Nicola Sturgeon orders ScotRail bosses to publish action plan for improvement

NICOLA STURGEON has ordered ScotRail bosses to publish in full almost 250 steps being taken to improve the network, as the Scottish Government again came under fire for a rail service “shambles”.

Tory leader Ruth Davidson and her Labour counterpart Kezia Dugdale both challenged the First Minister on the issue at Holyrood, with Ms Davidson highlighting the “chaos that passengers have endured” as she demanded the action plan be made public.

Ms Dugdale said fed up travellers “needed a break”, as she called on the Scottish Government to put the brakes on a fares hike planned for January.

She said: “After weeks of misery, people in Scotland deserve to know there is light at the end of the tunnel with a fare freeze in 2017. The SNP should back Labour’s plan.”

The state of Scotland’s railways was raised at First Minister’s Questions a day after Transport Minister Humza Yousaf was forced to make a statement to MSPs on the issue.

There has been widespread criticism of the reliability of ScotRail trains since Dutch firm Abellio took over the franchise, and Mr Yousaf was pressed to publish the full details of an improvement plan put in place after services slipped below agreed standards.

Ms Sturgeon announced on Thursday that ScotRail will publish the action plan, which contains 246 separate measures, within days.

She made the commitment after Ms Davidson told her Mr Yousaf’s statement had left key questions “unanswered”, adding: “He says ScotRail is well under way to implementing 250 action points for improvement, but he won’t tell anyone what they are.

“And it’s not the first time. A month ago he told MSPs on a parliamentary committee he would come back to them with an answer. Yesterday, when asked again, he had nothing more to say.

“So can the First Minister give a commitment today, will her Government publish those 250 action points or not?”

Ms Sturgeon said: “Yes. ScotRail will publish them within the next few days.”

Ms Davidson welcomed that commitment, but added: “Of course it would have been better if the Transport Minister had been able to give the same clarity yesterday.

“Even the First Minister would admit that this week the rail networks have been in a shambles.

“Commuters standing on platforms have watched as the Scottish Government blamed the train operator for the mess, and the train operator has said that the Scottish Government is responsible for how many seats are available and therefore how much overcrowding exists.”

While the Scottish Government is working on putting together a public sectorbid to take over the running of services from Abellio, Ms Davidson said thecurrent contract has “at least six more years to run”.

She told Ms Sturgeon: “The question passengers want an answer to is pretty simple – when they’ve seen the events of the last week, over the next six years how can they have any confidence at all that this deal is going to work?”

But the First Minister told her both she and the Transport Minister are pressing for improvements from the rail operator.

Scotland Transport Minister Humza Yousaf (C Austin/Sunday Post)

The SNP leader said: “Humza Yousaf made it very clear yesterday that what we are doing, pressing ScotRail to deliver, are ongoing improvements to their performance.

“The contract that is in place right now targets ScotRail with making sure that 91 out of every 100 trains run within the recognised industry standard for punctuality. At the moment their performance is 89 out of 100. That is not good enough.

“So the various action points that are covered in this plan are about improving that service and about beginning to see improvements in that service immediately.”

While a summary of the action points is already on the ScotRail website, Ms Sturgeon said the “full details” of the 246 measures will be “published over the next few days”.

She added: “What they cover are improvements to infrastructure, improvements to the ScotRail fleet and improvements to operations.

“Of course all of this is backed by an investment of £5 billion over the remainder of this decade in improving our rail services.”

Regarding the public sector bid to take over the running of the service, she said this had been a commitment in the SNP manifesto.

“We haven’t had the powers to do this previously but we will now have the powers, so we said we would make sure there was an option that when the franchise is next up for renewal, to ensure that there is a public service bid able to compete for that franchise,” she told MSPs.

“Now I know the Tories are no friends of the public sector, privatisation is and always has been the watch word of the Tories, but we want to make sure there is a public service bid able to compete the next time the franchise comes up for renewal.”

She added: “In terms of capacity on our railways, we are working towards plans that will deliver 200 new services, 20,000 more seats per day and better journey times. That’s what we’re purchasing with the £5 billion of investment that we’re putting into our railways.

“I should say about 60% of the cost of running our railways in Scotland comes from Government funding, that compares to about 20% south of the border.”

She also stated that while current rail performance is “not as good as we want it to be”, it is “slightly better” in Scotland than the UK average.

Transport Minister Humza Yousaf to make statement to Parliament over ScotRail