Peter's constituency contains Cardenden and Kinglassie.

Anti-Austerity Budget

'The Scottish Government has proposed an anti-austerity budget that protects or increases spending on essential services while cutting the tax burden for most people in Scotland. Everyone earning less than £33,000 per year will pay less income tax than they did last year.

Low paid public sector workers will get a pay rise of at least 3 per cent and the SNP will continue to fully mitigate the effects of the Tory bedroom tax.

This is in addition to maintaining previous policies such as the abolition of prescription charges and a ban on NHS privatisation.

Predictably the right wing press are obsessed with the fact that high earners will be asked to pay a couple of pounds per week more. As one of these high earners I’m happy to support this as a way of creating the fairest tax system in the UK as well as making sure that essential services such as health and education are available to everyone.

Victory for Democracy

Last week’s humiliating defeat for the Prime Minister was not just important for the Brexit withdrawal bill. It showed that if opposition parties are willing to work together we can make it difficult or impossible for the Tories to continue to impose their damaging policies on us. It remains to be seen whether the “official” Labour opposition can continue to hold their MPs together to inflict further damage on a failing Tory Government.

Now is also the time for Scots Tory MPs to honour their promise to stand up for Scotland rather than just obediently follow the whips through the lobbies.

It’s OK Not To Be OK

Last week I attended a reception hosted by Royal Mail who are highlighting the fact that Christmas can be the loneliest time of year for some people. They’re helping to break the stigmas around mental health so that people are able to talk about mental health problems as easily as physical problems. If somebody near you will be alone on Christmas Day, how about popping in to see them at some point?

And Finally….It’s been an eventful, not to say hectic year for many of us. I’m grateful as ever to everyone who has worked so hard in my constituency team to deal with queries and problems from every corner of the constituency. We’ll be closing the office between Christmas and New Year to give them all a very well earned rest.

However you choose to celebrate Christmas, best wishes from me and all my team to you and your loved ones'.