By MICHAEL BLACKLEY SCOTTISH POLITICAL EDITOR FOR THE DAILY MAIL
Nearly £3million of compensation has been paid out to Caledonian Sleeper passengers since the service was nationalised by SNP ministers in 2023.
The huge payouts, which amount to more than £22,000 per week, were made to compensate travellers for delays to the service.
It's led to claims SNP ministers are 'making a mess' of running the popular overnight route, which links Scottish stations to London, while taxpayers are picking up the tab for passengers being 'let down'.
Since the service was brought into public ownership two and a half years ago, a total of £2.73million has been paid out to passengers beset by delays to their journey.
Under the national Delay Repay scheme, passengers are entitled to compensation if their train arrives at its destination station more than 30 minutes later than its scheduled time.
Scottish Conservative transport spokesman Sue Webber said: 'The SNP promised that nationalising our sleeper service was the best option. But these figures show that passengers are being let down by a service that's too often late and taxpayers are picking up the tab for compensating them.'
The payments were made to compensate travellers for delays to the Caledonian Sleeper service.
Transport minister Fiona Hyslop said services 'may need on occasion to be cancelled'.
The popular service offers an overnight trip with cabins between London and Scotland.
'As with their botched ScotRail nationalisation, it appears the SNP are making a mess of running the Caledonian Sleeper.
'Shelling out almost £3million on reimbursing travellers is the last thing we can afford at a time when the SNP's financial mismanagement is leading to swinging spending cuts and tax rises.
'Rail users have consistently been let down by the SNP failing to deliver on their promises. Their incompetence is driving people back into their cars and onto the roads.
'If the SNP insist on nationalising Scotland's rail services, they must make sure they're able to efficiently run them - instead of running them into the ground.'
The Caledonian Sleeper service was formally taken over by the Scottish Government in June 2023 - a year after ScotRail returned to public ownership.
It had previously been operated by Serco, which was awarded the franchise for the period from 2015 to 2030 in a deal worth £800million.
The new figures, obtained by the Scottish Conservatives following freedom of information requests, show that £492,846 was paid out for 30-minute delays, £1,937,022 for delays of more than one hour, as well as £296,482 for other 'manual' claims.
'The number of compensation cases paid out since Caledonian Sleeper entered public ownership until the end of October 2025 represents approximately 3.4 per cent of almost 480,000 journeys during the same period. 'Any disruption to passengers is regrettable and it is only right that Caledonian Sleeper do all they can to compensate where journeys are delayed or cancelled. 'With bookings at a high and great passenger satisfaction results, we are focused on ensuring the publicly owned Caledonian Sleeper is a success rather than criticising on past disruption - particularly when blame for more than half of all delay compensation claims rests elsewhere.'