Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 22 September 2021
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate, such is the strong concern that has been expressed by many of my constituents across Mid Scotland and Fife, but most especially by those who live in the Perth to Edinburgh M90 corridor, the area around Kirkcaldy and central Fife, and those near to Dunblane. Those people have been in touch because they are concerned about the proposed 2022 changes and what they would mean for them and their families.
There is no other way to describe what is contained in the proposals other than to say that they are cuts to rail services. In percentage terms, they would work out at a 12 per cent reduction across Scotland since the pre-pandemic year.
I also fully understand and sympathise with the passengers and rail workers who feel badly let down by the proposals because they will impact not just on the services but on jobs.
In its amendment, the Scottish Government implies that Professor Docherty’s report is about not just
“building back to pre-pandemic levels”
but providing for “future demand”. I want to examine that further. John Mason rightly pointed out that working patterns are changing, perhaps permanently, and that there will definitely be people who will choose to work at home who would previously have commuted to work in offices. However, that fall in demand must be set against the regional demographic changes and what we are told is a wider Scottish Government policy when it comes to the green agenda.
I will explain what I mean. The proposed removal of a direct link from Edinburgh to Perth has been a particular concern. The rerouting of services from Perth to Edinburgh via Dunfermline will add 10 minutes to the journey time, when that journey time is already well over the time for comparable journeys in the rest of the UK and Europe. That is precisely why, for the past 20 years, we have been campaigning for the rail infrastructure between Edinburgh and Perth to be upgraded. We want to get more people on to greener transport by making trains much more competitive with roads.
Surely we must also pay attention to the extent of the population growth that is taking place around the western edge of Perth city and around the hinterland of Kinross and Milnathort, a large proportion of whose working population travels to Edinburgh and Glasgow. We should not forget, either, that Perth station is supposed to be the hub for Dundee, Aberdeen and Inverness, which is exactly why bodies such as Transform Scotland have been presenting such a cogent case when it comes to infrastructure developments. Surely it is very important that ScotRail recognises all that when it timetables future services.
Such was my concern about those issues that I asked to meet ScotRail officials on 6 September. They told me, in effect, that they were going to push ahead with the changes because there was so little that they could do to make ScotRail services competitive against road, given the constraints of the current infrastructure. I understand that concern, but I am afraid that I do not accept that what they are proposing for 2022 will be the right answer.
There are concerns in other parts of Mid Scotland and Fife about the proposed ending of the direct link between Dunblane and Glasgow, which will necessitate a change at Stirling, and about the proposed changes to services in central Fife, which will involve more changes at Inverkeithing.
People are telling us clearly that they want trains to be accessible, to run on time and to be clean and efficient. They do not want slower trains, cancellations and train journeys that are less competitive with car journeys, nor do they want a service—as Graham Simpson pointed out—that is functioning against a backdrop of uneasy relationships with Government and with passengers.
Good-quality transport must be at the heart of economic policy making, and I suggest that we learn a lot from what is happening on the rail networks of some of our European neighbours, who know how to get train services right.
15:53