I'm calling out Conservatives for their misplaced criticism of ScotRail - Alastair Dalton

Part of my job is to hold those in power to account, but I include not just government ministers and others in positions of authority, but all politicians.

They have an elevated status and stand to influence their supporters - and the wider electorate.

ScotRail can be unfairly blamed for issues that are responsibility of Network Rail | Michael Gillen

Transport can be an easy target for politicians, particularly if they seek to tap into popular prejudices.

The railways have traditionally been a punch bag, perhaps because most people don’t use them regularly and think they must be as awful as they’ve ever been.

Add in nationalisation, and opposition parties have the perfect ideological stick, even if ownership may be irrelevant to whatever difficulties the industry is suffering.

So it’s unsurprising the Scottish Government control of ScotRail has become a favourite way of highlighting any perceived failing. Except when the problem turns out to be nothing to do with the train operator.

I’ve called out the Scottish Liberal Democrats on this in the past. This time it’s the Scottish Conservatives.

The party issued a press release headlined: “Shocking new figures reveal that ScotRail have shelled out almost £2million on replacement buses since the SNP nationalised it in 2022.”

But it turns out the vast majority of this spending was when trains weren’t running because of engineering works by Network Rail, which is a separate, UK government-run body.

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The Scottish Conservatives said: "The shocking bill for replacement buses highlights what a shoddy deal train users and taxpayers are receiving from the SNP's botched nationalisation of ScotRail.”

Well, it doesn’t. But the party appears to have pinned the blame on ScotRail simply because the response it received to a Freedom of Information request seeking the figures did not mention engineering work or Network Rail.

I’d hope that was due to ignorance rather than malevolence, but the apparent lack of checks seems odd, and could pose a reputational risk.

Opposition parties are a vital check on ministers who love to stress the positive and bury the negative. But when it comes to transport, they will come to be trusted no more than those in government if the criticism is so misleading and wide of the mark as it was here.