Seòmar agus comataidhean

Passenger numbers have increased, but they have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. I emphasise that the change to peak fares is a pilot project: the £15 million will be used to run a pilot on particular routes for six months in order to test out whether removing peak fares will have an impact on people’s travelling behaviour on the railway network. It will not remove peak fares across the network.

There is a combination of funding. There is an additional allocation for part of the forestry programme to help to secure delivery of that growth. It is a combination of the organisation’s existing budget and the additional allocation that we have made. Simon Fuller can say a wee bit more from a forestry point of view on how exactly we are going to do that.

I do not have that information in front of me. I would have to check and come back to the committee on that.

The fair fares review stems back to our national transport strategy. It was one of the key priorities that we identified as an area to take forward in reviewing our transport policy. The purpose of the fair fares review is to look at how we can address anomalies within the fare structure, whether in relation to rail, ferries or buses. We are trying to identify ways in which we can remove those anomalies, and to look at how to streamline some of the ways in which fares are set for different transport modes.

That is the background to the fair fares review. However, the national transport strategy was published before Covid. Since then, one of the most significant things that has happened has been the big change in patronage on public transport, which has continued to this point. We have not had full recovery in patronage levels, particularly in relation to rail.

The idea behind having a pilot on removing peak fares is to see whether that would help to make public transport—in this case, rail—more attractive to more people, and to test that as a hypothesis that could potentially have a positive impact. The £15 million that we have allocated in the budget will provide for that.

We are taking forward a range of work to identify the most appropriate way in which to carry out the pilot, as it is important that we do that in a meaningful way and that we can be confident about the outcome and the findings that come from it. Therefore, quite a bit of detailed work is going on behind the scenes involving Transport Scotland and ScotRail to identify an appropriate route for the pilot.

The fair fares review overall should be completed in the spring of this year. We then intend to set out some of the proposals that have emerged through the review process. That will also involve a public consultation exercise, which will allow stakeholders, Parliament and the public to have a say on some of the findings from the fair fares review and some of the work that we are planning to take forward alongside carrying out the pilot on peak fares.

If you look at public transport from a socioeconomic point of view, you will see that the vast majority of people who use it use buses. We are now at a point at which almost half the population of Scotland are able to travel on buses for free. Obviously, that has a significant financial benefit for those who regularly use buses. If you want to focus on areas that will help people on lower incomes to access public transport, buses would be the number 1 priority, given the sociodemographic profile of those who use buses and the significant numbers who use them compared with rail. As I said, almost half the country is now able to travel for free on buses.

That was a good piece of work, although it has taken some time. It was led by the Fraser of Allander Institute and it is a joint piece of work between Government and Parliament. I am keen to make sure that, across Government, there is much greater transparency around spend on meeting our climate change targets. In this year’s strand 1 work, if you take the carbon taxonomy that has been used, you can see that the proportion of spend on low carbon has increased while the proportion of spend on high carbon factors has declined. We are starting to get greater transparency around that.

That is the challenge for the high-level strand 1 work that we have this year. That provides a bit more detail, in overview, of how we are spending our resources in tackling climate change. Strands 2 and 3 will give us much more detail and will also make it more bespoke to individual portfolios.

I am conscious that a lot of the burden falls on this committee when it comes to climate change. However, I would have thought that the Economy and Fair Work Committee would have a particular interest in what is happening in the economy portfolio on investing in tackling climate change—likewise, other portfolios. It is important that we get strands 2 and 3 delivering that level of detail, so that individual committees beyond this one will be able to see more clearly exactly what an individual portfolio is doing to deliver on our climate change targets, and how it is investing in funding to support that.

That is what strands 2 and 3 should help to deliver. I think that strand 1 has been helpful in being applied to this budget, but there is clearly more that we need to do. That will be done over the course of the year.

Just to be clear, we are providing £62.5 million to support bus services. Within that there is £1 million in resources and £5 million in capital to support councils to explore providing bus services in their areas.

I would like to have seen faster and greater progress. Bus is the most flexible form of mass public transport. It is a very flexible resource and real priority for us, as reflected in our policy programme. However, it is important that we allow local authorities to consider what is the most appropriate model for their area. Something that works in a big urban area might not be effective in a more rural area.

There are several different options available to local authorities. One model that some local authorities are interested in is franchising: having a franchise service in the local authority area would allow the authority to set out the services that it wants, their frequency and the fare rates. It would give local authorities much more control and remove the need for them to own and run buses, although they would control the service. That takes away a lot of the capital cost that is associated with running a service. We need to allow local authorities the space to identify what would be the best way to go about that. The funding that we are providing is to support the development of some of that work.

It is fair to say that the bus industry is going through a really difficult time because of Covid, and that patronage levels have not fully returned to their previous levels, which is causing financial challenges. It is in all of our interests to find a more sustainable approach. If you were to ask me whether the current model is working in our interests, I would say that it is not. That is why the provisions were put in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 in order to give us options. I would like to see some of those options being developed and becoming active models that are being used. I hope that we will start to see that happen over the next couple of years.

We have more than 3,000 public charging points in Scotland, which does not include the number of private charging points. There will be several thousand private charging points, including those that have been put in at workplaces and so on, which are not part of the public sector network. There is a distinction. The 3,000-plus figure relates to public sector charging points. I do not know what the figure is for private sector charging points, but several thousand on top of that will be available. That is a growing network as well.

We have committed to doubling the public sector charging network from the 3,000-plus units that we have at the moment to more than 6,000 units over the next couple of years. We have allocated £30 million to support that and we are working with the private sector to lever in an additional £30 million to deliver that expansion of the network. A combination of further private sector investment, which will continue to grow, alongside the public sector investment in the public charging network will give us sufficient coverage for the charging network overall.

I have heard a number of times the figure of 30,000 charging places that the CCC believes is necessary. I am not entirely sure how that figure was arrived at. However, we believe that a combination of public and private investment will provide us with sufficient coverage, alongside encouraging people to make greater use of public transport.

It is part of a programme of work that we have taken—

We have been working with the Scottish Futures Trust to look at levering in private sector investment. That engagement is on-going. That is where the total of £60 million comes from. It is public and private together, but £30 million comes from the public sector.

Yes. I am happy to provide any further information that would be useful.