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Fiona Hyslop has identified an error in her contribution and provided the following correction.

At col 50, paragraph 5—

Original text—

One of the first things that I did as minister back in June was publish “A Network Fit For The Future: Vision for Scotland’s Public Electric Vehicle Charging Network”, in which we say that we are looking to work with the private sector to put in place an additional 6,000 EV chargers before 2026.

Corrected text—

One of the first things that I did as minister back in June was publish “A Network Fit For The Future: Vision for Scotland’s Public Electric Vehicle Charging Network”, in which we say that we are looking to work with the private sector to put in place 6,000 EV chargers before 2026.

I ask Bill Reeve to reply in relation to the timescales.

Well, I am a politician, not a rail expert.

Probably. I will need to tell Parliament, and I will also need to get the decision through Cabinet. Given the committee’s interest, we will ensure that we alert it when the announcement in Parliament is due.

The commitments are in the programme for government. It is a priority for the Scottish Government to deliver on the review, to look at the assessments and to ensure that we have improvements. Our current proposal is to dual the A96, with the priority being the dualling of the section from Inverness to Nairn, where the work is more advanced.

The sensible thing to do is to see what the review says and how the options are assessed, because the options that are recommended will have an impact on the timescale, as will the amount of capital that is available.

I am not talking only about the A96; I am talking about all of the transport budget. You will know that there will be a 7 per cent reduction in capital funding from the Scottish Government in the coming years, because there was no inflation proofing for capital funding. Also, as you will be aware, construction inflation has been in excess of regular inflation. There are challenges for all aspects of construction.

I think that it would be remiss of me to give you a commitment on timescales before we have done the necessary piece of work. We will report as soon as the assessments have been done.

The proposal is ambitious, but I think that it is welcome. It is a real attempt to try to make rail a choice for people who currently use cars, for example to commute. Since Covid, we have seen changes in how people are travelling. Over the piece, 70 per cent of commuting passengers are back, but that is not the full complement. We are also seeing strong returns elsewhere in the system—for example, Saturday is now the busiest day.

The preparatory work has been on-going since the announcement that the pilot would happen. We have just confirmed the date when it will start, which is 2 October.

One issue is capacity. I have made clear to ScotRail the need to ensure that the communication is very strong, and it has also made sure that, particularly on the Glasgow-Edinburgh line, all seven or eight carriages will be used for the journeys. To date, some trains have had only four carriages. That is not going to happen during the pilot period. Additional carriages will also come in in some of the other areas that have been added, particularly the Alexandria area.

The change is very welcome. I think that people will see it as a big step forward. It will help people with affordability, particularly given that, for many people, the cost of rail is prohibitive during peak journey times. However, I recommend that everybody watches ScotRail’s communications, because they may need to adjust when they travel. I suspect there will be far more appetite for rail travel.

It is a pilot, and we do not know what will happen or what changes there will be. Clearly, we have hybrid working, and the change may encourage more people to go back into offices. That is part of what we will look at, but we also want to assess whether it will lead to a shift from car to rail, with the associated decarbonisation and reduction in emissions.

One of the first things that I did as minister back in June was publish “A Network Fit For The Future: Vision for Scotland’s Public Electric Vehicle Charging Network”, in which we say that we are looking to work with the private sector to put in place an additional 6,000 EV chargers before 2026. As for current numbers, we understand that about 20,000 chargers in domestic and business settings have been receiving Government support. [Fiona Hyslop has corrected this contribution. See end of report.]

Going forward, local authorities are taking on responsibility for trying to ensure that their areas are fully covered. As far as investment is concerned, how we work with the private sector will be really important; indeed, ChargePlace Scotland has been supported by the Scottish Government for some time, and that contract will continue, I think, until 2026.

The Department for Transport produced a report on what it thought would be the number of EVs, but I think that it underestimated the number by about 16 per cent; we have far more electric vehicles on our roads than was anticipated in that initial research. As a result, we will work with other ministers to ensure that we have a good benchmark from which to monitor the number of EVs on our roads and the situation with charging. We have a very good rate of charging points compared with the rest of the UK outside London, which is very strong in this area. As everyone knows, however, we still need to improve.

The issue is the shift from initial subsidy. I have had plenty of letters from MSPs, saying, “Hang on a second—the price is going up now”, but that is because private operators are now operating systems that used to receive a great deal of subsidy. If they are not getting the electricity for free, they are obviously going to look for additional support.

I will ensure that the EV vision is sent to the committee—it might actually have been sent before you became a member, Mr Lumsden—but it is about how we work with private operators. When I launched it in the Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc in Dundee, which I know the committee has previously visited, I saw some of the innovative work that is being done there, including a mobile EV charging facility. That is quite an innovation that can be used in rural and remote areas, where there have been problems in the past, as well as for events. Quite a lot of private sector activity is happening, but the kind of roll-out that we all want is still a work in progress.

That discussion has to continue with unions, but it is important to provide certainty and stability by saying there will be no office closures. We want to ensure that there are workable and sensible operations for stations, and that has to involve getting the views of unions. Certainly, there are no strikes taking place in Scotland, and I want that attitude and relationship to continue so that we can continue to ensure that we have effective working with our unions.

I think that we are on track. We have about 73 chargers per 100,000 people, which means that we are the second strongest to London on provision, but we need far more. I think that everybody understands that. We now need to know how we can do that and how we can generate private funding for it, because we have already invested about £65 million—a lot of money—to kickstart that interventionist aspect. I am not going to say that I am satisfied; I do not think that that would be reasonable, because everybody knows that we need to improve in order to give confidence for everybody for travel.

Another thing that we want to look at—I know that the committee was interested in this—is how we promote tourism using electric vehicles. We need people to be confident about that, but we have some way to go. However, if that is our drive and aspiration, ensuring that we have EV charging available to people who want to hire electric vehicles and travel across our beautiful countryside using them will help rural areas.