Sustainable Public Transport

Speech by Alison McInnes delivered to The Scottish Parliament on Thu 7th Jun 2007

I thank the Labour Party for using its debating time to explore this issue further. As Brian Adam rightly pointed out, it is about more than Edinburgh, which is why a strategic transport project review would be the objective way forward. To single out two projects is just not fair.

We heard from the Green party that the use of global footprinting to measure our impact on the environment is gaining support. The north-east of Scotland has been taking part in a three-year pilot project with the WWF to measure its footprint, the results of which were announced at an event in my home town of Ellon a few months ago.

We are taking far more than our fair share of the world's resources. If everyone in the world consumed resources at the rate at which we in Scotland do, we would need three planets to support us. However, none of the people who attended that event was down heartened by the results; those people were galvanised by it and are determined to tackle some of the issues that contribute to that big footprint. Local schemes that involve the whole community are now being developed in Ellon and Huntly. It is commendable that the people at the event did not say that the problem is too big for us to do anything about, but I am clear that they expect us here in Parliament also to pay heed to it and to face the fact that a three-planet lifestyle is not sustainable

We can work on three main areas to shrink our footprint: energy use, food production and transport. Given that around 15 per cent of carbon emissions are land-transport related, we can make a difference: we can reduce the impact of transport. We know what the solutions are: faster trains, second-generation park and rides, new railways, trams and demand-responsive transport. There are lots of sustainable transport solutions, but they need consistent support and some certainty to make them a reality.

For decades, Scotland suffered because of a lack of vision, co-ordination and investment in transport, which the previous Government took bold steps to counter. During the previous session, there were radical changes to transport delivery, a step-change in how transport was planned for and a new optimism and growing ambition throughout Scotland as local authorities worked with other stakeholders to plan ahead. I thought that the SNP shared that ambition, given that its manifesto said, "let us build a more successful Scotland", "Let Scotland Flourish" and that it is time to move Scotland forward. However, we are not moving forward; the SNP is taking us backward to the old stop-start, will-we-won't-we school of transport planning, which I thought was a thing of the past.

The Liberal Democrats recognise that planning for a sustainable Scotland needs us all to work together. The Government, local councils, communities and the business sector should all have a voice. That is why I set such great store by the finalised national and regional strategies and the emerging local transport strategies, on all of which the key stakeholders were consulted less than a year ago.

Building an integrated transport system for Scotland will not happen overnight. Indeed, it cannot happen in one term of government-although, with an SNP Government it looks like plans can disappear overnight and for no good reason, other than to fund unsustainable promises that were made during the election.

Stewart Stevenson's amendment would lead to more cost, and to delay and uncertainty. He talked about accountability and balance, but there is nothing balanced about his approach. He said that he would start with the two biggest projects, so we can expect even more uncertainty.

The Tories' amendment is no better. They should be big enough to admit that they do not want the projects. "Mibbes aye, mibbes no"-where have the Tories been during all the hundreds of hours of committee scrutiny and debate in the previous session of Parliament?

We can have ambitious but costed and deliverable projects throughout Scotland, which join up the country, make us competitive in Europe, create new jobs and support tourism, or we can ditch them for uncosted, undeliverable daydreams of bullet trains and road-building schemes. It is clear what the majority view in the chamber is: the SNP must stop prevaricating and let the projects go ahead as planned.