Dundee Liberal Democrats - www.dundeelibdems.scot

Speaking ahead of tomorrow's statement from the First Minister in which she is expected to set out an expansion of Covid ID cards, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and health spokesperson Alex Cole-Hamilton urged the government to ditch the "unworkable" scheme and demanded a full parliamentary vote on any further expansion before it comes into force.

Scottish Liberal Democrat justice spokesperson Liam McArthur has today urged the Scottish Government to deliver workable proposals on drug consumption rooms and for the leaders of the SNP and Scottish Conservative party to declare their support for trials to go ahead.

Mr McArthur's remarks come on the occasion of the First Minister's joint visit with Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross to the Bluevale Community Club in Glasgow's Haghill area.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today unveiled a series of proposals to prevent burnout among NHS staff amid warnings that they are set to face the hardest winter in the health service's history.

In the first of a series of interventions designed to offer New Hope for Health, Mr Cole-Hamilton is calling for a new urgent Burnout Prevention Strategy, to include:

Let's Make Lib Dems BME Friendly - It's Not What We Do, But How We Do It That Counts

Below is an outline of why I am standing for Vice President.

I am an established Race Equality and Diversity campaigner with a Business Management background and an established record of striving for Race Equity across the Party. In the course of my 25 years as Party member I have served on the Federal Policy Committee, International Relations Committee, been Secretary of the PCA, vice chair of EMLD and served as a Regional Diversity Champion. I am also Secretary of Lib Dem Friends of India. It is this personal history that accounts for my reputation as a Community Champion within the Party and my high profile amongst BME communities nationally.

Time and time again, we hear that the reality of what ethnic minorities face in our party and in our politics does not match up to the principles we hold, and, as a party committed to equality, it is vital that we apply our values and make a change. I will provide the positive vision and leadership we need to move forward and make that happen.

A campaigning Vice President, for a campaigning Party

I was a 100/200m Sprinter. Catastrophe struck in my early 20's when my achilles tendon ruptured. For 20 months I was in a wheelchair. I needed wheelchair-friendly public transport to hospital and the inadequacy of it shocked me. It made me realise that everyone has a choice. When you see something that's wrong, do you leave it for someone else, or do you fight for change?

Vision

My goals for this role are:

• I want to help provide a platform for better training and promote a programme that supports ethnic minority members to develop their potential, so they are competently able to stand for external and internal elections of office
• I want to see established an attractive and resilient message that helps to build a strong foundation for the Liberal Democrats to engage and campaign with in Ethnic Minority communities
• Within the party, I want to establish a better understanding of Ethnic minority issues on housing, education, LGBT+, heath, crime, etc. This will allow us to better serve the ethnic minority communities at a national and local level

You, as Liberal Democrat members, have asked me for a diverse, inclusive party that represents all sections of all our communities well.

I am standing to be your Vice President for minority communities to promote inclusion and to eliminate racism and other discrimination from inside our party, to inspire more and more candidates from under-represented groups to stand and to inspire all of us to engage on a sustained and substantive basis with all of the UK's communities so that we eliminate exclusion and disadvantage.