Bus Services Regulation

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 17 March 2011.

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Photo of Charlie Gordon Charlie Gordon Labour

I always like to give transport ministers credit where it is due and I have done that since Keith Brown took over his job. I will not criticise him for not taking an intervention from Karen Gillon, because I think he is feart of her. To be fair, so am I. However, he rather phoned in his opening speech. He said that the Government’s role was to set the policy framework. He said that there is an open market in bus services, but I provided third-party evidence of market failure. He said that buses should compete with the car. They should, but they hardly ever do so.

Keith Brown mentioned quality tools, including statutory quality partnerships, but no partnership has been signed in 10 years. He mentioned third-party bus-lane enforcement, which is important in our cities. I hope that he will answer my written question on that before dissolution. He said that the Competition Commission is the available remedy, but we should sort out the situation under devolution; transport is devolved to the Scottish Parliament.

I will clear up the point about Richard Simpson again, although I have cleared it up in correspondence with the minister. At a public debate, Richard Simpson gave the Labour line that no change should be made to the free bus travel scheme. However, like many other individuals of his age, he mused on the fact that he is a well-off man who gets to travel for nothing on the buses.

Jackson Carlaw outed me as being out of date. That is fair enough. He cannae see it from where he is sitting, but I am actually wearing flared trousers and platform soles. He then rather undermined his effect by saying that what we have to do is to get back to Maggie Thatcher. I am grateful to him for that, because Maggie Thatcher is not out of date in Scotland; she was just never supported as being relevant by the people of Scotland. I am also grateful to Jackson Carlaw for reminding the chamber of Alison McInnes’s view of my bus bill. Alison has the haunted look of a prisoner of the Thatcherites. She gave me a row earlier and said that I should work with bus operators. I assure her that I have signed more voluntary bus partnerships than she has had hot dinners.

Karen Gillon outed herself as a Cliff Richard fan—clearly, that is a case of too much information—and went on to give real examples of the human cost of market failure in local bus markets. My old conscientious adversary Stewart Stevenson let his standards slip today in setting up a couple of straw men. He said that I was out to renationalise the bus industry. No, I am not, and neither am I out to recreate municipal bus operators nor to create or replicate the bureaucratic and expensive Transport for London model, which I went down to London to have a close look at some years ago. As I thought I had made it plain in the debate, I want to amend the Transport (Scotland) Act 2001 to make it easier to implement statutory quality contracts, because that will pave the way for cross-subsidisation, which I see as a key feature of the regime.

Rob Gibson made the point—to be fair, it was an aside—that bus reregulation was not in the last SNP manifesto. Here is a quotation from the SNP national conference of October 2006:

The SNP recognises the failures of bus deregulation across Scotland and reiterates its support for re-regulation of Scottish buses.”

Who is U-turning now?