Dundee Liberal Democrats - www.dundeelibdems.scot

Responding to reports that the EIS Union has written to the Education Secretary to demand the scrapping of national testing for P1 pupils, Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Tavish Scott MSP said:

"Teachers are quite clear that national testing for five-year-olds is counterproductive and useless. Why is John Swinney still pretending that everything is fine?

Commenting on statistics showing that of 551 revenge porn complaints received by police in the first year of the new laws coming into force, less than half were reported on to prosecutors, Scottish Liberal Democrat justice spokesperson Liam McArthur MSP said:

"New legislation can take time to settle in but the authorities need to closely monitor and understand the gap between the number of reports received and the number passed to prosecutors.

Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Tavish Scott MSP has today laid out a plan to back teachers with a range of proposals designed to restore the status, strength and resilience of the profession to be discussed at the party's conference next month.

The party has repeatedly called for McCrone 2 - an independent expert commission to review teachers' terms and the demands placed upon them. In Dunfermline on 8 September, delegates will now be asked to back the Commission designing and delivering better conditions for teachers including:

Jo Swinson MP has written to Ministers in Westminster and Holyrood demanding action to address the current shortage of EpiPens in pharmacies, which has left anaphylaxis sufferers in East Dunbartonshire and across the country concerned about a lack of access to the life-saving treatment.

According to a recent statement from EpiPen, manufacturing delays have caused the shortage of the 0.3mg Adrenaline Auto-Injectors.

Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Tavish Scott has today said that the Scottish Government must trust teachers or classrooms will face another difficult year as further evidence of the impact of the Government's education policies emerged.

This week:

• Exam results showed the total number of courses passed by S4 pupils has declined by a third since 2013, with education expert Keir Bloomer saying the government had been "sleepwalking" towards a "castrophic" drop, "giving young people fewer opportunities".
• Analysis by Professor Jim Scott showed the number of S4 pupils studying and passing French has dropped by more than 60% (27,626 pupils passed in 2012-13, compared to just 9,854 last year), with other modern languages also experiencing big falls.
• It was revealed that there were almost 700 vacant teacher posts as the new term approaches.

I say no - conscience comes before one's own ambitions and equality, tolerance & justice are far more important that one's own career path. The future of our great United Kingdom and our future generations is far more important than anything else in my view and worth fighting for every step of the way.

Politics surely should be about policies and not personal attacks - what a shame it hasn't remained that way? What I did not realise is that this was just the beginning of a long and rocky ride over the coming months where I saw a real lurch to the right, in the words of the former Tory MP Stephen Phillips QC the party has started to mould itself into 'UKIp-Lite'.

Scottish Liberal Democrat justice spokesperson Liam McArthur MSP has written to the Lord Advocate to query the very low numbers of prosecutions and convictions for the offence of upskirting in Scotland as the Scottish Liberal Democrats revealed that the law has only been used a handful of times a year since it was introduced in 2010.

Commenting on the publication of the Scottish Government's long overdue suicide prevention plan, Scottish Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said:

"The Scottish Government can't be forgiven for letting the last strategy expire 586 days ago, holding back the development of critical and much-needed services. Two people a day die by suicide and it is one of the biggest killers of young men.