• Lib Dems: Tesla announcement demolishes Johnson’s Brexit fantasy
• Jane Dodds: Our benefits system is broken
• Wollaston: Farage voting Tory shows Johnson has drifted to extremes

Lib Dems: Tesla announcement demolishes Johnson’s Brexit fantasy

Responding to the announcement that Tesla will be investing in a new factory in Germany and not the UK due to Brexit uncertainty, Liberal Democrat Shadow Brexit Secretary Tom Brake:

On Boris Johnson’s first day in Downing Street, Dominic Cummings was pictured wearing a T- shirt picturing a company founded by Elon Musk. Now the very entrepreneur Cummings idolises has chosen not to invest in the UK because of the extreme Brexit being pursued by this government.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson is giving a speech at an electric car factory the very same day that we find out this industry is being damaged by his Brexit plans.

You really couldn’t make it up. This completely demolishes the Johnson and Cummings Brexit fantasy and shows their deluded plans are already costing the country vital investment and making us all poorer.

The best way to stop this Brexit nightmare, kick Johnson and Cummings out of Number 10 and build a brighter future is to vote Liberal Democrat on December 12.

Jane Dodds: Our benefits system is broken

Jane Dodds has called the UK Benefits system “broken” and is calling for urgent changes to be made to the way the system operates.

The Trussell Trust, which runs roughly two-thirds of the foodbanks across the UK, has recently published a new report which shows that more people than ever are being forced to rely on foodbanks – with the previous 6 months being their busiest on record.

During the last 6 months, 823,145 emergency food parcels were given to people in crisis in the UK, with more than a third of these (301,653) going to children.

This represents a 23% increase on the same period in 2018, the sharpest rate of increase the charity has seen for the past five years, and the charity has said the main reasons for people needing emergency food is the five-week wait for their first Universal Credit payment.

Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats Jane Dodds said:

Our benefits system is broken, plain and simple. It’s unacceptable that we have thousands of families, including thousands of children, forced to rely upon the support of foodbanks simply to have food on their table.

We should be supporting the most vulnerable people in our society, giving them a helping hand when times are tough. Instead, we’ve got a system which favours sanctions and penalties over compassion and reason.

Things need to change. We need to scrap the 5 week waiting period of Universal Credit payments, to do away with the archaic and heavy-handed system of sanctions and ensure we offer a genuine safety net, one which ensures no one in work needs to rely on foodbanks simply to get by.

Wollaston: Farage voting Tory shows Johnson has drifted to extremes

Responding to the news that Nigel Farage is considering voting Tory at the general election, Liberal Democrat candidate for Totnes and ex-Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston said:

Boris Johnson has drifted so far to the extremes that even Nigel Farage is now considering voting for him.

The Conservative Party is now indistinguishable from the Brexit Party.

Both want to pursue a damaging Brexit, cosy up to Trump and plunge the country back into the past.

As Farage has admitted, the only way to stop this Brexit nightmare becoming a reality is to vote Liberal Democrat, so we can beat Boris Johnson and stop Brexit.