Meeting of the Parliament 04 September 2025
I thank Mr Doris for bringing the debate to the chamber. It is great to be back after our summer recess and to talk about something that people care about so much.
Nicola Sturgeon promised passengers that Scotland’s rail service would improve under Government ownership, yet things are manifestly worse than they were under Abellio. Public transport has become unreliable and far too expensive. Taxpayer subsidies, ticket prices and the number of complaints have all soared, but the number of services and the number of passengers using them have plummeted.
It was the Scottish National Party’s decision to reintroduce peak fares on ScotRail trains last year. That was a disastrous decision, because it punished hard-working Scots, who paid hundreds or thousands of pounds more simply to commute to their work.
Our party, the Scottish Conservatives, campaigned against that. Despite being defeated in the Parliament last September on a Scottish Conservative vote on the issue, the SNP at that time refused to budge, claiming that abolishing peak fares permanently was unaffordable. We have always campaigned to permanently scrap peak fares, because we want to ease the burden on hard-working Scots.