 Rwy'n credu yn siarad gael iawn i gwaith i'r 19 ôl o'r gwaith i'r Gwsiaf Siles an، i gwaith i'rotaeth, i gwaith i'r Gwsiaf Siles an. Rwy'n credu i'r Gwydiannau Cyti Clark. Rydw i'n credu권ol o gwych am gylliddenydd i g withdrawnr, ac rwy'n credu bob Doris i'n credu gwirionedd Gordon MacDonald i'r gwasanaeth i'r gwasanaeth i Miles Briggs, i'n credu gwaith i'r gwasanaeth ymlaeniedadau i'r ddysgu. Rwy'n mynd i amser o gymysgau i ddiwedd yma yn fy modd bob Doris a Ros Mchaul o'r ddysgu i dd sakuraeth eich ddysgu. Felly, rydw i ddysgu bob. Rydw i ddysgu i ddysgu i ddysgu i ddysgu. Rydw i ddysgu i ddysgu i ddysgu, ddysgu i ddysgu i ddysgu i ddysgu i ddysgu i ddysgu i ddysgu i ddysgu i ddysgu i ddysgu. Thank you very much indeed. I'm really glad to be here. Thank you very much as my first committee, so it's nice to be here, so thank you for the warm welcome. I also have no declaration of interest to announce, but equally happy for anyone to look if they want to. Okay, thanks, Rose. The Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish National Party are actually eligible for nomination as deputy convener of this committee, so I would like to nominate Bob Doris for this role. Are we all agreed? Okay, thank you. Therefore I would like to welcome Bob as deputy convener. So our next item of business for today is a decision to take agenda items five and six in private. Are we all agreed? Thank you. Our next item is an evidence session as part of our inquiry into addressing child poverty through parental employment. Before summer recess, we held a series of evidence sessions on childcare, education, employability and fair and family friendly working. Today we're going to focus on transport. I welcome to the meeting our panel, Paul Finch, strategy manager, NEST Trans and Vice Chair for Transportation on the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland. Mick Hogg, regional organiser, national union of real maritime and transport workers, is also known as the RMT. Paul White, director, confederation of passenger transport, CPT Scotland. Thank you all for accepting our invitation. I would like to make a few points to mention about the format of the meeting before we start. Please wait until I or a member ask in the question. See your name before speaking. Don't feel you have to answer all our every single question and I have nothing new to add to what's been said by others then. That's perfectly okay as well. Members online, please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn your microphone on before you start to speak. You can indicate with an R in the chat box in Zoom if you wish to come in on a question as well. I ask everyone to keep questions and answers as concise as possible. I'm going to invite our members now to ask questions and turn. First of all, I'm going to ask Roz to come in on question 1. Thank you very much, convener. I would like to ask at both the polls if that's okay, but Mick, if you want to come in at a point then I'm happy with that. What are some of the key challenges in delivering the vision of a national transport strategy? Basically, I also want you to know how that's going to work in a long-term process, not just as an immediate issue, but how it's going to work in a long term. Okay, I'll commence. Thank you very much for the question. The overall vision for the transport strategy has been fairly well clearly set out in national transport strategy 2. I think across the industry there is a widespread support for the objectives and commitment within that. Transport Scotland then went on to deliver a strategic transport project, STPR2, strategic transport project review 2, which set out some of the strategic priorities for delivery of transport thereafter. What we're now seeing is how that is then being put into action in the ground, both in the indications for the short to the medium and the long term. I think what is clear is that revenue funding is a clear challenge for the full implementation of the vision that is set out in the strategy. Sometimes there is a constraint on the ability to change or the commitment to change long-held practices around how the transport system is operated. There are some real challenges to see how things can be overdone. Also, there are competing pressures within the local authority level to sustain some of those changes that we might want to seek to bring about. Perhaps bus franchising might be one example of there where some of the risk is transferred to the local authority. I think that a local authority level, when they are also facing pressures from health education and other objectives at the moment, I think that that is a constraint on that ability to fully achieve the objectives that have been set out in the national transport strategy. There are some of the headwinds that seem to be slowing the delivery of those objectives. I will echo a lot of what Paul says without repeating it. The NTS vision and objectives are all admirable. We are all pushing the same direction and they still stand. The document was largely created pre-Covid, so post-Covid, there are challenges about the delivery of that in terms of—I have spoken for my sector, the bus sector—usages down. That is also true for rail, but the patterns of travel are changing. The operational costs have increased, whereas we have still seen carious and congestion reaching the same levels as it was pre-Covid, which is a real challenge for bus operation in terms of making your services reliable, affordable and punctual. We have also faced challenges. We have seen that in the press recently, with the launch of the low-emission zones and Aberdeens bus gates. There is pushback on things that the environmental benefit of it or the environmental agenda was maybe stronger at a point, whereas the cost of living crisis is now coming to play so that people look at those measures and consider, is that limiting my access? Is that going to affect my—is it going to hit me in the pocket as well as I need to buy a new car? Is the political will there at the local authority level to introduce the kind of measures that would really free bus from congestion and allow more and better bus services? Is that there present? That is our vision, our concern. We believe that R&T believes that transport is a very important transportation model in order for people to get to work. We believe that with more investment and even the scrapping of peak fares, we believe that that is an added tax on the working man and the working woman. The quicker we see a scrapping of peak fares and making a railway more affordable, that would be a step in the right direction. Can I just come in and ask a question on the national transport strategies? Priorities are obviously wide-ranging and include tackling inequalities. To what extent is tackling poverty including child poverty? A consideration in the specific policy set out in this latest delivery plan, if I can bring in Paul first of all, and then if Mick and Paul White—I should like to say that there are two Pauls, so it's confusing—can you man on that as well? Traditionally, the delivery of transport systems in Scotland has been based around an economic model, very much focused on an explicit cost-benefit model—pound in, pound out—and it is only relatively recently that the child poverty and inequalities element has been there implicitly, but it is only in the last few years that there has been a far more explicit assessment of where those assessments come in around the equalities impact assessments that we are now seeing undertaken across the sector—health equalities impact assessments as well. They are perhaps coming in more so on the big policy measures and the priority measures now. Historically, implicit in the background, more focused on finance and economics, because that's the way transport systems have been historically developed increasingly and specifically since the last three or four years greater and more explicit, but it's still an increasing level of bringing it to the fore. From an RMT perspective, there have been various reports that have established the link between transport and employment, inequality and poverty. For instance, research that was published in 2021 by Transport Scotland found that people on low incomes, transport was a vital part of life and public transport. Use was influenced by three factors—affordability, accessibility and individual household circumstances. I keep referencing the affordability because that's a big game issue as far as the RMT is concerned because we found out, as a result of the pandemic, about getting people back to using a railway that we need to not only encourage but to support people by using Scotland's trains, because transport, if we're serious about the climate agenda action, using trains is a very important model to encourage and support. I agree with the other two panellists. Bus is an enabler for many Government objectives, and it's clear from the national transport strategy. In fact, there's a diagram in there about the virtuous cycle of bus. If you can improve bus, it will boost speeds, lower bus fares and it becomes possible to increase the network. There are steps through the actions of the NTS that should help to tackle inequality. There are also free travel for the under-22 scheme, which is specifically designed to tackle the affordability issue for young people. The First Minister's statement from earlier this year about affordability, availability, accessibility and the robust complaint. I believe that Ross wants to come back in. You raised three points. I want to come back on that because you're talking about affordability, but individual circumstances. I don't know if you've got information from your members as to what the balance is on there. Is affordability the main concern, or is it just doesn't quite fit with the way that their lives are? I'm just trying to get an idea of the balance between the two. I think that affordability is crucial because it's costing a working class, people, a man or a woman an absolute fortune in order to actually get to their place of work. You're talking about thousands of pounds and we just feel that affordability really needs to be top of the agenda so far as the Scottish Government is concerned by supporting. As I said earlier, by scrapping the peak fairs, we see that as an added day tax on hard work in the families at the end of the day. If we could fix the affordability issue, the other issues would solve themselves. Paul White would like to come in. I'll offer a slightly different perspective from my sector on affordability, which is crucial. We should be looking at how we manage that for bus users and potential bus users. For us, it's one element of a package that you have to deliver. If I take the under-22 scheme, you can give every young person under-22's card so that they can travel for free by bus, but if there's not a bus that they can access, if there's no bus available, then there's no point to the card. Yes, those schemes can encourage usage, but only if it's part of a package of measures that also looks at the availability and accessibility of services. It's estimated that a third of the population are entitled to free bus travel, focusing on older people, young people and disabled people. Do you think that that's the right group to focus on? I'll pop it to Paul White first. From my perspective, it is for Government to decide who should receive that benefit. From my perspective, we look to ensure that the scheme is fair for users and for the operators who are asked to provide the scheme. Extending free travel is fine as long as the scheme to deliver that, the concessionary travel schemes, are operating on the basis that the operator should be no better or worse off for participation, which is built into the scheme. If you extend the people who are eligible, you extend the budget. That's where there may be an issue when we've got a tight financial settlement. As such, those schemes can generate a good increase in usage. I think that we're going to see an evaluation report in the first year of the under-22 scheme. It's imminent, and that will probably point to that. To make the most of those schemes, to make them worth the hundreds of millions that Governments spend on them, you really need to look at it alongside providing a reliable and accessible network of services. Thanks for that, Paul. Nick, do you have any comments? First and foremost, we don't have any bus members as such. We have bus members south of the border, but from a Scottish perspective, we don't have any bus members. Certainly from an RMT perspective, my view is that it's a great opportunity for young people because it allows young people to see more of the country and travel. If that opportunity wasn't there, young people would be restricted in terms of travel, so I think that it's a great opportunity and it's welcomed. Obviously, the concession from SPT is real, Paul. Thanks for the questions. The question is about the balance of whether we've got the concession balance right. I think that it's always important to go back to what we're trying to achieve with this, and is the Government actually trying to achieve the benefit for loads with low incomes? That might suggest that it's possibly worth assessing moving from a more targeted concession scheme as opposed to a universal scheme, but obviously that has drawbacks as well. The over-60s concession, obviously people between 60s and 65s are still working as well, so that's possibly a consideration, but obviously that's a historical decision as well. I think there could be things that are better targeted at low-income families because it doesn't seem to be that at the moment. I guess another anomaly across Scotland, and I know there are exceptions, is this parity across modes as well, whereas there's a lot of concession offered in the bus sector, which is welcomed, but there are examples across Scotland where rail is that missing link. So there are people geographically disadvantaged because they have a rail station and not necessarily a bus station that seems a bit bizarre, and also perhaps you go to the Northern Isles as well, where people will be using the ferry services almost as a proxy bus service, but again they don't have that entitleton as well, and there are disadvantaged due to geography, not due to circumstance, which again seems to be a couple of anomalies in the current system, which may be worth considering, but obviously one has to consider that in the context of the objectives you're trying to achieve as a Government, and also the revenue that is available as well, as well as wider political considerations. I'm sorry, I'm writing so many notes, I'm not quite as organised as I should be, my apologies. The fair fairs review is currently under way. What would you like to see recommended in terms of concessionary travel? I think I'm going to have to ask all three of you again, as me being in the new situation, I'm just going to go for all three because the more information I get, the better. If that's okay, you just work from there. I guess in the headlines there's been two elements to fairs fair review. One, Mick has very kindly talked about the peak fairs removal as well as a six-month trial. One wonders whether that is long enough to properly evaluate that in terms of, well, is that long enough to assess the changes that might happen, and also then to make a decision as well what you're going to do about it. After you have that evaluation, it appears to me to be a very short period of time in order to assess something. Although it is simplification of the rail fairs network, I think everybody would agree, would be broadly welcomed at its complex and, again, geographically varied across the country as well. Other aspects of the fairs fair review have been, I think Paul said in his written submission, opaque. We know that there is a desire to take a step back and look at the funding distribution and the revenue aspects of the different aspects of the public transport sector across Scotland, but to date local authorities have been relatively—it hasn't been shared with us to date around those things. In terms of what we would like to see, I think I'll refer back to my previous answer, which is about where we want to see how the money that has been distributed to public transport sector as a whole is actually meeting the Government's objectives and also responding to the key needs that we know we have across Scotland at the moment. I would like to see that as an outcome and I'd like to see some more transparency about how that process has been going about, because to date members haven't seen that transparency. Okay, thanks. As far as RMT is concerned, we would like to see a fair balance at the end of the day. We believe that there's not enough investment in Scotland's railway. The investment should allow accessibility for all. We believe that some of the ideas, suggestions that have been put forward by ScotRail and Transport Scotland to a degree the Scottish Government needs a review, particularly the booking office issue. We believe that the booking office issue programme is inextricably linked to anti-social behaviour within the Scotland city trains. We believe that the issue of anti-social behaviour is getting worse. It's not getting any better. To even suggest that closing booking offices and ticket offices and even stations and having un-staff data stations, the money that's actually been invested in Scotland's trains really begs the question in terms of accessibility for all, particularly if you take the most vulnerable people within society and disabled people. I would just like to quote a piece of you just be with me. It is clear that action is required from the Scottish Government to improve safety of women and girls when travelling by public transport. Research published by Transport Scotland in March 2023 found a consensus from women and girls of all ages that being in spaces that were staffed or had staff presence made women feel safer and women were more comfortable if ticket offices were open and staffed, especially after later at night. The report went on to recommend that the Scottish Government explore increasing staff presence on public transport. We believe that the Scottish Government needs to prioritise acting on this recommendation. The investment is welcome, but we certainly believe that investment needs to be prioritised. I will make two comments on concessions and then we will bring that into the fair fairs review. The first on concessions is certainly valued in these schemes, but they are hundreds of millions. A bug better of mine is that they are often in terms of bus spend that is regarded as support for the bus sector whereas operators are compelled to provide a service for the Government. It is essentially buying a product. If you buy a low-framed test school, you do not see your subsidising test school here buying a product. In those terms, that is an issue with concessions for us. Within the fair fairs review, the only visible outcome of the review so far is the peak rail fairs pilot. What are the objectives of the schemes? I would say that with the under-22 scheme for bus, you probably saw abstraction from rail to bus. Young people who travel by rail move to bus. With the trial of the removal of peak fairs, you will see some commuters who travel by bus now move to rail because they will find that the better value proposition. However, what you are not really affecting is the amount of people who use car. The data suggests that if one of your objectives is to look at it from an environmental benefit or shifting people on to sustainable modes for the longer term, is the money that is spent on it worth the investment. In terms of the wider fair fairs review, in the point that Paul made about looking at overall transport spend, I would welcome a look at that bus and rail were on the same side of sustainable transport. Bus in Scotland is about 79 per cent of all public transport trips, but the budget for bus, and there are many reasons for that. There are lots of expensive things to do with rail, but the budget for bus is a fraction of the budget for rail, whereas we carry far more people. Looking at the entire transport spend and looking at where you can generate the most value that does not just give people subsidised fairs, but looks at how you make buses and trains better, that would be worthwhile. I think that Jeremy Watt wants to announce a supplement to you. Thank you and good morning everybody. I suppose that I should declare that I have a consistently bus pass due to my disability. I am interested, Paul, at the last point that you were making in regard to how much the bus companies get per journey in regard to if you use your disabled pass or your younger person's pass. Is that figure going up in regard to the amount of money that the bus company runs? My understanding is that the calculation for it can sometimes disadvantage certain bus routes because they do not stop enough for a travel further. Is that something that you would like to look at again, or is that a place where the bus companies can make it work? In the beginning stages of another review of the concessionary models that underpin both the elder and disabled person scheme and the younger person scheme, that will impact on the budgets for the scheme for the next financial year and the rates that operators receive. There is a science to it. It is a complex one that involves looking at what would happen in the absence of the scheme, the scheme generating trips, which is a benefit to the operator. You have to consider that. What discounts would a user of the scheme use? They would not keep buying single tickets if they were using it more than once a day. You look at discount factors, generation, cost trends. There is a science that goes into looking at what should be the correct budget for a scheme and what the reimbursement rate should be. However, it is true that we have gone from 73.6 per cent when the scheme launched in about 2007 to 56.8 per cent. It has historically gone down, so hopefully we do not see that this year. It does, as you rightly point out, if you are running a route that serves pockets of the community where it is largely people who use that product and if they were paying full fare, you would get a certain amount. If they are using a concessionary card, you are getting 56.8 per cent of that fare. In terms of making the business case, making the service cover its costs, it can make it more challenging. I wonder if I can go back to the next point about the closure of stations or the non-man in a person of stations. What response have you had back in regard to that, particularly for people with disability, that if you arrive at a station and there is nobody there, how are we meant to cope if we need help? Has that been discussed about what in practice are people meant to do? First things first, the consultation has just closed. The closes understand it last Friday, and the response that we have had so far is just under £800,000 of a response. That is to the national campaign, which Scotland is also involved with the cross-border. We have had an absolute overwhelming response from the members of the public, particularly the elderly, the disabled and the vulnerable, because they obviously see and welcome rail stations being at staff. The actual thought of no staff being at the stations is just a recipe for absolute disaster, as far as women are concerned and young girls are concerned. We would strongly suggest and recommend to the transport secretary who has actually been sitting on the transport refocus findings for almost two years. That is now the fourth transport secretary, and neither have they come clean in terms of what they intend to do with the transport focus findings. We would strongly recommend that the transport secretary, Fiona Hyslop, comes clean and rules out any cuts. I will now bring in James, who is joining us remotely. Before I ask him to come in, James, there is a slight shadow on your camera at the moment. Is there any way that you can move your camera? I do not know where it is coming from. I tried earlier on to get rid of it, but I think that there must be something to do with the camera on my computer. I will see if I can get it sorted at a later date, but I cannot do it just now, Collette. Do you want to just come in now, James? Okay, thank you. Now, if we can go back to what the committee means to be about. The issue that has just been discussed is a very important issue, but I do not think that talking about the cabinet secretary coming clean on something when we have not come out with a position yet as yet is appropriate, and I certainly do not think that it is appropriate when we are talking about this subject matter here. I will ask the witnesses, and I will start with Paul Finch. Do witnesses have a view on the bus fare cap currently operating in England, and do you think that such a scheme would be suitable for Scotland? Thank you for the question. In urban areas, at the moment, some of the bus operators do operate a tap and a cap system, where there is a maximum amount that you pay daily. That is a voluntary system that has been bought in by some operators. I think that in urban areas, there is a potential for that to work quite nicely. My question then would be—my question to myself almost—how might that work for some of the longer rural distance routes in the north-east of Scotland? We have people coming in from Peterhead and Fraserborough, and there is obviously a different fare and a cost implication for the bus operators and coach operators, where you have that mix of interurban or rural bus services as opposed to a reasonably compact and well-defined urban network, which often operates on a different model. If that was to come in in Scotland, then that would have to be considered in ensuring that it works appropriately for all. I agree with a lot of what Paul was saying. The fare cap currently in operation in England has seen some increased use, but the data suggests that it is more used from existing passengers, rather than generating a great deal of new passengers. As Paul points out, the two major factors in looking at a fare structure would be the costs and the two largest costs for an operator are fuel and drivers hours. A longer service, a rural service generates more costs to operate. Finding a cap that suits the entirety of Scotland in the different travel patterns is a challenge that we have managed in England. The other observation that I would make is from Germany, where they introduced a cap on their travel scheme. I do not have the exact exact—I think that it is a monthly all-travel scheme. They introduced a very discounted rate, and then at a later stage increased it. It was much still much less than the original offering, but I could jump up from the first level, and there was a lot of pushback. Once you establish a scheme like that, it is very difficult to move off it and say to somebody that your fare that you have now grown used to is going to double when we remove the cap. There are challenges to it. If you are looking at the amount of money such a scheme would cost to launch in the universality of that benefit, there may be better uses for that money. I see that you say that they have got it in England, but it is voluntary, which means, obviously, that some areas will have it, some areas do not. There is a kind of postcode effect where some might benefit from it. See how you said that the cap went from here to there. There was a jump in the cap. Would that be because, if it is based on past journeys as in England, you are getting smaller numbers taking place when there is an increase in numbers, you are still getting the same amount as the previous journeys, so it is less per head, so you would have to raise the cap. If people in England are currently facing a £2 cap and it raises to £2.50, that is the idea that is going to happen. Government has to cover the cost between the actual operation costs and the £2 level, so I will need to get you to could you ask that again, please, sorry. That is fine. Basically, what I was saying was that if you are based on it in past journeys, then what you are doing is you are based on it at the bottom level because you are hoping to increase your partners. Your passenger numbers, which would mean that there are more people getting that cap, which would mean that there would be more cost eventually to either the provider or else they would have to raise the cap, as they have already done in England. I suspect that we would have to do it again. I think that you get your point now that essentially you can be a victim of your own success in terms of if a scheme generates greater use and government is paying x per journey than that, but that increases, so do those schemes, as they become more successful, cost government more? Yes, definitely. Yes, thank you. I would like to bring in Mick Hogg. Ross, come in. I have a supplementary apologies for interrupting you. We are sorry. Thank you, convener. My apologies, James. Sorry about that. No, it was just on that last point, Paul, if I could. I believe that Lillian Buses is doing something similar as to what is happening down south with a £4.80 daily cap on their buses. Is that something that is working? Do you know? Is that something that is the model that could work, even though it is slightly different? Is that something that has been taken into consideration and what are your thoughts on that? Absolutely. That is probably the future of ticketing. I think that the use of the word cap here, so in the English scheme, that is a national offering of providing a set fare level for your journey. It is a £2 cap on your journey. What Lothian is offering is a point at which, so if you keep buying singles or whatever, you are never going to be above this value. It is similar in London as well. Capping that at an operator level is fantastic off to the passenger, and we are seeing uptake of that. Operators will probably extend those schemes across Scotland. The next challenge, which will probably be one for the national smart ticketing advisory board, which is being set up, is how we look to make those schemes multi operator schemes. Lothian will set their cap based on their particular situation, whereas a first or a stagecoach might have a different cap. How do you provide a regional fare structure where there is that kind of capping available? That is more plausible than the other capping scheme that we were talking about. Essentially, if you were looking to... That is purely commercial. What Lothian is doing is there is no Government funding for that. They are providing a commercial offering and operators are providing commercial offering. If one of the outputs of the fair fairs review was we think that a daily cap should be this amount, x amount, and it is lower than the current cap offered by Lothian, then you would have to see what might be an expense to Government. Are you going to fund that? Are you going to... If you're saying this is the cap, but it doesn't meet costs, are you going to... It's going to be a cost to that. Thank you. Thank you, convener. Apologies again, James. No, just before I bring it in, can I just clarify the cap on that? Is that for one journey or is it for multiple journeys? The cap, as it's offered in England, is an impaired journey, so no journey is going to cost you more than £2. The Lothian offering is total for the day. So, if you buy four singles, you're not going to be charged four singles, you're only going to be charged at a cap level, which will be less than four singles. Okay. Thanks for clarifying that, and I'll now let James back in. No more. Thank you, Tboti, for that. Mick Hogg, what's the scope for integrating concessionary travel entitlements across different modes of transport, and what do you think are some of the barriers to achieving this? The concessionary travel, as I understand it, doesn't go far enough, as far as RMTs are concerned. We obviously have been campaigning as a trade union for a long time to make the concessionary travel more wider, to cover more people. We certainly feel that, similar to what's taken place in the bus season, young people should be applicable to the actual way that they train, so that's certainly our view, so far as that issue is concerned. What do you think of some of the barriers to achieving this? Some of the barriers, I think, like you say, are a more working relationship, with the ScotRail transport in Scotland and the ScotRail weight holdings. We certainly feel that there's a lot of bureaucracy involved when it comes to running the ScotRail weight. We feel that, if there was less bureaucracy, we would feel that the more progress would be made in running the ScotRail trains. Can I ask Paul Finch to give me his view on us, please? Thank you for the question. It is possible, because there are rail concessions in the SPT area that go wider than what's available nationally as well. Historically, if not currently, Fife has a scheme as well. I'm not entirely sure of that one, apologies, but definitely in SPT, so it is possible. One then thinks, well, why is it not happening, and then one might think, well, again, is the ambition there to change something that's a status quo, or is that available in terms of the revenue funding available for the whole transport sector, would probably be the main barriers that would be presented. There would be no doubt technical issues, but the fact that it's been done in one area, in a particular area, seems to me that it is possible, so then it's a case of, well, is that the best use of the revenue that's available for the transport system in order to achieve that? Again, is that then achieving the overall objectives that we're trying to achieve, which is about getting children and alleviating child poverty, and getting parents and assisting people into work? We know affordability is one thing, but then availability and household circumstances are other things as well. I guess that there is that balance, I would also say, across modes, and I made that point before different parts of Scotland have got different access to different transport systems as well, so again, that might have to be considered. Thanks for that. Paul White, would you like to come in and say in this one? Again, I'd probably say that it would be for government to consider whether they want to extend concessions to other modes. I would point that rail fares are already heavily subsidised by Scottish Government. ScotRail would be able to provide you with the committee with the exact figures, but I think that the subsidy to rail fares currently, which universally, is probably greater than the money that's spent on the concessionary fares schemes for bus. That gives you an idea of the quantum that we're talking about. Extending free fares to groups within rail would have a huge financial cost. It would also probably have an impact on bus use, so looking at that holistically, looking at the impact of those schemes across all modes, I think, is very important. I know that we're looking, we're asking the government to monitor the impact on bus removal of rail fares, just so that we understand there are consequences for those for other things. If that means that service is no longer run for certain areas or for bus because people are going to rail, what do we do about that holistically, which hopefully is something that's covered in the fair fares review? I want to thank Paul Finch, who brought us back to the focus of this inquiry, which is child poverty and parental employment. I absolutely get that all three witnesses have been talking about affordability and the quality of the service and safety of female travellers and a whole variety of things, but the focus of this inquiry is child poverty and parental employment. There are lots of factors in relation to that in relation to transport, and I need to put on the record that we could do more on that if we didn't have a national minimum wage but with a real living wage. That would make fairs more affordable. I would also say that 69 per cent of children living in poverty are in working households, where at least one person is working. 80,000 children in Scotland are impacted by the two-child benefits cap by the UK Government. Before I get substantive questions here, whether the witnesses believe that ending the two-child cap and moving from a national minimum wage to a living wage would be a substantive move to making transport more affordable for parents trying to get into work or to get more hours within their working day. Mr Hawke, perhaps? Quick answer, Ray Wobb. Yes, and to make the opportunity more possible, and highlighting the cost levels of provisionary barriers when they take up employment. Given the families and young people's opportunity to travel with reduced or even free fairs, I think that that would go a long, long way in addressing child poverty within Scotland. Mr Finch, I don't know if you would be drawing on that, but I wouldn't do my job properly as an MSP whose constituents are directly impacted by that. If I didn't ask this question, would this make a difference to affordability in transport, Mr Finch? I feel I'm willing to respond to that, because I'm coming here as a transport expert in terms of this particular issue. Obviously, if there is a wider constellation of issues around enabling people to get to transport, we know that affordability is one thing, and I guess that affordability can be addressed by the cost basis of the provision of the service. There are also wider aspects of wider support that can be given to families as well. I feel uncomfortable—I mean, I come here as a transport planner. Okay, I'm going to ask transport questions. Don't you worry, Mr Finch? Would you be slightly more bold than Mr Finch? Like Paul, I'm here to address transport issues. What I can say is that part of the solutions to the issues that we're addressing today are about making buses more affordable, and another aspect of that is increasing the money in everyone's pocket. But in terms of your particular question, I can't really be pressed rather than that. But you confirm that incomes are a key aspect, not just price. Incomes are a key aspect. The more money people have, the less owners it might be to pay a cost, be that traveller any other cost. That's clear, but my ability to comment on how we generate that income for people is limited as a transport. Okay, I feel like I'm going to ask that question. Let's look at some of the specifics of affordability. There are some decent work taking place by the UK Government in relation to this. For my unionist colleagues, I'm not trying to make a particular point here, but there are other things about it. Jobcentre Plus, for example, has the travel discount card for those seeking employment, and in some cases, for maybe the first month once they get into employment, there's a partnership deal with ScotRail, which can give the first month's rail travel for free once parents get into employment. I know that there's also the flexible support fund that they have, so there's a mix of stuff there. The Scottish Government's got the parental employability support fund, which can pay towards transport costs. Fear Start Scotland has a role to play there as well, and there's also a £74 million community bus fund. Now, why have I listed all of these? Well, because I want to make sure that witnesses here think that the money that is in the system, so the money that the UK Government should be paying to support out-of-work parents into employment to make that sustainable, and those parents in part-time employment pick up more hours and get into full-time employment with career progression. The money that's there for that and the money that the Scottish Government's also putting into this, is it being used together strategically? Because maybe not enough money, but there's still quite a lot of money whirling about the system here. Is it being used strategically and effectively? Maybe that's something that Mr Finch has a view on. Thank you very much. In my written submission, I made the point that, probably outwith core urban areas, for many people public transport isn't an option, because if you're a parent who is working, you need a certain level of viability and frequency of a public transport service to enable you to access childcare, access work, get back from work, get to the childcare, get back to home, work out your shopping. I believe, from my experience, that the public transport offering is very limited for a majority of areas of the majority of geographic areas outside Scotland, outside the main built-up areas. It's a very difficult task without a private car to achieve. That's a very valid answer, but it's not an answer to the question that I asked earlier on when you were talking about affordability and cost. My question was about the money that we're putting into the system to support affordability and cost. You quite rightly want to talk about that. We'll come up later on this evidence session, and I'm absolutely sure about the rural transport offer, whether it's fit for purpose for working families and those trying to get into work. I'm asking about the money already in the system, whether via the DWP or via the Scottish Government, whether or not you think that that's been used strategically well enough. I would say that for a lot of parts— In relation to affordability. Can I come back on this one, please? The point about affordability becomes moot if there isn't a viable service to spend it. Yes, where you have that service available, those things are welcome and strategic. They are complicated. There is a range of different things. You have to go through to achieve that, but for many areas it is not strategic because it is not achieving its aims because—not because of affordability but because of the more fundamental point—it's that you don't have an option to get to work unless you have access to a private car. I think that that is actually a very fundamental consideration in terms of the question that you ask, because strategically you can have all these interventions but they're not having the impact that you want to achieve. Mr Finch, we've just spent 10, 15, 20 minutes talking about affordability and it wasn't a moot point that we were answering with other questions. I agree with everything you've said, Mr Finch. I absolutely agree with that. Other MSPs will ask questions absolutely about that and you can put all of that on the record and I'll support you when you put it on the record. I totally get that, but that's not the question that I ask. I'll one more effort to ask the question. If you don't want to answer it, that's okay. I'm not trying to be rude, but I'm just trying to elicit some information to be helpful to the committee in this inquiry. Is the money that the DWP uses—remember that the inquiry is about child poverty and parental employment and how transport plays a role in relation to that—is the money that the DWP uses? Is the money that the Scottish Government uses? Has that been used strategically well enough in your view? It's a reasonable question. I would say no, because of the point that I previously made. I don't think that that is an answer, but Mr White, do you have anything to add? I would say that, as the money being used strategically well enough, probably not. There's an argument that you could say that there may be local solutions, so having pots of money locally to better understand the local issues is positive, but is there a joined up look at a spend across Scotland and is it all pushing in the same direction? I think that that's something that is lacking and may be something that will be addressed in the fair fair's review. You mentioned the community bus fund. Again, that's also fairly unclear. I've heard the term community bus fund. You'd think that the title is going to be used to improve community bus links and to help people who are in poverty. The understanding that I have of it is that it's money that can be used for local authorities to pay consultants to look at the powers within the transport act, so that's not exactly delivering its title. I think that there is a piecemeal at the moment. We can do with a joined up approach, but that's not a criticism of any one of those schemes. The work of the DWP, because I'm sure that it delivers good results. I'm not suggesting that it's mentioned, Mr Hoggan. It's the partnership between DWP and ScotRail that I'm interested in. Personally, I think that one month's free travel is welcome for real travel. I don't think that it goes far enough. It could be extended to bus travel as well for those just into employment who are working parents whose children are in poverty. That's what the inquiry is about, convener. Perhaps it could be for six months or three months fully free, three months taper to 50 per cent support. There could be a more substantive offer. It could be a partnership between ScotRail, between the bus companies, between the UK Government and the Scottish Government. I'm trying to think how we deliver something substantive and meaningful that actually drives change for the people that I represent rather than just talking about things. Mr Hogg, do you have any views on that? Affordability is the key as far as I'm concerned. I certainly believe that, as I touched on earlier, transport plays a very important part in getting people to work. The Scottish Government's own strategy in tackling child poverty, which is called best to start bright futures, is certainly welcome as far as the RMTs that you're concerned. Can the Scottish Government do more? Absolutely. I believe that the Scottish Government can do way more. Is it a step in the right direction in terms of what the Scottish Government is doing at this moment in time? Yes. Final question, and I suppose it's Mr Hogg, because Mr Finch and Mr White can't speak for individual bus operators or the workforce that Mr Hogg can talk about from a years of experience about the workforce within the railways. One of the issues that we want is trains that run later or start earlier or more frequently, and that all does come down to cause, but it also comes down to supporting workers in relation to their pain conditions to support some of that. Has there been discussions between ScotRail and RMT, for example, about how we do run trains a bit earlier or a bit later in a way that is affordable, given quite rightly the additional staff costs to that, but have we started to think about how we can reshape the railways to be more responsive to that kind of thing to support child poverty and parental employment, for example? Continuous discussions, Bob, in relation to more resources within the Scotland trains, because the harsh reality is that there is not enough resources as things stand in terms of Scotland's trains. The suggestion that things stand to run more trains earlier or later is not possible. If you take, like I said, a good example, Sunday not being part of the working week, where Sunday is very much reliable on the staff, existing staff, working the overtime, and that is the elephant in the room, so far as ScotRail, Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government is concerned, is to address Sunday not being part of the working week and more resources in place. If we have more resources in place, Sunday is part of the working week. I am absolutely convinced that, with good industrial relations, we will be delivering more earlier trains and more later trains. Okay, thanks, Bob. I am now going to bring in Jeremy. Thank you, convener, and good morning again. I suppose I just want to move on slightly, if that's okay, in regard to where we are. At the end of Covid, support funds affected the availability and affordability of bus services. With that support fund now gone, what had been the impact of that, both for rural communities and urban communities? The impacts of the pandemic are still impacting almost public transport. Patrons are down rail, down on bus, costs are there, so there is a gap. In England and Wales, there is still a level of continued support to help bridge that gap. In Scotland, that support ended at the end of the previous financial year, and there has been an impact on fares and services, given that there had to be a reaction to the removal of that support to allow the wider networks to remain commercially sustainable. Fares have increased, as have many other products that we all purchase daily, and services. Lots of areas may have only seen reductions in frequencies, but where services have been cut, that's always very emotive, and it's always felt very keenly, and it's something that we would ideally like to avoid. Is there a marked differential between rural communities and urban city communities, or is there a similar picture across the whole of Scotland? I would say that provision of transport in rural areas is challenging. That's not just across Scotland, that's across the UK and wider. You are facing fewer people who use the bus, the costs are high in terms of fuel and journey length. That makes many of those services marginal in terms of their viability. A removal of a support grant such as NSG Plus, the network support grant plus, which was the Covid support for the sector, will have a larger bearing on those marginal services that are largely rural. In the north-east of Scotland, there has been a significant impact of that change. There was a significant impact for operators with the impacts of Covid, and the change in travel patterns and people's reluctance to get back on the bus, which has been noted. The tier 1 services, the main line bus services, what we've seen is fairs increases, and just the clicking of the operating hours, operating days, reductions in frequency, say, from a 15-minute down to a 20-25-minute frequency. It's still viable, but there's been that diminiation of service. There's the tier 2 services, which perhaps were commercial or commercially and part subsidised. They've been hit, perhaps the routes that have been shortened, or perhaps some of those routes have been withdrawn. Then we have the tier 3, perhaps the ones that wholly subsidise services. They've been affected by some of the wider issues related to local authority revenue availability for discretionary funding. My head of service, Aberdeenshire Council, akinned it to almost a commercial collapse of the bus service and having to make significant impacts into support of some of those services. Without that, there would have been towns without buses, which, in living memory, would never have been thought about. There are significant impacts in certain parts of Scotland, and some of that pressure has not been transferred on to local authorities in terms of their revenue to continue, almost like a lifeline availability of bus services in some of those areas. Mr Hogarton, have you got anything to add to that? Just to briefly add, Covid clearly had a massive impact in terms of the income coming into Scotland's railway in order to sustain Scotland's railway. No fares were obviously taken throughout the height of the pandemic. People, believe it or not, like I'm talking about passengers, felt that using Scotland's railway was free of charge. To convince them after the pandemic was over that they needed to start paying in order to use Scotland's railway was an absolute challenge. Install a challenge in order to get people out of their cars, out of their buses, and using Scotland's trains. It's still a challenge. The deputy convener has said that we are here to look at particularly child poverty. What is the effectiveness of subsidising buses? Is that a way of helping in regard to the whole issue of people getting to work or getting to school around employability? There clearly has to be a review of rural transport provision in looking at the technologies and the different ways that we provide services to help people to address child poverty among other issues, other issues that might be impacting those living in rural areas. Over the last five years, commercial mileage has dropped by 7 per cent and subsidised mileage that is supported by local authorities has dropped by 34 per cent. The commercial sector has had challenges and has made cuts, but local authorities have also had severe challenges in budget constraints and have had to look at their supported bus budgets and make cuts as well. In that context, where money is tied across the board, how do we provide those transport links? That's when aspects such as demand responsive transport and community transport may play a role. How do we look at new solutions to link people to key bus corridors where they can then shift from a community bus onto a transport hub where they can get the train or an interurban bus? I wonder if you can follow up slightly. Obviously, Edinburgh is the best place to live. Obviously, Edinburgh buses are probably the best service that we have anywhere in Scotland. It's obviously owned by the three local authorities, but it makes a profit. I suppose that my question is, if Edinburgh can do it, why can't other cities do it? Sarah Boyd is the managing director of Lothian Buses speaks well on this. If you're looking for other witnesses for this panel, I would recommend. She would recognise that Lothian Buses is a fantastic company and they do things very, very well. They do work as a commercial operator, they make a profit, but they have the benefit of the demographics of Edinburgh. To compare to Glasgow, there's no suburban rail network. In Glasgow, a lot of people from Glasgow—I live on the south side—I probably use a train to get that access as a descensor, whereas in Edinburgh, most people use the bus. You've got a larger market in terms of that. There's no competing rail network. There's a network of bus lanes through Edinburgh that assists bus provision that is lacking in other cities. You also have car parking charges that probably reflect the true cost of the car to the local environment, which is something that other places may not have in Glasgow. You've got a series of large car parks around the city centre where you can access quite cheaply. It's not cheap to bring your car into the centre of Edinburgh. Yes, Lothian Buses is a fantastic company, but there are other factors that mean that are led to the success of that municipal operation. I could point to municipal operations in other areas of the country where they have essentially ceased to operate because of challenges, so it's not that municipal operation is the panacea. It was a really interesting question from Mr Balford. I'm a Glasgow MSP, Mr White, and the Cathcart Circle or the Maryhill line in the north of the city. There is competition between that suburban rail network and buses. I'm not clear whether regional transport authorities or the bus companies complement each other in trying to be strategic in how they work in partnership in relation to that. Is that a systemic issue, or are there examples where the rail network and the bus companies are working properly in strategic partnerships? I recognise that part of my constituency where there is a poor bus service because it becomes less profitable because rail networks are part of that, but they still have vital service locally. I'm from the Cathcart area, so I know that well. I think that the creation of the bus network and the creation of the rail network have been exercises taken separately. Those are opportunities for looking at the fuller picture of public transport for provision across the city region, or wider, is a role for regional transport partnerships. I think that there has been some work in Glasgow there. I forget the name of the document, but I am essentially looking at the mobility plan more widely across the region. It is a relationship where we are both two aligned in terms of providing sustainable transport links, but there is a degree of a real passenger that somebody moving from bus to rail has an impact on bus and vice versa. Can I ask Mr Finchian? That relates to rural transport, where there may be gaps in the service. Perhaps it is even more vital to get that co-ordination between rail hubs and lifeline bus routes. Does that partnership work in more rural parts of the country? I noted when we were discussing this. In my written submission, I was quite clear when I talked about the strength of public transport in core urban areas, I would highlight that increasingly it is almost some suburban areas are struggling now as well. It is not just rural areas. Sometimes when we talk about rural, I live in a settlement on the edge of Aberdeen, which you might think that can sustain a bus service, but that bus surface is subsidised. I am only four or five miles from the centre of Aberdeen. When we talk about rural definition and subsidised services or not, traditionally we have always thought about small villages and rural areas, but increasingly, because of some of the pressures I noted before, it is that level of viability is sometimes closer to urban areas than you might necessarily say. That is one point. I am coming back to a point that was made earlier. There is a lot of work that could be improved in terms of how we could get the bus network and the rail network to work better. The levers that the public sector has to achieve that, though, unless there is a franchised system, are relatively limited because the system for the majority of Scotland is based on the 1985 Transport Act and on presumption of commercial operators making the best choices of what they want to do. As a regional transport authority, which does not have those powers, it is quite difficult to influence and dictate to stage coach or someone like that. Yes, you will be running feeder services into, say, Qintour station or InfoRury station. Sometimes they do it because it works, but it is very difficult to mandate under the current environment that we work. There are examples of good partnership working and there are bus partnerships. There is the prospect of bus service improvement partnerships, which are coming down the line, and they may well provide an opportunity for that more or a better joined-up approach. Certainly, the conversations that I have with the senior managers at ScotRail, where they say that we have a strong rail corridor here, why can't it ease to everybody's benefit if the local bus services could be redesigned to feed into that. We did an example where the local authority has the powers. We were in Belfast a few months ago, where it is a holy franchise system, so the public sector has control over the buses as well as the trains. In that environment, they were able to arrange the glider service, which was a fast tram-like bus rapid changeable, but they were able to then deliver feeder services into that. It is possible that there is the willingness to do it, but it may also be about the levers that the public sector partners have to achieve that as well. I would go further and say that there needs to be a better approach when it comes to our transport links approach in terms of the bus network, the rail network and the ferry network. Those are networks that are all inextricably linked to each other, and a better approach, a better strategy that we put in place would serve the people of Scotland a lot better. I am conscious of time, but I have one more question about community bus fund. Any comment around the potential of using that in relation to the level of funding and how that can fit in with what we are going forward to do? Paul White might want to talk about that. We have touched on regulatory models in the last question. There are certainly powers in the transport act, and local authorities are free to investigate those. There is some good work in areas of Scotland looking at bringing together local authorities and bus operators through partnership models. Glasgow is a good example of that. Where you can look at the network of services and bus, you can consider things like fares, you can consider a whole range of benefits to the network through that partnership. The community bus fund seems to be driven towards allowing local authorities to bring consultants to investigate the powers of the transport act and consider what might be a possible best solution for them further down the line. SPT has done some early work on that, looking at the costs of bringing in a franchise model to the Strathclyde region through largely Greater Glasgow and the timescales for the introduction of those things. My own opinion is that the community bus fund, as the name suggests, should prioritise improving bus links or communities and tackle issues such as those that the committee is looking at. Things that are immediate are absolute priorities and should not be invested in considering options that may take five to seven years and cost lots to deliver. The truth of the matter is whether a bus has got first or stagecoach or any other operator's name on the side or SPT's name on the side, the challenges that are affecting the costs for users are the exact same as congestion and the challenges that have changed the evolution that Covid has brought out in travel patterns and things like that. None of that is resolved by who owns the bus, so I would like to see the community bus fund more directed towards targeting those types of things that allow people access to buses and that the buses are available and affordable. I do not have every two witnesses have anything to add to that. Just briefly from me, it is not my gig, but certainly what I would say is that a lot of the fragmentation and certainly the benchmark would clearly come over loud and clear as Loven buses, how to run the community partnership in the Lovens, which they deliver very well. The community bus fund, as I understand it, is a capital fund and I think the crying need is for revenue support or revenue interventions that can perhaps promote innovation in particular areas. That might be a limitation as to the practical use that local authorities and others can put the money to to immediately address the problems of this particular inquiry. I am now going to bring in Paul. Thank you very much, convener. I suppose just to expand on the theme that colleagues have been interrogating. The Transport Act obviously gave provision to local authorities around services and we have had some discussion on that already. I appreciate what Paul White said about municipality not necessarily being a panacea. We do know that local bus services in Scotland have dropped by 38 per cent since 2007. We have lost thousands of routes and often those routes are the sort of routes that connect communities to other services, train services, but also help people in rural communities and particularly get to work and access work. I am just interested. Obviously, we have had a kind of four-year delay to get in secondary legislation to enable local authorities to explore and take forward much of this work. That secondary legislation, what impact has that delay had in your review and maybe if I can ask Paul White? I could come back to you on the point around lost routes since 2007. I think that that was a feature of a press release by Scottish Labour about two to three weeks ago. I have written to Mr Sarwar about that because it was based on a statistical correction on the number of routes in Scotland in 2020-21 that that release does not take account of. Prior to 2020-21, the traffic commissioner would publish reports that show the number of routes in Scotland, but some were double counted due to routes crossing local authority boundaries, so the numbers double counted some routes in 2020-21. I do not have the figures running me, but it is around about 800, so it went from the figure drop all of a sudden from 2,000 in something by 800. The figures for that year actually net. There was a drop of 40 actual routes, but the figure was readjusted for 840, so I have written to Mr Sarwar to say that he has not recognised the statistical correction that is clear from the traffic commissioner's report, and that figure about losing 1,300 routes is actually incorrect, so it is about 400, which is not ideal. You would acknowledge 400 is a serious issue for communities across Scotland. We would like to see progress on the secondary legislation for all aspects of the transport. Those have been delays, and for good reason. The Covid has interrupted the process, and we all switched our attention to looking at how we fund and operate public transport through the pandemic when the patchage levels went down below 10 per cent. We do not shy away from the discussions that might be had during the transport act powers, such as franchising our municipal operation or bus service improvement partnerships, but that has been delayed and will go into 2024, so I am sure that it is a frustration that is shared with local authority partners. Do you want to comment on that? I will go on to digital demand response transport. I will say again that there is aniganness from the local authorities to engage with the transport act provisions and to see what works for them in their particular examples, what they are trying to achieve, but also to take into account their budgetary and their risk profiles around this. Lots of authorities, those who have benefited from access to the bus partnership fund, for example, are very much looking at BSIPs and the franchising models at this time, and seeing the guidance and the secondary legislation come out has been welcomed, and we are keen to engage proactively with Transport Scotland officials on that particular journey. I am open by talking about rural issues and issues in rural transport in particular, and for many rural communities there is a huge issue in terms of being able to access transport that takes you to work opportunities for various levels of education in our report. I am keen to discuss the potential of digital demand response of transport. Now, although it has been highlighted that it should not be a replacement for wider services, there is a role to play. It has had a role to play. People will remember Dialabus, for example, being a feature of our transport network for some time. I wonder if you might comment firstly on the potential of that to support people, particularly in rural communities, who need that extra support to get to the various places that I have mentioned. For my perspective, it is fantastic to see new technology coming in and helping. Yes, the digital demand response of transport, the access to information and the availability of a bus being able to access a bus being able to know the timetable or to get on how much it is going to cost you, those type of things. The more we can provide that, the better it will help. Digital demand response of transport, like all demand response of transport projects, can be quite costly to provide. That is the one factor, because you are not dealing with a number of passengers, you are not dealing with them, set routes. Low usage can mean that when you look at the cost per passenger journey, it can be quite high. That can be a challenge for those types of projects. Kickstarter funding, trying to get the thing established and get usage up to a certain level, can be useful for it to hopefully reach a stage where it is sustainable locally for people to use, but certainly new technology provides opportunities to travel those types of things. I suppose that the interesting thing about that is that you have to have access to technology, so would you see those two things as sitting quite close together? We need to deal with that digital exclusion part, as well as having the services available to people. I think that you are exactly right. There are two aspects to that. Do people have the technology to use it and does the accessibility angle of it easy for people to use or read or access if they are visually impaired, if there are other accessibility issues? We really have to take that into regard. I wonder if I can just ask Mick about that digital piece in terms of the real network as well and people's ability to access those sorts of new services. Do you see that as a concern for all the people, particularly with additional support needs, who rely on digital but also having human staff there to support them? Is that a twin thing that we need to look at? Yes. We welcome new technology. We are not dinosaurs despite the fact that we have been accused of being dinosaurs living in the dark ages. We welcome new technology. We work very, very closely with Faye Scotland. We have a good working relationship with Faye Scotland, the four trade unions, and we recognise that part of that is new technology and the accessibility to new technology is the key to Scotland's trains going forward. We certainly welcome new technology. The Aberdeenshire Council had recent experience of a ready-to-go scheme, which is digital demand responsive in and around the area of Inverruri, a town of about 10, 11,000 people, on 15 or so miles away from Aberdeen, looking at that area. It brought new people to the public transport market. It enabled access to employment, it enabled access to nurseries, and it helped young people to get out and around, so they had the youth card, but they could actually use the youth card no longer reliant upon their parents for doing the shuttle bus, the taxi service in these areas. However, you are buying a different product. You are not buying a fixed-route, fixed-time service bus, you are buying a more flexible product. I think that the experience of Aberdeenshire was very positive, it was expensive, and unfortunately the funding was withdrawn because of the cost. However, strong lessons were learned, and I think that we can see that probably across Scotland we are at a relatively immature stage at the moment, and some of the software needs to expand or mature to better serve the market. I am very enthusiastic about digital demand responsive in rural areas. There are some legislative concerns because, as it is at the moment, you cannot put it in where it might undercut or cut across a commercial operator because of the legislation and that limits where you might effectively deploy it as well, but the experience in terms of what we are talking about in this committee was very positive in terms of achieving those objectives in those areas where there is not a strong and reliable bus service, or where the bus service runs on a particular corridor, but the actual employment and service accelerabilities might be off that corridor in a variety of locations, which you might find often on market towns out with the main cities. I believe that this is something that we should be continuing to support and to ensure that there can be a maturity of the technology to better serve the particular circumstances, recognising that it is one tool in the toolbox and that community transport, voluntary transport and subsidised taxes are also active travel links as well can all be part of what is in the toolbox for a particular community. Literally just a little point because you are talking about a specific example that is happening just outside Aberdeen, which sounds great and it certainly fits into previous evidence that you have given to us today about fitting in with people's lives because it is a little bit more user friendly, shall we say, but your concern was funding stocked. The funding stocked, so the whole process stocked. Is it because it was not commercially viable? Is it because of the different concerns that were over cutting or going past or getting in the way of different transport models? Or was it primarily just the fact that it was never going to stand on its own two feet and it's not going to happen? The digital demand responsive transport, and there's a wonderful report that the COMO UK have done with Transport Scotland on this, which I commend to the committee in terms of providing that overview. Very rarely will that ever be commercially viable, it will always be subsidised. I would note that the majority of Scotland's railways is subsidised as well. Aberdeenshire Council have a budget of around £3.2 million for their bus network per annum. That was costing an additional £470,000 per annum on top of the fixed bus route. Then there were pressures on that budget from other, like I said, making sure that all towns across Aberdeenshire had access to a bus. It was something that the local authority at that point couldn't withstand, despite the positive and beneficial outcomes that it had in achieving accessibility and widening the availability and affordability of transport to particularly marginalised groups who perhaps didn't have access for whatever reason to a private car. So, to surmise just to make sure that I've got it all right, as far as the remit of what we're looking for and getting parents back into work and looking at child poverty, it's an avenue that may actually work as long as the funding process is there. People respond over time to the certainty, so if they see it as a pilot service or will it be there, will it be not, there's a nervousness about taking up. So sometimes it's about that longer term commitment that can help. But sometimes you have to have that learning experience as well, chicken and egg, sort of situation. Thank you very much. Thank you, convener, and thank you, Paul. I think it's on those points about how we sustainably support these services to offer additionality in terms of the core services that we would see across bus, rail, etc. A lot of community transport organisations, Paul Finch mentioned community transport, do an excellent job of additionality, but they actually struggle in terms of funding and sustainability of funding. So, as was his question about those digital responsible services and those community services, we need to see them become much more involved in the kind of mainstream funding rather than just being perhaps pilot innovations, but don't command confidence. I think it would be really good to see that evolution because of what we have seen in the last few years about the mainline public transport network, that there is this need across many areas of Scotland which are crying out for support so people can get around and not be wholly reliant on the car because the problem is people are now being forced car dependents and they're having to run a car and not feed their families just so they can get around the situation so there needs to be a solution. This seems to offer one way of doing it and it would be really good to see the fairs fair review and some of these other initiatives extend their remit or at least consider how this can be made an appropriate technique instead of some of these really great organisations living almost hand to mouth in terms of year to year allocations of funding help to address the voluntary nature of some of their stuff and actually perhaps start investing in low decarbonisation of their options as well. Okay, thanks very much and I want to thank all our witnesses for taking part in shooting your expertise today. We will conclude taking evidence on the inquiry next week with a session with the cabinet secretary for social justice, the cabinet secretary for wellbeing economy, fair work and energy, the minister for children, young people and keeping the promise and the minister for education. That concludes our public business. Next week we will hold our final evidence session of the inquiry with Scottish Government cabinet secretaries and ministers and we'll also hear from the cabinet secretary for social justice about other priorities relevant to this committee. We'll now move into private to consider the remaining items on the agenda and I'd like to thank our witnesses once again. Thank you.