 thank you, and welcome to the public, to this meeting, the 29th meeting in 2018 of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee. Could I ask everyone to make sure their mobile phones are on silent? No apologies have been received but a member of committee may leave, need to leave before the end of this session. The first item on the agenda is the decision on taking business in private. The committee has asked to consider taking item 5 in private. This is the item on ferry services in Scotland and is for members to report back on a recent visit to Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd. Are members agreed? Yes. It's agreed. Therefore, we'll move on to agenda item 3. Before I do so, I'd like to invite any members who have any relevant interest to declare them. Thank you, convener. I am the honorary president of the Scottish Association for Public Transport and honorary vice president of the rail future UK. I co-convene the cross-party group on rail for which ScotRail lines provide the secretariat. I'm the honorary vice president of Friends of the Far North line. I'm a member of the RMT parliamentary group. I think that's all. Yes. This evidence session is part of a regular update from ScotRail alliance and to allow the committee to monitor rail services issues. I'd like to welcome from ScotRail alliance Alex Hines, the managing director and Angus Tom, the chief operating officer. I'm going to ask you to make a short opening statement. Could I ask you to remember that there are a lot of questions on this, so to keep it brief and not to go into too much detail on specific issues, because I'm sure that committee members will want to draw you into questioning on those later in the meeting. Alex, if you'd like to start off with three minutes. Thank you very much. Well, good morning and thank you to the committee for inviting me here to give you our regular update on progress with Scotland's railway since we last met in May. All of us at the ScotRail alliance, that's Network Rail Scotland and ScotRail, are working flat out to deliver the best railway that Scotland has ever had. I'm confident that we will do that, but this hasn't been without its challenges. Our punctuality hasn't been good enough in recent months, and I want to start by saying I'm sorry to customers for this and for the impact that this has had on their ability to go about their lives. Some of this has been outside of our control. Extreme weather events like Storm Alley have a significant impact on our ability to keep Scotland's railway open for business, but at other times we have to hold our hands up. Too often our infrastructure has let us down, and when the railway doesn't work as it should, it causes significant inconvenience and disruption for those who rely on us to get to work to see family or to visit the country. That is why we are continuing to build upon the Donovan review and working to understand the root causes of failures not just fix the symptoms. Ensuring the resilience of our assets and infrastructure is another key focus, and teams are literally working around the clock on this. In control period six, there will be an 8 per cent increase in funding to enhance our weather-related resilience. At the heart of our work is the work that we do for the customer, and earlier this year we took the decision to ban the use of skip-stopping. That doesn't make it any easier for us to hit our performance targets. In fact, it makes it more difficult, but it was a decision with customers at its heart, and it was a decision that has been universally welcomed by our customers. Since the last session, we have introduced three new types of trains to the network. Yes, we have had some teething problems with our brand new Hitachi electric trains, which are now operating between Edinburgh and Glasgow and Edinburgh and North Berwick. The feedback from our customers has been extremely positive. The electrification of the central belt continues apace, with Stirling Dumblane Allewar and shots entering the final stages. Customers can now experience our iconic intercity trains between Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and our upgraded intercity network will ultimately connect Scotland's seven cities. Investment in rural routes will see the launch of great scenic railway journeys, and other highlights to note include the improvements that we are making to our timetable starting in December and carrying on over the next 12 months, which will deliver faster journeys, more seats and more services to our customers. Building on the progress already made, a pilot is under way for brand new mobile ticketing, and finally across the alliance we are investing in more than 350 brand new jobs in Scotland's railway. We are investing in trains, in our infrastructure, in our communities and in our people. Thank you very much. Thanks, Alex. The first question of this morning's session will go to Stuart Stevenson. Thank you very much, convener. I want to return to the subject performance and specifically the performance improvement plans. Before perhaps going there, I note that rail editorial last time round said that Scotland shows the way. It says that there may be short-term pain but the result is long-term gain. Is that a proper representation of where we are at the moment that we are experiencing some pain and the improvement plans are perhaps not yet delivering what we require but there will be long-term gain? There is no question that the closer working between track and train is perceived to be a better way of running a railway system. Of course, there are lots of challenges across the UK rail network right now. Despite challenges here in Scotland, we remain above average for things like customer satisfaction and performance and those sorts of things. There is no question in my mind that the level of investment that is happening across the Scottish rail network is creating some operational tensions. This year we are investing £850 million in this 12-month period, the most on record ever in Scotland's railway. It is true to say that some of the issues that we have seen relating to performance are actually a function of the investment programme itself. What makes us very optimistic about the future is that a lot of those enhancement schemes are coming towards their final stages. We have now started to deliver the new express trains and the intercity trains, and the customer feedback on those products has been fantastic. That gives us a great deal of hope for the future. I join the crowd to approve the 385s. I travelled in in one this morning, as I have on a number of occasions, in my 12 to 14 hours a week on ScotRail. On the improvement plans, what are the key challenges in those plans that are at the bottom of the list? What will be done last? What is there still to do that really matters? If you look at train service performance, there are a number of reasons why we are not achieving our target right now. One is weather. The weather in the last 12 months has been materially different and more extreme than is normal. Even for Scotland, we have seen beasts from the east, we have seen the hottest summer on record. All of those things have challenged the resilience of our railway. The infrastructure reliability, particularly in the Glasgow metropolitan area, has not been good enough, which is why we are investing an additional £5 million between now and March in the infrastructure in that area. The Glasgow area is very critical to the whole of the Scottish rail network because any delay there can ripple out across the network. Believe it or not, the delays that occur in Scotland due to cross-border services have increased by 80 per cent in the last 12 months. That is a function of the timetable difficulties that we have seen at Northern and Govia Thameslink railway. Finally, we took the brave decision to ban skip-stopping, which makes it more difficult in the short term to deliver our PPM targets. That is what is happening. We have good plans to address all those issues. Combining with the investment programme, we are working flat out to make sure that we are delivering the service that our customers expect. Let me just close off my questions here. I will come back on other matters later. In infrastructure terms, because that is where the big increase in difficulty has come from, what are the big things besides weather, which, presumably, as MDU can't directly control? What, beyond that, are the big issues in infrastructure? One of the things that we are tackling particularly at the moment is that, because we are going in to deliver all that investment often overnight, what we are seeing is reliability problems shortly after we have gone in to renew or enhance the network. We need to get much better at making sure that we risk assess the engineering works. Normally, on a Thursday, we review the weekend's forthcoming engineering work. We have now strengthened those processes, so we review forthcoming engineering work earlier. We have also set a higher threshold to our delivery teams, which say that if you don't think that you can complete that work in time and hand the railway back reliably for start-of-service, then don't do it. There is lots of activity in the short term to make sure that the scale of the investment that is happening across Scotland's railway network isn't negatively affecting train series punctuality. Can we just seek clarity on one comment that one member would like to say? Thank you, convener. I just wanted to make it absolutely clear that we have heard that skip-stopping has been stopped before, but it turned out that it wasn't. Are you confirming that all skip-stopping is now—there is no more skip-stopping? So, I am confirming that we have implemented our revised policy on skip-stopping, which is that we have banned it apart from in a latter resort. I get the daily skip-stopping report. There are some reasons why we would want to use it. For example, if a station is out of use because there is an incident there or a lighting failure, then clearly we wouldn't call there that counts as a fail to stop. The number of skip-stops is down 80 per cent on the previous year and is at record low level. I am not saying that we would never ever use it, but we do not use it as a mechanism to catch up to hit PPM any longer. Thank you for clarifying that. Richard, yours is the next question. Basically, I have to say that I recently watched a debate in House of Commons where an MP was really going ballistic about their railway and he called on the manager to resign. I am certainly not doing that to you, Mr Hines. I think that you are trying to cope, but I want to know and my constituents want to know who is to blame for delays, who is to blame for not getting a train, who is to blame for the situation. It is my view that you are trying to run a railway where you are one hand tied behind a back by network rail. Am I correct or am I wrong? Is it their situation that is causing your situation? Be truthful. In Scotland, network rail and the ScotRail work together through the Alliance to deliver Scotland's railway. If we look at the primary causes of the deterioration in train series performance in the past 12 months, it is a result of infrastructure-related delays, which of course is the responsibility of network rail and weather, which is allocated in the delay attribution guide to network rail. In order for ScotRail to do a good job, network rail in Scotland has to do a good job, and we are working together on that. When you say that you are working together, is network rail not a standalone and they could basically let you down and you have got no recourse and this Government has got no recourse against network rail or do we? Network rail is regulated by the Office of Rail Regulation, but on a day-to-day basis there is very close working between Angus's ScotRail team and the Network Rail Scotland team, also led by me, to improve train service performance. There is a much greater level of co-operation here, so rather than blaming a party what we are very focused on, it is making sure that we understand why train series performance is below target and then making sure that together is an alliance that we have plans in place to fix it. Just to finish off, network rail is controlled by the UK Government, correct? That is correct. There are lots of follow-up questions here, unsurprisingly. I am going to go to Jamie Greene to start with. Thank you, good morning, panel. Good morning, gentlemen. Just following on from the topic that Richard Islayl is exploring, and I thank Mr Hynes for your briefing to MSPs with some statistics. Can I refer to those if you have them in front of you? This is about the reason why ScotRail is not delivering on its PPM. In your briefing, there is an interesting table that states that the failure to reach that PPM is either caused by Network Rail, ScotRail or other train operators. Would you not agree that that is perhaps an oversimplistic view on things? For example, within the 63 per cent attributed to Network Rail, what percentage of that is a result of infrastructure failures? I am looking on the Network Rail website and they have a very helpful pie chart in terms of the reason why operators do not reach their PPM. Their statistics say that 37 per cent of delays are attributed to infrastructure failures, and indeed 23 per cent of those failures are what we call TOC on self. In other words, issues that the train operator could have prevented, such as defective trains or a lack of staff. Can you just clarify your position on the table and the statistics therein? Every delay that happens on the UK network in excess of three minutes is attributed to a root cause, whether infrastructure, train operating company, disturbance, for example. The delay attribution guide sets out whether that delay belongs to ScotRail or another train operating company or a Network Rail. It is true to say that things like external, such as suicides, trespass, weather, get put into the Network Rail bucket as well as what I would call genuine infrastructure asset failures. That leads to the analysis that is shown that Network Rail becomes primarily responsible for the late running of trains. What I would like to focus on is the deterioration in the last 12 months, which about half of that is from weather and half of that is from genuine infrastructure asset performance. That is where the focus is across the alliance on addressing both of those things in the short term, so that we can tackle those performance issues. However, you are right in saying that in the Network Rail delay bucket it picks up things that are not directly related to the infrastructure asset. Just to clarify, it is an important point, because it does form the part of a lot of the debate around the issue. The 63 per cent attributed to Network Rail captures things like weather, such as external events that are outside of anyone's control. As I said, looking at the figures, whether there is only 11.7 per cent of delays, whether there are delays that you could have prevented as the operator is 23 per cent more than double that and coming up not far behind the Network Rail infrastructure failures. Now, 37 per cent is still 37 per cent too much, I agree, and those infrastructure failures should be reduced, but it is clear that the picture is not quite as bad as it has been painted in your briefing. Well, I think that it is just a function of the way delay attribution works across the UK network. Rather than focusing on which parties to blame across the alliance, we are focused on fixing the problem. In the past 12 months, the problem has been weather and infrastructure, which is why we have good plans in both cases to address those. At the end of the day, what customers want is a reliable train service that they are less interested in who is to blame. If you can fix the Scottish word, that would be wonderful. Jamie, I am going to have to move on, because there are a whole heap of questions taking on that point, Mr Hynes. Is there a debate in the industry about delay attribution? It strikes me that this talk on FOC, in case it comes out the wrong way, is not refined enough to say to the public what it is about. For example, I doubt that the passengers are going to be that bothered if the delay is due to network upgrade and, as a result, they will get better trains and better service than if it is a delay for something else. It strikes me that this delay attribution is not sophisticated enough to reflect that many of the delays might be due to upgrades, but that is not reflected in how it comes out. Obviously, it is our job to make sure that we are upgrading the network to support a high level of reliability and to explain what we are doing about that. The delay attribution system has hundreds of delay codes. It has been in existence for about 25 years now, and it is a frequent topic of debate in the UK rail industry. What we do across the alliances is that every month we publish our PPM statistics and we explain to our customers what were the primary causes of delays. For example, in the last period that we published, we hit a PPM target of 81.8 per cent. Four per cent of that PPM loss, as we call it, was directly due to storm alley. That is a great example of this more extreme weather that we are seeing. We are seeing more storms and more severe severe storm conditions, and those storms are becoming more impactful. As you might imagine, we have done full lessons learned on storm alley, and every tree that fell onto the railway, which disrupted our network, came from outside the railway boundary. All the good work that we are doing at the moment to improve vegetation management within the railway boundary would not have helped us there. My view is that we could try and reform the delay attribution system across the UK, but that is a job for others. Our job is to make sure that the customers of Scotland's railway get a reliable service as soon as we possibly can. Alex, if a ScotRail train is delayed to wait for other passengers from a train operated by another operator that cannot make progress because of weather, how is that delay attributed in your statistics? Do you not think that, in 2018, it is a little bit ridiculous that a train cannot make progress up a hill because of leaves on the line? Essentially, the delay attribution system tries to identify the primary cause of delay. Sometimes that is not always possible. Events here in Scotland can be due to a late departure from Birmingham Newstry. It is a UK-wide network. In the interests of being able to see the woods from the trees, what we are focused on at the moment is infrastructure-related failures, particularly in the Glasgow metropolitan area, not because Glasgow is more important than anywhere else, but the Glasgow network affects the performance of the whole of Scotland's railway and weather, as I discussed. What you are referring to are the LNER services between Inverness and London. As you know, autumn creates many challenges for us. This autumn, which was a Donovan review recommendation, our autumn plan went to the ScotRail Alliance board. It was our biggest ever autumn plan. We invested £13 million in our autumn plan. We run what is called railhead treatment trains across the network, and the number of miles run by their railhead treatment trains were up 60 per cent on the previous autumn. We had more leaf fall teams. We had more equipment fitted to the track, which spreads this glue-like, sandy material to enable the trains to get better traction. However, what we need to do is to make sure that we review this autumn's performance, which, from an autumn perspective, has gone relatively well, to see whether we can do more working with LNER and on the infrastructure to avoid that happening. Briefly, I will bring in John Finnie and then I have a question myself. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. It is from the briefing that you provided to us. It is a particular phrase that relates to this, or maybe you will tell me that it does not relate to this, and it is the phrase. Our integrated control works closely with signallers and other operators to ensure that we make decisions for the benefit of the majority of passengers when it comes to managing and regulating services in Scotland. Can you maybe expand a little bit more on that? Is that a head count? There are 30 folk in that train, and there are 200 in that, so the 200 will always get preference? So, not necessarily. In Scotland, we have a single control centre for the whole of Scotland, and the control centre is part of the alliance. The control centre is responsible for managing the network rail bits of the system and the Scotland rail bits of the system. That is unique in the UK. We think that it is better. It is one reason why we have a lower delay per incident here in Scotland than in other parts of the network and enables quicker decision making. The signallers will comply with what is called regulation statements. If it is a class 1 train, a fast train, they are clearly given priority because you do not want them stuck behind class 2 trains, which tend to be stopping trains. Those regulation decisions that are made by signallers are made in the interests of the overall system. One of the things that the control centre does, particularly at the moment since May, is to look beyond Scotland to see what are those cross-border trains that are coming to us up the east coast main line and the west coast main line to make sure that any late running inter-cities do not adversely impact the ScotRail services or the services on the Scottish Rail network. As I said earlier on, the delays created by those cross-border services are up 80 per cent in the last 12 months, given performance problems south of the border. Our control centre is having to work harder to mitigate the impact on Scottish rail services right now. In effect, does that mean that you can or would give preference to a ScotRail train? The signallers will regulate for PPM, so they will do the best thing for every train operating company and freight operating company in Scotland. They will not give priority to a particular company or not. What they will give priority to is the overall reliability of the system. That includes Sleeper, ScotRail, LNER, TransPennine, Virgin Trains, freight operating companies. They, in real time, are looking at the whole picture and making decisions in the best interests of the overall system. It must be a very complicated calculation that it certainly is. We have a dedicated team in the control centre working 24-7, managing that while we are sitting here. I, too, like all the committee members, read your briefing note to MSPs regarding the problems faced in Scotland's railways carefully. A lot of it, as has been alluded to and as you indeed have alluded to at the committee today, are pointed in the direction of Network Rail. I just wondered why there was not a representative of Network Rail here as part of the alliance group to answer some of those questions, because it would have seemed to me that that might have been useful. The briefing is designed to explain the facts around why we are not hitting our punctuality target. They are not directed at any one party to blame. What they are directed on is making sure that the facts are clear as to what is going on with respect to train series punctuality. The whole purpose of the ScotRail alliance is that ScotRail and Network Rail work together to deliver Scotland's railway. I am the managing director of Network Rail Scotland. I am also the managing director of ScotRail. I happen to be a Network Rail employee from a Pay and Rations perspective, and Angus is the chief operating officer of ScotRail. Together, we work together to deliver the best for Scotland's railway. That is the whole purpose of the alliance. A Bellio's bid set out a deep alliance to deliver Scotland's railway, because, like most people, we believe that this is the best way to run a railway for Scotland. I take that point and I just make the observation that, sometimes, if people are going to be asked questions on specific things, although I am sure that you are very confident in answering all the questions, sometimes it is helpful to have members of, say, Network Rail present. I am just going to leave that comment hanging there if I may and move on to the next question, which is from Colin. Thanks very much, convener, and good morning to the panel. ScotRail's performance is now below breach level and you have the worst performance since the franchise began. Have a Bellio been given any penalties for the failure in performance, or have you simply been given a waiver to avoid hitting your performance targets until June next year? ScotRail's performance is not beneath the breach level. Scottish Government has decided to grant a temporary waiver on the breach level in the franchise agreement, recognising that the causes of the increasing delays in the past 12 months are as a result of infrastructure, weather and the impact of cross-border operations on Scotland's railway, i.e., all those things outside the direct control of ScotRail. Believe you me, Transport Scotland and Scottish Government are quite rightly holding us to account on making sure that we deliver the performance improvement that our customers expect to see. Just to be clear, had you not been given that waiver by the Scottish Government, your performance figures are below what would be classed as breach level? That is correct. You touch on the issues around the reasons for that, and I think that the debates have already been had on the fact that most of the extreme weather reasons are attributed entirely to Network Rail when it comes to those figures. However, one of the reasons that you have not mentioned is in your application for that waiver. One of the reasons for you failing to hit your performance targets is the fact that you are now avoiding skipping stops. Do you not think that the public and passengers will find it absolutely remarkable that one of the reasons that you are given for failing to hit your performance targets is the fact that you are now doing your job in terms of stopping at all the stations that you are supposed to? Skip stopping is just one of the measures that control centres across the UK use to restore train service to timetable after an incident happens. We took the decision to ban it, except in a last resort. Not everyone chooses to do that. We chose to do that, and I think that we can see that in the level of our customer complaints. What that means is that it takes us longer to respond to an incident, so we think that it takes us 25 per cent longer to recover from an incident than prior to the use of skip stopping. We believe that it is the right thing to do. PPM is just one measure of the quality of the train service. Last period, it was interesting to see that, although our PPM was lower than the same period 12 months before, customer complaints were a lot better. We believe that, although it is difficult for our PPM statistics, it is actually the best thing to do for the customer, which is why we did it. I think that customers will think that stopping at the station that they are waiting at is a good thing for our real company to do. I find it remarkable that that is now an excuse for not hitting your performance targets, which seems to suggest to the committee that, when the franchise bid was made, you built in to hitting your performance targets on the basis of missing stops. Presumably, that is the logical conclusion to the fact that, if you are not missing stops anymore, that is a reason for not hitting your performance targets. Failure to stops have occurred on Scotland's railway for many, many years, way back into the previous franchise. In the autumn of last year, it is fair to say that we overused fail to stops, which is why we took the policy decision to ban it. Now that we are effectively banning skip-stopping, when do you perceive that you will meet your contractual performance targets? The ORR seems to suggest that it will have to wait until 2022. Is that the case? Clearly, the thing to do is to get to 92.5 per cent PPM moving annual average as soon as possible. Given that we are trying to move a moving annual average, there is a mathematical limit on how quickly we can reach that. 92.5 per cent PPMMAA is a very challenging target. Scotland's railway has never got to that level and stayed there, which is why we are working flat out to get there as soon as we can. As soon as you can, but the ORR says that it will not be until 2022. Is that accurate, or if it is not, when will you meet your performance targets? Our aspiration is to get there as soon as we possibly can. That is our target. Finally, you will be pleased to know what engagement you have had with the Scottish Government over your failure to hit those performance targets. Have ministers given any indication that they expect to end the Obelio ScotRail contract at the first expiry date on 31 March 2022, or do they intend to let that continue until 2025? We sit down and review the performance of Scotland's railway every month with officials at Transport Scotland. I have recently met the Cabinet Secretary on the issue of train series performance, and the Scottish Government is quite rightly holding us to account on the delivery of better train series performance. I think that you will find that the Scottish Government is on the record to explain that their expectation is that the franchise would run full term. Right now, the focus for the ScotRail Alliance is delivering improved service to customers, delivering the December timetable change and the new fleets of trains to deliver the faster journeys, the more seats and more services that we promise to our customers. We are going to move on to the next question, which is Jeremy Greene. Jeremy, you tried to catch my eye during an exchange there. I will let you bring it in if there is something within this question. It is all linked together. It just falls on from Mr Smith's line of questioning. Do you know why the year 5 payments to Bellio have been brought forward, or is that a question for the Government? Can you just clarify what your question is? Yes, accelerated franchise payments. My understanding is that those payments that are due to Bellio have been brought forward by the Government, and Transport Scotland have paid those earlier than the year in which they are due. Is that something that you are aware of? I mean, Bellio ScotRail has not received any money from the Scottish Taxpayer that it is not already due, and clearly this is a big commercial contract, and those commercial discussions happen all of the time. If you have a specific question, perhaps we can follow that up. You said money that is not due, but what is it due now? Is it the case that the money is due down the line but it has been paid earlier? Is that my understanding of what has been reported? Well, I mean, I think that this is a complex commercial contract where those commercial negotiations happen all the time, but it is not true to say that Bellio ScotRail has had a single penny from the Scottish Government that it is not due, so... Okay, thanks for clarifying that. In your previous answer, you also mentioned that PPM is not the only way of monitoring performance. There are others. If I could point to two others, one is the Squire fund, which is an important part of your metrics, and the other is around complaints. I will start with complaints first because, as you mentioned in your answer to Colin Smyth, you seem to be pleased with progress on that. You may have read today's news and the latest which report that came out looking at how complaints are handled by train operators in the UK, and the reality is that 40 per cent of people who complain to ScotRail do not think that their complaint was handled politely, and 57 per cent of people who complain to ScotRail have a more negative view on the company after complaining. Is that acceptable to ScotRail? If I take Squire first before coming on to customer complaints, I am pleased to say that Squire is moving in the right direction. We are making some very real progress in this area, and you will have seen for the last quarterly results that there was a 10 per cent improvement in our Squire performance. The three areas that we need to tackle next are the surfaces of car parks, ticket office closures and on-train ticket inspection. We have good plans in place for all those things, and Angus personally leads our Squire improvement plan, so Angus, do you want to explain to the committee what else we are doing here in this area? Last time that we met in May, we introduced a new way of making sure that we tackle some of the problems that are identified through the Squire regime. Last time that we met there were 11 areas that were identified as not achieving or not improving in a way that was satisfactory for our customer. Out of 11 areas, 10 of them are all heading in the right direction, which is Alex's point about the 10 per cent improvement. There is one area that we are still looking to do further plans on, which is around our on-train ticket inspection, which is around some of the mechanical software problems that we are having with some of the equipment on board our train that our ticket examiners use. I personally lead working groups now looking at how we can improve service quality for our customer and making sure that we make the best of some of the funds that are available. Alex touched on those now. It is actually not from the charity fund, but there is £5 million worth of investment going into car parks around our stations, which our customers will welcome. There is £2 million being spent on improving CCTV to improve security at stations, so it is a more modern CCTV system that we are putting in place. Are there some of the examples that we are doing? Just on Squire, before Mr Hines comes back with my question around customer complaints, my understanding is that there are over £4 million in the Squire pot at the moment, is that correct? I cannot give you an exact figure of what is in the Squire pot. In answer to a recent parliamentary question, that is the number that I have got, but we can check that for the record. How do we ensure that that money, which is in effect fine for not meeting your performance metrics, will be used to do things that will improve the customer experience and not be used to do things that you should be doing anyway? So when we make an application and we work with our colleagues in Transport Scotland to use that money for something that might benefit or improve something for the customer, be it on train or at a station or a car park, we have to write an investment paper, which we then submit to our board, the Abellio board, and Transport Scotland have sight of in full view of what we spend that money on. The money is used for improving things that have not been identified through the service quality regime as needing improvement, such as we might put more station shelters in, we might improve seating at certain locations, in the Edinburgh Glasgow route. You might have seen some of the stations that have had improved waiting areas and have had some work and some money spent on them. Any money spent from the Squire fund is genuinely additive to what was in the investment programme anyway, so it is genuinely extra. Clearly, the expenditure requires Transport Scotland authorities, so they make sure that that is the case. On complaints, so I am familiar with the publication by which this morning and we will review that report and see what lessons we can learn to further improve our complaints performance. In ScotRail, we set ourselves the target of responding to complaints within one week rather than the industry standard of four weeks, and our performance against those targets are good. I am sure that there are always things that we can learn to continually improve our complaints handling process. There are a few questions that came up during the course of that, so I am going to take Mike Rumbles first and then Richard Lyle. Thank you very much, convener. In answer to your question from Jamie Greene, when you were asked had you received any taxpayers' money in advance when it was supposed to be due, you gave what I thought at first sight was a clear answer. You actually said that you had not received a penny of taxpayers' money that was not due. The real question is have you received it before it was due? That is the question that Lyle answered. I think that this is a big commercial contract and the commercials of the contract have been... It is a simple question. Have you received money that was due to you before it was due? The subsidy payments between ScotRail and Transport Scotland are adjusted all the time to reflect changes in the contract. Is that a yes that you have received money, taxpayers' money, before it was due? The answer to the question is that these commercial discussions happen all the time and that includes the phasing of subsidy, but it is not true to say that ScotRail has received anything that it has not been due under the terms of the franchise agreement. That is a very important question. You seem to be evading answering this question, if I may say so, on the grounds of commercial confidentiality. It is a very simple question. Jamie Greene tried to pursue it and, from my perspective, got a clear answer. I am trying to pursue this. Just that we get it clear, has ScotRail received taxpayers' money that it is due but before it is due? Yes or no? We have had discussions with the Scottish Government around the phasing of subsidy payments. Yes. You have received it before. I think that you will have to answer the question because you are being pushed quite clearly on this. There must be a date that the subsidy is normally paid. That would be the due date. What you are being asked and have been asked by two committee members is have you received that money in advance of the due date? To me, it is a simple yes or no answer. It would be helpful to end the line of question and move on, but we cannot do it until you give me a yes or no answer. Have you received a payment in advance of the due date? It is true to say that ScotRail has received some revenue support payments, which are contractually due in advance of April next year, but that does not change the net amount of taxpayer subsidy to the franchise. It is worth saying that those commercial discussions happen all the time between ScotRail and the Scottish Government. Those changes are just one of the changes that we discuss at regular intervals with Transport Scotland officials. I think that the simple answer is yes. They have been paid in advance, but there is no difference to the overall total that is being paid. Richard, do you want to come in? Yes, I was going to say that. It does not matter if you are owed X amount of money and you get it at a certain date. It seems that you do not get more than X amount of money. What is the problem? I want to go on to some of the things that I thought— Richard, John Finnie wants to ask, particularly on the question of payment dates. I am happy to let you go forward. Otherwise, I would like to bring John Finnie in. No, I am on a separate other question. I will bring John Finnie in first and then come back to you, Richard. Thank you, convener. Mr Hines, it was around replies to both my three colleagues there and your use of the word franchise on some occasions and contract on others. Is these words interchangeable? Are they the one and the same, because you talked about changes to contract? What changes would be undertaken to the contract? The contract is called the franchise agreement, which is a big document that thick, which contains hundreds and hundreds of pages around the rights and obligations of the franchisee and Transport Scotland. It is managed in a dynamic way. For example, if we do not meet commitments, we have to make payments to Transport Scotland and the late delivery of the Hitachi trains are a good example of that. Sometimes the Scottish Government chooses to reinvest those payments into the Scottish rail network. Those commercial negotiations are happening all of the time on a real-time basis. The purpose of it is to make sure that we are delivering good services to the passengers of Scotland, but also a good deal for the Scottish taxpayer. I am glad that you mentioned the phrase Scottish taxpayer. I understand that you will want to use the term commercial and confidence, but that is of course taxpayers' money. The obligation on this committee is to scrutinise the use of that public money. What substantive changes to contract have taken place, then? That would have financial implications. The largest change that is made to the franchise agreement since it came into force on 1 April 2015 is our revolution in rail timetable. The timetable benefits that Scottish rail customers will see in the next 12 months are greater than that at the time of the bid. That was a further improvement to the benefits that Scottish rail customers will see. That was a big change to the franchise agreement. It requires an increase in net subsidy. That is another good example of those commercial changes that we made to the franchise agreement on an on-going basis. We do that to make sure that we reflect the latest situation. That is a dynamic contract that was signed in 2014, but the world looks a bit different now. Both parties are continually working together to deliver the best outcome for Scottish rail customers and taxpayers. Those discussions are happening all of the time. I do not recognise the commercial in confidence. That is taxpayer money. Can you direct members to where we would find a note of all the contract changes? Clearly, everyone wants an enhancement to the timetable. Where would we find that, Mr Hines? My understanding is that the franchise agreement and any franchise variations are available on the public register, albeit in redacted form, if those discussions are commercially confidential. How are they commercially confidential? You are a sole provider. If the change that we agree with the Scottish Government requires us to spend money with a third party, for example, we do not necessarily want the supplier knowing how much money we have got to spend because, miraculously, that would be the cost that they quote us. There is genuine commercial confidentiality here. I am sorry to ask. One for the one. One for the one, and then I must go to Richard Lyle on the way. If you are buying an additional service from someone, surely you say that that is going to cost us X, give us X more. Your inference is that it is X plus something that you are getting. I mean, I think that if we have got some big third party suppliers and we do not necessarily want the supply chain to know what our budgets are, and so sometimes that detail is redacted from the franchise agreement between Scotland Rail and Transport Scotland to make sure that we can deliver the very best deal for passengers and taxpayers. The franchise agreements for every train operating company across the UK are publicly available, but some key clauses on an exceptional basis are redacted to protect commercial confidentiality. I am going to go to Richard Lyle for a follow-up on squad perform. I think that I also have to clarify. If you have an overdraft with a bank, and you draw on that overdraft but do not go over your overdraft, is that no similar to what that is? You are allowed to exibute the money for the Government. You may draw on that at any time. Is that no similar? Yes or no? There are only two sources of funding from the railway. That is the fare box from customers and the subsidy payments from the Scottish Government. Both of those things change over time. You can draw on that subsidy at any time, as long as you do not go over the subsidy. I will move on to my question. All the performance targets you have, you are a train operator, not a car park attendant, my view. Do you believe that all the performance targets that you have got should be reviewed and some are really not necessary? Well, Squire is the toughest service quality regime in existence in any franchise agreement across the UK. We signed up to it. It is our job to meet it. Squire is designed to measure those things that the customer sees irrespective of who is responsible for delivering it. The stations and the car parks are primarily owned by Network Rail, they are leased by ScotRail. Actually, this car park resurfacing that we are doing at the moment between now and the end of March to specifically tackle the service quality areas is being funded by Network Rail. Angus, I do not know whether you have any follow-up on that. Alex has covered most of the main points around the service quality regime. It is a tough regime, but as Alex said, we have committed that we would abide by that regime and make sure that we improve things for our customers. The service quality regime is about what the customer sees feels when they go on our station or on our trains and improve that for the customer. There is a car park near Belsil train station, which is not immediately right beside the station, but it is your responsible for it. I am absolutely parking that comment, because I do not think that that is along the line of the question that we agreed. I am going to move the cat-bats well away from the station. Mr Lyle, please, I am moving on to the next question, which is John Mason's. Thank you, convener. Slightly different direction. At this point, you mentioned in your opening marks the class 385 rolling stock, which Mr Stevenson enjoys. Can you give us an update on how that is going forward? I think that there were a few hiccups in October, but where we are with that. We have 10 trains in service, four of them operating between Edinburgh and Glasgow and one of them operating between Edinburgh and North Berwick. We have 20 trains accepted by ScotRail, ready for service, and at the moment we are working with Hitachi to get sufficient numbers of the class 385 rolling stock into Scotland and accepted for use for the December timetable change, where the requirement jumps up to around 30 trains. We have had some teething problems with the new wrong stock, which is not unusual for the introduction of new trains. We are working with Hitachi to iron out those teething issues. The train is operating pretty reliably. I think that the train will prove to be a fantastic investment by a Bellio, £475 million of investment. The feedback that we have had from our customers around the Hitachi train, which we brand as express, has been absolutely superb. We are looking forward to giving customers across the central belt of Scotland a taste of that new product. I have got that correct. There is 10 in use, 20 accepted and 30 needed. Is it 30 that that is what we are going to get eventually? No, we are buying 70 of these trains. We need 34 at the December timetable next month. That will see us— We are going to have 30 for next month. We will deliver a full Hitachi Edinburgh Glasgow service from next month. We will also operate the Hitachi trains between the central belt and Allawa. We will also use the Hitachi trains to operate a new service between Edinburgh and Glasgow via Falkirk, Graemston. The 365, the so-called happy trains, they go on to the Dunblanes. We continue to work with Hitachi to make sure that we have all 70 trains in service by next May, which is the next timetable change that will deliver even more services, more seats and faster journeys for the customers of Scotland's railway. One of the aims of these trains was to reduce the Edinburgh Glasgow journey time to 42 minutes. Can you give us an update on how that's going? We already deliver a journey time of 44 minutes today, exploiting the potential of the electric trains. That's down from 52 minutes when we had the diesel operation. From December we start to deliver some 42 minute journey times between Edinburgh and Glasgow. That's a 20 per cent reduction in the journey time between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Next May, we will operate even more services at 42 minute journey time, exploiting the fact that we've got more of these Hitachi trains and less diesel trains on the network, which, as we know, are slower to accelerate and break. It remains my aspiration that I would like to get journey times between Edinburgh and Glasgow down to 39 minutes to exploit the very quick performance of this train. Network Rail colleagues are seeing what incremental infrastructure work will be required to enable that to happen in the future. Is it the intention that the law will be 42 or will it always be the case that some will stop more often and therefore will be longer than 42? Certainly in the peak where we make more stops to prioritise capacity and frequency, and sometimes on later night services we stop more often, but the standard service pattern will be 42 minutes wherever possible. Ita, you want us to come in? Just a small point, just to clarify, Alex, you said that you were investing £475 million in these new trains, is that correct? Correct. That's for 70 trains. At night to do infrastructure, that's just the actual rule and stop. It's £475 million on the new fleet, so that's the Hitachi, the Intercity, plus, of course, the refurbishment of all the trains that we're keeping within Scotland, which are being refurbished to an as new standard. That includes the one-two-fives that Aberdeen, Edinburgh, route as well. The next question is from Maureen. It must have been between 2011 and 2014 that I got the agreement of government to upgrade the trains from central belts to Aberdeen and Inverness, that they are four or five coaches and slightly more comfortable for such long journeys. We're coming to the end of 2018 and we're still not there yet, so can you provide an update on the roll-out of the high speed trains between central belts and Aberdeen and Inverness? Yes, of course. Since October we've been operating the first intercity service between Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and customers have started to benefit from the four carriage intercity trains. We're getting 26 of these intercity trains, both four and five-car carriages, so that's a three-car diesel train to a four or five-car intercity train. A bit like Express, the customer feedback we've had on that product has been exceptional and we're really excited about giving customers more of those intercity services as we recreate this intercity network for Scotland across the seven cities. For the December timetable change, so next month we will be operating 10 services operated by the high speed train. Because of delays by Wabtec with the heavy overhaul of this train, we will be operating some HSTs in what we're calling classic mode, i.e. pre-refurbishies are still quality trains. Customers are already experiencing between Aberdeen and Edinburgh and customers will start to see more of these high speed trains from the 9th of December. Between now and the end of next year, we will roll more of the high speed trains out and we'll be refurbishing most of those, well all of those trains, such that they're all done by the end of next year. So there are 10 at the moment or nine at the moment? For how many will there be in total? So there's one in service at the moment, 10 for next month and 26 ultimately, and they will be all refurbished to an intercity standard by the end of next year. The unrefurbished high speed trains will deposit toilet waste directly onto the tracks and despite your agreement with rail workers not to do this and of course it impacts on them most of all. On the 1st of November, the First Minister said in the chamber in response to a question from himself that I quote, this is not a practice that we support and it is important that Scott railworks to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. So when is the situation going to be resolved? So we agree we don't support this practice, it's not a practice we would like to see more of but because of the delays to the refurbishment of the intercity trains we've been forcing to this situation whereby we have to operate the high speed trains in what we call classic mode. So as you might imagine we've had extensive discussions with our trade union colleagues and indeed our workforce on how we manage the issues that this will present. We have some investment planned which we will deliver as soon as possible to try and mitigate the impact of the fact that these trains aren't fitted with closed emission toilets. That includes a modification to the rolling stock which will limit where and when that effluent is discharged to the track and we will continue to work with our workforce based on the track as well to make sure that any risks are being managed. The good news is that in Scotland generally we don't allow track workers track side when trains are running so risk is minimised there and we've set ourselves the deadline of working with our trade union partners to come up with a package of measures by the end of this month. Sorry that's the deadline to come up with the ideas, the package. My question really is what's the deadline to getting rid of this package if you really shouldn't have in the 21st century? What is the timescale for you to be able to say by this date it will not be happening? So at the moment we're expecting all of the intercity trains to be refurbished and that includes the fitment of the closed emission toilets by the end of next year but as an interim measure we're going to invest in the classic high-speed trains to reduce the problem we can fit, technology to the train which limits where and when we can issue the effluent to the track. When do you think that will be done then? So probably in the early new year but we're still in discussions with our trade union partners and the workforce to find a solution to this difficult problem to make sure no one's exposed to any of the issues faced by the use of this wrong stock which is used today here in Scotland. It's not a new thing for Scotland's railway. We'd rather not be here but we're working with our partners in the trade unions to find a way through this. Can I just ask a full-up question on that? Is this discharging of human waste onto the rail tracks which I think you describe as the classic mode? I'm not sure that that's where I'd look at it but how are you going to assure people in Scotland, a lot of whom are on private water supplies, that human waste isn't being dropped onto the track close to where water is that could affect their drinking water in their houses? I mean I have to say I find it very odd. I mean it's completely against the law for example a farmer to drive down the road carrying cattle and for that waste to be discharged on the road or anywhere else for that matter has to be taken back to the farm and disposed of properly. So I don't understand how we're in this situation. Surely you knew when you put the trains on the track this was going to be a problem and could you please then assure me that it's not going to get anywhere near human water supplies and you can absolutely assure the public that that's going to be the case? Well clearly there's no risk to water supplies. I mean this is a practice which is currently used across the UK rail network including here in Scotland today so we will manage any risks just like we do today and there's nothing we would do to compromise the quality of water supply. As you know plan A was to have the refurbished high-speed trains in service which includes the fitment of retention tanks so the toilets we're not in that situation. We don't want to be in this situation so we'll need to make sure that we manage any risks as best we can and those is what we're discussing with our workforce. Okay well I'll just make the point that if human waste is dropped on the track and you get rain that human waste will break down, seat through a ballast that's on the track and could go into human water supplies. I mean there are very strict regulations regarding that so I'm not sure how you can make that assurance but well this is a risk which we manage today and it's our job to make sure that that risk gets no worse as a result of this. Okay Peter no worse. Yeah you know I think this is a kind of a fairly shocking situation that we're in because I understand that as of next month you will be running 10 of these trains between Aberdeen and Edinburgh and only one of them, only one of the 10 will be refurbished, nine will be still as you call it the classic mode which I would use another word to describe it but is that correct? Only one of the 10 that will be running next month will be upgraded. So that's our expectation yes we are expecting to have a second refurbished train here in Scotland but we may use that to continue driver and conductor training and maintenance training. These trains have recently come out of service on Great Western Railway, they were refurbished relatively recently, you know customers will be used to the look and feel of these trains already operating between Aberdeen and Inverness on cross-border services so what our customers tell us that they would prefer a classic HST over a 170 and so yes it wasn't our original plan but I firmly believe that customers will regard this as an uplift in the level of quality of provision of rail services. But this is far from what we were promised you know we were promised that these trains when they came out of service every one of them would be refurbished before they went on that on that route and you've absolutely failed to deliver on that and you know that's refurbishment you knew that was coming down the track a long time ago why are we so far behind with the refurbishing these trains? Well essentially because the contract we entered into with Angel trains who actually own the trains they've not delivered and the root cause of that problem is that Wabtech the company who are doing the refurbishment of these trains on behalf of Angel trains have really struggled with this refurbishment programme and that's left us in the situation that we're in. Angus I don't know whether it's worth adding anything else on that. Wabtech have struggled to maintain staffing levels at what they required for the refurbishment programme there's been technical difficulties that they've had to overcome with fitting some of the new and upgraded equipment we want on the train and they've started to get through these problems and they are making their own roads but they have struggled to deliver on time and you know we are holding Wabtech and Angel trains to account on this to make sure that they recover this as quickly as they can and we've had to take the unfortunate decision to introduce these and what we call the classic or that as is kind of. Have you any financial recompense come in because of the failure of this Wabtech that you call it to refurbish these trains? In the contract we have and in the franchise agreement we have with the Government and Transport Scotland we have obligations to deliver trains by certain times if we don't hit those obligations on the time that we say to do then yes there are penalties for Abelio, ScotRail for not meeting their obligations. There's penalties in Abelio but is there other penalties that you can pass back to Wabtech? Are contracts the yes there is mechanisms to the different contracts for us to try or for us to hold Wabtech and Angel trains to account? Jamie Greene and then move on to the next question which will be Richard Lam. Thanks convener. I mean just falling on from this line of questioning I'm sure that the panel understands the frustration felt by passengers specifically on Aberdeen and Inverness routes when they see over £1.3 billion being spent on the central belt improvements delivering spanking new three at five carriages and an improved journey time only to discover when they turn up at their stations to get to Edinburgh they're getting trains that are unrefurbished nearly 50 years old. I mean can you see why there's a sense of frustration amongst passengers in that respect? I mean I think it's fair to say we share customers frustration that delays by Wabtech and Angel trains as less as in this situation but nevertheless we want to deliver the more seats the more services and the faster journeys for customers and that we will start next month. I mean I would add that the customer feedback we've had based on the intercity train which we've already introduced has exceeded the level of customer feedback we've received are the brand new Hitachi trains which kind of demonstrates that you know providing the customer environment is of high quality. The age of the train is not a material consideration in the minds of the customer. Okay and Richard Lyle yours is the next question. A couple of weeks ago a couple of members of the committee were in Glasgow and we had the opportunity, I had the opportunity of walking through Glasgow Queen Street which is being refurbished in undergoing substantial redit redevelopment principally to allow increased passenger circulation space. I spoke to two workers while I was there can I ask you this question I don't think you've ever been asked. I was surprised that one of them worked for an agency but it had a ScotRail jumper on so do you have any agency workers working for ScotRail and can you provide an update on the redevelopment of Glasgow Queen Street station? Yeah sure so we do have some agency workers working for ScotRail to fill short-term gaps in our staffing or to deal with an increase in demand so for example if we've got special events or in the run-up to Christmas we bring in additional short-term agency people to support our teams on the ground. Obviously as a living wage employer we make sure that all our staff in ScotRail and indeed those people in our supply chain are paid the Scottish living wage and we've got a huge recruitment campaign going on across Scotland's railway right now 200 people in network rail Scotland 140 people in ScotRail to accommodate growing demand for great people to supply the bigger and better railway that we're creating here. In terms of the Queen Street redevelopment we've now completed the demolition of the 1970s buildings which were in front of the Victorian train shed onto George Square and we've now commenced the creation of the brand new fully accessible modern concourse which is going to bring the railway into the heart of George Square. That project is on time and on budget. It will deliver eight car platforms by December next year which will enable us to lengthen the Edinburgh Glasgow services from seven carriages to eight carriages from December next year and the complete station will be finished in the spring of 2020. I've just answered my second question but can I also say just quickly that the two people I spoke to spoke highly of ScotRail and they were hoping that they would get a full-time job so I hope they do. I wish them well. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to bring in on a slightly different subject but on stations Colin. Thank you very much convener. Services obviously from Air Station have been severely disrupted since August including the cancellation of all southbound services between Air and Strunran all very welcome. Some of those services were reinstated on 2 November but when can we expect all southbound services to be reinstated and given the fact that the problems at Air Station are not going to go away and further work will be required at that station can you give a guarantee that you're developing a contingency plan that will see a temporary station opened south of Air should there be disruption in the future? So like you we were pleased to see the reinstatement of train services through to Strunran and we had a meeting of the station task force just yesterday and all parties reiterated their commitment our desire to see the reinstatement of a full service as soon as possible. We don't yet have a firm date on that because we're still understanding what works need to be taken to the former station hotel building to make sure we can protect the railway and get the full functionality that we need particularly access to our air townhead depot. So all parties Transport Scotland, ScotRail, Network Rail Scotland, South Ayrshire Council are working as fast as we possibly can to reinstate the full train service as soon as possible and also in parallel work up a plan for the longer term future of the station and to make sure that if we have to go in and do any further work, any further stabilisation or encapsulation work to that station that it's not too disruptive to the train service. Stuart, yours is the next question. Thank you very much. I think we've probably covered a fair bit of this because I wanted to just ask about what's happening on Stirling, Dumblain and Allowan in your answers to my colleague John along with John Mason. You gave some answers. I'm just looking at some of the diagrams for the new timetable and I see for Edinburgh to Dumblain it is passed as a 158 but your answer said it's a 365. Is that simply because the 365 performance characteristics are being treated as a 158 or is it at? I'm looking at the 10th of December service 1, Papa 2, 3. It was my understanding that we've diagrammed electric trains on that route. We're still working through the fine detail of our timetable but in terms of the electrification of the railway between Falkirk and Stirling, Dumblain and Allowan, the construction phase is now complete. We have now started to what's called energise the railway, which is essentially to switch the electricity on and overnight each night at the moment we are in the process of making sure that the construction is such that we can start to run test trains. We will start to run test trains at the end of this month and that will enable us to make sure that the system of electrification is performing as we expect and then we can hand the railway into use to operate electric trains on that route from the 9th of December. It's my expectation that we're operating electric trains on the railway between Falkirk, Cremstone and Stirling, Dumblain and Allowan from the 9th of December. The path for Glasgow Queen Street to Allowan is showing 385s, which I presume therefore the engineering and proving is complete on that route, is that what that's telling you? I'll need to clarify that. I'm happy to take that offline and respond to your question in writing. I'm looking at the path from Edinburgh to Cumbernauld via Cremstone. It's also pathed those 385s, so is the engineering complete on that as well? For December, the electrification of the line between Edinburgh and Glasgow via Falkirk, Cremstone is complete and in use. From December we operate a brand new service, which is Edinburgh to Glasgow via Falkirk, Cremstone and in addition the services to Dumblain, Stirling and Allowan all convert to electric operation from the 9th of December. The next question is from John Mason. Continuing that theme, could you give us an update on the shots line and the electrification of it? Yes, of course. On shots, we've now had authorisation from the rail regulator to say that this is a piece of infrastructure that we can use. The east end of the shots line electrification has now been energised and is fit for service. We're hoping to complete the west side of the shots line project next month. The shots line electrification doesn't drive a timetable change for December, it's not December dependent, but both the Stirling and Dumblain Allowan electrifications and the shots line electrification are due to complete next month and both of those projects will be delivered within our budgeted borrowing headroom and both of those projects are due to beat the regulatory milestone for the electrification of those lines, which was March next year. We expect to complete both in December of this year. Does that mean that although they're not in the timetable, when do you start using the electric trains on the shots line then? Not in December, but between December and May. We're currently working through what's the fastest possible way we can give customers the benefit of electric trains. Clearly, that requires Hitachi to deliver in excess of the 30 we need for next month's timetable change. Thank you. The next question is from the Deputy Commander, Gail Ross. Thank you, convener. Can you give us an update on phase two of the Highland Sorry, I'm going to pause because I did say to Richard Lyle I was going to bring him in on that question. A general question that quite a lot of rail track is near hand to houses. When you're upgrading a station or a platform, what action do you take to ensure that residents are not getting too inconvenienced by the noise, especially during the night? Exactly. Given the scale of the investment happening on Scotland's railways network often overnight, making sure that we conduct that work in a way that takes cognizance of line-side neighbours is really important to us, and we have a specific team to manage those community impacts. The first thing that we do is make sure that line-side neighbours are aware that work is going to take place so that we inform them. The amount of communications activity happening right across Scotland's rail network in terms of community liaison is very high, as you might imagine. We make sure that our contractors and our workforce understand the sensitivity of the work that they're doing, particularly overnight. Inevitably, in some cases, there is some disruption in the short term, but it's our job to make sure that we're managing that work as delicately as possible. I might add that on the electrification schemes, of course, once constructed, because electric trains are quieter than diesel trains, the noise impacts of the railway are significantly reduced. Whilst there might be some short term impacts, we have to manage sensitively at the end of the day with an electric railway, it's quieter than a diesel one. I apologise, Gail, for interrupting you. So, Highland Mainline phase 2, can we get an update, please? Yes, of course. We are currently on site upgrading the Highland Mainline, so we have a £60 million project that is due to finish at the end of March, which will seal us adjust the infrastructure on the Highland Mainline to enable us to operate a regular hourly service between the Highlands and the central belt, and also cut journey time in due course once we've completed the rail out of the intercity trains. That investment, £60 million due to complete by the end of March, we are currently on site and that's going well, and that will unlock the faster journeys and the more seats and the more services we'll provide at future timetable changes. I'm glad that you mentioned faster journeys. In your opening statement, you mentioned scenic rural journeys, because the convener is going to let me off of this one. The far north line, obviously, journey times from Inverness to Wick are four and a half hours. That's lovely if you want to take in the scenery, but not so great if you want to get somewhere quickly. So what work is being undertaken to try and cut that journey time? So, I mean, I think there's two specific areas on journey time I want to pick up on. One is a generic one across Scotland's railway network. We're working hard on journey time, both ScotRail and now Network Rail. Scotland has specific targets to improve journey times on Scotland's railway, both for passengers and for freight, and we have a team working on that to make sure we're maximising any opportunities. Specifically, on the far north line, we have the review group, which is on-going, which is assessing the ideas that we might have to cut journey time, and that might seal us, amend stopping patterns, add additional services in with limited stops to try and reflect the fact that the visitor economy isn't the only market that we're serving in those areas. John Finnie. Thanks for those answers, Mr Heads. £60 million is a significant investment, and it's very welcome, but, of course, at the end of the day, it will still leave the greater part of the route between the central part of Perth and Inverness, a single track. Source law guarantees if a locomotive is going to break down, as has happened a number of times, it's going to break down in the single line section of it. The most recent Network Rail Monitor Scotland and the OR are highly to concerns about timetabling and opportunities for freight. Is it the case that, with the introduction of the developments at Avie Moor and Pitlochry, and the new high-speed trains, are some of the train times actually going to be longer than they are at the moment? Are there any implications for knock-on for people travelling beyond Inverness, please? Our expectation is that we will cut journey times as a result of Highland Mainline. One of the reasons why we haven't been specific around exact journey times is that we need to work with other train operating companies and freight operating companies, because we have ambitious targets for freight growth as well. We are developing the timetable across Scotland's railway industry to come up with the best possible solution for passengers and freight, but both for passenger journeys and freight journeys, we have clear targets to meet to cut journey times for both. You would acknowledge that there is a significant impact on the proportion of the line that remains single track, notwithstanding those welcome upgrades. The current investment programme will improve the ability of the infrastructure to support better train services, but, as you say, single track sections will remain, which inevitably constrain our ability to grow the train service even further. If you have done any evaluation of the increase, welcome increase in the movement of trains, and the potential implications, because, as the deputy convener and myself are well aware, it is often not that you are held at once. If there is a problem, it can sometimes be three delays in the line going on. We are expecting infrastructure interventions to enable a more reliable railway. Of course, with the deployment of the intercity trains and their better capability, acceleration, braking and quality, customers can look forward to enabling by the Harlan mainline project faster journeys, more seats and more services. That is what we are committed to delivering for people. With regard to the scenic routes and a lot of the West Highland lines, are they being viewed in those terms? They understand that there is to be an increased frequency on a Sunday for interest to Lachaber, which is welcome. I will then run into one further question, which applies across the network. That is a lot of that additional capacity that is generated by people who are involved in mountain biking, for instance. You know where I am going with this. The undertakings between Glasgow and Edinburgh about the level of cycles that would be carried, the upgrading and the issues around the weight of the door and what could be carried in the refurbished high-speed trains, because there was a big expectation. Of course, it is all very well having an increased service on a Sunday, but if you can still only fit two or three bikes on, that is not very much. We are continuing to invest in the scenic rail journeys, so that is refurbishing rolling stock to enable more scenic layout. That is lining seats up with windows, for example, which we have done on the Class 158 rolling stock, and we are doing on the Intercity rolling stock. Next year, you will see us launch more and more of these scenic rail journeys and actively promote those as we refurbish more of the stock. Clearly, cycle carriage is a big challenge. The fact that we are getting more carriages up from 800 carriages in the fleet to 1,000 in the future will give us more space for everybody, including cyclists. We are working specifically with the Scottish Government on a plan for the scenic lines that would seal us higher in additional carriages that we could use for the carriage of cycles and heavy mountain biking equipment, and we are hoping to be able to launch something there for next summer. Specifically, on the Intercity trains, we have an investment programme to increase the number of bikes that are available to be stored in the carriages, and that modification is under way. Once all the longer distance services are operated by Intercity trains, we will enable customers to store their bikes in the end power cars that exist on the Intercity trains for end-to-end journeys, so that people are going from the start of the train service to the end. Clearly, we cannot launch that until we have all the high-speed trains into traffic, because we would not want to promise customers a high-speed train one way and then not be able to catch them back. We have an investment programme for cycles, both at stations and on board. We have a dedicated cycling manager, and making Scotland's railway more convenient for cyclists is a key part of our investment programme. Thank you very much. Can you share progress with the committee regarding the provision of cycle? Yes, of course. We are happy to follow that up. Thanks, John. Maureen, I think that the next question is yours. If we can move on to the Aberdeen Inverness upgrade, where work is on going, I understand that some of the work has come in ahead of schedule, particularly from Aberdeen to Dice. Can you just give us an update on where the project is and whether the whole project could come in ahead of schedule? I know that there is some work, pretty major work, which will require commuters to use bus services shortly. We are spending £330 million upgrading the Aberdeen To Inverness line, which will enable ScotRail to introduce more services and quicker journeys and higher-quality services. Not only are we focused on making sure that the service between Aberdeen and Inverness is better, but we are also interested in making sure that local rail provision into Inverness is better and local rail provision into Aberdeen is better. That project is currently on time and on budget. We decided to do the project using two big closures of the railway. We made that decision in consultation with the public in that part of the country. The first blockade that we had was a 14-week blockade earlier on this year to reinstate double track between Aberdeen and Dice. I am pleased to say that that project went well and we delivered all the work that we expected in that period. The rail replacement operation worked well and that railway is operated reliably since we handed it back into service. The next phase of the project sees us another block next spring into the autumn where we do similar as we reinstate more double track. The full benefits of the Aberdeen To Inverness upgrade will be felt by customers in the December of next year, so more services, better quality rolling stock. Obviously, the service will be more reliable because there will be less single track sections between Aberdeen and Inverness. Jeremy, you have a question. I recently asked in the chamber the Scottish Government's plans for improving disabled access to stations and carriages. The answer is somewhat pointed in the direction of Network Rail, and that should be lobbying them. Can you provide some reassurances that there is a joined up approach between both Governments and all members of the Alliance that there is a will and a plan to improve disability access across the network? Accessibility of rail services is right up there at the top of our agenda. The good news about ScotRail services is that there is always at least two people on board each train who can support customers who require some additional help. Every single carriage in the rolling stock fleet will be fully accessible to people with reduced mobility by the end of next year. Every time we go in and make a station investment in Queen Street being a good example, Richard, we make sure that it is fully accessible. We are currently working with Transport Scotland to make sure that we can exploit the access for all funding pot that exists across the UK to improve station accessibility. We have a dedicated accessibility manager. We have a forum that helps us to design products and services. To give you an example, the accessibility forum was the first people to try out our new intercity train. They were really pleased with the accessibility improvements that we have made. Some people may have noticed the change priority seating that we have made on express to make sure that the priority seating is really clear. The people that we work with representing accessibility groups say that that is absolutely fantastic and really helps people with additional needs. We are looking to see whether we can roll that out on the other fleet. It is absolutely at the top of our agenda. That is part two more questions. John Finnie, followed by Richard Lam. I certainly commend the priority seating on the trains. It is excellent. I have seen a lot of favourable comments about it on social media. If I noted you correctly, you said that there are always at least two people on board a train. That is very welcome news. Is this a big announcement today? Obviously, on the driver-only operation bits of the network, which tend to be in the Glasgow metro area, we are committed to providing a ticket examiner on board each service. This is an area that we have been working really hard on now. Nearly every service that operates now has at least two members on board, and it is one area that we have been working really hard on. How does that work? The ticket collector is staying on the train all the time from start to finish? Yes, that is correct. As part of our franchise agreement and as part of the agreement that we have with our trade union partners, we are committed to providing a ticket examiner on board the driver-only operated services, which, as I say, are mainly in the Strathclyde area. That is an area that we have been seeing really great progress on recently. Of course, a ticket examiner is not the same as a highly trained safety critical guard. The role is different, but, nevertheless, from a customer perspective, they like to see helpful, visible, highly trained employees. That is what we set out to deliver. We have been working really hard in that area to make sure that, no matter where you are across Scotland's railway network, you see a consistent level of on-board visibility for our people. That is very dear to me. Again, could you share the roll-out of that programme with the committee? Thank you, John. Rich Lyle, which will be the last question, and I have a point of clarification. If the convener allows me, there is one question that you have not been asked during a session is on ticket prices. Could ticket prices be made more accessible as in booking an advance if you want to go to Aberdeen? Is there any way of rationalising and making that more simple for people like me who like to go on trains? You cannot get out your five cards on this question. Obviously, the fairs and ticketing system is a complex one across the UK. You have to make a profit. I know that you have to make a profit. Our job is to try and make it as simple for customers to understand that that is one reason why we are investing in smart ticketing. Our advice to customers, if you want the very best deal, make sure that you buy before you board—that is the first thing—by an advance if you can. We make sure that we offer really good value fairs to our customers. Ultimately, one of the ways that we will be successful is to make sure that the additional capacity that we are providing in terms of the number of seats that are filled with customers so that they can enjoy our product. I would like to ask a point to be clarified. I was one of the committee members who went to Glasgow Queen Street Station and saw the work that was going there. Now, when you came to the committee on the 8th of May, you said that the redevelopment of Glasgow Queen Street Station completion date is 2020. Now, when you said to the committee today that it would be completed in December 2020, I think that that is what you said. The 8 car platforms will be delivered by December of next year. The station concourse redevelopment will be complete by spring of 2020. Everything will be complete by the spring of 2020. That is the end date for the redevelopment of Glasgow Queen Street Station. Thank you. I am grateful for that. I am sure that you will be back in before then to answer that, if necessary. Thank you very much for the evidence session that you gave in this morning. There are no further questions, so I would like to briefly suspend the meeting for five minutes to allow the witnesses to put them on. Thank you. We are now moving back into session and we are going to move on to agenda item four, which is the European Union Withdrawal Act. This is consideration of Scottish Government's proposals to consent to the UK Government legislating on three statutory instruments. We have received consent notifications in relation to the following UK SIs, the Exotic Disease Amendment EU exit regulations 2018, the aquatic animal health and alien and locally absent species in agriculture amendment EU exit regulations 2018, the fisheries amendment EU exit regulations 2019. Those instruments are being laid in the UK Parliament in relation to the European Union Withdrawal Act. All three have been categorised by the Scottish Government as making minor or technical amendments. The committee's role is to decide whether it agrees to the Scottish Government giving consent to the UK Government to make regulations on its behalf. There are some committee's papers, there are some broader related policy issues which may arise in the future and we've all had a chance to go through it and I could go on and explain each and every one, but my question really is, are there any comments on the SIs? John, you'd like to make a brief one. I have no issue with the content of them at all and I think it's appropriate that we'll end their support. It was just simply in relation to the comment, the paragraph covering summary of stakeholder engagement and consultation. It says there and I quote, the Scottish Government's weeks frequently with a broad range of stakeholders to discuss animal health and welfare-related matters. I don't doubt that, but given the amount of legislation that's coming, it would be very good to know that, specifically, those issues have been drawn to the attention of the normal consultees. I think that that's a genuine point and I think it would be helpful that we ask the Government to clarify when those are brought forward that they have consulted with the interested parties. Stewart? Given that this is the Scottish Parliament giving consent to the UK Parliament, then of course the consultation would properly align with the UK. I think that it would still be comfortable to know that they've been discussed and we can leave that to the Government to make sure that we've raised that point. Are there any other comments? The question is, is the committee agreed that it should write to the Scottish Government to confirm its content for the UK SIs to be given? The committee agreed that it should note and request a response from the Scottish Government on the related policy matters identified in the paper that will be required to be addressed in the future. Okay, so that is agreed. Therefore, that concludes the public part of the meeting and the committee will now move into private.