Meeting of the Parliament 28 March 2018
I thank John Finnie and the Green Party for raising the issue of better buses. Like the Greens, the Liberal Democrats believe that reversing the decline in bus use across the country is essential. We need to make bus use a practical option for more people in communities across Scotland, particularly in our rural areas, where bus transport is problematic, to say the least.
However, we have a problem with the last part of the motion, which calls for a statutory target to achieve greater bus use. A statutory target without any penalties is just a useless piece of legislation. Our statutory health targets are consistently missed but, of course, no penalties have been attached to the Government because of those failings. Such targets are completely useless.
We think that, in the forthcoming transport bill, the Scottish Government will enable many of the freedoms in Labour’s amendment without calling for bus reregulation. However, we think that Labour has got it right in highlighting the concern about
“any measures to cut back availability of the current concessionary travel scheme”.
The Conservative amendment will, of course, be pre-empted if the Scottish Government’s amendment is agreed to.
Although I have not been in any discussions with the Government about its amendment, we are willing to support it because—I rarely say this—it is quite a sensible amendment and it chimes with what we believe.