30/07/2013 Newsnight Scotland

began and considers traitor. -- but Following allegations of physical

and sexual abuse at this Catholic boarding school police say they are

launching an enquiry. So far the Catholic hierarchy has said nothing,

but can they remain silent? And we hear from coach operators who

support three bus travel but say there needs to be a change of gear.

Fort Augustus Abbey School was with some of Scotland's's leading

Catholic families chose to send their sons, confident they would

receive the best academic and spiritual education. But some

received physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the Benedictine

monks who ran the school which closed 20 years ago. The BBC heard

accounts of physical and sexual abuse at Fort Augustus and its

feeder school, Carlekemp in East Lothian -- East Lothian. In one

case, an Australian monk repeatedly sexually abused a pupil. The

headmaster failed to alert police and the monk was sent back to

Australia with no warnings about his offending. He became a parish priest

in Sydney. The Benedictine order is answerable only to the Pope. The

Catholic hierarchy in Scotland has not commented on the investigation.

Instead, Tina Campbell, the safeguarding adviser for the

dioceses of Motherwell, has spoken for the church. She has accepted

apologies must come from the top. It makes a tremendous difference for it

to come from the leaders and the Shepards in our church.

I know that some of our bishops are meeting with victims and offering a

healing ministry. That is never reported but for a lot of people

that is where it needs to come from. I think it is important that the

church involved takes this seriously, I saw reports last night

that suggests the currently the ship do, but also that steps are taken to

make sure this cannot happen in the future.

The allegations come in a difficult year for the Catholic Church in

Scotland. Cardinal Keith O'Brien resigned in February after admitting

improper sexual conduct towards fellow priests. Several dioceses are

without the Bishop as the church continues to face questions about

how it atones for its failings. I am joined by Mark Daly, who has

been investigating the story for the past few months, and Stephen

McGinty, who writes on church matters.

Mark, what reaction have you had from the high heads in the Catholic

Church today? None. The police have confirmed they are investigating,

politicians have been calling for action, the head of the Benedictine

monks has been saying they will launch some sort of Hinckley, but

the silence from the senior clergy in the church has been deafening. --

some sort of Hinckley. In Canada call sense, the Benedictines are

answerable only to the Pope. -- in a canonical sense. As you saw in the

piece, Fort Augustus was frequently visited and vociferously supported

by the cream of the Catholic Church - bishops, Cardinals, who supported

the school for decades. As recently as 2000, the former Bishop of

Glasgow, Mario Conti, he said that the Abbey School had profoundly

influenced the Catholic Church in Scotland. The school was

inextricably bound up with the fabric of the church. That being the

case, washing their hands and saying this is a Benedictine matter,

nothing to do with us, that does not really wash with the victims. They

expect answers from the people at the top of the Catholic Church. They

expect accountability, and the way they feel they will get this is the

-- through a full and open transparent inquiry.

Do you feel this is a mistake? I think in terms of public relations

it would be appropriate. It is not just public relations. The

thing I find difficult to understand is this distinction, the

Benedictines are directly accountable to Rome and we are the

hierarchy in Scotland - again, it is all talking about, if you like, the

producers of the problem and not the victims. The victims are the flock,

these were Catholic children, Catholic families who thought they

were interesting there children to the church of which they were

members there is a cruel -- and there is a peculiar lack of concern

about that. The church's argument is that this is a Benedictine matter

and the head of the big team -- Benedictines has been explaining the

situation. The overarching view of it is that this is a crisis within

the Catholic Church, another ingredient to that crisis.

It is important for the leadership of the Catholic Church to step

forward and say that we are aware of what is going on, historically, with

these cases and that things having placed to tackle it. Is that going

Also, what else has gone on? The really striking thing, in Mark's

film come it showed new allegations of abuse of -- at Fort Augustus, but

allegations of abuse by priests are hardly new. We have massive scandals

in America and other places. I don't remember the Catholic Church saying

at other points we will know that these go back and investigate every

institution and dioceses we were involved in to see what we can

discover rather than reacting to stuff that is brought out in the

press. In 1995 Catholic priest was prosecuted and sent down for child

abuse, then the Catholic Church decided to get to grips with this.

They organised a national body within the Catholic Church to look

at it and they pulled together a number of cases and started

reviewing them. What was interesting was is that in 1985 they said we

have got to grips with this situation comedies under control,

but then in 2004 the director of child progression -- protection

wrote a very tough memo saying that enough -- not enough was being done.

Problem priests were not being adequately supervised and eight

years on the Catholic Church would say, well, we have dealt with this,

we are tackling it, but the problem is now known -- most people no

longer give the Catholic Church the benefit of the doubt. There is a

feeling that there should be proper accountability, and more importantly

for the church, they have to be more open about what they have done and

are continuing to do. That is crucial and people are not seeing

that. Yes, and if they will not be, others

will step in. You were in a school near meeting this film and they have

taken it out of the hands of the church there, haven't they? Yes, it

reached a tipping point. One of the Cardinals, the senior clergy in

Sydney, he talked about a crisis in faith as a result of this drip, drip

of constant scandals, and it all came to a head last year. If I can

read a quote from one of the senior police officers involved in one of

the recent investigations into abuse in the Catholic Church, he said, I

can testify from Michael and experience that the church covers

up, silences victims, Enders police investigations, lets offenders,

destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the church. -- testify

from my own experience. A Royal commission was launched because,

even if there are the best practices in place today, there are people in

Australia that feel they cannot truly move on, they cannot have

confidence in the policies they have today until they go right back to

the beginning. And that Royal commission is still going on.

It has only just kicked off, just giving evidence.

The Pope's comments yesterday were not about the same thing but he is

being much more conciliatory. Why not get everything out in the open?

That is the problem, that is the Catholic Church's attitude.

They always keep things behind closed doors and deal with things in

the church. I think those days effectively are over.

We will have to leave it there. Thank you both. Free bus travel for

the over 60s was launched seven years ago by a Lib Dem minister.

Oddly enough, it has become one of the flagship policies of the SNP

government. Could it be the scheme which is usually increased access to

public transport is threatening bus Free bus travel for the over 60s

used to be something of a no-brainer. The cash rolled them for

the bus companies, pensioners could travel all over Scotland free of

charge and everyone loved the government for it. But things have

changed. The subsidy pot is shrinking and the cost of running a

bus service is rising. Bus companies say that could lead to cuts in roots

and services. The simple answer is that it is one

of the few ways you can save money, cutting services. It will probably

force people into making decisions that under normal business rules you

would not make. Really, cutting services, cutting males, cutting

journeys is one of the few ways you can save costs if you have an

efficient operation. I think it is fair to say that in the Scottish bus

industry we have a fairly efficient operation.

The scheme works on the basis that operators are no better or worse off

for participating, but bus companies are getting less from the government

than they used to, even though the scheme is just as popular.

When the scheme first started, the government gave bus companies 73% of

every pensioner's Feher. Three years later and that fell to 67%. No

companies are looking at getting just 60% back from the government.

-- melody is complete. Here at McGill's they have invested in new

buses. The company has grown by 20% thanks to the free bus travel scheme

but its popularity among the over 60s puts pressure on the service.

Nearly 40% of my revenue comes from the concessionary scheme.

Traditionally it was about 20% of the customer base was an OAP, which

is what they were cold. The problem now is it is too big a part of your

business. If the income falls but the passenger journeys are still

there, you don't not have the normal levers you can pull in business in

order to make efficiencies and savings. That is an issue, because

the people affected will not be the concession cardholders, but the

other people, the people that are cash payers and not causing this

problem. I would like to see something along the lines of what is

done in England with the concessionary scheme, whereby there

is a curfew, nine EMR Tenney, we are people using their card before that

time have to contribute towards the cost of that. -- 9am or 10am curfew.

The result is one other option is that if you only had over 65 Google

Jew would have a five-year holiday where you do not issue cards at

all. But would passengers be prepared for

something -- to pay for something that has been free for years.

Would you be prepared to pay 50p to get on a bus to Largs?

I would want to get there. If it came to the push they were taking it

away from us, no chance, I will walk everywhere.

We would need to pay it if they put it on, but I don't think we should

need to pay it. I wouldn't mind paying it.

I wouldn't mind paying 50 prints. That is just the way he is. But I

don't think it is right. It should be free.

The trains do it. No, that is out, no. I don't have the money. I'm a

pensioner! The charity age of Scotland accepts

something needs to be done to make the scheme sustainable but says

charging even a small adult money could discourage people from using

the bus at all. Loneliness and isolation is a problem in Scotland,

so anything that will have an impact on allowing older people to get out

and about from a social aspect and using services, we would have grave

concerns. What we are trying to proposes there is a way of paying

for that, and again we would advocate looking at the eligibility

age, and that is again through canvassing older people who would be

supportive of it. Advocates of the travel scheme say

its benefits go beyond the over 60s, creating more jobs at bus companies

and getting pensioners spending on the high street. But is it a luxury

we can no longer afford? Well, we could not convince anyone

from the government or from transport Scotland to join us, but I

am joined from Edinburgh by', the -- by George Mair, who is the director

of the Federation of transport Scotland.

Robert Magill clearly thinks it is a problem, is it to do with this cap?

Is that the main issue? I think we have to continue to work

with governments to explore the opportunity in these constrained

times to find ways to manage the scheme more effectively, but also

perhaps reduce the financial burden on Governor. The simple answer is it

quite clearly cannot be maintained. -- burden on government. We have

spent a lot of time this last year working with government to get a

base set, developed a model to de-dash-macro predict the cost of

the scheme going forward. This scheme is so important we have to

continue that work going forward. What is wrong with this team at the

moment to Michael is it because it is nice weather too many old people

are getting on the buses and because there is a cap there is no return

from it? This year we are seeing an

increasing patronage, and the likelihood is if that was to

continue throughout the of the year, we would see operators being paid at

a lower level than the 60% that has been agreed. That is quite a

perverse situation, that we complain about seeing a growth in patronage.

The way to deal with that is to work closely with government to get the

scheme to a sustainable level. you accept that shelling out more

public money is not a solution for you, what is a solution?

As was mentioned in that interview, there are options. The age criteria,

for example. In England it is linked to pensionable age. You can have a

period that is phased in, so that people who have passed on to lose

the benefit. Just to simplify this, rather than

60 years could be 65, that is what you are saying? Yes, and you would

have a period of grace that cards are not issued, reducing the cost to

government, and if you even charged 10p over 146 million journeys, that

would take a huge pressure off the government.

10p? Yes, on 146 million journeys.

That would be enough? These are options that need to be

explored. As matters stand, are we to take the

threat from some of the bus companies that there will be cuts in

services seriously? I very much hope the model we have

developed in conjunction with transport Scotland will hold us in

good stead. We agree the parameters of the model and that will drive the

outcomes. The government has accepted the agreement we have at

present and we will be working with Transport Scotland in the weeks

ahead to look beyond... I gather that means there may be cuts in

services unless you reach a deal? If the only answer is reimbursement,

there is not a great deal of options left to deal with that.

Thank you very much. Now a look at tomorrow's front pages.

Bradley Manning is on many of them. There is a picture of him, US

WikiLeaks soldier guilty of espionage. Bradley Manning, cleared

of aiding an enemy but still facing 154 years in jail.

The Daily Telegraph - Tory adviser backs fracking in desolate

north-east. John Humphrys is a victim of BBC

left-wing bias, apparently. That is according to the Daily Telegraph,