 Good morning everyone. Welcome to the eighth meeting of the Net Zero Energy and Transport Committee for 2022, which we are conducting in hybrid format this week. At agenda item 1, we have consideration of whether to take agenda items 5 and 6 in private. Item 5 is consideration of evidence heard on the transfer of ScotRail's operations. Item 6 is consideration of the committee's work programme. Do we agree to take those items in private? Thank you very much. That's Items five and six will be taken in private. Agenda item two is the consideration of a statutory instrument. The national bus travel concession scheme's miscellaneous amendment Scotland order 2022, which is currently in draft form. I welcome Jenny Gilgrewth, minister for transport. Good morning minister. I also welcome officials joining us today, Heather Old, Solister Scottish Government, Tom Davie, head of bus strategy and concessions policy, and Debbie Walker, business and operations manager, both from transport Scotland. Good morning everyone, thanks for joining the committee. This instrument is laid under the affirmative procedure, which means the Parliament must approve it before it comes into force. Following this evidence session, the committee will be invited at the next agenda item to consider a motion to approve the instrument. I will now invite the minister for transport to make a short opening statement. Minister, over to you please. Good morning and thank you for inviting me today to discuss the draft national bus travel concession schemes order 2022. The order before the committee today sets the reimbursement rate and the cap level of funding for the national bus travel concession scheme for older and disabled people in 2022-23. The order also sets the reimbursement rate for the national bus travel concession scheme for the young persons scheme in the coming financial year. In doing so, the order gives effect to an agreement that we reached back in December with the confederation of passenger transport, which represents Scottish bus operators. The objective of the order is to enable operators to continue to be reimbursed for journeys, made under both the older and disabled persons and the young persons scheme, after the expiry of the current reimbursement provisions at the end of this month. It specifies the reimbursement rates for both schemes and the cap level of funding for the older and disabled persons scheme for the next financial year, from 1 April this year to March of next year. The order is therefore limited to the coming year. Due to the on-going Covid-19 impacts on bus passenger numbers and the continuing uncertainty for the coming year, it has not been possible to undertake the usual analysis and forecasting that would underpin the annual revision of the reimbursement rates and the cap for the older and disabled persons scheme. The funding cap and reimbursement rate for this scheme for 2022-23 has therefore been retained from the previous financial year. The proposed reimbursement rate in the financial year for 2022-23, from the older and disabled persons scheme, is set at 55.9 per cent of the adult single fare, and the cap level of funding will be £226.1 million. Those are the same as the corresponding figures for the financial year 2021-22. In practice, we think that claims will be substantially less than the cap's level because of the continuing impacts of the pandemic on patronage. For the young persons scheme, the reimbursement rates have also been retained from 2021-22 at 43.6 per cent of the adult single fare for journeys made by passengers aged 5 to 15 and at 81.2 per cent for journeys made by 16 to 21-year-olds. As in 2021-22, a budget cap is not yet being set for the young persons scheme in 2022-23. We believe that those rates are consistent with the aim set out in the legislation establishing both of the schemes that bus operators should be no better and no worse off as a result of participating in the schemes. We welcome a degree of stability for our bus operators. Pre-bus travel, as we know, enables people to access local services and gain from health benefits of a more active lifestyle, but it will also help to strengthen our response to the climate emergency, supporting our green recovery by embedding sustainable travel habits in young people. The order gives those benefits to provide for them to continue for another year on the basis that it is fair to operators and affordable to taxpayers. I commend the order to the committee, and I am happy to take any questions that members may have for this morning. Thank you very much minister. We will now move on to members' questions, and the first question is from Liam Kerr. Minister, thanks for putting this forward. I just want to clarify something with you, because yesterday, in a debate about Aberdeen City Council's budget, BBC North East reported that the SNP group proposed removing, I think, 180,000 from the under-22 free bus travel fund to spend on other things. I hadn't appreciated that it was possible to do that, to move under-22 bus funding elsewhere. Is it possible, as far as the ministers are aware, and if so, is that really what was intended by this scheme? I'm not saying on the detail of this specific example that Mr Kerr has given. I don't know if officials know any more on that, but we'd be happy to come back to him on the specifics of it. This is a national scheme, as he will be aware of. I don't want to say too much on it, given that I'm not aware of the news article or the debate that he cited from Aberdeen City Council yesterday, but I'm more than happy to write to him on the specifics of the detail of the scheme. I don't know, Tom, if you want to come in on that and how it should work. I'm not familiar with the point that Mr Kerr raised as either, but the scheme basically gives us an obligation to pay operators the rates set out in the order for passengers who are carried under it, and that is the case regardless of budget. Whatever it is that operators, however many people operators carry next financial year, under the young person scheme, we are obligated to pay them the percentage rates set out in the order. In that sense, we can't, without actually changing the scheme itself, we have our fixed statutory obligation to make payments. There's a separate question about how much we expect that to amount to in budgetary terms over the course of next year, but that's a slightly different question, but it doesn't affect what the scheme is and what we have obliged to do under it. Yes, I'd be very grateful, Minister, if you would come back to me. It was a surprise to me as it clearly is to you, so I'd be very grateful for that. Thank you very much, Liam. Can I just check before we move to item 3, if any members have any additional questions? No additional questions. Agenda item 3 is the formal consideration of motion 02903, calling for the net zero energy and transport committee to recommend approval of the national bus travel concession schemes miscellaneous amendment Scotland order 2022. Only the minister and members may speak in this debate to the extent that there is one. I now invite the minister to speak to and or simply move this motion. Thank you, convener. I move the motion to recommend the draft order be approved. Thank you very much, minister. I invite contributions, if any, from members. I don't think that there are any contributions from members. Minister, do you want to add anything else to your motion to move the amendment? I don't think that I have anything further to add. The question then is that motion 02903, in the name of Jenny Gilruth MSP, be approved? Are we all agreed? We are agreed. The committee will report on the outcome of this instrument in due course. I also invite the committee to delegate authority to me as convener to approve a draft of the report for publication. Is that agreed? Thank you very much, minister. Thank you for coming along to the committee this morning and thank you to the officials for joining us. I will briefly suspend the meeting for the change of agenda item. Welcome back. Our next item is an evidence session on the transfer of ScotRail's operations. In March 2021, the then Minister for Transport, Michael Matheson MSP announced his decision not to extend the franchise arrangements for the operation of ScotRail. Instead, it was announced that it would be run by an arms length company set up by the Scottish Government. On 8 February, the current Minister for Transport, Jenny Gilruth MSP confirmed the transfer would go ahead on 1 April. The net zero energy and transport committee has therefore agreed to hear from stakeholders ahead of the transfer of operations on 1 April. Next week, we will hear from the Minister for Transport at our next committee meeting this morning. I am pleased to welcome Robert Samson, Senior Stakeholder Manager of Transport Focus, Mick Hogg Regional Organiser, National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, RMT and Michael Clark, Program Director, Strategy and Transformation, Great British Railways Transition Team. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for accepting our invitation. It is good to see you this morning. As you know, we have just over an hour for this panel and we will now move to questions. First question from me. I would like to ask each of you what service improvements you would like to see as a result of the impending reorganisation and what concerns you might have that the number of services run by the new entity may decline. If I could put that question in the following order to Mick Hogg, Robert Samson and then Michael Clark, Mick, over to you. Okay, it looks like Mick Hogg may have dropped off. So, I guess, Robert, that brings you up the pecking order for the answer. That's my back, that's my back. Oh, hang on. Mick is back. Well, welcome back, Mick. Can you hear us okay? Yes, I can. And did you hear my first question? Can you just say it again, please, if you don't mind? Yeah, absolutely, fine. I was going to ask each of you what service improvements you would like to see as a result of the impending reorganisation and what concerns you might have that the number of services run by the new entity may decline. Okay, thank you very much for this opportunity to address your committee. My main concern is industrial relations with the new operator that is taken over. MSPs are well aware that 2020 and 2021 in particular saw a number of industrial disputes within the Abilio way to ScotRail. Primarily, that was down to the transagency of the ScotRail, not prepared to negotiate, because every pay claim in the way that some of my members were being treated within the ScotRail was unacceptable, hence the reason for the two disputes on pay and the rest of the working-neighbor agreement. What I would like to see going forward under the ScotRail way holdings is an improvement in our industrial relations and no repeat of the debacle we had in 2020 and 2021. I have got to say and update this opportunity the discussions that we have had with the new transport minister so far have been very, very positive, so I look forward to more constructive, positive dialogue with the Scottish Government and the ScotRail holdings. On the actual services being cut, we actually do not see a need or a necessity for the cuts in the services. We want to see an increase in the services. If we are seriously about the green agenda, we want to ensure that the services are maintained, particularly if there is a serious commitment to get people to stop using their cars and start using their trains, then we seriously need to ensure that the trains services are available, in particular the trains are affordable to use. Certainly this proposal to cut train services needs to be reversed as far as the RMPs are concerned, and I will leave it at that. Thank you for what we received before this meeting the policy submission document for the RMP, so thank you for that. Robert Samson, the same question to you please. Back in July 2020, we published the passenger priorities for improvement. We believe that that is what ScotRail trains should focus on. We covered that across Great Britain, including Scotland, and the top priorities that we would want to see addressed going forward as the main passenger concerns, reliability and punctuality, price of train tickets offer better value for money, passengers are able to get a seat on a train, trains are sufficiently frequent at the times that I wish to use a train, keeping passengers informed of delays, maintaining clean trains, wi-fi connections, issues like that are based on the passenger priorities, which are available on our website. A list of growing read-out lists goes into about the top 20 priorities for passengers in Scotland, which we wish to see improvements on. As well as that, we recognise that the May 22 timetable will see a reduction in services from about 2,400 down to 2,150 trains a day. That goes against passengers wanting to see an improved frequency of trains. We asked ScotRail to make the consultation on the May 22 timetable fit for future consultation, a public consultation, because there is very much local concerns across the line from Bread for Scotland about the timetable proposals, but that has got to be seen in the context of just now about 60 per cent of passengers pre-Covid travelling just now. We hope that it is a starting point for the May 22 timetable where, in subsequent iterations of the timetable, there will be more services added as people return to rail. Thanks very much, Robert, for that. I am sure that other members will want to follow up on your mention a number of issues there. Michael Clark, the same question to you, and let me know if you are in a position to address this question, because as a representative of Great British Railways, you might have some views on that, but I am happy to be guided by you. Thank you for the invitation to speak to the committee this morning. I was going to set out that I do not have any formal focus on the question at all, which remains one for Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government. To be clear, when I am speaking, I might be talking about the experience that we are thinking through in the Great British Railways transition team, if it is of use to the committee to consider that more widely in the context of what Scotland is doing, but I cannot speak on ScotRail. If I could just pick up some of Robert's comments, which I think we are thinking through similar issues, I think that you can see the issue of services and demand in every year of Covid and impact and what it does for the railway passenger demand, freight availability and finances. There are similar issues running around the nations of the UK. The question is, what is best for the passengers to recover demand and, as I was saying, to get people away, to get a modal shift back on to the railway? That might be more services, it might be the same level of services, but I would look at what passengers want and what the funder, in this case the Scottish Government, is willing to pay for that. In the Great British Railways transition team, we are trying to think about how we set up the railways to run as a commercial business in the public interest, is how we often say that. If you were looking at this as a commercial interest, you would be trying to match services better to demand. One problem that William Shatts found, the review found, was that the railway was quite inflexible. It did not react either positively as an increasing service or then decreasing services to passenger demand, which builds costs into the system. I think that where Robert was going, certainly where I was going, are there better ways to tell customers back on to the railway using that money? At the moment, I think that the biggest and comparative lead to February 2019, we were at 72 per cent of revenue for rail journeys that either start or finish in Scotland, but we were at 59 per cent of revenue for journeys within Scotland. That again matches patterns across the UK. Commuters have not come back as leisure travel has and business travel is quite flat. How do we address those? Is it through ticketing? Is it through passenger assistance apps? Is it through marketing campaigns? Is it through better information events when journeys? I think that I would look at the whole question rather than concentrating just on services. Thank you. Thanks very much, Michael. It is very useful to get that perspective. I will hand back to make Robert on another question that I have. Before I do, Michael, just one question while you are on. What impact will the introduction of great British railways have on the operations of ScotRail? For example, are we going to see increasing integration of services between the two operators? What is your expectation in terms of those two parallel reorganisations happening? What is the end goal? I will get too ahead of myself. It still matters that the Scottish Government and the Government in Westminster are discussing at the highest level of how best to implement their mutual rail agendas. I think that the whole thrust of objectives from both Governments is for a better integrated railway and a more seamless passenger experience. There seems to be quite a commonality of objective overall to have a more efficient railway, a better customer-focused railway and an increasingly green and decarbonised railway. That is a great place to start. We are trying, through work on our whole industry strategic plan, to set up a planning process for the next 30 years. That can speak to both Governments' strategic objectives in a way that the whole railway and all the people operating on it, particularly those running across borders, can see and plan out in a way that serves all of their customers. We are quite interested and very pleased to be a bicycle committee, because we are looking at quite a lot of what is going on in Scotland and has been going on to see how we might replicate that and learn lessons from it. The integration that will occur of track and train within the new ScotRail construct is particularly interesting to us at how you create that capability. One advantage is the disadvantage that we have over the old alliancing system. It is very similar to a model that we are trying to replicate elsewhere across the railways. The strategic planning bit is quite aligned on at the top level. The integration of track and train is quite aligned on at a principled level. We are also looking to consider whether we can establish a freight growth target across England and the Wales and the similar way that Scotland has to maximise that bounce back as well and to learn from the decarbonisation that Scotland's railways have given forward. I think that I am quite optimistic that there is a very high principled and strategic level. There is a commonality of views that we can work with, so that is a productive way of going forward. Let me pass over back to Mick and Robert. My final question for the moment. What assurances would you like to see in relation to jobs, infrastructure improvement and the cost of rail travel? What concerns do you have in those areas? Mick, I will ask you to pick that up first. I think that we need to focus on more jobs within our railway. That is an absolute priority. Since the pandemic, our annual intake of staff at the academy within the ScotRail atrial made court has been put on the pause. We have not seen any recruitment into railways. The demographics within ScotRail are pretty high. The average age of a ScotRail employee is high in the 50 marks. What we really need to do is start investing in the new blood, as far as the RMT is concerned. What we would like to see is the apprenticeship paper side, because, under the existing franchise agreement, there are 100 apprenticeships throughout the lifetime of the franchise. As a result of the break clause, it puts us at a figure of 70 apprenticeships. I am not entirely sure if there were any apprenticeships recruited during the height of the pandemic, but, under ScotRail, the RMT will be advocating for more apprenticeships to invest in the future of Scotland's trains. That means increasing apprenticeships quite significantly. On the actual fair rate side, I understand that the fairs have went up by 3.8 per cent. We, from a reunion perspective, do not see that as a necessary increase in the fairs. We need to ensure or would advocate that fairs need to be affordable. If Transport Scotland and the ScotRail and the Scottish Government were serious about attracting the passengers back to the railway, a fair freeze would have been the correct way forward. Bear in mind that the First Minister advocated throughout the height of the pandemic not to use public transport, which included the trains. We need to convince the people of Scotland that it is safe, affordable and clean to use Scotland's trains. When we start doing that, I believe that we will start seeing passengers returning to Scotland's railway. We recently conducted the consultation on ScotRail's ticket office opening hours. What came through there was that passengers value a visible staff presence, so we hope that there is a visible staff presence that assists passengers at all times. We have also just published a report to date about the Westminster ones, but it is about women and girls' experience on public transport. One of the findings that came through from that report is again the need for a visible staff presence for reassurance for people when using the rail network. That is a high priority for passengers, a visible and helpful staff presence, and sufficient jobs. We are looking forward to the Scottish Government's fairfares review to see what mechanisms can come forward. Again, value for money always comes out at a very high top, if not at the second top of passengers' concerns about not just the level of fares, but it goes into all aspects. You are paying for the journey about punctuality, reliability, comfort and so on, but affordability is a very big issue going forward. We are looking forward to the fairfares review to see what is happening in the longer term. As we said earlier, we encourage people to rail. There have been such products as flexible season tickets, as commuters are now in a hybrid mode of working to a certain extent, working from home and the office. We are looking at ticketing initiatives to attract people back on to the rail network and to meet the Government's objectives of more people using public transport and rail as we go on to the carganiser system. Thank you for joining us. This is an opportunity to look at the future of rail in Scotland. I will first come to Michael Clark. The network rail will be subsumed into Great British Railways. Is your understanding that the Scottish ministers will retain a role in specifying and funding rail infrastructure outputs in Scotland, which have been very successful over recent years, not least the basket airdri line in my constituency? If so, what will that look like under the current periodic review system, or will you anticipate something different? Will that control still be there, but what will be the relationship? If you could maybe comment on what discussions you are already having with colleagues in Transport Scotland and other rail authorities. I am very happy to speak to that. There is no intention to change the nature of the current relationship of funding and specifying from the Scottish Government, which was quite a clear line in the William Shatts plan for rail that would be maintained. That is positive, as you said. It has delivered some very successful results and some clear the clear reality for Scotland to specify what it would like out of its railway. We intend to maintain that. We have been speaking with a number of people, but I would say not to a great degree at the moment. As I said, we are a technical arms body. We are waiting for the Scottish Government and Westminster Government to conclude negotiations on how they would like to implement this across all the nations of the UK. We will work to implement that with Transport Scotland and the other authorities. However, we are in contact, as you would expect, with people such as Bill Reeve, Alex Hines and Chris Kip, who are at this magnificent building in New Scotland in Scotland. In 2018, when the Williams review was kicking off, we held a series of focus groups across Great Britain, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, on what passengers we wanted to do with the new structures that were coming forward. It became quite complicated for the rail structure for a passenger who just wanted to make it only. When we delved into what they wanted, we wanted accountability and transparency. We wanted accountability and transparency about who is running the trains and infrastructure projects. We wanted to easily explain why new lines are being built, why they are being delayed in some instances. It is about accountability, transparency and simplicity for passengers, so that they can easily understand the system going forward. Mick, do you have any comments about Great British Railways in the future? Yes. We, as a trade union, are really concerned about what has been proposed under Great Britain's railway going forward. We have concerns that have a cuts agenda written all over it. As a result of using the pandemic in order to see a recovery off a railway, if that is the case, the RMP will obviously fight those proposals every step of the way. I do not make any apology for making those comments, because I do not see why, in the first hand, rail workers are deemed and seen as essential workers for keeping the economy ticking during the height of the pandemic. On the same token, it suggests that, under Great Britain's railway, there will be job cuts and less investment in a railway. We take a reverse view. We see the railway's recovery being more jobs, more investment in a railway and an improvement in a industrial relation. Our position is clear that we want to work with the Government in order to ensure that we have a sustainable, workable, safe and affordable railway going forward. I will stay with Mick for my second question, which is about decarbonisation of ScotRail services. Scottish ministers aim to fully decarbonise ScotRail services by 2035, requiring a significant programme of electrification and the use of battery or hydrogen-powered rolling stock. Any of you is target realistic. What needs to happen for that to be met, particularly from those who operate the service, what confidence you will have in new systems and what involvement you want to have in ensuring that we can move to that decarbonisation, but to do it safely and responsibly? I think that we need to welcome any actual change to ensure that we have a more greener railway, particularly if it means getting more people ditching their cars and using the public transport. I think that that is welcomed. However, what we actually need to ensure is that the just transition in order to get to that target does not mean that there are less jobs in the railway. From a trade union perspective, we will do whatever we need to do in order to protect jobs, terms and conditions. That will certainly be the focus from an R&T perspective to ensure that jobs are protected. Just remind me what the other part of the question is, please. It is in terms of operating new stock, if it is going to be either battery or further technology changes such as hydrogen and what the expectations would be of the railway workforce. We would welcome that, as long as it did not reduce staff personnel on the train, because we have a big issue within Scotland's trains in terms of anti-social behaviour being on the increase and assaults on staff and assaults on passengers. If you look at one of the existing agreements in Scotland's trains, it is called the Strive Clyde manning the agreement. That goes back some 35-36 years. What that means in the layman's terms is that a secondary person on the train is not a guard, because that secondary person is not a safety critical. We need to ensure that there is a second person on every train, as far as Scotland's trains are concerned. In any new technology that is introduced, we need to ensure that there is a staff presence on the trains at the stations in order to ensure that the staff feel safe when using Scotland's trains. Scotland's trains are clean, safe and affordable to use. I will come to Michael Clark next. You referred to Scotland's experience on decarmerisation. Can you perhaps comment on whether you think that 2035 target is realistic and what needs to be involved and having been on one of the hydrogen chains at COP26, although it did not operate on hydrogen when it travelled? Obviously, there are ambitions there, but there is quite an expense there. What do you think is realistic and do you think that that is achievable in 2035? Thank you. Again, I will have to have a bit of a caveat up front that I haven't examined the Scottish target in the attempts to get it specifically. I think that you highlighted a couple of very interesting points in your question that I would pick up there, similarly to Mick, who used the word sustainable. That is one of our priorities, the transition team sustainability. We need that as both financial and environmental when we go into those questions. One of the first things that I would say is that the best thing that we can do, and others who have alluded to this in the near term, is to get people back on the railway. That is one of the greenest measures that we can take at the moment to make the railway a more attractive mode of transport and stop people using cars. I would link to that, but there is an integrated transport aspect to that that we are very keen to promote. That would be it with the Transport Scotland agenda for the railways as well, from what I know of it. What I am leading up to there is having a target that is a good thing. It concentrates the minds and people can work towards it. It is an ambitious target, as a target should be, but I would be evaluating that against the funds that are available. When I think about what is the most valuable for money way of achieving the greatest decarbonisation across the transport system, would that be it? I would particularly be thinking new technologies, how proven are they, how likely are they to come through on time? I would have a rigorous programme around checking that and the costs about it and how deployable they were potentially at scale. If I recall rightly, a recent network rail traction study identified about 9 per cent of the UK rail network where hydrogen is likely to be deployable, so I would be trying to triangulate all of those things to see if it was achievable from a value for money and an environmental impact perspective. Finally, before I hand back to the convener, to Robert, whether he has any views on that value for money and trying to get people back on to railways is a way to decarbonise clearly in terms of less use of cars, but there is an expenditure perhaps more on capital, but on hydrogen or indeed more electrification, do you see that this is a value for money issue that is a competition between those two things or do you think that we need to do both to achieve our net zero targets? We need to achieve both to reach the net zero targets and we could be an attractor on to the rail network for passengers, for non-users, come on to a totally green network, a totally net zero rail network. There is a rolling programme of electrification that has been on going for several years now, but I see that as on going and that should be achievable by 2035. As my call, it is not so much difficult, but it is difficult, I suppose, to say that the roll-out of new technology for hydrogen and battery-operated trains, some of our rural lines, like the bar north and probably down to the Stran rail line, that is where we are looking at the introduction of new technologies such as hydrogen and battery-operated. How far will those technologies come along prior to 2035 to make them deliverable and affordable is key in all this, but the rolling programme of electrification, I suggest, would be deliverable by 2035? Thank you, Robert. I will pass back to the convener. Thank you very much. We have a couple of supplementaries in this area, Liam Kerr, to be followed by Mark Ruskell. On that last point, Robert Samson, you said very clearly that electrification should be achievable by 2035. The rail decarbonisation plan to 2035 is not costed. That analysis is yet to be undertaken, despite being published in July 2020. Do you then think that enough has been done to assess what needs to be done to achieve electrification, for example in terms of bridges, lowering track where it is necessary? Given that this document was published in July 2020, do you see any evidence that the lack of costing is being addressed or indeed planned? We are not heavily involved in the process just now, but we hope that the network rail, as part of its control period 7, outputs are looking at this just now in the strategic business planning, also the strategic transport projects review as well. We will hopefully take some of those issues forward. However, as you rightly pointed out, they do need to be fully costed, but there has been an on-going programme of electrification for many years now. Passengers will definitely want to see it continue. Passengers will see the benefit of it in the introduction of the new electric trains of class 3A5s that have better performance and greater improvement in punctuality and reliability, which is the benefit of passengers, which is the number one priority on the railways. It needs to be costed going forward, but the programme has been delivering up to now and we would want to see it continue. I work with a number of communities that are building up business cases for line reinstatements and stations to be brought back on to existing lines as well. They have been successful in getting money from local rail development fund to do that, but one of the concerns that they have is around the escalating costs of reopening railways, escalating costs in general around capital projects on the rail network. I wanted to ask Michael about that. Why are we seeing cost estimates, particularly around station re-openings, double in recent years? I do not see where the additional costs are that are being brought into the system. Thank you, Mark. I am probably not the best person to answer that question, as I do not have a great oversight from partners in network rail and the capital side of the business that has been building infrastructure. I am aware from the William Shep's work of project speed, which was looking to halve the time and costs of capital infrastructure projects. One of the things that we have found is that there is a gold plating—that sounds a bit pejorative—but the processes have got quite contractualised. The processes have got quite ossified, and they are not very lean. Project speed, with some of its examples so far, has looked quite successfully at how, if you get the relevant parties ourselves in network rail, the ORR, the rail operators and the local communities interested, you can cut through quite a lot of that. If you can involve local contractors more easily rather than a succession of subcontracted contracts, there are ways to do that. It takes a bit of concentration and will to do it in the current system, and that might be something that the time for integration under ScotRail helps to look at alongside local communities. I am afraid that that is my uninformed view. Thanks. I do not know if MEC has got any other views on that. I will pass back to the convener. If I could just come in quickly. Local communities want to see stations opened, reopened and new lines built or lines reopened. The cost is quite high, but surely local communities, MSPs and regional transport partnerships should all be able to sit down with Network Rail, ScotRail, Transport Scotland and work out what is in the best interests of the past. How can we deliver a new railway or a new station in a way that is affordable and meets the needs of the communities? It is about what I said before about the volumes in the view of what passengers want, some accountability, transparency and simplicity and what is transparent, and actually delivering that to hopefully aid the reopening of stations and new lines. It comes down to accountability and transparency and a simplified structure. We would hopefully deliver all of that. If I could just make a comment based on the question. Of the 349 stations within the Scotland Railway of which 143 are actually staffed, so that leaves 206 unstaffed stations from a trade union perspective, we would like to see every station staffed. The reason for that is because antisocial behaviour is actually on the increase and is getting out of control. We receive the daily reports of our staff being verbally abused. If not verbally abused, then the assaulted or passengers assaulted. I will just briefly refer to the ScotRail ticket offices. We certainly believe that the narrow focus of the ticket settlement agreement consultation did not give an opportunity for passengers' wider concerns being staffed, as the ticket and settlement agreement process is set by Westminster and allows transport focus to object on a narrow criteria based on ticket sales only. As we all know, a booking office provides staff the booking offices at stations and offers security and reassurance to many, including women in vulnerable groups and disabled groups. I think that that is an important factor to take into account. Thank you, convener, and for transparency. I declare an interest as a member of the RMT parliamentary group and also unite the union. Good morning to our panel. My first question is probably best aimed at Mick Hogg. I was pleased to hear you say earlier on that earlier discussions between the RMT and the new transport minister have been positive. That is encouraging to hear. I am aware that the current ScotRail franchise has a no compulsory redundancy commitment, and that is for all ScotRail staff. However, I understand that the Scottish Government has so far not agreed to continue with that commitment under a publicly owned ScotRail. I wonder Mick Hogg, if you can give an update on that and say the importance of a no compulsory redundancy policy. Thank you for the question. Yes, it is a big focus of the RMT and my other trade union colleagues within the Scotland railway, because we do have a no compulsory redundancy agreement. Here is the ironic thing about the issue that is still to be clarified for us. The under-privatisation under national express, under national express and under first group and under the ability of the ScotRail had a no compulsory redundancy agreement, yet under nationalisation from the 1 April 2022, we still do not have clarification or confirmation of a no compulsory redundancy agreement being extended. I had a discussion with the transport secretary last week and I raised that very question. The transport secretary's swift quick response was, Mick, who is saying that you are not going to get an extension to your no compulsory redundancy agreement. I am going to hold the transport secretary's feet to the fire on that question, because it is a very, very important question for my members, because what we want is some stability within the railway, particularly with ScotRail. Holdings has taken over the railway from 1 April 2022, so I am encouraged with the discussion that I have had so far, but it is a very, very important question that needs to be addressed in order to give the reassurance and the stability that is needed going forward. Thank you for that, Mick. I think that we all agree that we want to see improving industrial relations. The deputy convener talked about the importance of looking to the future. I am not sure if Mick can still hear it, because he is frozen on the screen, but I will keep going, unless I am told otherwise. You can hear me, Mick Good. I am thinking about the future, because the deputy convener made that important point. I know that Scotland's four rail unions, including RMT, Unite, ASLEF and the TSA, have published a vision for Scotland's railways. I am interested to hear what the other panel members think of that report, but I wonder if Mick, if you can clarify, will trade union representatives sit on the new publicly owned ScotRail? Has that been confirmed? I asked that very question as a result of the two-way transfer discussions that have actually took place. I have put forward a proposal from a consensus of an opinion from the four railway unions on our perspective nominee. That position has been given due consideration by ScotRail, which is to welcome participation on the board from a non-executive perspective. We will continue to raise that question, because we see the benefits of having a voice sitting on the board representing the four rail unions. I am interested to hear if Robert and Michael have any views on that vision for Scotland railways document. There are a lot of recommendations in there. Perhaps Robert can come to you. There are a number of recommendations in the document. We particularly welcome the ones that obviously change with passengers' needs, such as a visible staff presence at stations and on-board trains. That is the main one as far as passengers are concerned. As far as the establishment of ScotRail trains limit also gives an opportunity to strengthen the user voice along with the trade unions. ScotRail Scotland has a stakeholder advisory panel, but there is an opportunity to strengthen it and make it a challenge panel. A number of organisations such as Scottish Water have established their independent customer challenge panel to ensure that it keeps its customers at the heart of the business planning and delivery. Off-gem, as well as part of the price control process, establish customer engagement groups with responsibilities to provide challenges to the companies and providers overall performance. Not so much as micromanaging, but there is an opportunity to have a challenge panel to have a user voice and a trade union voice to challenge it, because it will be a monopoly provider going forward. It is important to get a user voice as well as a trade union voice in there at the very beginning. A challenge panel is one that will do that and has worked in other regulated markets, such as water and energy. Michael Russell, do you have anything to add? Thank you. I have not read the document, so I cannot speak to that, but if I can just briefly say, I think that it is an excellent thing that that vision has come forward, because there is a lot of change on the railway and it needs a lot of change. Having done the Williams review with Keith Williams, it was clear that it was not working for passengers or funders in many aspects, and then Covid, as you know, created a burning platform for finances and demand. I think that lots of change is required from everyone. The key to that will be ensuring that the people who staff the railways and do the day-to-day work on it are at the centre of that and embrace that change. Someone said earlier that the network rail is getting absorbed and changed, but Scotland rail has been taken into the OLR. There are changes to franchises in England and Wales, so we cannot just not think about how those changes affect staff or what changes are required of staff doing. Nick touched on one earlier, which I think is worth more of a highlight, which is that the real need to increase the diversity of the railways workforce on International Women's Day to recognise that the railway is poor at diversifying its workforce. That is something that we can bring through. We can link that to other debates. The excitement about new technologies and the excitement about being at the cutting edge of decarbonisation should hopefully help to inspire new and different people to come forward on the railway as a diversity aspect. However, we need to look at customer focus and skills and training. I am perfectly neutral about levels and numbers of work, as Nick will know a lot better, that will, in shape, be thinking about the rest of the system. Do they have the right skills? Are they incentivised through the contractual processes in the right way? I cannot speak for that, but I would imagine that Scott Brown would want to work with the unions to complete that type of thing. It really does lead into other things about how we get the best systems for ticketing and modernising those retails with staff supporting that in the way that customers and passengers want. I would also support Robert's point about the use of voice at the same time. Thank you, Michael. Thank you for acknowledging that today is International Women's Day. It is just a very brief final question on that, because Robert has already touched the importance of women's safety. We have heard from Mick about the fact that we already have a lot of stations that are unstaffed and that there are concerns for the safety of the workforce as well. I just wonder, given that this is a bit of a hot topic right now and that the Government wants to have a national conversation, are there any lessons that we can learn from international best practice on this? I would be interested to hear if you have any knowledge on that. Thank you. I do not know about international best practice, but we have just started. I think that it is an incredibly important issue. If we cannot ensure the safety and security of passengers on the railway, we will not have passengers on the railway. It is a basic hygiene factor that we will need to work hard to ensure that it is at a very high level. We do not have a focus on that yet in the transition team. We are slowly building on. We have been talking to the British Transport Police, for example. I know that the chief constable has a priority on women and girls' safety in the railway, as we would expect. We are listening to their ideas and we will talk to them about how we might help with our work to promote that in due course, if we have more responsibilities for it. Robert and Mick, do you have anything to add? Not an international perspective, but as I said, we have just published a report today about women and girls' experience of public transport. It is only—I have certainly read it in any depth—but one of the things that stood out to me is that we found that 85 per cent of women and girls fought about their safety when planning on making a journey the types of mitigations that we are taking, including travelling at particular times of the day, using specific routes, avoiding certain types of transport or travelling with others. I think that that is quite an alarming statistic that 85 per cent actually think about their safety when making or planning a journey in advance, so there is obviously work to be done in this area to make significant improvements. Thank you, Robert. Last word to you, Mick. Hi, thank you. Just briefly, the national conversation women's safety on public transport, the new transport minister announced a national conversation for the future of Scotland and the consultation on women's safety on public transport. RMT believes that cuts are wrong, which worsen passengers' safety, security and accessibility. As transport focus response said, the conversation should include ScotRail listening to the concerns expressed by passengers and stakeholders replying to the consultation. If we look at the feedback from transport focus, bear in mind that there were 1,500 plus 1,550 responses in 1 per cent in favour of the cuts, so that clearly demonstrates 99 per cent were opposed to the actual cuts. As far as the RMT is concerned, we would like to see a total reversal of the proposed cuts, because the opening hours are to be reduced by 3,200 hours. There is only a hundred, sorry, there is only a hundred and thirty-three hours are proposed to be reinstated. We do not think that that is anything near enough. We can see a disaster for Scotland's railway written all over it in terms of the antisocial behaviour. I keep referring to antisocial behaviour, and please believe me that the antisocial behaviour is on the increase. Passengers and staff members are continuously being assaulted. That is a real concern for us, because the British Transport Police cannot be on every train. There is not enough British Transport Police in order to staff Scotland's trains. I have said before, and I will say it again, that if we can ban people who are actually found guilty for antisocial behaviour at football grounds and shopping centres, I find it absolutely bizarre why we cannot ban those same people who are actually found guilty from using the Scotland trains. I just find it absolutely staggering. Thank you, Mick, and to the panel. I'll hand back to the convener now. Great. Thank you, Monica. Next up, Jackie Dunbar, to be followed by Natalie Donne, Jackie, please. Thank you, convener, and good morning, panel. I would like to ask the panel just a couple of questions. During the pandemic, we saw a huge change to the way that folk travelled, if indeed they did, because a lot of folk started working from home. As we emerge from the pandemic, what do you think the real industry should do to adapt to that change to the way that folk travel? We're hearing that some people won't continue to do homework. If I can go to Michael first, then maybe Mick and then Robert. Thank you. It's a very good question. It has blamed most assumptions that there would always be a baseline demand in parts of the railway, and it would always be required, I think, out of the water. What we are considering now is that actually, virtually all rail travel can be discretionary, or the vast majority of it. That places a different emphasis on how you approach it, treating people much more as a customer with a choice of different transport loads than a service of passenger. With little choice, you have to just get to and from. We would still be seeing reliability and puncturality as core passenger requirements. I think that Mick picked up the basic hygiene of clean and safe. That will change, but what we're trying to do now is much more targeted understanding of who is of markets, even from a town to town city to city level, who is travelling at what time for what purpose, and what do they need from their ticket? How do they need flexibility? Do they need it being digital? Do they need it more end-to-end so that they can connect with the journey at the other end? I'm really trying to modernise that offer for the rail passenger in a way that other transport modes have already had to do, because they have to attract them on. We're thinking a lot more in that regard, and we've got a revenue team working really hard to analyse those flows, and a customer team then working really hard to try and think through what that customer proposition for a modern railway that we have to tempt us, tempt the man back on to, can't take it for granted looks like. That might also be an opportunity for the railway, but large parts of the railway had quite high peak demand, which then drove costs and rolling stock, and it made it more difficult to infrastructure, maintenance and renewals. Now, it might have spread that demand out and plan those things better, make it more efficient and make sure that customs aren't interrupted in their journeys in the same way. The other thing that I would mention is the need to integrate and look across transport modes to help customers. Rail can only go from station to station. Scotland has a very promising active travel impetus, as does the Government in Westminster, so we're thinking how we link up stations as the gateway to the railway, but then how we enable people to get there in greenways and help them to map out their journey in increased use of data or information that are available to customers in the way that high-slug transport for London has successfully done in the past. The first thing that we should not have done was to increase the fare by 3.88 per cent. I said earlier that Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government in Scotland were seriously about attracting passengers back, particularly after the height of the pandemic. The thing not to do is to increase fare. What we need to do is to send the right signal, the right message to passengers so that Scotland's railway is affordable, secure, clean and safe to use. I bear in mind that 50 per cent of passengers—or only 50 per cent of passengers—are using the railway. 50 per cent continue not to use a railway. If we are really serious about sending the right message, we should have ditched the plans to increase fares. That was the wrong message and the wrong decision, particularly the First Minister's comments throughout the height of the pandemic. It is a bit ironic when we talk about encouraging people to use the Scotland's railway. Scotland has decided to go ahead with the consultation on ticket offices in January 2022 when it knew—and Transport Scotland knew—that only 50 per cent of passengers were using the Scotland's railway. We see that from a trade union perspective as a deliberate ploy in order to get the cuts agenda in through the back door, which we do not believe was helpful in terms of having an alleged national conversation on the Scotland's railway. I look at fares and ticketing initiatives to attract people back to the way that they work and live now has obviously changed. We have peak fares in the morning and afternoon, but it is a leisure-based recovery. Should there be peak travel, should it be the same fare throughout the day as people's travel and patterns actually change? We also look at, for instance, engineering works. More people are now travelling leisure at the weekend. Should we continually close some sections of the railway at the weekend to undertake engineering works? Should that be at different times during the week when less people are now travelling? To a certain extent, all those are very much in the air as passengers return. However, we have been carrying out a survey of 2,000 people for two years now about how they are travelling through Covid. One of the things that come through consistently is about efforts to say that they will never again feel completely comfortable on public transport. That is quite a worrying statistic, so we need to look at ways of encouraging back giving reassurance about the safety measures, about the cleanliness, about ventilation and trains and how those go away. We have to look at not just the fares and ticketing initiatives but other hygiene factors that we need to look at to encourage people back on to the rail network that is coming through from our travel during Covid surveys. I can just ask you a quick supplementary, Robert. In regard to what you have just said about a third say that they will never again feel comfortable, apart from what you have just stated, is there anything else that you think that might help people to feel more comfortable moving forward? Yes, but reassurance is about having room on the train. It is about sufficient services at the time that the people want to use the train. Again, it is a whole matrix. I am not just fares and ticketing but reassurance that the rail is reopened, that it is there for business, new comfortable trains, visible staff presence and various obviously buying tickets from the ticket office but also looking at digital as well, the way that people want to buy tickets in future. There is a whole range of mechanisms to make people feel safe coming back to the rail network. I can send further details on that because we have a report on the five or ten measures to make people safe that I have not got to my fingertips just now. If you could actually provide us with a copy of that, that would be extremely helpful, I would say. I am looking at the convener, sorry. My next question is in regard to the actual rail network. The Scottish Government has set out ambitious plans for the development of the Scottish rail network, such as the creation of the Glasgow metro rail system. Can I ask what your views are on those plans and do you think that they are deliverable? If I can start off with Michael, please. Sorry, I am smiling because I was just thinking that I should not attempt myself to comment on the plans that the Scottish Government has funded. I hope that you will not be extremely rude if I do not think that it is within my 30. Robert, do you have anything that you would like to say? Yes, we will be responding to the consultation on the STPR2, but we fully welcome the plans for Glasgow metro and the rail network. If we want to meet our net zero targets in the longer term, that is one part of the jigsaw tax that will help to achieve that. Okay, thank you. That is all that I have got to ask. I will pass it back to you. Great, Jackie. Thanks very much. I see that Liam Kerr is a quick supplemental in this area, Liam. Just a very quick supplemental, if I may. Robert Samson, you just mentioned STPR2, which is undeniably important, but STPR2 does not even mention relaying the lines from Peterhead and Fraserbury to Aberdeen, so they will remain the farthest places on the mainland from a station. The only option then is to drive, which would seem to fly in the face of all our ambitions here. In your view, should the decision to exclude all consideration of those lines from Fraserbury or Peterhead to Aberdeen be reviewed and maybe a feasibility study that is ordered at the very least? I think that it goes back to the earlier question that was asked by Mark Ruskell to the largest. I didn't know about what local communities actually want, how they are delivered, how they are actually funded. No, they should not be excluded as part of the wider net zero debate. No, they should be included and see if they are deliverable and if they are feasible. That will make a difference for people's travelling behaviours. The committee has heard call for better integration between walking, cycling, bus and rail services, and that includes calls for integrated smart ticketing. Just last week, Scotland's climate assembly highlighted to the committee that they wanted to see a much more integrated joined-up way of travelling and further to be a mechanism to make public transport cheaper, particularly for low-income families. I would like to ask the panel how they feel this could best be achieved and if you feel the Scottish and the UK Governments are taking the right action to deliver this goal. I will go first to Robert Ruskell, please. I think more can be done in developing one-ticket solution smart ticketing. We look at rail. Journeys do not begin at a train station and end at a train station. They are a part of a wider journey. How do they actually get there? We did a report a few years ago about transport integration. It is also about the confidence factor as well about not just the smart ticketing but how joined up is it. When we get off the train, we will see the back end of the bus or the ferry departing on vice versa. It is about a whole package of an integrated transport system where timetables are interlaid. We have the confidence of whether it is one-ticket in your pocket or a ticket on your smartphone. One of the best ways is a smart ticket that ensures that you are getting the most appropriate fare for when you are actually travelling. One of the things about smart ticketing is that you have to give the consumer confidence that they are using the smart ticket that is fit for purpose to secure that they are always going to be charged the most appropriate and cheapest fare for that particular leg of the journey. It is tailored for an individual and for groups. There is a whole range of things in there about making sure that it is right for consumers, but it is about giving them confidence in the product that they are always getting charged for the right amount for the particular leg of the journey. I know that you touched on that earlier. I would put the same question to you, but I will also add a short supplementary. Do you feel that an integrated ticketed system would benefit not only the public but the rail industry in the long run? Thank you. It is a very good question and I tend to agree with it. A lot of what Robert said is on our mind and we are thinking about how best we might achieve it. There is a lot there about what do passengers want and it is friction-free travel. It is not to have to think about it, it is hanging the confidence that it works. We are looking at, for example, rolling out pay-as-you-go systems similar to that in London to other large major conurbations, as much as possible. We are looking at consolidating online retail offerings. At the moment, that is one of the issues that we have found, that all of the operators have their own websites and they work different effectiveness. There are other third-party retailers and people get confused. We want a consistent offer on that from where it is publicly possible to put that together. It all comes back to data. What information is available at the moment? It can be quite hard and confusing to get a lot of information about your tickets. There must be simple ways of providing this for passengers, opening that up so that people can make their own choices. You asked about, I think, that it will be better for the railways system if it is implemented properly. I think that one of the challenges that we have had at the moment is that it has been done in fragments and in bits. Each operator might think about having a smart card and that will have a different state of ticket gates if it is not operable with another phone company's offering, and it all adds confusion and complexity. I think that, in doing this, we have to think very carefully about how it is simple and easy for the passenger, how it works as a visa card or an Apple Pay system would. There is a commonality of back-offers. The problems are sorted out by the system underneath it rather than by the passenger having to work out what they have to have out of their pocket at any one time. That could be a more efficient way of doing it for the railways, if you cannot have multiple different back-offers systems that then have to be patched to talk to each other. A bit of machine learning is to get over that and the right data being available from all parties should be able to do that. I know that you asked about integrated ticketing and smart ticketing, but your question was about accessibility and inclusion. Have you taken a good look at how well or probably how badly the railway is doing across the UK at serving all potential customers and passengers? That is a really positive thing. We are working on a national accessibility strategy that is linked to our Hull Institute's strategic plan. We are trying to take that as a broad and inclusive approach of how we could serve people that should be customers of the railway, if they wanted to be customers of the railway. That links, quite importantly, into making it simpler, friction-free and easy for people, providing them with the information, providing them with that assistance, more online and digital, where it is possible to do so as well. Thanks, Michael. That was very helpful. I will put the same question to you in terms of how best do you think a smart integrated ticketing system could be achieved and how you feel the Scottish and UK Governments are taking action to deliver on that. I would also ask if you believe that integrated ticketing could be more of a challenge for workers in practice due to the ticket applying to more than one method of public transport. I am not sure whether you could give me your views on that. I think briefly that an integrated rail ticket service, a smart ticket service, is clearly welcome. It appears to be the way forward in terms of new technology. I do not think that we can actually block or oppose new technology. However, from a trade union perspective, what we would obviously say is that there needs to be a transition, a just transition, and we need to ensure that staff are actually not put on to the industrial waste scrap heap, because we need to obviously listen to what passengers want. There needs to be a lot more joined up thinking when it comes to rail, ferry and bus. That is an absolute priority, because, as I think standing just now, I think that the rail side, the ferry side and the bus side can only be described as an absolute shambles in terms of no forward thinking. There needs to be a lot more strategy, a better strategy put in place that allows a person to go from the railway to the ferry and from the ferry to the bus in order to get to their final destination, or vice versa. I think that what we need to do, and this is an important point, is support for our most vulnerable people within the society. The vulnerable people within the society are not familiar with the new technology. We talk about machines at a station that are going to close booking offices or stations, and we are really serious about ensuring that Scotland's railway is open for everyone within the society. We need to ensure that the most vulnerable people within the society are included in that national way of conversation, because the harsh reality is that I keep making reference to antisocial behaviour on the increase. With the antisocial behaviour being on the increase, vulnerable people are not going to use Scotland's railway, they are going to remain in the house because they are scared and reluctant to use Scotland's railway because it is not safe. If we ignore that issue, what is clearly going to happen is that Scotland's railway is going to become a magnet for the antisocial behaviour, if we are not serious about tackling that question. With the right forward thinking, I think that what we should do first and foremost is to scrap the cuts agenda, support Scotland's railway, support the most vulnerable people within the society and have a better forward planning when it comes to an integration of ticket and rail ferry and bus services. Before I bring in Liam Kerr, can I ask our panel members for brief replies? We still have a bit to get through and I'm keen to bring in all the questions that we have from members. Liam, over to you. I shall direct one question to Mick Hogg based on what you've just said. Michael and Robert come in if you wish to add. Mick, I listened very carefully to the point that you've just made, which I think was a good one personally. Moving on from that, I have a huge concern at the implications of some of the statements and answers that I've been hearing in the chamber here, that less well-used services could be cut. That would have an obvious impact in the north-east and the Highlands, for example. Do you share my concerns at this implied direction of travel that we've been hearing? Would the RMT be resistant to using lesser use at the moment as a reason for centralising investment in services away from places like the north-east? We want to see absolute 100 per cent use of Scotland's railway. I said earlier that there are 349 stations within the Scotland Railway, of which 143 are staff. Those figures speak volumes on the approach to Scotland's railway. I don't think that a railway is being used where we support passenger use in order to send the right signal by ensuring that a railway is not only safe but clean and affordable to use. We want to see every station that is staffed and the cuts that are agenda the reverse. To meet the net zero targets that the Scottish Government has, we have to see more passengers on the rail network in the short medium to longer term. We know the time to see what is coming in to play on May 2022, but we want to see that not as the beginning of a cuts agenda, but as a starting point to actually grow back the railway and more passengers on, increase demand and increase services at different timetable alterations. I am very grateful. Thank you very much, Liam. My final question is from Mark Ruskell. Mark, over to you, please. Thank you very much, convener. I think that later on this week, we are going to finally get the report into the Carmen Stonehaven tragedy. I do not want to pre-empt what the findings of that, the detailed findings of that may conclude, but I wanted to ask you if you have any kind of broad conclusions, broad recommendations about how we should be dealing with the two issues about climate adaptation on the rail network and how we make sure that services and the network are safe, but also about how the franchise should be run, how the operator of last resort should be run, are there any lessons there in terms of rolling stock or other safety concerns that need to be brought in? You have all mentioned safety as being a top concern, a top issue in terms of getting people back on to the railways. I wonder if you have any thoughts on that. Perhaps I could start with Mick, Robert and Michael. Okay, thank you. I think that privatisation has clearly not helped matters so far as our railways is concerned, because clearly, as a result of the tragedy at Stonehaven, we do not have much to thank the pandemic for, but there is one thing that is absolutely clear. If it was not for the pandemic, we would actually be looking at a lot more fatalities on that particular disaster that took place up at Stonehaven, because the train itself, you will be talking about hundreds of 80 passengers opposed to 20 or 30 passengers on the day in question. The other thing that is also coming over loud and clear is the infrastructure up in the far north of 80 Scotland. Victorian infrastructure, but I have got to add. That clearly demonstrates and clearly spells out the issue regarding the lack of investment in our infrastructure. If we are serious about learning the lessons of what happened up at Stonehaven, we need to ensure that a railway receives more investment and ensures that the Victorian infrastructure is addressed as quickly as possible, because if we do not do that, then what clearly has happened up at Stonehaven, particularly with the adversity, whether the conditions will have actually been seen, and no doubt more adversity will come, but we can see other stonehaven tragedies coming our way pretty soon. I believe that going forward, we need to learn the lessons of what happened at the Stonehaven event. We have got to look at investing in the rail network as climate change is dealing with severe weather resilience. Mick talked about Victorian heritage and infrastructure, which is quite right, but to a large extent, the Victorians built the railways in the right places. It is land use planning decisions since, under a certain extent, we have to look at use of flood plain, but it is about building in resilience to make sure that passengers can have a safe and secure journey going forward. Thank you for supporting that building in resilience to how the railway goes about doing operations and maintenance. That makes it a part of its daily routine. The other thing that I would say is that I think that I would be expecting the integration of track and train under the new ScotRail construct to help with that. People aren't looking at their own particular decision making on their own particular contractual basis of the track or train, but you could look across the piece in one of the best decisions, as you said, for the rolling stock, for the operations, for the services that you are running at those particular times, and you can adapt them more quickly, because you are incentivised to do the best thing for the whole system, rather than do the best thing for your contract. I hope that that will lead to more effective decision making that will help to prevent anything from us again. We have a final question. We have talked a lot this morning about national conversation, and we have highlighted particular strands of that conversation. We have had the ticket office closure consultation. There has been a complete national timetable review, I think the first one, for 30 years in Scotland. There is the welcome focus on women's safety, as well. I am just wondering—I can maybe start with Robert. How do you see a national conversation now going forward? You have also mentioned about having passenger representation on the board or some kind of focus on that. Is there a sort of wider way of doing things here? Can we have a citizen's assembly on ScotRail? Should we have more regular, more involved discussions at community level about services? We are in a quite participatory democracy at the moment, and I am just not really seeing that read across into some of the discussions about the future of ScotRail. It all seems to be quite disjointed. Robert, do you want to kick off your thoughts on that? Well, the national conversation could have the opportunity to actually have greater user participation. It could see the outcome of that of citizens' assemblies informing how they are always delivered. It is not about lumps of mail, it is about transferring people who want to make journeys. To our extent, we have generic principles that apply to all over Scotland. We know about what passengers want, about punctuality, reliability, frequency of service, tickets that offer good value for money, good information during disruption. I think that we will go back to what you said about the timetable consultation. We were very keen that that was a full public consultation on a national timetable, because timetables are very local and have individual needs. We are personally travelling from Fife to Edinburgh because of the change of our timetable for 15 minutes. It means that childcare arrangements, getting children at school, getting to working back, a whole family life can be disrupted by one train changing. That is why you have to have public engagement at the railway that we want going forward now. The start of ScotRail trains, limited on 1 April, is an opportunity for all of us to deliver the rail network that we want to see and meet when zero ambitions are going forward. I think that in national conversation, rather than everyone coming at it separately, we should look at it as an opportunity and actually giving a first-class railway going forward. You know that this is a big opportunity that we all should take. Elected people are stakeholders like myself. Let's grasp this opportunity and deliver the railway that we want to see. Thank you. A national conversation is welcome. We certainly welcome the opportunity to have a dialogue and into it, opposed to a national confrontation. During the pandemic 2020 and 2021, if we had anything in Scotland, it would be a national confrontation. We want to see an improvement in our industrial relations. One of the franchise commitments was to have good industrial relations. We want to see under ScotRail wait-holdings, hopefully. The discussion that we have had so far, particularly with the new transport secretary who is in the listening mode, is that she wants to have good industrial relations and ScotRail holdings wants to have good industrial relations. We are really hopeful that good industrial relations will be a number one priority for Scotland's railway going forward. Robert talked a lot about the availability of passenger data, so I think that this is positive to consult people on change and bring them with them as your railway develops and expands, partly to attract them and reassure them that they are always there and what they are there for. We are also going to attract talent and people to work on railways, as we were talking about earlier. The one addition that I would have would be to consider whether you broaden that out not just to passengers and users but to taxpayers and entirety. You have given, I think, 22% of public transport journeys in Scotland were by rail in 2019. What do you want from your transport system that you are paying for would be an interesting conversation. How can rail be at the heart of that alongside other areas? I would be interested in that aspect of the conversation too. Thank you very much Mark. That brings us to the end of our allocated time. Let me thank the panel members for joining the committee today. We very much appreciate your time and your insights into the transition facing ScotRail and rail operations in Scotland and across the rest of Great Britain. Thank you for joining us and that brings us to the end of the public part of the meeting.