Chamber and committees

There is certainly no such benefit, convener, although I hope that there will be for my constituents, if they get jobs in the years ahead.

Cabinet secretary, if Mr Fairlie is leading on canals, I hope that you can suggest to him that we look at the wider regeneration impact on communities. In my constituency, there is regeneration at the Hamiltonhill Claypits, impressive investment is being made in Maryhill, Gilshochill and the Stockingfield bridge, and a new nature reserve has been developed towards Cadder, beside the banks of the canal. Does the cabinet secretary agree that using canals as drivers of community regeneration, particularly in deprived areas, is important and that, when we audit Scottish canals, we should audit their social benefit as well as the pounds and pence elsewhere?

Absolutely.

I do not know whether the next question is related, but in preparation for today’s meeting, I was looking at the papers and saw that, some six years ago, the UK Government started talking about radical reform of the rail system across the UK. In 2021, the Williams-Shapps report was published, and eventually, in February 2024, the UK Government introduced a Rail Reform Bill that, from what I can see, would protect many of the devolved aspects of the rail industry.

However, there has been a lot of delay in relation to that bill, and now that the UK election has been called, we will have to wait to see what an incoming Government does. Has there been any impact on the Scottish Government and its planning arrangements in relation to Scotland’s railway, now that we are six years down the line from what was marketed as radical reform of the rail network?

I have a question about the performance of ScotRail. The most recent performance data that we have shows a public performance measure figure of 91.3 per cent, but the target is 92.5 per cent. Therefore, although performance is pretty good, it is not quite there. How can we drive improvement in ScotRail’s performance? In March this year, ScotRail had to pay out £1.5 million because of delays and cancellations, but £1 million of that was not to do with anything that ScotRail had done; rather, it related to issues with Network Rail.

ScotRail has reached a performance level of 91.3 per cent. Admittedly, that is not the target, but its failure to meet the target is down to Network Rail rather than to ScotRail. How do we drive an improvement in performance? How can we report on the data in such a way that we can work out which organisation needs to up its game to do even better?

There is a question—it is not to declare an interest, although I will say that I had to go to Cardiff to see Bruce Springsteen, because he is not playing in Scotland on his European tour.

A few months ago, in a debate in Parliament, I raised the idea of a £1 levy on tickets that are above a certain value for events in Scotland. If 50,000 people are going to see Scotland playing Finland at Hampden or 50,000 people are going to see Taylor Swift, the money from that levy could be used to provide high-quality public transport. If someone is paying £100 for a ticket, £101 would not be much different, but just think what we could do with that pound. I raised the idea in the debate that you led, cabinet secretary. How could that idea be developed further?

That was very helpful. Speaking from my position as someone who is involved in the committee’s scrutiny of the matter as well as being the constituency MSP, I suppose that we should start to ask some of those questions when it is appropriate. No doubt we will return to the matter, so I will not ask more about it, at present.

No, convener—you have just given me the assurance that I need. As convener, you had suggested that we had sorted out what was happening with the A9, because the petitions committee had sorted it out. However, we clearly have to take this committee’s own view on that. You have put that on the record, convener, so that is fine.

That would be helpful, cabinet secretary. What I did not ask about, because I did not want to go down that road either, was that a lot of the talk with regard to the bill was about specifying pan-UK routes, pricing and fare regimes, but with caveats for Scotland and Wales. The question is this: how strong were those caveats? I will leave that sitting there, though, until we see what an incoming Government does.

That is helpful, cabinet secretary.

I want to move on to the new train procurement programme and the plans to decarbonise the network by 2035. Before I do so, I declare an interest. I am delighted to say that Gibson’s Engineering Ltd has bought the previously closed Caley rail works at St Rollox, in my constituency. It hopes to employ thousands of workers there in the years ahead, should it be successful in growing the business. I have every confidence that it can do so.

My questions are in relation to procurement—I do not wish to ask questions about any individual company that is part of any process—but I wanted to put that on the record for transparency purposes. My understanding is that the new train procurement programme was put on the Public Contracts Scotland website in 2022, looking for expressions of interest. The ambition is to have 675 new carriages, with 65 per cent of the fleet being replaced.

What I am not sure about is how our committee can track—no pun intended, cabinet secretary—against benchmarks along the way to see where the Scottish Government is in that process, so that we can carry out our scrutiny role.

That is helpful, cabinet secretary. I acknowledge that ScotRail is a well-performing and well-run railway, but clearly we still want to drive improvements where we can. The committee would welcome correspondence from you, following that meeting, to update us on what work is being done to address the matters that you have just put on the record. That would be quite helpful.