 The final item of business this evening is the member's business debate on motion 9106, in the name of Mark Ruskell, on transforming local bus services. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. As ever I invite members wishing to participate in the debate to press the request-to-speak buttons now or as soon as possible. I invite Mark Ruskell to open the debate around about seven minutes. I thank members from across the chamber who have signed my motion to secure the debate. I very much look forward to everyone's contributions and, of course, the minister's response. Last week I hosted a reception for Scottish bus week, and here in Parliament we had bus drivers, passenger groups, bus champions and transport organisations all passionate about improving Scotland's bus networks. The room was alive with ideas, and I especially thank Kevin Stewart for engaging and listening so well and reflecting that passion during his speech at the event, and I'm sure the whole chamber wishes Mr Stewart well. In my region of Mid-Scotland Fife I've seen the same thing, communities full of ideas of how to improve local services where they live. We should take note from those organisations and communities because we do spend a lot of time in this chamber talking about what's wrong with bus services in Scotland, but we perhaps spend less time setting out how we want to transform our bus networks. At the heart of our vision for better buses should be a few central principles. Firstly, our buses must be reliable. One of the most common inquiries I have from constituents about bus services is about short notice cancellations of services. Whether that's McGill's and Stirling and Clack's or Stagecoach and Perth and Fife, folks are finding it harder and harder to rely on buses to commute to work, head to school or meet up with families and friends. Canceled services erode passenger confidence in bus, particularly in rural areas where people can be left without any other option to make their journey. Passengers and regulators like the traffic commissioner should be able to hold bus operators to account, but too often they are hampered by a lack of available evidence. We need to see a Scottish equivalent of England's bus open data system that shares live data from bus fares and service information. We have the equivalent powers available as part of the Transport Act. It's time to make those a reality. John Mason. I thank the member for giving away, and he's right. In the cities, too, about buses being cancelled often at short notice. When we've raised that with First and SPT, they've said that it's often a shortage of drivers. Does he agree that that is one of the issues? Mark Ruskell. Absolutely. I think that the bus industry has faced a number of headwinds, some of which of course have been caused by Brexit, and the driver shortage is very much a part of that picture. Fundamentally, where there is not a good reason for why services have been cancelled and why passengers are seeing poor services, we need to hold the companies to account. I think that the bus open data system is a really good way to do that, which I think would be welcomed by the traffic commissioner. Secondly, buses must be affordable. From subsidies to concessionary travel schemes, millions of pounds of Scottish Government money is now given to bus operators. Despite that, private bus operators have recently hiked up fares, so 9% increase in Glasgow, 12% in the Highlands, 15% in Perth and Fife. Earlier this year, the former Transport Minister, Jenny Gilruth, committed to review of all public subsidies for bus to look at how increased conditionality on public funding could improve bus services. Applying conditions to public grants is not new. We need to see conditionality apply to all Scottish Government funding for private bus operators to prevent profiteering, fare hikes and cancellations. We need to see an integrated ticketing system that allows you to take the bus train travel metro using one ticket or travel card. I hope to see that in the Scottish Government's upcoming fare fares review. If I have time, Presiding Officer, I can give you the time back. I thank the member for giving me his making a very good speech. He made the point about public subsidy of bus companies. Does he agree with me that simply providing that without visibility of the profits being generated by privatised bus operators is not good enough and that we should consider using grants not just in a blind way, but in a way of taking public equity stakes in privatised bus companies? Mark Ruskell? I think that that is a useful contribution from Mr Sweeney. I will come on later in my speech as to how we need to reform the system so that we have much more public control and public transparency over the way that our public transport is being run in Scotland. I do not come on to the third point. I think that our buses must be accessible, and that means two things—making sure that communities have a bus service that they can access and ensuring that services meet the needs of all passengers. Rural communities are particularly vulnerable to this boom and bus cycle of profit-driven private bus services. From the withdrawal of the X53 service in 2021 to the recent axing of the 155 service connecting Tibymor residents to Creefen Perth, cash-strapped local authorities are expected to patch up or is effectively a broken commercial system. Rural communities are too often left with no public transport provision of any sort, but communities such as the Glen Farg community transport group are showing us what can be done. In April this year, that community group launched bus service 55, running on another recent axed route from Glen Farg to Kinross, which I am pleased to say carried around 200 passengers in its first week. Now, those community-driven projects show exactly what buses can do when private profit is taken out of the picture, and we need to see community transport groups like Glen Farg integrated into Scotland's bus network. However, we also have one of the most expansive concessionary travel schemes in the world, with all under 22s, people over 60 and disabled people benefiting from free bus travel across Scotland. However, we must aspire to try and go further to address the acute transport poverty facing some communities. That means investing in the bus fleet that empowers anyone with a wheelchair mobility, so anyone with a wheelchair mobility requirements a baby buggy or a bike to choose bus, and extending free bus to people seeking asylum in Scotland who are forced to live on only £45 a week. I certainly commend Paul Sweeney's leadership in this area. Finally, we need system change, as I said earlier, and our buses must now be run surely in the public interest. Years of deregulation of bus services has left a fragile patchwork of services and operators where the needs of passengers are secondary. From this broken system, we need to build an ecology of bus that shifts the balance of power away from not-for-profit models towards the public interest. We already have some of the tools that we need to build this new system. Through the Transport Act, local authorities can franchise and set up municipally-owned services. Those models will not work for all local authorities, but some of them are desperate to get things moving. Glasgow City Council has already taken its first steps in exploring public control for buses, and Highland Council has invested in a fleet of buses to serve community needs. I hope that the community bus fund will provide a source of start-up capital to accelerate the radical shift in bus ownership that we desperately need to see. Full transformation of Scotland's bus services will require significant investment, but Tory austerity has a stranglehold on Scottish budgets. It is more important than ever that we consider all possible ways to raise revenue and to finance that reform. That means diverting funds from high-carbon road building projects to public transport, putting workplace parking levy back on to our agenda, and using the powers available to introduce local road user charges. We need everyone in this chamber, people across our local and national governments, our communities, organisations and passengers, to back our buses and deliver the transformation in local bus networks people in Scotland want and they deserve. I look forward to working with colleagues across this chamber, the Minister for Transport and with communities on the ground to deliver on this ambition. I look forward to the contribution of other members and the minister in this debate. Ross Scott, we now move to the open debate. I call first John Mason to be followed by Graham Simpson in around four minutes. Thank you very much. I am certainly happy to speak on public and sustainable transport in general and today on buses in particular, so thank you to Mark Ruskell for the opportunity to do so. Starting on a positive note, there is a lot of good news. Free bus travel for the under 22s and the over 60s, which I have to say includes myself, allow people to get out and about, go to work, study, visit family and friends and also as a result improve their physical and mental health. In Glasgow, we see greatly increased numbers of electric vehicles which both help improve air quality and tackle climate change, while also giving the passengers a smoother, quieter ride. First bus in Glasgow tells us that they will soon have over 200 emission-free vehicles. In Edinburgh, there is an exceptionally good bus service. Just last week, I was staying in Craig and Tinney, which was a part of the city that I did not know at all, but between Google Maps, Lothian Bus' own app and excellent signage at the bus stops, I could travel between there and Parliament with no problem at all. However, I do accept that it is not all good news. Bus passenger numbers in Glasgow in the west of Scotland have been falling since well before Covid and I think that there are a variety of reasons for this. In many parts of Glasgow, there is such a good local train service, which is usually faster, more predictable and gives a more comfortable journey than the bus does. For example, from Carmile in my constituency, the 64 bus takes about 38 minutes to get to the city centre. By contrast, the train takes 14 minutes, so the bus really cannot compete with the train on that full journey. I get a lot of complaints then that the bus service is not good enough. Now it has been suggested that public ownership would make all the difference to bus services. There are obviously gains such as any profits being reinvested in public services and perhaps a more joined-up approach to ticketing. However, ScotRail has moved into public ownership already, and as far as I can see, the services are pretty much as before. Lothian Bus' previously told us at committee that it would make very little difference to their services whether they were publicly or privately owned. My own memory of public ownership by the likes of Glasgow Corporation is that there were still many complaints about the service and the feeling was that solid Labour voting areas, as you might find it hard to believe used to happen, like Castle Milg, got a better bus service than other areas that voted in different ways. If we want to increase bus or train services, pay the staff more or if we want to reduce fares, then that comes at a cost whoever the owner is. We can lower fares and raise taxes to pay for that if we want to. That is a perfectly feasible choice, but we should realise that there is not a sudden increase in money available just because of public ownership. I have tried to make reasonable and logical points, I hope, as an accountant and member of the finance committee should be doing. However, there is another factor at play here, namely the emotional side. Many people have an emotional love affair with their car. It gives them the sense that they have achieved something in life, that they are in control of their lives and no longer have to walk to a bus stop or wait in the rain for a bus at the mercy of others. That is not just a debate about money and frequency of buses, although it certainly is that. It also has to be a debate about how we get people to fall out of love with their cars and I am not quite sure how we do that. I commend Mark Ruskell for his motion and this debate. We face some challenges in relation to sustainable transport, but I remain enthusiastic about public transport, including buses, and I certainly hope that all MSPs will set an example by using them as much as they can. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I also congratulate Mark Ruskell for securing the second debate on buses that we have had in a short spell. Of course, there have been a number of events on buses recently, namely his own and the cross-party group on sustainable transport, which I convene has also been looking at public transport and how we decarbonise public transport buses, trains and ferries. There is a lot of interest in this in the Parliament and indeed a lot of agreement between us on the challenges and what should be done. I was very taken by the recent Friends of the Earth paper called On the Move and they say in that that they estimate that Scotland needs to shift around 3.7 billion car passenger miles a year by 2030 to public transport and walk-in cycling to meet its carbon targets. They say that it will require an average increase in bus and tram passenger miles of around 80 per cent and a more than doubling of rail passenger miles in Scotland by 2030 compared to pre-Covid levels. That will, of course, take a huge amount of public investment, something that John Mason touched on in his excellent contribution. Mr Mason presents us with a challenge of how we fall out of love with our cars. For me, it is not about falling out of love with your cars, it is about how we improve public transport so that people do not feel the need to drive. That is the challenge, because many people, including myself, like to use public transport, but it has to be there. We have too many, yes or certainly, John Mason? I thank the member for picking up on my point and letting me come in. Does he not think that there are some people in our society who would just take their car into the pub, into the school, absolutely everywhere because they are so attached to it? I have no doubt that that is true, but I think that there are also many people who would rather not use their car if they had a viable alternative. Mr Mason will be well aware that there are far too many bus deserts in this country, in areas that do not have a decent service. I live in one of those areas in East Kilbride, where I do not have a decent bus service. I got the bus down to Hamilton during Scottish Bus Week, and I had to walk half an hour to get to the bus stop that would get me to Hamilton. I just think that that is a ludicrous situation. We have lost a number of services over the years. I have lost a service. I used to have a decent service, but now I do not. I was made aware of a service that runs between Creef and Perth, the number 155. That is facing the acts on 1 July, and with no reasonable alternative put forward. There are local campaigns being fought throughout the country. We really need to do something about it. Part of the answer may be to use the powers in the Transport Act that empower councils to take on bus services, but we have to accept that there could be a colossal cost to that. In Glasgow it has been estimated that that could cost £200 million, and it will take years and years and years. I am fully in favour of councils taking up those powers, but we need to accept the challenges that are in that. We all want to see bus services improve fares as part of the solution. Cutting fares, as has been done in England and elsewhere, in places such as Germany, have good systems in place. We need to make it more affordable. The buses need to be there, and that is the way that we will get people to use them. Katie Clark, to be followed by Christine Grahame, is in four minutes. I refer to my entry in the register of members' interests. I congratulate Mark Ruskell for securing the debate and for highlighting in his motion the role of buses in tackling the climate emergency. We need to deliver a model shift from cars and planes to other forms of public transport such as buses. As I am sure Mark Ruskell agrees, our current efforts are inadequate. Grahame Simpson has already spoken about the very limited bus services that are available in many parts of the country and, indeed, the local campaigns throughout the country for better bus services. We need to encourage people to use buses, and the Scottish Government needs to do more to promote the use of the existing bus network. However, I fully agree with the spirit of the motion and, indeed, with Mark Ruskell's contribution, that we need an affordable, reliable public bus service that tackles inequalities, supports the economy and helps to deliver Scotland's climate aims. The motion focuses on community transport pilots that have been introduced and on bus passes for young people, which, of course, I warmly welcome and, indeed, all the other initiatives that have taken place to encourage bus use. However, we need to be more ambitious and we need to encourage the use of bus and significantly expand our bus network to make buses the choice that people make. Our current model is broken. Since Margaret Thatch is Conservative Government in the 1980s deregulated buses, we have been left with an expensive, unreliable, fragmented and dysfunctional bus system that is slowly following apart. The Scottish Government seemed to accept that the privatisation of rail did not work, although I listened to John Mason's contribution. It is not clear why they think that a privatised model works better for the buses, but it may well be that the minister agrees with me on that point. I believe that this debate is not just about public interest but also about public sector ownership and control. Fears rose between 1995 and 2020 by 58 per cent in rail terms. Since 2007, we have seen a 52 per cent reduction in bus journeys, so those are long-term trends that we are dealing with. Private operators throughout Scotland, as we all know in this chamber, are currently cutting lifeline bus services. Every MSP will have examples of that in their local area. In North Ayrshire, we have seen services cut from the Garnock Valley to Glasgow and from Irvine in the Three Towns and the use of transport hubs at Creswick, Irvine and Kilmarnock, which is significantly increasing transport times. We need the Scottish Government to come forward with a plan to significantly expand the bus network. I believe that that includes capping fares to encourage people to use buses. I believe that it also involves bringing buses under local control by enabling the expansion of the municipal provision of bus services. I do not believe that it is a coincidence, John Mason, that Lothian buses are considered the best value in Scotland. The Transport Scotland Act 2019 gives the power to local authorities and transport authorities to set up municipal bus companies, but we now need the regulation to enable such municipal bus companies to become a reality. Yes, we need more resources, but we need to find a range of ways to increase funding. The point that has been made about conditionality highlights that, in the past, the significant investment that the Scottish Government has made into the privatised bus network has not always led to the best use of public funds. I very much look forward to the further contributions in this debate. I thank Mark Ruskell for bringing forward this debate, one in the spirit of member debates when we shine a light on the activities in our constituencies in the main. Borders buses is the main provider of bus transport across the borders and indeed parts of Midlothian. I commend them surviving through Covid and indeed transporting health workers for free. Now they are extending routes and consulting for others. They also have an app with a tracker, so no need to ask the usual questions. Is the bus due? Have I missed the bus? It also lets you know if there is wheelchair access. Since Borders buses took over from First Bus East, much has improved, including a better fleet. I do not think that privatisation is always a bad thing. I think that they make a pretty good job of running that service. I am, I would say, their critical friend. Yes. Paul Sweeney, thank you for giving me that point. Does she recognise, however, that around 45 per cent of all private bus operators turnover is public money in subsidies and actually many of these buses are bought with the public buses subsidy? Christine Grahame. I certainly do not rule out municipal ownership but I think that in my constituency I am watching a family-owned company that has brought the service up by its bootstraps from what we had before. I criticise when they need it but I say that they have made huge improvements across the Scottish Borders and into Midlothian. Turning to the extended concessionary fairs, of course, supports those services but I put a marker down here that post Covid I understand that the over-60s have not returned in pre-Covid numbers. I can understand why, but that is impacting on the service. In rural areas such as mine, the regular bus providers I have just mentioned cannot reach, obviously, every village in Hamlet. In my rural constituency, a car can be a necessity, which brings me to community transport in the Borders and Midlothian. In the Borders, for example, there are gallow wheels that I have visited, providing affordable and accessible transport for disadvantaged and rural excluded sensory impaired and elderly residents in central Borders. They use volunteer drivers, and they are subject to availability, but they make a big difference to users who are often lone pensioners with no family of friends to help them to remain socially included. They have got three vehicles, an accessible 11-seater minibus and two smaller 5 to 6-seater vehicles, especially adapted for wheelchair use, taking groups and individuals from grout central Borders for outings for shopping, lunch clubs and so on—all, as I said, driven by volunteers. Their sister is Tweet Wheels, which provides exactly the same kind of service with a minibus that is adapted to take up sea passengers with wheelchairs and a smaller vehicle that can carry two people in wheelchairs plus four passengers. In Midlothian, there is Lothian Community Transport Services, an independent organisation that provides promotes and supports high-quality passenger transport services. It is also only done for not-for-profit organisations in Edinburgh, Midlothian and Westlothian. There is the community bus that covers the villages of Temple, Carrington, a smaller, bigger village of Gorebridge, Birkinside, Newton Grange to the Mining Museum and Gowkes Hill, which the other bus service may not reach. LCTS also runs a dial-a-bus service for people with mobility issues. You do need to book, but if you want to go shopping or go to the GP's surgery, it is there for you. For example, on Mondays, the service picks up—I am giving you the bus timetable now—it picks up in Penicook and Ock and Dinney at 9.30, drops you off in the town centre and collects you at 11.30, and Wednesday the service goes from Penicook and Ock and Dinney to Straighton, which is a large shopping centre. There is Broomhill Day Centre in Penicook, which provides transport to pick up elderly folk for their day there. It too depends on volunteer drivers. I visited this recently to see the driver check the addresses where he had to pick up folk for the day. Those are just a few examples, and I too welcome an extension of those services through the Scottish Government's community bus fund, with £1 million to be allocated, and that is particularly important in the rural areas that I represent. Before I begin, it would be remis, as a Lovian MSP and a former city councillor here in Edinburgh, if I did not mention during a transport debate the long-awaited opening of the New Haven section of the tram network, which is open today. That is very welcome and good news for many parts of the city. While our welcome is completion, I would like to restate my disappointment at the time of taking to having the inquiry published. A few weeks ago, the report went to the publishers, and yet we are still waiting to see what it says. The people of Edinburgh and, in fact, Scotland have been deeply inconvenienced by this over the past number of years, and we all deserve answers here. I am delighted to be speaking in tonight's debate on local bus services. I am a huge fan of buses. As someone who does not drive and does not cycle, I rely on the network of buses in Edinburgh and Lovians to get me around. Without it, I would be bound to the generosity of friends and family for lists, and I would be completely incapable of helping my two daughters with the various commitments around the city. Instead, I am free to roam Lovian as and when I choose and join the various excitement that our capital and beyond has to offer. A well-run bus network is essential for disabled people. The ability to get around should not be an afterthought but rather a priority. In places that are not well-served, we see that the quality of life for disabled individuals is damaged. In my region of Lovian, we see both ends of the spectrum clearly. We have here in the city of Edinburgh a world-wide class service, and yet, just across in Lovian, we have much poorer service. To be fair, there is a reasonably good transport link from Lovian into Edinburgh. However, getting from town to town is completely different in Lovian. The radio nature of a bus network centered in Edinburgh means that, often, there is no direct route between two locations that are actually closer together geographically. Mark Ruskell, I thank the member for giving way and explaining some of the challenges with integrating services when you have a fragmented set of companies and services that are trying to run together. With the benefit of hindsight, does the member acknowledge that deregulation of bus services in the 1980s was perhaps a wrong-headed move? To be fair, the issue here in Lovian and Mid-Lovian is that it is all run by Lovian butters. We do not have a particularly fragmented service within my part of Mid-Lovian. For example, to get from Parfhead to Straiton, you need to take one bus all the way to the edge of Hollywood Park, and then another all the way back out. A journey that would probably take 50 minutes in a bus can take over an hour going that way. I wonder whether the member would agree with me that there is a challenge with circular bus routes or that kind of thing that there just is not the demand often to make them pay, and it would need quite a heavy subsidy, and Glasgow would have had the same problem. I do accept John Mason's point, but there is also a public service duty as well, and particularly for those who do not drive, who need to get from different parts, I think that there is an issue there, and I think that it is just something that we need to consider. Obviously, there are a number of factors that make it difficult to create effective transport links for every possible journey within Mid-Lovian. However, if we want our small communities as accessible as possible, if we want people to drive less, we have to provide them with that necessary infrastructure. I want to very briefly touch on one other issue, and that has been brought to the attention of me by disability access panels from across Scotland. In my capacity as a convener for a cross-party group on disability, I have been meeting with access panels to see what issues affect disabled people around Scotland. There have been a number of common issues, but one that comes up more than anything is access to public transport points. From the state of the pavements and roads to the rise of floating bus stops, we are not considering the needs of roads with limited mobility. Public transport is only useful if people can access the bus. There are apparently plans here in the city to review the number of bus stops and reduce them. I would like to strongly advise against that. The extra distance between stops may seem smart and able-bodied, but for many disabled people that presents the difference between the ability to get on and being forced not to get on a bus. I could go on, but I will finish with that. Buses are excellent tool for disabled people, but only if they are able to act with them. I was not originally going to speak in this debate, but I wanted to make a brief reflection on some of the issues that Mark Ruskell raised in his speech and, off the back of what Jeremy Balfour has just said, on accessibility. That absolutely has to mean that buses themselves are accessible for wheelchairs and those with limited mobility, as well as buggies and prams, and it crucially does not put those two sets of users in competition with each other, as we often see at the moment. However, it also means that it needs to be accessible for those with a wider range of impairments, too. As the convener of the cross-party group on stroke, we have regularly heard about how those with aphasia are often challenged when sitting in accessible seats on the bus. Much of that is about changing public attitudes to hidden disabilities, but there are practical things that could also be done to support. For those with aphasia and other verbal communication issues, it is often an issue communicating with a bus driver where you want to go, trying to get the correct fare and often even more difficult when there is a queue of people impatient to get on behind you. Audio and visual stop announcements make it easier for everyone to know where they are going and I am always struck by the difference between operators in my central Scotland region and those here in Lothian. For refugees and others coming to Scotland, those adaptations are useful to allow them to access their area. Being able to get to the buses, Jeremy Balfour has just said, is also a real issue. In Falkirk, many of the buses terminate in the town centre after the closure of the bus station. While the street the buses are on is accessible, relatively flat and well maintained, the surrounding streets are quite steep. As Graham Simpson alluded to earlier, if you cannot get to the bus, you cannot use it. Expanding the bus network is not just a transport issue and we need to look cross-portfolio on that. It is a local planning issue as well. We continue to build estates with no connectivity and a reliance on cars. Having to walk to the edge of the estate that you live in and then further for the bus, then having to sit on the bus that goes all round the houses, is not going to entice people out of their cars. That is just local travel. To get across my region, it would take hours and probably a transit via Glasgow city centre to get from my side of the region where I live to the side where Graham Simpson lives. We also need to link better with other forms of public transport. I think that just on that point, the region that we both represent, Gillian Mackay, makes an excellent point. I live at one end of the region, I think that she lives at the other. For me to get across to Falkirk from East Kilbride would involve several legs in public transport, so I end up driving and I wish I didn't have to. Gillian Mackay. Absolutely. That is in a region called Central Scotland. Once you get out into the south of Scotland, more rural parts, as Christine Graham said as well, that problem just magnifies even more when there are single services to get places. That is certainly true across many bits of Central Scotland as well. I raise those examples because they are in relatively urban areas. Linking up with other pieces of public transport and active travel is really important, too. For example, from Grangemouth in my region to Polmont train station, it is a 10-minute drive on a bad day around a mile and a half walk or getting on a bus from Falkirk to go into Central Falkirk back out via Reading before coming back to nearer Polmont train station for a mile of difference. Small changes like those can make big changes to public behaviour patterns and we need to see that level of detail to see buses be a real alternative. I want to thank my colleague Mark Ruskell again for bringing that forward and looking forward to working with those across the chamber more on that issue. I now call Paul Sweeney for around four minutes, Mr Sweeney. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I want to thank Mr Ruskell, Member for Mid Scotland and Fife, for bringing that motion for Members Business. I was pleased to sign that motion and I want to thank Mr Ruskell particularly for his steadfast support and that of his team to the campaign to extend the current concessionary travel schemes to asylum seekers, which was launched back in December of 2021. It currently has public support, I think, from every party represented in the Scottish Parliament, which is fantastic to see, and indeed it is a policy that the Government itself has committed to exploring the possibility of implementing in its programme for Government. For that, I and others are truly grateful. The campaign focuses on one simple premise to extend the current concessionary travel schemes that exist in Scotland to those seeking asylum and subject immigration control where they are not able to access normal social security provisions or indeed work to earn an income. It could not be any simpler than that, really, and it has resulted in a pilot taking place in Glasgow to evaluate the impact of such an extension. We look forward to the outcomes of it. It has the backing of charities and organisations working in the third sector, including the Scottish Refugee Council, the Voices Network, Maryhill Integration Network and many others, from anti-poverty groups like the Poverty Alliance, mental health organisations like the Mental Health Foundation and from faith leaders across Scotland. We have heard from people with lived experience of their trauma dealing with the hostile asylum system in this country and the impact that concessionary travel would have on their mental health well-being, their ability to integrate into our society and the feeling of purpose and agency that they would subsequently have. It would be a real liberation psychologically and physically for thousands in Scotland. When we started the campaign, we coined the phrase for such small change, it would make a huge difference and we stand by that slogan because it is true today, as it was in December 2021. The costs are, in the grand scheme of the Scottish Government budget, negligible, less than £0.5 million a year to implement, which we would work out at less than 0.1 per cent of the Scottish Government's annual budget. Politics is about choices and priorities. In today's society, where the UK Government does everything in their power to use asylum seekers as a lightning rod for their failures across the public policy landscape, we in this Parliament have an opportunity to stand against that gratuitous and appalling demonisation. It is an opportunity for us all collectively to say that these people are our neighbours, they are some of the most vulnerable people in the world who suffer significant trauma and they are indeed our friends. Most importantly, they are welcome here and should be given every opportunity to fulfil their potential as human beings and as citizens. In that point, whilst it is essential to provide that access, we know that for all citizens in this country, our bus service could do with much improvement and there are things that we need to look at carefully, particularly the costs in a cost-loving crisis. Many people are finding it just unaffordable to access the bus system and no more so than in Glasgow. I contrast the public loan system in Edinburgh where the cost of a single bus fare is £1.80, in Glasgow, the privatised and unregulated system is £2.65, an unacceptable difference. That is a measure of the failure of the 1986 deregulation and privatisation of the system. I encourage the minister and his speech to make reference to chapter 2 of the 2019 transport act. We really need to get chapter 2 activated because that contains the provisions for franchising. It is one thing that has been rehearsed in the chamber this evening about public control and extending ownership, which Conservative member for Central Scotland indicated to entail massive capital expenditure. That is one thing, but we can emulate, for example, Manchester, which had a breakthrough achievement in re-regulating its system as of March 2021, the first region in the UK to do so since the 86 deregulations were introduced. They are hoping to take control of the fare box. If you can take control of the fare box with a regional transport authority, you have the private operator's attention because you can force compulsion on packaging routes, ensuring that they cannot cherry-pick the profitable routes and ditch the loss-making routes, and you can bring coherence to the public transport planning landscape. That is what has been discussed tonight, that we have a form of lemon socialism where we privatise the profits and socialise the losses. I have time to give way. Very briefly, but Mark Ruskell. I am enjoying the member's contribution about the benefits of franchising. Would he acknowledge, though, that this does not just need leadership within this place from the Scottish Government. It also needs leadership from councils as well. Councils need to engage with the Scottish Government and say that we want to use these powers. We want to use the community bus fund. We want to develop a vision, perhaps in the way that Andy Burnham has done for Greater Manchester. Absolutely. I accept that point, and I have a really constructive meeting with SPT who said that they might need to see additional legislation to safeguard their right to introduce franchising. As we need activation of the power under the 2019 act, we also need to have that collaboration with SPT and other transport planning authorities to ensure that we make them most of that opportunity. I invite the ministers to refer to that. Thank you very much, Mr Sweeney. I call on the minister to respond to the debate around seven minutes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Thank you to all members who have contributed, in particular to Mark Ruskell, for bringing the debate to the chamber. I particularly thank him for opening his speech by expressing such kinder marks for Kevin Stewart. I am sure that he was speaking for the whole chamber in that respect. Members, I hope that we will understand that I am responding to the debate in lieu of serving a transport minister. I hope that I will be forgiven if, on occasion, I might have to pick up some specific examples and pass that on to the new minister once they are appointed. But, hopefully, members will take that as an opportunity to have shaped the new minister's inbox before they have even been appointed by the First Minister and the chamber. I think that we need to begin by recognising that, across the chamber, we all recognise that bus travel is an essential service, not only in providing people with access to the services and facilities that they need, but also in reducing our carbon emissions, helping to tackle the climate emergency. Bus services play a vital role in supporting the delivery of the vision that has been set out in the First Minister's equality, opportunity and community policy prospectus. I know that Kevin Stewart was very much delighted to speak at the Scottish Bus Week reception that Mark Ruskell mentioned when he met some of the Love My Bus Champions. He was impressed by the appetite that was shown by everybody involved to innovate and respond to the changing needs and demands, particularly those who had worked throughout the pandemic to keep essential bus services running safely. In listening to some of the comments during the debate, I was reflecting a wee bit on the appetite that exists for people to say what they need from bus services. Way back in the early days of social media, when Twitter was a nice place to be instead of the Benfire it's become, I set up a better buses campaign, and the idea was to get people to share their own experiences of the bus services. I could tweet when I was on my way to go and meet first bus in Glasgow, and by the time I got to their offices to have the meeting, I had 20, 30, 40, 50 people that morning telling me what their experience was of the buses, both praise and criticism. Criticism when services weren't good enough and often praise for when a driver had gone out of their way to be extra helpful. People really do care about this. They have an appetite to see bus services that meet their needs, and many of those local issues that are being picked up by members across the chamber, whether that's around short notice cancellation, cuts to services when, as Katie Clark quite rightly said, we should be talking about an appetite for expansion rather than just a firefighting against cuts. The issues around pricing, signage, the accessibility points, important points on that, made by several members, and also the final speech from Paul Sweeney with the focus on asylum seekers' access to buses and the transformational change that that could have the potential to make. Mark Ruskell also made the call for conditionality in the way that the Scottish Government provides funding and support for bus services, and I hope that that's something that the new transport minister will heed and that the way that those comments have been made across the chamber. Mark Ruskell also recognised that Scotland does already have one of the most expansive concessionary travel schemes, and I hope that that's something that's celebrated as well. There were a couple of slightly more conceptual issues across the chamber. The question about personal preferences, whether people are too attached to their cars, do we need to break that attachment or actually make bus services more attractive in a positive way? There might be a few irredeemable Jeremy Clarkson's out there, but I think that there's a great deal of evidence that people who drive do want to drive less, or at least a great many of them do, and others who don't have a car at all want both public transport and active transport choices that work for them. That's why the Scottish Government is committed to a long-term sustainable future for bus services in Scotland. Indeed, £420 million support for bus services and concessionary fares is being provided in the current financial year. We're in to phase 2 of the zero-emission bus challenge fund. I'll give way briefly, yes? I thank the minister for taking the intervention. He's mentioned fares a couple of times. I think that there's general agreement that we need simpler fares and probably lower fares as well. The Government is committed to publishing a fair fares review. Does the minister know when exactly that's going to be published because it's long-awaited? It's certainly eagerly awaited by me. It's something that's very much part of the bute house agreement that we negotiated, and I'm sure that the new transport minister will be keen to update Parliament as soon as possible. We have a range of support. I mentioned the zero-emission bus fund, up to £58 million support for operators of all sizes, to work collaboratively to make transformational change towards zero-emission as the default choice of Scotland's bus services. While Scotland has currently around double the proportion of its fleet already zero-emissions compared to England, I'm proud to say that by launching the second phase of the fund, we'll continue to see that grow. As everyone in the chamber will appreciate, improving journey times and reliability will also contribute high-quality bus services and encourage motorists out of their cars and onto the buses. That's why we're investing in bus priority infrastructure through the bus partnership fund. £26 million of bus priority funding already provided to 11 partnerships covering 28 local authorities, and that initial funding is for the implementation of bus priority measures and to support local authorities working with partners to identify and develop further projects for delivery. I'll give way again. The bus partnerships might well be making progress, but I don't think that we're seeing good enough progress with regards to bundling routes, having fare capping, even a common livery, for example, and having that critical control of the fare boxes. Does he recognise that that can only come with activation of that chapter 2 and getting that 2019 act fully firing on all cylinders? Indeed, and if there's a tiny bit of time to make up the interventions, I'll be able to come on to that in a moment. The comments that were also made around community transport—I want to touch on briefly, such as Glen Fawr community transport group—makes a major contribution to reducing isolation and increasing the access that people have to their communities, who would otherwise be unable to use conventional bus services or where those suitable services are too limited. The Scottish Government provides funding to the community transport association to develop and advise the sector there. Community transport is just one part of the answer to Katie Clark's very valid questions about public versus private. Katie Clark made the case for public ownership very assertively. Jeremy Balfour seemed to make the case equally clearly, but maybe accidentally, but either way, the Scottish Government policies and plans do continue to develop to give local authorities the flexible tools that Paul Sweeney is quite right to say that they need to address transport issues. Through the Transport Scotland Act 2019, local transport authorities now have the power to run their own bus services, and further secondary legislation to allow bus franchising and partnership working will be introduced later this year. All local authorities are in— I can give you the time, by minister. Okay, if there's time for one more intervention, I'll be happy to do so. As long as you're not going to miss your bus. The point that I was making is that I think in my patch that I actually have a family-owned bus company that's doing a jolly good job, and I would have concerns if the local authority were to take over running that bus service. In my view, there's a mixture. The Lothian regional transport is particularly good, but then it's serving a larger barnaria with a lot of population travelling. Mine isn't. We can recognise, of course, that Scotland is not a single homogenous entity. There are different needs and different contexts in different parts of the country. We should take account of that. The point was also made during the debate that a great deal of the revenue from bus services may operate well in some places and badly in other places in the private sector, but a great deal of the revenue comes from the public pass and a great deal of the capital investment comes from the public pass as well. The point that Mark Ruskell touched on around conditionality, around how we make sure that we get good value for that public investment, that's going to be critical whether services are running the public sector, the third sector or indeed the private sector. I want to finish by saying that we do encourage local authorities to consider the range of powers that exist for them under the 2019 act to make sure that they are fully used to deliver quality bus services for local communities. In addition, the community bus fund will provide support for local transport authorities to assess the options to improve services in their areas. We are working actively with COSLA and other partners to develop the detail and delivery of that fund. During the debate, we have heard some different views, but it is clear that we have a shared understanding of the importance of a modern, affordable and accessible bus service for all of Scotland. Once again, I thank Mark Ruskell for bringing the debate and all members for their contributions to it. Thank you very much minister. That concludes the debate and I close this meeting of Parliament.