• Lib Dems call on Farage to intervene after Nottinghamshire Reform council bans local journalists reporting
• Davey calls on Blair to give evidence in Parliament following White House Gaza meeting
• Adult mental health waits stretching to more than 1,000 days
• Rennie comments on report showing bill for flood schemes is spiralling

Lib Dems call on Farage to intervene after Nottinghamshire Reform council bans local journalists reporting

The Liberal Democrats have written to Nigel Farage to demand he intervenes after Reform’s Nottinghamshire County Council Leader blocked his councillors from speaking to local journalists from Nottinghamshire Live and the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Liberal Democrat Culture, Media and Sport spokesperson Max Wilkinson has written to Farage demanding he step in and urge Reform’s council leader Mick Barton to reverse the “dangerous and chilling” decision.

Max Wilkinson said the move risks contravening local government’s code of conduct, which calls on elected officials to “submit themselves to the scrutiny necessary to ensure … accountability”, and prohibits information being withheld from the public “unless there are clear and lawful reasons for doing so”.

Max Wilkinson MP, Liberal Democrat Culture, Media and Sport spokesperson, said:

Reform’s move to block local journalists from reporting on their work is straight out of Donald Trump’s playbook. It’s a cornerstone of our democracy that politicians of all stripes are held to account — but for some reason Farage’s cronies think they can make themselves exempt.

This move sets a dangerous and chilling precedent for if Reform were to win power nationally and goes against our deeply rooted British values of freedom of the press. We must stand up to Reform’s assault on those principles.

Nigel Farage pretends to champion free speech: I’m calling on him to take some responsibility for once in his political career and demand that Nottinghamshire County Council Leader Mick Barton reverses this decision.

Davey calls on Blair to give evidence in Parliament following White House Gaza meeting

Responding to Tony Blair’s meeting at the White House with the Trump administration discussing the war in Gaza, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

Tony Blair needs to come before Parliament to give evidence about his discussions with the Trump administration about the ongoing war and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

If he has special insight into Trump’s intentions, it’s only right that Parliament and the Government are made privy to this.

Trump has a unique power to help end this war, get the hostages out, and get the desperately needed aid in to relieve the horrendous human suffering in Gaza. We must leverage all the information and resources at our disposal to make him do the right thing.

Adult mental health waits stretching to more than 1,000 days

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and health spokesperson Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has today said that the SNP have no plan to fix the crisis in mental health after new research by his party revealed shocking waits for psychological therapies across many of Scotland’s health boards, including a patient waiting more than seven years to start treatment.

It comes as part of a wider investigation by the Scottish Liberal Democrats into the state of mental health services.

A Scottish Liberal Democrat freedom of information request revealed that:

• A patient who started psychological therapy in NHS Highland in 2024/25 had waited 2,736 days.
• In the same period, there were 57 patients who had waited more than a year to start treatment in NHS Lothian, as did 48 in NHS Lanarkshire, 42 in NHS Forth Valley, 36 in NHS Grampian and 22 in NHS Dumfries & Galloway.
• There are currently patients on waiting lists who have been waiting 1,400 days in NHS Highland and 1,022 days in NHS Fife.
• 215 patients are currently waiting more than 2 years in NHS Forth Valley.

Alex Cole-Hamilton said:

For the past two decades, SNP failures have put mental health patients on hold, actively harming their ability to get the treatment and support they need in good time.

With hundreds of patients still facing horrifically long waits, it’s clear the SNP lack any kind of vision or plan for fixing this crisis.

Scottish Liberal Democrats are the party of mental health. We want to drive down waiting times by ramping up training of mental health first aiders and new staff, as well as rolling out more specialists in GP surgeries and A&E departments close to you. By increasing the tax paid by the social media giants who cause so much of the problem, this could provide funding for these vital services.

Scotland needs world class mental health services in every corner of the country. Next May, you can vote for a party who will deliver those services by marking a cross next to the Scottish Liberal Democrats on the peach regional ballot paper.

Rennie comments on report showing bill for flood schemes is spiralling

Responding to the embargoed report from Audit Scotland which warns that existing major flood schemes are taking longer to complete, with expected costs more than doubling to over £1 billion, and that climate change is increasing the severity and frequency of flooding in Scotland, with almost 400,000 properties potentially at risk by 2080, North East Fife MSP Willie Rennie said:

My constituency knows all about the damage that flooding can do and the long-term disruption it can cause,

This report suggests that the Scottish government cannot be trusted to get flood protection projects done on time or under budget.

My party has called for the SNP Government to conduct a review of the current disaster relief scheme for local authorities.

We also need to have a plan for natural management of water by working in partnership with landowners and farmers.

With severe weather now becoming an increasing part of our lives, the Scottish Government need to have strategies that will protect communities and build resilience.

Local authorities cannot be expected to bear the costs alone.