Strengthening Scotland’s Bus Network

As an amendment to motion S7M-01881 in the name of Stephen Flynn (Strengthening Scotland’s Bus Network), insert at end "; regrets the reduction in bus services across Scotland, including in rural areas, over the past decade; believes that true public control through regional bus franchising must ensure that money raised through passenger fares is retained by the public sector and reinvested directly into the network rather than extracted as profit by private operators; further believes that public control will also enable integrated smart ticketing across Scottish public transport; calls on the Scottish Government to reform taxpayer-funded bus grant processes to give significantly greater weighting to meaningful social value criteria, including measurable commitments relating to domestic jobs, apprenticeships, skills and supply chain growth, and urges the Scottish Government to adopt institutional patient capital leasing models for zero-emission bus fleets, learning from the financing approach being deployed by Transport for London, to reduce upfront financial barriers for franchised or publicly-owned bus operators and secure a long-term order pipeline for Scotland's domestic bus manufacturing base."