Scottish Lib Dems leader, Alex Cole-Hamilton, is hoping to continue balancing his duties at the head of the party alongside those in the new Edinburgh North Western seat.
The 48-year-old was in Portobello on Thursday morning to take part in a litter pick alongside marine conservation charity, Surfers Against Sewage, and took it as an opportunity to reaffirm his commitment to local concerns.
Mr Cole-Hamilton is facing Irshad Ahmed (Labour), Rachel Cairns (Conservative and Unionist Party), David Henry (Workers Party of Britain), Lyn Jardine (SNP) and David Thomson (Reform) for the seat.
Having been MSP for Edinburgh Western for ten years prior to this year’s reorganisation of constituency boundaries, he will be hoping for a similar result to 2021, when he received 25,578 votes, the highest number of votes ever cast for a single candidate in The Scottish Parliament election.
Speaking exclusively to Deadline News, Cole-Hamilton said: “I’m delighted to be standing as a candidate in the new seat of Edinburgh North Western and I’ve proudly represented many of its communities for the last ten years, and I love it very.
“I am raising kids there, sending kids to school there, and it’s a fantastic community. I understand the issues, because I’ve been dealing with them for the last ten years.
“It’s difficult to boil down to one [single issue facing this constituency], because it’s made up of several diverse communities.
“So take Queensferry for example, the biggest issue right there is the anti-social driving – which is not young people, it’s actually men driving high-performance, illegally modified cars and motorbikes – and it’s something the council and the police have not been able to stop.
“I’ve held several big public meetings, I’ve got the First Minister to convene a national task force on this issue, and it’s still an unanswered question.
“Also, the sort of lack and scarcity of resources to deal with the massive increase in population in Queensferry [is another issue].
“We’ve already had one extension to Queensferry High and it’s going to need another one because the council rejected Lib Dem plans for a new high school in Kirkliston.
“We’ve always got an issue with traffic and traffic volumes because of the increasing housing population and across West Edinburgh.
“In other parts, particularly Drum Brae/Gyle, for example, we have a recurring problem with the Gypsy Traveller community.
“I’ve been working both with the Gypsy Traveller community, the council and the police to talk about establishing a permanent halting site so the Gypsy Traveller community don’t feel they have to use green spaces around Drum Brae/Gyle, but doing it in a sensitive way that recognises the rights of Gypsy Travellers and the rights of the community.”
Balanced responsibilities
Having served Edinburgh Western for ten years – half of those as Scottish Lib Dems leader – Cole-Hamilton doesn’t believe that balancing the two responsibilities is a difficult task.
“It’s not a difficulty at all,” he said. “Local concerns are at large across the nation, so I’m here today to talk about sewage.
“It’s a problem in Northwest Edinburgh, the River Almond flows out through the community and it subject to hundreds of sewage dumping incidents every year.
“That is a problem that every coastal community in Scotland will face and even in some inshore places as well, where there are rivers connected to sewage and wastewater treatment ways.
“We need to take this seriously and that’s why Lib Dems want to bring forward a Clean Water Act in the new Parliament that will end dry dumping, which should be illegal, and where wastewater works are releasing sewage when they don’t need to.
“We want to monitor every outflow in Scotland and we want to upgrade Scotland’s Victorian sewage system.”
Data centres
The City of Edinburgh Council last month put in place a temporary ban on the construction of AI data centres, after a recent planning decision attracted significant pushback from environmental groups and locals.
Despite this, Cole-Hamilton announced at the Scottish Lib Dems manifesto launch that the party would expand the use of AI in the NHS and would back the construction of data centres in Scotland.
However, he stressed that Edinburgh was not the “appropriate place for data centres at all”, but that their construction could boost the Scottish economy.
He said: “It’s all about where you put them.
“So I don’t think Edinburgh is an appropriate place for data centres at all, but actually I think it’s a tremendous growth opportunity for communities in the far north, which are being depopulated because there’s no jobs for young people.
“They’re right. They’ve got renewable power on their doorstep which you could use to power these data centres.
“So this would honour our commitments to net zero, making sure that they are sustainable through renewable power rather than energy intenseive drawdown that they would have here.
“But I think we could be world leaders in this, and I don’t think that and our commitments to net zero are mutually exclusive.”
