In his Courier column last week, MSP Craig Hoy flagged constituent concerns over East Coast Buses’ recently reinstated X5 service and apparent wider issues across our bus network.

To those who have suffered travel disruption, let me first apologise while providing some explanation and, at the same time, a response to the hypocrisy of Mr Hoy’s continuing criticisms.

Courier readers and regular county bus users will well remember the dire standards of service on routes into Edinburgh prior to East Coast Buses.

The operator then was First East, a typical product of Craig Hoy’s Tory party’s disastrous deregulation of the UK bus industry during the Thatcher era.

READ MORE: Craig Hoy MSP column: Concerns over X5 bus service

When First decided to withdraw entirely from East Lothian, the response from Lothian Buses was to set up our subsidiary East Coast Buses; this in the belief that we could provide an alternative viable service based on our public ownership model, the commercial acumen of our management team, and our customer service ethos. So it proved.

On introduction, East Coast Buses was hugely successful. Funded entirely from Lothian’s own resources, the initial East Coast Buses fleet of second-hand refurbished single-decked vehicles was replaced within a year by state-of-the-art brand new low-emission equivalents.

As passenger numbers continued to rise, a further year later new double-decked vehicles began to be introduced.

Unfortunately, the Covid pandemic and the consequent national lockdown in April 2020 changed everything. Virtually overnight, the very existence of the Lothian business was under threat.

Two and a half years on, this doomsday prospect has been avoided but Lothian and East Coast passenger numbers have yet to get back to pre-Covid levels. Alongside this, Scottish Government funding support which enabled services like the X5 to be reintroduced will now cease at the end of October.

To these two formidable business challenges, we are also grappling with a growing problem of driver retention and recruitment. Similar recruitment difficulties are being experienced by many industry sectors and Craig Hoy should reflect on the relationship between this issue and his Tory party’s fixation with Brexit.

Instead of sniping from the sidelines, Craig Hoy could use his status as a Scottish Parliamentarian to push for continuing support for the bus industry. He could also lead by example. I look forward to his next X5 photo opportunity being one of him actually using the service on his commute into the Parliament.

Given the challenges that I have outlined in this letter, for the X5 and many of our wider services, the bus industry truism of ‘Use it or lose it’ has sadly never been more pertinent.

Jim McFarlane

Chair, Lothian Buses