Meeting of the Parliament 27 November 2025
I thank Jackson Carlaw for securing this debate, and I am grateful for the opportunity to outline my opposition to the proposed Glasgow congestion charge, which would be bad for my constituents and bad for Glasgow. It is a beggar-thy-neighbour policy that would hit those of us from the west who regularly visit Glasgow. I say to the SNP council that believing in separatist politics is not an excuse to disregard the needs of your nearest neighbours.
The SNP and Greens in Glasgow City Council will try to hide behind the idea that they are proposing the charge for environmental reasons, but the truth is that they are not. If they were serious about reducing the number of car journeys in the city, they would have ensured that commuters in the greater Glasgow area had access to affordable and reliable public transport. However, they have not done so.
After nearly two decades of the SNP in Government, and with the Greens in government for three of those years, my constituents are paying among the highest bus fares in the UK, and there has been no regulation of bus services. Having better and cheaper bus and rail services is the best way of relieving congestion, instead of fining people for going about their business. In other words, London-style congestion charges cannot be proposed without London-style public transport.
That brings me to the real reason for the charge. Everyone knows that it is all about the SNP council raising money to fill a £110 million black hole in its budget—a black hole that was caused by the SNP Government’s underfunding of local councils. Although I sympathise with the position that Glasgow City Council is facing, this proposal is not the answer—stopping the Government’s waste of taxpayers’ money is.
The proposal will have a real impact on my constituents. The people whom I represent need help with the cost of living, but the proposal will hit the pockets of my constituents, particularly those in Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, West Dunbartonshire and East Dunbartonshire who travel into or through Glasgow. That is before we get to the impact on places such as Lanarkshire, which Davy Russell talked about.
Such travel could be to visit friends and family, to work, to the shops or to attend medical appointments. In his opening speech, Jackson Carlaw talked about the centralisation of health services. Another example of that was the decision to close the children’s ward at the Royal Alexandra hospital in Paisley and move the services to the Royal hospital for children in Glasgow. Under this proposal, my constituents would be charged just to visit their sick children. They would not be alone; hundreds of thousands of people in the greater Glasgow area would be affected.
As we have heard, the basic rule of economics is that the more that is charged, the less demand there is. This measure would be bad not only for my constituents and their cost of living but for Glasgow businesses and the economy.
That is one of the key reasons why Glasgow City Council Labour group has opposed the policy, and it is also why Glasgow Chamber of Commerce has warned that it is
“very concerned about the possible displacement of business out of Glasgow.”
If there are fewer people commuting to Glasgow, it will damage Glasgow businesses, and the damage to them will be damage to the whole region. We will all pay, one way or another.
In conclusion, it is clear that hard-working Scots should not have to pay the price of SNP waste and failure. Like other members, I want to hear from the Scottish Government and the transport secretary whether they support the proposal and are going to co-operate with it, or whether they are going to make representations to Glasgow City Council to get it shelved. I do not believe that it is right and nor do my constituents and businesses, and I believe that the SNP council should think again.
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