Meeting of the Parliament 04 June 2026 [Draft]
As a West Scotland MSP, I welcome the First Minister’s prioritisation of Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, but families across Scotland should be able to benefit from the cap as soon as possible.
Making bus travel cheaper is only half the picture, though. Forty years after Thatcher privatised the bus network, many communities just do not have the bus services that they need. Fares have gone up, but routes have also disappeared, which leaves people isolated and holds our whole economy back. At the same time, a handful of private bus company owners have become obscenely rich. Some have made so much money from being bus company operators that they can afford to set fire to a pile of their cash by writing £100,000 cheques to the Scottish Labour Party.
The Scottish Greens proposed bringing our bus services back into public ownership through a bond scheme, but the SNP’s manifesto was silent on the ownership question. Does the First Minister not agree that it is time to end the failed experiment of privatisation? Will he work with the Scottish Greens to bring our bus services back under public control?