Meeting of the Parliament 11 September 2024
I welcome the opportunity to speak on behalf of Scottish Liberal Democrats this afternoon. We will support the motion and the Labour amendment, but we will not support the Scottish Government’s amendment.
The reintroduction of peak fares comes a few months after the announcement in April of a rise in fares of 8.7 per cent, which was a double whammy for commuters during the cost of living crisis. Some people will now be incentivised to come off the rail network and go back into cars. There will be plenty of real-world experiences out there that illustrate the barrier that the return of peak fares will make to their commute, and there is also a question about the reliability of the rail service. Passengers need reliability. Many experiences highlight commuters finding other means to get to work rather than rail, which perhaps impacted the success of the pilot.
It was hoped that that policy had the climate and sustainable transport in mind. The Scottish Government’s announcement stated that a 10 per cent increase in passenger levels would have made the policy self-financing, which poses the question why the Scottish Government was unable to achieve that magic number. What more spending would have been needed to ensure a successful public engagement programme to develop a self-financing policy and a sustainable rail service?