Meeting of the Parliament 17 May 2023
On the face of it, my motion for debate is about bus services, route cancellations, inflation-busting fare increases, a lack of investment and a failure of leadership, but, at its heart, my motion is about people who rely on the public transport system to get them to where they need to go. It is about people who get stranded on routes that get cancelled in the interests of shareholders. It is about people being failed by flawed approaches to bus services that hand public money and control to private interests.
In writing the motion, my intention was to instigate a balanced debate that I hoped members across the chamber could get behind, regardless of their party affiliation. That is why I am so disappointed by the Government amendment. It serves as an example of the blinkered approach that has led to the sorry state of bus services across the country.
Let us have a look at the motion and what the Government has removed in its amendment, which will get passed with the Greens’ support. Let us have a discussion about who is interested in the environment and who is interested in getting people out of cars and on to buses, because it is certainly not the Green Party.
My motion notes the
“recent bus fare rises across the country that are hitting during a cost of living crisis”.
The fact that the Government wants that removed suggests that it is in denial. Does it acknowledge that there have been major increases in bus fares across the country, and does it accept that, for many people who are on low incomes, that is a barrier to using buses?
The motion further notes that those fare rises
“come on the back of route cancellations across much of Scotland that are isolating communities.”
Is the Government seriously saying that there have not been route cancellations in every community across Scotland? I am sure that there has been bus cancellation after bus cancellation in the communities of Scottish National Party and Green Party members, just as there has been in our communities. That puts people off using buses.
Indeed, last week in West Lothian, two young people explained how they would both have to spend £40 on a Sunday to get a taxi, because of the bus route cancellations that have taken place. Young people told us that their first bus in the morning had been taken off, so they had to take taxis at £20 because, otherwise, they could not get to their work. Is the Government denying that routes have been cut? It certainly seems to be doing so. Let us look at the SNP amendment, which inserts the words
“supports the vision outlined in the policy prospectus, Equality, Opportunity, Community, for a public transport system that is more accessible”.
The system is not more accessible, and the people who are suffering the most are the poorest.
The amendment goes on to talk about the under-22s and free travel for the over-60s but, in the middle, there is a group of people who are generally on much lower incomes, which is why they are not in their cars, and those people are being denied access to buses because of the costs. You really could not make it up—the Government is in denial. It is not just that the SNP Government is in denial but that it has no idea what to do to build a transport system that will deliver for all the people of Scotland.
At the weekend, one of its members said that the SNP is
“in office but not in power”.
I would go further and say that it has no vision and is a clueless Government that is high on rhetoric, with no idea how to meet the big challenges that Scotland faces at this time. Record numbers of buses have been axed during its time in office, and the number of routes being axed is on the rise, so it is clear that the SNP’s broken system is failing thousands of public transport users in Scotland, and it has no plan to fix it. Indeed, I repeat that the Government does not have a clue about how to begin to fix the problems that we have in Scotland.
Scottish Labour will launch the biggest reform of buses in a generation, end the SNP’s broken system and hand power and control of routes, fares and services back to local communities and people who depend on those services. That is the direction of travel in which we need to go—