S4M-12382 Building Scotland’s Infrastructure

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Elaine Smith): The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-12382, in the name of Keith Brown, on building Scotland’s infrastructure for the future.

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Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP):

Although I speak in this debate in a personal capacity, I draw members’ attention to my honorary vice-presidency of Railfuture UK and to my being the honorary president elect of the Scottish Association for Public Transport. In the current climate, I should say that I receive no pay whatsoever for either of those appointments. I should perhaps also say that I am a regular user of the one Scotland card that gives me access to scheduled bus services throughout Scotland at no cost to myself.

This is a timely debate that will allow me to celebrate what has been achieved in public transport and to highlight some of the remaining challenges. We have had interesting contributions so far. Given his remarks, I take it that Gavin Brown is responsible for the fact that flying from central London to central Paris is slower than it was in 1931, when the Imperial Airways service, which operated from Croydon to Le Touquet, cost 4 guineas—which is a lot cheaper than today, although, of course, the value of money is different.

Likewise, I take it that—reductio ad absurdam—when Willie Rennie criticises proposals to spend more on capital expenditure and improving the economy, he would abolish the entire capital programme, because that would be of enormous benefit to the economy. Perhaps I am carrying that a little further than he would seriously take it.

Scotland’s railway network makes a great deal more geographic sense than many. Less than 10 per cent of rail journeys starting in Scotland end outwith our country. That is a smaller proportion than is the case for any other area of the Great Britain rail network. However, that underplays two important things about cross-border rail.

First, only 10 per cent or so of public transport journeys from Scotland to London are by rail. Most are by air. That is a ferocious and unnecessary burden on our environment. Currently, travel times are slightly better by air, perhaps by about an hour. However, the reliability of rail travel is substantially greater, and the nature of rail travel from city centre to city centre, using transport that gives one access to wi-fi, hot and cold running drinks and so on, without mode change, means that passengers are more relaxed and ready for work at journey’s end.

We can look at what is happening with the climate. The east coast of the United States of America is having the worst of all winters, demonstrating the effect of climate change, and there are significant difficulties in getting access to water in the west, a situation that is extending into the midwest in the summer. That shows that, if the environment is overexploited, it will bite back. The issue of high speed rail concerns economic issues but also climate issues. We have to get out of the air and on to rail.

In the shorter term, if we can speed up the journey, that will be helpful. It has to happen soon. It will take some time to get HS2 into place, but there are huge economic benefits as well as huge benefits in terms of the climate. It is one of the most important projects for everyone who lives on this island, and addressing climate issues is important for people around the world.

I want to say a few targeted remarks, chosen more or less at random, about some of the things that we might be thinking of doing but which have not yet been mentioned.

First, we need to find ways of ensuring that the rail infrastructure can better support freight. We have seen huge success with Tesco putting its dry goods on the railway network up to Inverness.

David Stewart: I believe that the freight facilities grant was in the member’s remit when he was a minister. I strongly support the freight facilities grant, but does he share my view that it is crucially important, particularly for lines in the north, that we have more dualling of track, because the basic problem that we have is a constraint and a lack of capacity on those lines?

Stewart Stevenson: Where freight is concerned, I would suggest that the problem is slightly different. I do not underplay the value of dualling, but not in relation to freight. For freight, if we are to get the fresh goods on to the network, the important thing is that we have a resilient network with alternate routing, so that the delivery of fresh goods is not compromised by technical problems that will occur even in the best managed of networks.

We need to freight-enable more of the network and the alternate route around Aberdeen. A lot has been done by the previous Government and this Government in that regard. To that extent, I hope that signalling between Aberdeen and Inverness will become a priority.

It is quaint and fascinating to see the token working between Elgin and Forres, but, really, a 160-year-old system might be capable of being updated. By the same token, north of Inverness it is perhaps time that we saw a little about the plans to replace the obsolete—no longer just obsolescent—radio token system.

Looking to roads, the success of the average speed cameras on the A9—saving lives, reducing accidents and improving journey times overall for the mix of traffic that we have—indicates that we should have more of that on our road network across Scotland. I hope that Willie Rennie will speak to his colleague Danny Alexander, who should be prepared to change his mind, as others have done on other subjects.

I travelled on the Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine line on the day it opened, travelling on the footplate of the Great Marquess—a steam train. I have it diaried to travel on the first day of the Borders railway. I travelled across the Forth road bridge in 1964 on the day that it opened. My great uncle was chair of the campaign committee for it in the 1930s. I very much look forward to crossing at the earliest possible opportunity on the new road bridge across the Forth.

We are making huge progress. There will never be a day when each and every one of us does not have more things that we want to do, so we have to prioritise. I think that broadly we are making good choices. I look forward to much more being spent on rail than perhaps has been spent in the past as a share of the budget, but good progress is being made. I give my congratulations to the Government.

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