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The budget should be sufficient, based on the modelling. It assumes that patronage levels will recover to 80 per cent of what they were prior to the pandemic, so it is dependent on passenger behaviour, bluntly, but that would certainly measure up with what officials have forecast in relation to people returning to bus.

The other thing to reflect on is that people’s travel habits have dramatically changed, so this is not only about bringing people back to public transport. Some people do not go to a workplace anymore; they work from home. That has changed the nature of public transport in Scotland. However, I think that we are still in a bit of a pre-pandemic cycle, whereby the delivery model that we currently have across public transport networks reflects provision that existed prior to the pandemic. We need to think again about some of our delivery models when people are often working from home during the week, because that changes what the patronage uptick is. In answer to your question, the budget should be sufficient but it assumes an 80 per cent return of patronage.

No; quite.

Pricing of fares is regularly raised with me. RET has been successful, and since its introduction there has been a substantial increase in the number of vehicles and passengers travelling on the network. It is now more than 5 million; it certainly was in 2019, the last comparable pre-pandemic year.

It also true that RET has reduced the average fare by 34 per cent for passengers and 40 per cent for car traffic, which is important. As I mentioned in an earlier response, it saves travellers around £25 million a year. However, I am keen that we use the ICP to consult island communities on their views on dynamic pricing. It is a fair observation.

I read in the Official Report of the committee’s previous evidence session that Mr Drummond, I think, was looking at that approach. As Ms Dunbar outlines, it is used in other transport sectors, so we need to be live to it.

I go back to my guiding principle from the start of the evidence session, which is that anything that we do next has to be informed by islanders’ views. We will not foist something on island communities. If more dynamic pricing is what they would like and would opt for, which would move us away from the current structure, I am amenable to that.

That is under consideration. As I outlined in my response to Mr Ruskell, a key part of the ICP will be the chapter on onward and connecting travel. We are looking for that to be completed internally in the first half of 2023, and there will then be stakeholder engagement.

Ms Dunbar is absolutely right that we need to ensure that there are more joined-up approaches to our broader transport network. There are already great examples of that in the transport network. I was in discussions with officials about that very point yesterday. In places such as Oban, for example, there is fantastic connectivity between ferry and rail, but that does not exist everywhere. We have that in other parts of the network, but we need to consider where we can build in opportunities to connect people’s journeys, because otherwise we are never going to facilitate the modal shift to get people out of their cars.

In response to Ms Lennon’s question about our net zero targets, we know that the transport sector is a significant contributor to our emissions, and we absolutely recognise the need to join things up better, whether that be through shared hubs or other approaches that exist in other parts of Scotland.

Yes—absolutely. I am not going to disband Transport Scotland at the committee’s meeting this morning, convener. However, to get into the detail of Ms Hyslop’s question, it is important that we recognise some of the challenges with the current tripartite structure. I am sure that committee members have read the project Neptune report and they will know that the tripartite structure comes with a number of challenges. There is a line in the report that says that the role of ministers is often quite detached from the tripartite structure. That is problematic, because I answer parliamentary questions in the chamber and I appear before the committee, yet ministers can feel very detached from that process.

Ms Hyslop asked whether some of the responsibilities could be transferred within the Scottish Government. Yes, they could. Could that strengthen the relationship between Transport Scotland and the Scottish ministers? Yes. Ultimately, following project Neptune, the community consultation work will tell us where the community wants us to go in that regard, and I am keen to hear from it. I do not want to prejudge that, but Ms Hyslop makes an interesting point.

It is interesting. The Norwegian experience is very different from what we have in Scotland, given the number and type of routes that are run and the type of vessels that are used. If we look at project Neptune, we can see that Scotland is quite unique in how we deliver ferry services. No other country in the world does things as we do them in Scotland. Maybe that is a good thing and maybe it is a bad thing—I will allow the committee to judge that. Nonetheless, I do not think that unbundling would provide us with the answers that we need here.

I return to Ms Hyslop’s observation in her question that the main challenge for the fleet just now is resilience and reliability. How do we improve that? That is what I am absolutely focused on, as transport minister, at the current time. It is about bringing in extra tonnage where we are able to do that, making sure that there is the investment that Mr Kerr spoke about—we have done a lot of that work in the past year—and ensuring that passengers’ lived experience of the network improves. It will need to improve markedly in the interim.

I would be happy to do that.

The member has asked a fair question. On the vessels that have been procured and are being built in Turkey, that was a free and open competition, and we could not dictate such terms in that competition. I am prepared to be wrong about that—I am looking at officials in case they are going to correct me. We could not dictate in that competition where the award was made, because it was an open competition.

The point about the supply chain issue is well made. As far as I understand it, there will be benefits to the UK supply chain in relation to the vessels that are being built in Turkey.

Obviously, we will have to do that as a matter of urgency, but I reflect to committee members that that is the first time that I have heard that statistic. I do not know whether officials have heard that previously in relation to inflationary impacts. It is also important to reflect that we have already leveraged £580 million into ports and vessels, so the additionality, which has been brought in the past financial year, joins that contribution.

In answer to Mr Kerr’s wider point in relation to inflation, of course, we will need to work with CMAL on mapping out what those inflationary impacts actually mean for the current fleet and the deliverables, which are absolutely key.

However, today was the first time that I had heard that particular statistic in relation to the inflationary impacts on the fleet. I am happy to hear officials’ views on that, but I think that we will need to look at the point that Mr Kerr has raised.

Yes, absolutely; I would.