• Rennie puts questions to minister over Lower Melville Wood fire
• Cole-Hamilton slams SNP for more miserable health figures
• Youth unemployment in Wales soars nine times faster than Scotland as Welsh Lib Dems warn of “Lost Generation”

Rennie puts questions to minister over Lower Melville Wood fire

North East Fife MSP Willie Rennie has today written to the new community safety minister, Kirsten Oswald MSP, to raise more than a dozen questions about the Lower Melville Wood fire and how the incident was handled. He has also called for a public meeting to discuss the future of the site.

Following the major fire which broke out at the Lower Melville Wood waste processing and transfer facility three weeks ago, Willie Rennie has written to the Scottish Government’s new community safety minister to raise a number of questions which have been raised with him by people in the area around the fire who have been worst affected, and which he wants to be addressed by an investigation into the fire.

These questions include:

• What was the initial cause of the fire?

• Why was the fire able to spread across the compartments to the neighbouring waste when those compartments were designed to stop spread?

• Did other fires on the site in recent months trigger an upgrade to fire prevention measures?

• Why was there so much waste stored on the site?

• Why was the fire judged to be level one?

• Why was it not felt necessary to have local, mobile air quality monitors?

He has also questioned the communications to local people throughout the incident, which he described as ‘poor’.

Willie Rennie said:

The fire was a major incident and I am grateful to the emergency services and other staff who have been involved in dealing with it. It has been difficult, methodical work to contain the fire and dowse a large volume of smouldering material. While I have tried to get answers for local people, I believed that the focus should be on dealing with the incident.

However, now that the emergency services have returned the site to Cireco, I want to turn to an investigation into this incident. This needs to be carried out thoroughly and robustly but also as quickly as possible. Local people also believe that it should be carried out independently.

Throughout the fire many of the people living closest to it – the people who were hit hardest by smoke, exacerbated medical conditions, and road closures – felt that they were left in the dark, without clear communications from the authorities dealing with this incident. They are looking for explanations and assurances, and they deserve to get them.

That is why I have written to the Scottish Government to set out what I believe needs to be included in the investigation. I have also made clear that there needs to be a public meeting to address these issue directly with the local communities.

Cole-Hamilton slams SNP for more miserable health figures

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has criticised the SNP for presiding over thousands of people waiting hours at A&E, huge numbers of patients marooned in hospital, long waits for mental health care and worrying vacancies amid nursing and midwifery staff.

New figures published today reveal:

• This week, 3,574 people waited over 8 hours at A&E, while 1,500 waited more than 12 hours.
• In April 2026, 1,950 people were marooned in hospital due to their discharge being delayed.
• At the end of March, more than 2,800 adults, children and young people who were waiting or had started treatment at the end of the quarter were waiting more than a year.
• As at the end of March, there are 2,710 vacancies among nursing and midwifery staff.

On A&E waiting times, Alex said:

The fact that there were virtually no 12 hour waits when the SNP first took power shows just how much they have failed.

To cut these horrific waits, we need to fix the broken care system. The gaps in community care are a bottleneck that’s causing 2,000 people a night to be marooned in hospital when they don’t need or want to be there.

You simply cannot fix the NHS without fixing social care.

On delayed discharge, Alex said:

Lots of these patients are medically ready to leave hospital but are prevented from doing so because of shortage of care workers and care packages.

The SNP promised to get on top of this problem a decade ago but it’s now costing the NHS an eyewatering £1.2 million a day.

The only way to fix these delays is to fix the broken social care system- my party made that a major priority in our election campaign.

We want to boost pay and conditions, establish clear career pathways so more people choose to work in care and create new housing reserved for key workers.

On mental health waiting times, Alex said:

On the SNP’s watch, people are facing endless waits for mental health care, which only risks problems getting worse.

Scottish Liberal Democrats have proposed training and recruiting more professionals. We want to put them close to where you live in locations like your local surgery and new walk-in mental health centres.

Scotland deserves world-class mental health services and the Scottish Liberal Democrats have a realistic plan to end years of SNP neglect.

On nursing vacancies, Alex said:

The problems with vacancies can be traced all the way back to Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP cutting training places and claiming that was ‘sensible’.

With staff now run ragged, they are struggling to provide the high-quality care patients need, and many are reaching for the door.

Scottish Liberal Democrats want better for our nurses and midwives so we can deliver first-rate healthcare to everyone. There needs to be a proper 10-year workforce plan for NHS and care to get on top of what they need.

Youth unemployment in Wales soars nine times faster than Scotland as Welsh Lib Dems warn of “Lost Generation”

New figures highlighted by the Welsh Liberal Democrats show a sharp deterioration in youth unemployment in Wales, with unemployment among 16–24-year-olds rising by 9.5 percentage points between 2024 & 2025, almost nine times faster than in Scotland (1.1 percentage points) and five times faster than the UK average (1.9 percentage points).

There are now 32,800 unemployed young people in Wales, with a youth unemployment rate of 16.3 per cent. That is significantly higher than Scotland’s rate of 12.6 per cent and above the UK average of 13.5 per cent. Wales is now closer to countries with long-standing youth unemployment problems, such as France and Italy, than many other parts of the UK and risks reaching levels seen in Spain and Greece if the current trajectory continues.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats warned that Wales risks creating a “lost generation” unless urgent action is taken to reverse years of economic underperformance.

The party says the figures reflect the failure of successive Labour & Conservative governments to secure the infrastructure investment, research and development funding and economic growth Wales needs to create high-skilled jobs. They also warned that Labour’s increase in National Insurance contributions is making matters worse, with businesses contacting David Chadwick MP to report that rising employment costs have forced them to reduce recruitment and, in some cases, let younger workers go.

The Liberal Democrats are calling on the new Plaid Cymru-led Welsh Government to immediately reverse the previous Welsh Labour Government’s 25 per cent cut to the apprenticeship budget and prioritise skills and workforce development.

The party also warned that soaring housing costs and growing student debt are making it harder for young people to build their lives in Wales, while thousands continue to leave for opportunities elsewhere in the UK. This brain drain reduces the tax base, weakens local economies and places greater pressure on public services as Wales’s population ages.

Commenting, Welsh Liberal Democrat spokesperson David Chadwick MP said:

Wales is heading in the wrong direction, and these figures should be setting alarm bells ringing in both Cardiff Bay and Westminster.

The most alarming statistic is not where Wales is today, but how quickly the situation is deteriorating. This is not an unavoidable trend. Other parts of the UK are showing that far better outcomes are possible. The question is why young people in Wales are paying the price for years of economic failure.

For too long, Labour and Conservative governments have failed to secure the investment Wales needs to succeed.

At the same time, businesses are telling me that Labour’s National Insurance jobs tax is forcing them to scale back recruitment and, in some cases, let younger workers go altogether. That is the last thing Wales needs when youth unemployment is already rising so rapidly.

The new Welsh Government must act immediately by reversing Labour’s damaging 25 per cent cut to apprenticeship funding and putting skills and job creation back at the heart of economic policy.

If young people cannot build their futures in Wales, Wales cannot build a prosperous future for itself. The Welsh Liberal Democrats will continue to champion our younger generations in both Westminster and the Senedd.