Dundee Liberal Democrats - www.dundeelibdems.scot

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie has today urged the First Minister to clear up whether staff in cafes, pubs and restaurants should be wearing face coverings. He has made the call after the First Minister reprimanded some businesses for failing to ensure staff were wearing face coverings despite the government's guidance and the law not requiring it.

Commenting on last night's BBC Scotland Disclosure programme, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said:

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie has today demanded the First Minister withdraw support for the expansion of Heathrow, stressing that the project is "fundamentally incompatible" with a green recovery from the coronavirus and "endangering the climate".

In response to a parliamentary question this week, Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Michael Matheson, stated: "Yes, we remain committed to the memorandum of understanding between the Scottish Government and Heathrow."

Postal Votes

Postal votes have gone to print on the 27th July 2020. The initial run was around 5,000 voters. These will be sent to Royal Mail on the 29th July 2020.

We expect paper ballots to land between the 30th July and the 2nd August in the UK. We expect this to take up to the 14th August for non-UK postal ballots.

Scottish Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Alex Cole-Hamilton has today called on the Scottish Government to explore publishing more regularly official statistics on the number of deaths by suicide to help react to the mental health tidal wave that it is feared has been caused by Covid-19.

This week the National Suicide Prevention Leadership Group raised concerns about the impact of the virus crisis on mental health and called on the government to "undertake enhanced monitoring of statistics on suicide and self-harm to identify emerging trends and groups at risk, to enable early preventative action".

As hotels follow self-catering accommodation in re-opening Far North MP Jamie Stone has made a plea for travellers to be cautious on Scotland's trunk roads as he revealed figures showing there were 785 serious or fatal accidents on Scotland's trunk road network between January 2017 and summer 2019.

Information provided by the Scottish Government to the Scottish Liberal Democrats, revealed that trunk roads taking people to the Highlands and North East including the A82, A9 and A90 saw the most accidents in which someone was injured or killed.

The Scottish Liberal Democrat Leader has today asked the First Minister to use her first press briefing since the reintroduction of the Spanish quarantine to publish the science and the review which underpinned the lifting of the quarantine three days earlier.

Willie Rennie warned that the Scottish Government is putting public trust at risk if it refuses to publish that advice.

Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, Jamie Stone, has coordinated an open letter calling on the Government to support the 3 million people that have been excluded from support during the pandemic. It has been signed by 99 MPs from 9 different parties, who are members of his ExcludedUK All Parliamentary Party Group.