ScotRail's performance target waived

A trade union has called on the transport secretary to resign after it emerged the Scottish Government will not enforce ScotRail's contract over the next year.

By The Newsroom Thursday, 11th October 2018, 8:35 pm Updated Friday, 12th October 2018, 1:10 pm

Scotrail has come under fire.

Michael Matheson has agreed to waive the operator’s performance benchmarks until June next year.

The Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) said the minister had given ScotRail “carte blanche to fail”.

Sign up to our daily newsletter The i newsletter cut through the noise Sign up Thanks for signing up! Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting...

Scottish Labour said the decision amounted to “moving the goalposts to protect a failing franchise”, but the Government said ministers could hold the operator to account within the terms of the franchise agreement.

ScotRail is required to make sure it maintains certain levels of train operating performance as part of its contract.

Mr Matheson confirmed he has agreed to a temporary waiver on compliance, despite figures published last month showing reliability on ScotRail trains over April to June at their worst level for more than two decades. Other figures also showed punctuality on train services had worsened, with ScotRail returning its worst figures for the same quarter since 2005/06.