Hapless Humza’s career? It’s going right off the rails
THERE should be a sign hanging above Humza Yousaf’s office which says: ‘Welcome to the office of the Transport Minister – the graveyard of political ambitions.’ For years, it hasn’t really been clear which Scottish Government portfolio should come with the biggest career warning for Ministers on the way up.
For a while, it did look like it might be health: after all, who wants to cope with winter deaths, missed waiting times and patients stuck on trolleys.
But there have also been times when education was the Scottish political equivalent of the Black Spot. Indeed, every time there is an exams fiasco, all the other Ministers sigh with relief that this particularly thorny brief does not belong to them.
However, given the way things are going with ScotRail, there really is only one contender for the title of ‘Department of Doom’: it has to be transport.
It has already accounted for one SNP Minister. Stuart Stevenson was the first Nationalist to hold the post. He was also the first to resign. Having decided to downplay the traffic chaos caused by a snowstorm that left motorists stranded on the M8 back in 2010, he had to go.
Mr Stevenson lost his job because of the roads. Mr Yousaf is under pressure on the railways.
Now, everyone knows ScotRail is in a mess. The company is fighting the bolshie rail unions on one hand and trying to cope with Ministers breathing down its neck on the other.
It has been fined for keeping its stations and rolling stock in a shabby condition and is facing almost daily opprobrium for failing to run the trains on time.
Labour and the unions certainly think they have Mr Yousaf on the run. Kezia Dugdale tried to pin all ScotRail’s woes on him at First Minister’s Questions last week.
Aslef, the train drivers’ union, even called for him to be sacked.
A spokesman was forced to say Nicola Sturgeon still had ‘absolute confidence’ in her Transport Minister – the first real sign of serious pressure.
Mr Yousaf, for his part, is trying to push all the blame onto ScotRail and is threatening the company with nationalisation if it doesn’t improve its services.
This looks like a smart move because it helps keep the blame on the company. But really, nationalising ScotRail could be one of the worst moves the SNP Government ever makes.
That is because, at the moment, Mr Yousaf can hide behind ScotRail bosses and blame our beleaguered train operator for all that passengers have to endure.
But if the entire rail network is nationalised, it will be his railway. He will be the Scottish equivalent of the Fat Controller. The buck will most definitely stop with him.
So, when those complaints start piling up, when the trains fail to run on time, when there are leaves on the line or snow heaped on the tracks, Mr Yousaf will be the one responsible.
But there is a wider point here. Where exactly is the evidence that suddenly ScotRail is going to get better just because it is run by the Government and not by a private company?
Labour’s gripe with Dutch firm Abellio, which runs the ScotRail franchise, seems to be that public money is going abroad, to the shareholders, instead of being invested in the railways here. But what is often overlooked is that millions are being invested in our railway, by that same company, at the same time.
ALSO, as a commercial enterprise, it has an interest in making the railway as competitive as possible, in attracting as many passengers as it can, in winning back motorists and making the experience as cheap and enjoyable as possible. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t make any money and, more importantly, it wouldn’t hit the targets that allow it to retain the contract.
As someone who uses the railway regularly, I know what a poor state it is in. I arrived at
KEZIA Dugdale really hit home last week when she accused embattled Transport Minister Humza Yousaf of travelling round the country in his ‘ministerial car’ while passengers suffered on the railway. When it then emerged that Mr Yousaf was going to ScotRail’s control centre early one morning to see for himself how things were doing, a spokesman was quick to point out that he would be going there ‘by train’. One suspects, given the success of Labour’s barbs, Mr Yousaf will be travelling everywhere by train for the foreseeable future.
Waverley for my train the other day to find it was so packed no one was being allowed on. That was because the previous train had been cancelled, forcing two loads of passengers on to the same – two-carriage – train. And that was not exceptional.
But I also remember British Rail. It was so bad it became a standing joke – worldwide.
ScotRail needs to improve its service drastically. It knows that, if it fails to do so, it will lose the contract and millions of pounds as a result. It is in its interests to do all it can to make things better – which is probably as much as anyone can hope for.
But if the railways are nationalised, does anyone really think the service is going to improve, that glistening new rolling stock will suddenly appear or that more tracks will immediately be laid to ease the congestion?
Labour wants to nationalise the railways because it believes in state ownership. That is a flawed view, but understandable from a party of the Left.
But the SNP? Why on Earth would it go down the same route, particularly as it will lead to Transport Ministers, such as Mr Yousaf, taking all the blame when things go wrong?
As he looks up on entering his office tomorrow, Mr Yousaf will not see any sign warning him of the perils of his job. But if he decides to turn ScotRail into a latter-day version of British Rail, that imaginary sign may well become his political epitaph.