ELECTION 2021: Findlater urges 'fair share' of investment for north-east economy

THIS week, we asked the candidates standing in Banffshire and Buchan Coast to share their views as to how the area could recover from the economic ravages of the Covid pandemic.

Conservative candidate Mark Findlater gives his view on how the party can help the area emerge stronger from the pandemic:

As I write this, the UK vaccines programme has reached almost 32 million people, 2.5m in Scotland alone. The scale of the response is incredible.

Vaccines are critical to beating this awful virus and reopening our economy. But it won’t be enough to leave recovery at that. We have to invest in the future, stimulate growth, and speak up for our rural and coastal communities in the next Scottish Parliament.

The first thing Scottish Conservative MSPs will do is get a fair share of funding for this part of Scotland, to ramp up our economy and create jobs.

Every Aberdeenshire man, woman and child got £165 less from the SNP government than they should have for council services this year. That’s £43 million for 2021 alone. I’ll help fix that as your MSP. No more paying over the score to get the scraps from the Central Belt.

Poor connectivity. In this constituency, you’re eight times more likely to have poor internet than someone in Glasgow. I’ll make the SNP’s woeful R100 programme work for us.

There has been massive UK and industry investment recently in our renewables capacity, and a £16 billion transition deal for oil and gas. Carbon capture and hydrogen power will create great jobs for us and our bairns for years to come. The next Scottish Government must step up to the plate and match our ambition.

There needs to be new farming support to give certainty to our markets. Despite UK guarantees for overall farm funding to 2024, nothing from Holyrood.

We need both Scotland’s governments to work together for the post-Covid recovery of the fishing industry, now we are an independent coastal state. As well as millions in additional support for the whole sector, UK Ministers are in daily contact with industry representatives, as I have been as a candidate, as has Douglas Ross.

Other things to boost our economy — fixing punitive business rates, and the higher taxes hard-working families pay here compared to other parts of the UK.

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