Dave Thompson MSP

We are now well on our way to the UK General Election, with 6th May looking to be a sure bet for the big day and with Brown, Blair and Clegg busy plotting how to keep Alex Salmond off the airwaves.

It is entirely unacceptable to Scotland for the broadcasters to exclude the party that forms the government of Scotland. If these debates are to be at all relevant to their audiences, they must reflect the democratic reality of Scotland and the political diversity across the UK and that must include SNP involvement in debates broadcast in Scotland.

The SNP are seeking to have a substantial influence at Westminster by electing a block of 20 or more MPs, with obvious UK-wide political implications - not least given the perfectly possible outcome of a hung parliament.

On a range of issues, which will loom large in the General Election campaign, the SNP have a distinctive as well as compelling policy position.  For example, while Westminster favours renewing the Trident nuclear weapon submarines on the River Clyde, the SNP will be arguing for none.

At a time when the UK is heavily in debt, whoever wins the election will have to trim public spending. The London parties, which have all acknowledged that the UK Government must make these savage cuts, all plan to slash Scotland's budget, which will squeeze Scottish services and endanger Scottish jobs.

An obvious alternative is to scrap the plans to spend £75 billion over the next 40 years on a new nuclear weapon system to replace Trident. Many people, like General Lord Guthrie, a former Chief of Defence Staff, now agree that Britain can't afford to build a new system like Trident, a position backed by the Scots Parliament, as well as a majority of Scottish Westminster MPs, Scotland's Churches and Trade Unions.

Public spending is also exercising the minds of the LibDems who claim that the SNP Government is favouring the central belt at the expense of the Highlands and Islands, as Glasgow gets more per head than we do, but I am sure you can guess who was in power when the current system was set up. Yes, the LibDems, whose hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Another scandal backed by the LibDems (and Labour and the Tories) has been in spending £500 million on the Edinburgh trams, a project which the SNP government opposed. We also cancelled the proposed Glasgow Airport Rail Link (GARL) so I wonder what sort of mental convolutions they have to make to come to the conclusion we favour the central belt.

In fact, the truth is the opposite and a good example of this is in our commitments to transport spending. The estimated cost of the Strategic Transport Projects Review for Scotland is between £12.11 billion and £20.85 billion and the Highlands/North of Scotland will benefit to the tune of between £3.27 billion and £6.62 billion or 27% to 31% of that.

This funding includes major proposals to dual the A9 from Dunblane to Inverness and the A96 from Inverness to Nairn as well as enhancements to the rail services between Inverness and Perth/Aberdeen. Nothing like this was proposed, never mind achieved, by the LibDems when they were in power for eight years so any claims they now make should be taken with a pinch of salt.

To finish on another transport issue, the Conon Bridge Rail Stop has also featured in recent publicity, with the LibDems again calling for the Scottish Government to fund it. This conveniently ignores the fact that the Council has been given the money by the Government to deal with such rail transport matters and highlights the tendency of the LibDems to be economical with the truth.