Meeting of the Parliament 09 September 2025
I thank the Scottish Government for giving us the opportunity to acknowledge the progress that has been made in the devolution era to restore our railways and to run them in the public interest. It is a timely debate, coming just one week after peak fares were finally scrapped for good.
The debate is also an opportunity to look forward to the kind of railway that everybody in Scotland wants and can feel proud of: one that is genuinely affordable, safe and accessible, low carbon and pollution free; that provides a reliable service that is welcoming and comfortable; and that reaches many of the communities that were abandoned after the Beeching cuts and need to be connected once again.
There is much to be said about our railways, but I will start where we left off last week. The scrapping of peak fares is what people want. They do not want complex, overpriced ticketing whereby they have to sprint to the ticket barriers to get the last off-peak train.
The days of making rail exclusive and only for the few are coming to an end, but we need to go further. Research from the Scottish Greens shows that the vast majority of ScotRail’s first-class capacity goes unused. Last year, 98 per cent of first-class tickets were unsold.
Our railways should be for all of us. Every journey on a ScotRail service should be a first-class experience. It should not be determined by our ability to pay extra. We have all been in the situation of struggling to find seats or being forced to stand in cramped carriages while the first-class carriage is almost completely empty. Anyone who has got on a busy commuter train from Glasgow to Edinburgh during the festivals in August knows that that can be particularly uncomfortable in the heat and can lead to people feeling unwell. Rail companies across the UK are reducing their first-class services, and it is time for ScotRail to do the same. If we are to have a rail renaissance in Scotland, we need low-cost, reliable and accessible rail.