Brian Wilson: Public ownership of Scotrail was a political trophy – while practicalities were ignored

Public sector ScotRail can be one thing or another. It can be a nationalised rail company, an integral part of the Scottish Government, subject to the stringencies of public sector pay policy. Or it can be an arms-length, publicly owned franchisee, operated along commercial lines without Ministerial involvement. It cannot be both.

If it is the former, then Ms Gilruth – or, more accurately, her boss, Ms Sturgeon – has had not only a right but an exceptionally urgent duty to instruct ScotRail management to resume negotiations and get this sorted. If it is the latter, then ScotRail should not be looking over its shoulder for political instruction or – as its spokesman put it yesterday – “wider public sector ramifications”.

But which is it? I doubt if either Ms Gilruth or ScotRail management really knows. The waters have been hopelessly muddied by the rhetoric. Ministers wanted to claim the trophy of “renationalisation” without recognising this would take them straight into the minefield of industrial relations. As always, they were more interested in the headlines than the practicalities of delivery.

Ms Sturgeon even found it necessary to unveil a plaque to celebrate the achievement. Abandoned travellers can read it at their leisure in Queen Street station. “Marking the transition of ScotRail, Scotland’s railway, to public ownership on 1 April 2022 by Rt Hon. Nicola Sturgeon MSP, First Minister of Scotland”. That does tend to confirm where responsibility lies.

If there is laughter anywhere, it must be in Utrecht, headquarters of Abellio, where its owners, the highly successful Dutch company which runs the busiest railway network in the EU, must be delighted to have seen the back of ScotRail and the Scottish Government. For all the criticism they faced, they never came close to plumbing current depths.

It is two and a half years since the Transport Secretary, Michael Matheson, announced that the Scottish Government would terminate the Abellio contract early and look for a public sector solution. At that point, Abellio were headed for the exit and future responsibility rested firmly with those who had sent them packing.

So what work was done by the Scottish Government in the intervening period to pre-empt the issues which have crippled Scotland’s railway within seven weeks of the plaque being unveiled? When did they discover that there is such a shortage of drivers that the system wholly depends on them being willing to work indefinitely on rest days?

Following his earlier statement, Mr Matheson announced in March of last year that “ScotRail services will be provided in public hands through a company wholly owned and controlled by the Scottish Government. This is in line with our Operator of Last Resort duty”.

At that point, if not before, there surely needed to be an urgent sense of future planning including the need to recruit more drivers. There is a paradox involved in complaining about the amount of money train drivers earn and having failed to secure enough of them to keep the trains running.

That has put ASLEF in a position of strength where there is no need to take industrial action in order to deliver the current impact. The failure to recruit has done the job for them. Who in the Scottish Government has been talking to ASLEF and ScotRail about a joint approach to driver recruitment since Mr Matheson made his announcements?

The most immediately puzzling question for the public is why on earth there have been no ongoing face-to-face talks, to reflect the seriousness of the consequences. It beggars belief that there has been no such meeting since May 4 while the dispute trundled towards mass cancellations, despite repeated pleas from Kevin Lindsay, ASLEF’s Scottish organiser.

I heard Ms Gilruth say she had “heard from Mr Lindsay this morning that he is willing to do that”. Personally, I heard Mr Linsday say exactly the same thing last Thursday after First Minister’s Questions when he pleaded for meetings with Ms Gilruth, Ms Sturgeon, ScotRail management – indeed, any key players who would enter the same room for negotiation. To pretend otherwise is, at best, disingenuous.

Asked why there have been no meetings for the past three weeks, Ms Gilruth replied: “I am not in the room, obviously – that is for ScotRail”. Asked if she could not pick up the phone and instruct ScotRail to meet, she said: “I have absolutely spoken to them in these terms”.

So are ScotRail defying a Ministerial instruction to meet? I doubt that very much.

There was never the slightest possibility of ASLEF accepting a 2.2 per cent pay offer at a time of double digit inflation. Their members are decently paid because they belong to a strong union with bargaining power but also, in my experience, a strong public service ethos. However, the idea they were going to accept a substantial real-terms pay cut just because the new franchisee is in the public sector was, and remains, delusionary.

Neither is playing them off against other public sector workers going to cut much ice and it is distasteful to try. ASLEF members’ loss would not be the gain of nurses or council workers. On the contrary, the history of industrial relations suggests that the best hope of low paid workers in the public sector is to cling firmly to the coat-tails of those with more bargaining power.

In short, Ministers should immediately instruct ScotRail to resume face-to-face talks and hammer out a compromise that both sides can live with. If public ownership of the ScotRail franchise is not going to lurch from one crisis to the next thereafter, there has to be a complete re-think of how it going to operate as a partnership in the public interest, not as a political trophy with hands-on one day and hands-off the next.

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