Chamber and committees

Okay. That will be 15 years since the initial policy commitment to roll out integrated ticketing, and there is no understanding of whether the three regional transport partnerships that I mentioned will have any role in that in the near future.

That will be useful.

Which of the three options do you think will get more people on to public transport and repair services?

Three regional transport partnerships are mentioned in the statutory instrument but there is no understanding of whether they will move towards rolling out integrated ticketing in the near future. Is that correct?

What will the timescales be for that?

I will try to keep it to the subject. Have the three RTPs that are named in the SSI benefited from the community bus fund? The minister mentioned that there is a relatively small amount of money—£5 million—for community bus funds. You will have noticed in Perth and Kinross that the council has used that money successfully to develop a new model for rural bus services that involves communities running their own services. I am interested in where that would sit within a new emerging model of rural services, and whether there is an expectation that the community bus fund will be enhanced and further developed in order to create new delivery models?

What about the other two RTPs that are mentioned in the SSI?

Good morning to the panel. I am trying to get a sense of where the Government’s vision for buses is now. As Monica Lennon has just outlined, we can have municipally run services that are run in the public interest and owned by the public. We can have franchising in which regional transport partnerships and councils can control the provision of services in their areas or we can have the status quo, with bus services improvement partnerships trying to get fragmented services and fragmented public sector delivery working a little better. What is the Government’s vision? Which of those three approaches do you think is the way forward and which do you back?

That concerned pricing rather than the delivery model, which the fair fares review did not cover at all.

I will move on to the cabinet secretary’s announcement on climate change from a couple of weeks ago. As part of a package to reboot our action on climate change, a national programme of integrated ticketing was announced. It was, of course, announced previously—12 years ago—but it has not been delivered yet. That will probably need to be delivered on a regional basis and rolled out across Scotland. Which of the three transport partnerships that are mentioned in the statutory instrument will be the first to integrate ticketing in a pilot area and encourage people on to public transport?

I understand that there is already an element of integrated ticketing in Shetland, and Shetland is mentioned in the statutory instrument. Would it be possible to move fully towards integrated ticketing in Shetland, at least, and to support that delivery with a regional roll-out?