Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 20 May 2020
Amendments 81 and 82 would require Scottish ministers to establish a scheme of free bus travel for NHS and social care workers during the emergency measures. The Government’s “Stay at home” message has been clear: people should travel or go to work only when it is essential, and they should, if possible, avoid public transport.
For our NHS and care workers, who really have stepped up to the mark, travel to their workplace, where they look after and care for our loved ones, does not get more essential.
17:15Of course, they have avoided public transport where they can, but for some key workers—often the lowest paid—public transport is their only possible means of travel to work. The very least that we can do at this time is recognise their commitment, dedication and compassion as best we can. One way—a very small way—to do that is to remove one of the financial burdens that they face.
Free bus travel for NHS and social care staff would not cost the taxpayer more. As is the case with free travel for NHS staff in Wales, bus operators would, in return for the substantial and welcome financial support with which the Scottish Government already provides them, be required to allow those staff to travel for free.
As members will know, the Scottish Government is continuing to pay the bus service operators grant and concessionary travel reimbursements at forecast levels, despite there having been a fall of about 80 per cent in concessionary travel passenger journeys. The Government is topping up the difference between actual usage under the concessionary travel scheme and forecast usage, and the total budget for grants and concessionary fares is worth more than £260 million for the year.
Local authorities and transport agencies are continuing to pay for school transport contracts and subsidised non-commercial routes, even though those buses are running either not at all or at vastly reduced frequency.
It is therefore not too much to ask of our bus companies that they should, in return for that support, not only continue their good work in focusing on routes for key workers, but allow the small number of NHS and social care staff to travel on those buses for free.
Ideally, I would like a scheme to cover rail travel as well, as is the case in Northern Ireland and Wales. I have for some time been pressing the Scottish Government to introduce such a scheme, but I appreciate that that would require discussions around rail franchising. So far, the Scottish Government has, sadly, chosen not to pursue that route.
For bus travel, however, a free travel scheme could be implemented almost immediately. There would be no need to provide new concessionary travel cards—in Northern Ireland, health and social care trust staff are entitled to free public transport simply by showing their photographic identification badge, and people who work in the private care sector, including in care homes, show photographic ID and a letter that has been signed by their employer. In Wales, NHS staff simply have to show their NHS pass in order to travel on public transport for free. I therefore ask: why not in Scotland?
Some members might argue that such a scheme would mean that more people would travel by bus, but it would be a bit of an insult to our NHS and social care staff to say that they would choose to travel by public transport, which they have been advised to avoid if they can, unless they really had to do so. This is about easing the burden on workers who already travel by bus.
There is no evidence whatsoever from Northern Ireland and Wales that a rise in passenger use has resulted from the free travel schemes that have been brought in for key workers there. We know that the proposed scheme can work, because it is working in Wales and Northern Ireland.
As the Scottish Government confirmed on 1 April—in the update to MSPs from the Cabinet Secretary for Finance—the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity asked operators to provide free bus travel for NHS workers when he announced the financial support for bus operators. He would not have asked them if he did not support free travel, or if he thought that it could not work or was not affordable within the existing financial support that the Scottish Government provides.
Some operators, including Borders Buses in my region, have responded positively, but most have not. Leaving the decision to bus operators has, unfortunately, not worked. If free bus travel is good enough for people in some parts of Scotland and for NHS and social care staff in Northern Ireland and Wales, surely it is good enough for all our constituents across Scotland who work in the NHS and social care sectors, to whom we owe an enormous debt of gratitude.
I move amendment 81.