Meeting of the Parliament 18 December 2019
That is a bit rich from the Conservative Party. Week in and week out, Conservative members come into the chamber to slag off ScotRail and to demand better services. Every time that I raise the fact that the vast majority of delays and cancellations on the network in Scotland are caused by infrastructure issues that are the responsibility of Network Rail, which is the responsibility of the UK Government, Conservatives boo me and say that that is just an excuse to cover for ScotRail, but now they are trying to defend ScotRail. I ask them at least to be consistent if they are going to stand up and make comments about rail services in Scotland.
The real answer to Liam Kerr’s question is whether his Government will commit to implementing the recommendations that Keith Williams makes in his review. Ultimately, following his review, there will need to be a political decision on whether there should be a fundamental change to the way in which our rail services operate. That will involve getting rid of franchising, allowing different models for the provision of rail services and ensuring that infrastructure and passenger services are much more closely aligned—in the way that Liam Kerr mentioned—so that they are much more passenger focused. If that happens, we will be able to make such decisions here in this Parliament.
In recognising the infrastructure challenges that we have in the Scottish routes, I hope that Liam Kerr will recognise that this Parliament should have responsibility for those challenges and that we should be able to align infrastructure with our passenger services in order to improve overall passenger satisfaction levels. I hope that he will be big enough to recognise that, but time will tell.