ScotRail Franchise (Break Clause)

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 14 November 2018.

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Photo of Liam Kerr Liam Kerr Conservative

No one could pretend that Scotland’s rail system does not face significant challenges. It does, and Jamie Greene was right to call out the SNP amendment for its naivety and standard buck passing.

Labour’s solution is to strip the operation from the incumbent franchisee and nationalise the railway. Colin Smyth stated that the reason for that was that passengers are fed up with overcrowded, overpriced and unreliable trains. No doubt they are, but let us test whether those problems are solved by the proposal for public ownership.

Mr Smyth says that the trains are overcrowded. That is true, in the central belt and at certain specific times of day. What is the solution? We could put on more rolling stock to make longer sets, but Labour members seem to have forgotten—or perhaps they are not aware—that ScotRail’s fleet is entirely leased, almost exclusively from three main rolling stock companies. Even if the current platforms could accommodate the longer sets, what would be the cost of renting more kit and is that kit even available?

Perhaps we could just run more trains at the specific times, but where would we get track capacity on a system that is pretty much sweated to capacity? The east coast main line has no available space and Glasgow Central station could not handle more or longer trains without significant infrastructure investment. Again, more sets means more rolling stock, which means more leasing cost to the taxpayer. I suppose that the nationalised company could buy the rolling stock to run the services, as I think that John Finnie might have been driving at, but at what cost? If it is not going to do that, it is running exactly the same model as at present, in which case the change of ownership has failed to solve the problem of overcrowding.

What about the idea that the break clause should be exercised because tickets are overpriced? Let us assume, because I am trying to be kind, that Colin Smyth can solve the problem of overcrowding without increasing the amount of rolling stock, so that the running cost is the same. How would a new public owner get the price down? There are three basic ways: hike taxes and hypothecate them to the railway, cannibalise from another budget, such as health or education, or cut investment. I would be interested to hear in closing whether the first two are on the cards, but assuming that they are not Labour appears not to know that the margin on running a railway is only about 2 or 3 per cent.