I’d rather let this feature slip during the General Election – the flood of press releases, and the fact that they generally got rather better coverage than usual made it seem slightly less necessary to cover them here. But, perhaps now that the news cycle has settled a bit, and given that we have a vastly larger Parliamentary Party in the Commons, this feature may offer some insight into what our new MPs are up to.

That said, there’s only one today…

SEPA need to show plan for cleaning up Portobello

Responding to comments from SEPA, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, saying that paddling or bathing in the water at Edinburgh’s Portobello beach could pose a risk to health, Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West Christine Jardine said:

This is an iconic location in our capital but once again people are being asked to stay out of the water because of threats to health. As Edinburgh gears up for its busiest season, this sends a terrible message.

Residents and visitors need more information out of SEPA as to what is leading to these closures and what action is being taken to deliver a long-term solution.

Scottish Liberal Democrats want a Clean Water Act for Scotland to update the sewage network, proper monitoring to find all the dumping and a complete ban on this filthy practice in protected areas such as bathing waters.

Scottish Liberal Democrats have launched plans for a Clean Water Act that would see:

• Scotland’s Victorian sewage network updated;

• Every sewage dump monitored and published with binding targets for their reduction;

• A blue flag system for Scotland’s rivers;

• A complete ban on the release of sewage in protected areas such as bathing waters.