Meeting of the Parliament 17 May 2023
I will focus my comments on local bus services—the sort of services that act as lifelines for our communities by providing the most vulnerable people with everyday access to shopping, services and socialising.
Despite the importance of such bus routes, they can be economically challenging to operate. That is when local authorities step in by providing subsidies to ensure that the routes are accessible to people who have few, if any, other transport options. Therefore, it is of great concern that we see local authorities losing their ability to offer that support. With their budgets having been hollowed out by years of cuts from the Scottish Government, local authorities are inevitably making cuts of their own in order to balance their books. Sadly, local bus services are among those cuts.
I have seen that in my community, where the SNP-led Dundee City Council has voted to end support for five local bus routes. In an effort to plug an £18 million hole in the council budget, more than £122,000 worth of support is being cut from the 51, 202, 204, 206 and 236 services. Those bus routes connect communities across the city—the Ferry, the west end, Lochee, Kirkton, Lawside and more besides. Their loss will be felt in each of those communities, and will be felt especially by the many elderly passengers who rely on them. As my constituents would expect of me, I have taken the matter up with the leader of the council. Along with local councillor Derek Scott, I will continue to push for those services to be reinstated.
This is not just a problem for Dundee, though. The environment and economy spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Councillor Gail Macgregor, wrote to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee warning of the risk. She said:
“there is concern that incredibly stretched levels of funding in FY23/24 will prevent Councils from providing the bus services they are currently providing, either directly or by subsidising”.
Given that, according to one survey, more than one in five Scots uses a bus weekly, the loss of any service is a serious matter—yet that is what will continue to happen if the Scottish Government keeps gutting council budgets. Its doing so also completely undermines the decision to give councils the ability to run their own bus services. What good is giving councils that power if they have no money to enable them to use it? That is another example of the SNP-Green Government talking a good game but failing to deliver results.
The target to convert the majority of Scotland’s bus fleet to zero-emission vehicles by 2023 is another promise that looks set for failure, with a Transform Scotland report estimating that just 16 per cent of the fleet will have been converted by the deadline.
We have a Scottish Government that is off target, is not investing in our communities and has seen passenger numbers decline by 40 per cent over the past few years. That all adds up to a Government that does not know how to deliver high-quality public transport. I invite the Government to listen to my constituents. They do not want gimmicks from this Government; they want their local bus services back.
15:25