Dundee Liberal Democrats - www.dundeelibdems.scot

Responding to John Swinney's comments at the Scottish Learning Festival, Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Tavish Scott MSP said:

"John Swinney has failed to convince Parliament that his endless pursuit of structural changes to education is working.

"His own self-appointed education advisors have told him to stop obsessing about structure.

Scottish Liberal Democrat MSP Mike Rumbles today used a Holyrood debate to call on the Scottish Government to tackle the inadequacy of mental health services and end the blanket ban on prisoner voting.

Mr Rumbles used the debate on "Dignity, Equality and Human Rights for All" to draw attention to the Scottish Human Rights Commission's warning that in Scotland "significant human rights challenges continue to be felt in people's day-to-day lives".

We need a bold new approach to improving mental health focused on prevention, including giving discounts to business rates for companies that take concrete steps to improve well-being in the workplace.

We also need a pay rise for NHS staff and demanded that Theresa May give EU nationals working in the NHS the right to stay now.

The IFS has demolished Boris Johnson's repeated claim that Brexit will lead to an £350m for the NHS.

In a letter to The Times, the IFS's deputy director Carl Emmerson points out that overall Brexit is actually set to damage the public finances and lead to "net fiscal loss."

This is a point made by the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast and adopted by the government.

Scottish Liberal Democrat health spokesman Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP today said long waits for physio will be affecting people's quality of life after it was revealed a waiting time target was once again missed by a huge margin.

New figures from ISD Scotland show less than 55% of patients referred for physical therapy, occupational therapy, chiropody/podiatry or orthotics were seen within the four-week waiting time target during the quarter ending June 2017.

At our conference today, the Liberal Democrats have agreed to a raft of new policies which will see stricter penalties for companies that break the law, as part of a series of measures to improve corporate governance.

This would include scrapping the need to establish intent or guilt of a senior executive in cases of corporate failure, meaning that companies themselves could be held criminally liable.

In the wake of the recent terrorist outrages it's clear that we need a bold change of strategy to defeat terrorism and counter violent extremism.

To do that, at our Autumn Conference today we have proposed a bold new strategy to defeat terror. At the heart of the strategy being proposed is proper funding and resourcing for the community police.

In surprising news today, the Head of the Deparment for Exiting the European Union, Oliver Robbins has quit to take up a new role after a series of disagreements with David Davis.

I'm glad someone has found an exit from Brexit.

Unfortunately for the government, it's the civil servant who was meant to be leading it.