[Falkirk, 15.07.2026] Falkirk MP and Co-Chair of the British Buses All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), Euan Stainbank, has said that the legal challenge brought by McGill’s raises serious questions about the Scottish Government’s handling of the £45 million ScotZEB3 scheme.
McGill’s has appealed to the Competition Appeal Tribunal after its bid for £4.3 million to purchase 33 zero-emission buses from Falkirk-based Alexander Dennis was rejected.
ScotZEB3 awarded most of the funding available through the £45 million scheme to operators seeking to purchase vehicles from Chinese manufacturer Yutong. This subsequently contributed to up to 115 skilled jobs being put at risk at Alexander Dennis’s Falkirk site.
Documents released under Freedom of Information legislation show that ministers pressed officials to complete the scheme before the pre-election period, despite warnings about the risks created by the compressed timetable.
Mr Stainbank said:
“ScotZEB3 should have supported Scotland’s bus manufacturing sector while helping to decarbonise Scottish transport. Instead, vehicles will be subsidised with Scottish taxpayers’ money while directly threatening jobs and our manufacturing capacity here.
“It is for the Tribunal to determine the legal issues and for McGill’s to make its own case in court.
“The Scottish Government should commit to publishing the fullest possible explanation of the scoring process. It must explain to my constituents how its scheme ended up blocking bids to build cheaper buses in Falkirk while supporting more expensive bids to buy buses from China.”
ENDS
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