News Story

A scheme that caps bus fares at £2 will be extended to cover all of Scotland at the “earliest possible opportunity”, John Swinney has said.

The First Minister said the timing of the nationwide rollout of the fare cap initiative would depend on the Scottish Government’s resources.

He said more than half of Scotland’s population could now benefit from the “excellent” scheme which limits single bus fares to £2.

The cap, which had been in place in the Highlands and Islands area, has been extended to cover the Strathclyde region benefiting people in Glasgow, Inverclyde, Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire.

Young people aged under 22, those over the age of 60 and disabled people can already benefit from free bus travel across Scotland.

Visiting a First Bus depot in Glasgow on Monday, Mr Swinney said he was “delighted that the SNP Government is today rolling out a scheme which will have a £2 bus fare cap in place for over half the population in Scotland”.

He said: “I want to make sure at the earliest possible opportunity we roll that out to the rest of the country and that will be a priority for SNP ministers in the months ahead.”

Pressed on when the scheme could be rolled out to the rest of the country, the First Minister told the Press Association: “It obviously depends on the resources that we have got available to us.”

He continued: “We have got to make choices within our budget but I want to reassure members of the public that the cost-of-living support we’re putting in place in the Highlands and Islands, and also in the Strathclyde area, will be rolled out across the rest of the country at the earliest possible opportunity.

“Cost-of-living support is an essential part of the Government’s programme. I want to make sure that we provide assistance to people who are currently struggling financially within our society.”

The First Minister was also clear he regarded the bus fare cap as being a “permanent part of what we deliver as an SNP Government”.

His comments came after Ralph Roberts, chairman of bus operator McGills, said the cap was a “very difficult thing to administer” but that he hoped it would address the decline in passenger numbers.

Describing the scheme as being “a very expensive use of money”, he questioned if it would be maintained and raised concerns passenger numbers could fall if the fare cap was scrapped.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Breakfast programme, Mr Roberts said: “If we end up stopping this £2 fare, our worry is that footfall will decline when fares go back to normal.

“But we hope it will create more usage and that will take cars off the road. It’s a better way to travel, better use of road space and it will make buses more sustainable.”

Environmental campaigners at Friends of the Earth Scotland branded the scheme “little more than a sticking plaster on a broken bus system that is failing communities and the planet”.

The group’s senior transport campaigner Emily Donnelly said that while the fare cap was a “welcome intervention that will ease pressure on the pockets of millions of ordinary people”, more action was needed to improve public transport.

She said: “A fare cap is a step in the right direction, but it is not enough to address the decline we are facing after 40 years of Thatcher’s failed experiment of selling off public buses and deregulating services.

“A fare cap appears to bring prices down, but in reality it means massive transfers of public money to the pockets of the millionaires who own Scotland’s bus companies. We are spending a fortune patching up just one of the symptoms of a broken system.

“Cheaper tickets make little difference to people where buses don’t turn up, services have already been cut or a route doesn’t exist in the first place.

“Transport has long been Scotland’s most climate-polluting sector, which only adds to the urgency to ensure our most-used form of public transport is a quality alternative to relying on cars, in a country where more than a quarter of people do not have access to a car.”