Politics latest: Humza Yousaf fields questions on ‘messy break-up’ as deal with Scottish Greens scrapped

Sky’s deputy political editor Sam Coates gets the first question to shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh. 

He puts it to her that given public money is tight, trains will be a lower priority than schools or hospitals. 

“We are in a very constrained public spending environment, there is no doubt about that,” she replies. 

“But the reforms we are setting out today will deliver significant efficiencies and cost savings for the taxpayer.

“The taxpayer simply can’t afford to continue with the current broken model that is throwing good money after bad.”

She says Labour estimates the efficiencies “will save the taxpayer as much as £2.2bn every year”. 

Sam pushes her on whether the efficiency savings will then be channelled back into the railways. 

She says Labour “would hope that we would reinvest some of those savings”. 

But she admits: “We’ve not got an agreement that all of it would be”.

“These reforms will allow us to demonstrate that we can get better bang for our buck, and deliver a better service for passengers as well,” she says.

Outlining more details about Labour’s plan, she adds: “We are not changing the way trains are financed. We are not bringing the trains themselves into public ownership. Our model will continue to lease from the private sector.”