SCOTTISH Tory deputy leader Jackson Carlaw’s attack on Humza Yousaf hit the buffers yesterday after he wrongly said the Transport Minister hadn’t caught the train since May.
The Eastwood MSP claimed the latest publication of MSPs expenses showed that Yousaf hadn’t boarded a ScotRail carriage since MSPs returned after the Holyrood election. However, the Tories were looking at the wrong expenses.
The SNP said the Transport Minister’s commute was covered by the Scottish Government rather than the Parliament, and that he had taken the train just about every week. Carlaw had accused Yousaf of having “never set foot on a train” apart from for publicity pictures.
Carlaw said: “Commuters will be furious that the train network is deemed good enough for them, but not seemingly good enough for the man in charge.”
SNP MSP James Dornan pointed out that the latest expenses release showed that Carlaw himself had only made five train journeys and mostly used his car. “The Tories are on the wrong track with this ridiculous claim,” Dornan said. “Humza takes the train most weeks to commute between Glasgow and Edinburgh in his ministerial role and it would be wrong for him to bill his parliamentary expenses for ministerial travel.
“In contrast Jackson Carlaw has made only five train journeys since May, far fewer than Mr Yousaf took in his first two months as Transport Minister. The Tories’ efforts to personally attack the Transport Minister instead of contributing to improving our train service have well and truly hit the buffers.”
In Holyrood, Yousaf was asked what deadlines he had given ScotRail to meet the 249 points set out in their performance improvement plan released earlier in the week.
“Of the 249 points in the plan, around six have a long-term deadline,” he told MSPs. “That does not mean that work will not start on them immediately – work will start on them immediately. All that it means is that there is a continual process of monitoring and continual work on, for example, signal cable renewal and points renewal.”
A poll has suggested satisfaction in ScotRail had fallen in recent months. The YouGov research said the proportion satisfied with train services was 58 per cent, down from 68 per cent, while 31 per cent were dissatisfied – up from 23 per cent.
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