Meeting of the Parliament 11 September 2024
First, I want to highlight the difference in approach between the Scottish National Party and Scottish Labour on the issue of peak rail fares. The SNP’s view seems to be that withdrawing peak fares was giving a subsidy to workers who travel to and from work by train at certain times of the day. Scottish Labour views peak fares as a tax on workers who use the train to get to and from work. In other words, workers are penalised if they have to use the train between certain hours of the day to get to and from work.
The cabinet secretary says that the pilot mostly benefited those with medium to higher incomes, and we need to talk about what that means. The phrase “middle earners” might mean one thing to the SNP, but I have been contacted by nurses, teaching assistants, a janitor and a hotel worker, all of whom are front-line workers who would fall into the category of middle earners—according to the SNP—and none of those workers felt that it was fair to be charged a premium for overcrowded and unreliable train services that they rely on to get to and from their work.
Even if we accept the SNP’s view that removing peak fares provides a subsidy to middle earners, I ask that we be realistic about the chance of getting more people to leave the car at home and travel by rail. If we want people to move from their car to public transport, ultimately, any measures will have to benefit middle earners, as they are more likely to be driving than people on low incomes. Inspiring modal shifts means targeting those who are driving and giving them a reason to change their mode of transport. That must mean making rail travel affordable, accessible and reliable. It certainly needs to be cheaper to use the train than it is to use the car.
If we do not make modal shifts, we will continue to face an uphill struggle. John Swinney recently said that he believes that the Government will still achieve a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres travelled by 2030. Personally, I think that that is pie in the sky. However, in reality, the SNP is unlikely to be in power by then, and it is easy to make targets for the future and then take little action to meet them.
The Scottish Government is trying to sell the removal of peak fares as a failure but, during an unprecedented time of SNP chaotic mismanagement that included delays, cancellations and the imposition of an emergency timetable—