Parties locked in row over performance of Scotland’s trains

The SNP has accused the Scottish Labour leader of smearing ScotRail in a row over the train operator’s performance.

George Adam, the SNP MSP, has called for Kezia Dugdale to apologise for saying that more than half of Scotland’s train stations were missing a punctuality target.

Scottish Labour hit back saying they will not say sorry for sticking up for passengers and demanding improvements.

Neil Bibby, the party’s transport spokesman, said at the weekend that services at “nearly 60% of stations failed to hit the performance target” in ScotRail’s latest punctuality figures. His boss, Ms Dugdale, repeated that claim in her column for the Daily Record.

The percentage relates to the 43 out of 73 stations that are terminals rather than all of Scotland’s stations.

ScotRail runs 359 stations altogether. Mr Adam described the comments as a “blatant attempt to smear an improving rail service”.

He added: “The ScotRail staff who have worked so hard to improve this service deserve an apology from Kezia Dugdale and from Scottish Labour – and perhaps also an acknowledgement that services have improved significantly in recent months.”

A Scottish Labour spokesman called on the SNP to apologise to passengers for “delayed, overcrowded and overpriced trains”.

“We make absolutely no apology for standing up for Scotland’s passengers, scrutinising ScotRail’s performance, and demanding improvements,” he added.

ScotRail says performance is improving, with 94% of last month’s services running on time.

In an article in Monday’s paper (“Unacceptable figures reveal city’s late trains”, page 1 Dundee edition,) we included a paragraph reporting that only 61.7% of train services to Dundee last month arrived on time. In fact that figure referred to a 12-month rolling average. We are happy to clarify this.