ScotRail peak fares criticism of SNP by Labour is ridiculous

It is hard to know where to start, so incredible is Scottish Labour’s broadside.

A couple of points are worth highlighting at the outset though.

The first is that opposition politicians, including those from Scottish Labour, have over the years seemed to delight in loudly portraying the SNP as a bit profligate with the cash.

Much of the time this noise has not stood up to any scrutiny when it has come to assessing the facts.

The second point worth noting without further ado is that the Labour Government at Westminster has decided to stick with the Conservatives’ fiscal constraints.

These constraints have for years made things extremely difficult for the Scottish Government.

And Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s declarations so far signal he is perfectly happy to continue with Tory-type austerity.

His speeches have seemed so, so similar to the messages from David Cameron and George Osborne, erstwhile Tory prime minister and chancellor respectively, when they came to power in 2010.

Scottish Labour has produced figures it says show a big jump in peak-time travel, which it put at 39%.

However, Scottish Government agency Transport Scotland has rightly pointed out flaws in Labour’s assessment of the situation, including importantly the fact that those buying “anytime” tickets may not actually have been travelling at peak times.

And surely Scottish Labour, given its general whining about the SNP spending money, would want to focus on the fact that there would have been a very substantial extra cost if the Scottish Government had made its temporary abolition of peak fares at ScotRail during the pilot project permanent.

Then again, maybe this extra cost and the requirement to make cuts in other areas were it to have been taken on would just have given Scottish Labour and other opposition politicians even more fodder. They could then have moaned about such cuts. And so the political merry-go-round would have spun a little bit faster, with even more heat than light.

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Scottish Labour’s criticism of the reinstatement of peak fares was, as well as being truly astounding, somewhat difficult to follow.

Labour MSP Sarah Boyack said: “This pilot was a rare success story from an SNP Government typically mired in chaos and failure.

“This scheme has been sabotaged by SNP incompetence at every turn, but peak-time passenger numbers have still soared.”

So it was a success story, but there was “SNP incompetence at every turn”. Eh?

Transport Scotland concluded when it was announced in August that peak fares would be reintroduced from late September that its analysis “shows that while there has been a limited increase in the number of passengers during the pilot, it did not achieve its aims of encouraging a significant modal shift from car to rail”.

The crucial point, however, and that which looked to sound the death knell for the brave move to remove peak fares, is that the 6.8% increase in demand during the pilot scheme was simply not sufficient.

The Scottish Government calculated that a 10% increase in demand for ScotRail services was required to ensure the cost of removing peak fares was paid for through the growth in train travel generated.

Transport Scotland calculated the cost of the full-year subsidy provided by the Scottish Government for the removal of peak fares by the time the pilot scheme ended on September 27 at about £40 million.

The calculations from Transport Scotland about the cost of removing peak fares at ScotRail are surely the most reliable.

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It has the numbers with which to formulate the best estimate of the annual cost of so doing.

The Scottish Government would presumably, for its part, have liked to have declared the scheme to remove peak fares had been self-financing and to continue with it on a permanent basis.

It would clearly not have been in the Scottish Government’s interests to have desired an outcome where it was going to cost a lot of money to make the pilot arrangements permanent, as turned out to be the case, thereby giving it a very difficult political decision and one that has clearly not been popular with many.

There is absolutely room for debate over whether there should be much more expensive peak fares on rail services or not.

However, this must take into account the huge fiscal constraints on the Scottish Government, and the fact these look set to continue under Sir Keir’s new administration at Westminster.

We cannot simply ignore the fact that other things would have to be cut to fund the £40m a year required to remove peak fares permanently in these toughest of times. And we must bear in mind the reality that the Scottish Government has already had very difficult decisions to make because of the Conservatives’ protracted woeful economic performance and ill-judged fiscal decisions.

It is also important to remember that peak fares, which are undoubtedly burdensome on the likes of the commuter route between Glasgow and Edinburgh, applied before the pilot.

And those who are criticising the Scottish Government should absolutely remember that peak rail fares apply south of the Border.

Perhaps Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar should have a word with Sir Keir.

If Mr Sarwar and his Scottish Labour colleagues think that abolishing peak rail fares is such a good idea, from the understandable enough viewpoint of easing the burden on working people, they could suggest that Sir Keir looks at doing this south of the Border.

Then money could flow into the Scottish Government’s coffers to do the same thing through the usual public finance arrangements.

This would surely be better than Scottish Labour carping away without any money being put where its mouth is.

How about that Mr Sarwar and Ms Boyack? It would require Sir Keir to be less Tory-like as he holds on to the public purse strings like a miserly householder but it would not be such a bad idea. Would it?