Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, convener. I understand that you want us to be brief—and I will happily be brief.

Although I am delighted to be at the committee, I am, to be frank, fed up with talking about this particular issue. However, I am not nearly as fed up as my constituents in West Scotland are about being failed by an utterly broken bus market.

I commend Ellie Harrison and the Better Buses for Strathclyde campaign for lodging the petition. As members will know, I represent the West Scotland region, including Renfrewshire, which last year saw a 13 per cent cut in bus services. That drastic cut that has had real consequences for people in West Scotland. Young people in Erskine are struggling to get to college; disabled residents in Gallowhill are being abandoned; there are veterans in Erskine without a nearby bus stop; national health service workers from Barrhead and Neilston are facing challenges in making it to their shifts at the Royal Alexandra hospital; and working mothers in Johnstone are finding it impossible to drop their kids off at school and get to work on time. In Foxbar, a dialysis patient is now having to make a daily taxi journey, because of early morning bus cuts. All the while, people in Glasgow and the west are paying among the highest bus fares anywhere in the UK.

Frankly, people have had enough, which is why you have so many MSPs in front of you this morning. Young people and older people alike are now asking what the point of a free bus pass is if there is no bus to get on. I focused on Renfrewshire, because I can offer that particular perspective, but the same stories are being replicated across Glasgow and the west.

Private bus operators clearly want to keep the status quo, but that is not an option; reform is long overdue and needs to be accelerated in the ways that the petitioner has put forward. Bus passengers in the west need and deserve change. The same franchising powers have been implemented in places such as Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds—and if it is good enough for those areas, it is certainly good enough for Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

The process for putting local buses under local control should be accelerated, and transport authorities should be provided with the necessary resources and information to make that happen urgently. I welcome the petition.

I have nothing to add.

I want to follow up on the points that were just raised about trade in services, although it is largely excluded from the TCA, holding up better than trade in goods. What analysis is there on that? We have heard this morning about online remote working being a big factor. Is that enough to largely explain what has happened, or are there other factors?

My second point was whether you think that the Scottish Government could have done more to explain those caveats. I think that an impression was created that we were going to align with EU law, and a lot of people expected a lot more alignment from the Scottish Government than there has been. Perhaps those important caveats, which I agree are sensible—this is not a criticism—about what is possible and meaningful have not been articulated to the public as well as they could have been.

The Scottish Government has a stated policy of EU alignment, but it comes with important caveats—where appropriate—which I think are sensible. However, they sometimes get missed or forgotten in discussions, certainly in the public domain. You told the committee last year, and repeated today, that you mean

“where it is meaningful and possible ... to do so.”

You have talked about the practical outcomes and reducing burdens, and I welcome what you said about the new UK Government looking to take a new approach.

My question is whether the limited use of the keeping pace power reflects a shift in what the Scottish Government has regarded as appropriate since the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021 was passed and the EU alignment policy was set? Could the Scottish Government have done more to explain those caveats in policy around alignment when considering the gap between the use of the keeping pace power and the different regulations that have not been brought in?

Good morning. Erasmus has been mentioned, most recently by Dr Marks. Clearly, withdrawing from Erasmus has had an impact on opportunities for young people generally, but also on opportunities for law students from Scotland and the whole of the UK. There has obviously also been an impact on the EU in terms of helping people to achieve qualifications that can be recognised there in the first place. What are your thoughts on the extent of that impact on opportunities and achieving qualifications in the law and the legal profession?

Have you any thoughts on the replacement programmes for Erasmus? There has been a delay to a replacement programme in Scotland, but Wales has made more progress. Has there been any impact on opportunities for law students or lawyers in Wales as a result?

Yes.

Last year—almost 12 months ago.

So you have persuaded them.

Obviously, the Government has made promises. You said earlier that the sector will believe this when it sees it, and I will believe it when I see it, too.