Barton is prospective Scottish Labour candidate for Holyrood

Bressay resident Robina Barton is about to be formally adopted at Scottish Labour Party’s Holyrood candidate.

Ms Barton has recently returned from the Scottish Labour Party conference in Perth, where she was a first-time delegate and speaker. She seconded a motion submitted by the Inverness and Nairn constituency on the issue of lack of GP cover in rural areas, an issue that is affecting Shetland.

As well as the GP crisis, issues debated included many relevant to Shetland, including air and ferry transport, broadband provision and fuel poverty.

The conference also resolved that Scottish Labour should campaign to keep lifeline ferry routes in the public sector, and commit to ensuring air services provided to the Highlands and Islands are affordable, regular and reliable.

Ms Barton said: “This was my first experience of a Labour Party conference and I left energised and inspired. I believe that party politics is really about values. In this, I was particularly impressed by Kezia Dugdale’s keynote speech. It left me in no doubt that the values of social justice, decency and community responsibility that I believe in are very much alive throughout Scotland and indeed the wider UK.”

She added: “The SNP have done a great PR job but their record in office belies their leftwing posturing. They have been utterly ineffective in tackling such important issues as health, education and law and order. Empty headed rhetoric is not what anyone wants from a government.”

The conference was the first since Jeremy Corbyn and Kezia Dugdale were elected respectively as leaders of the British and Scottish Labour Parties, and Ms Barton said: “Kezia Dugdale has asked people to take a fresh look at the Labour Party and I would ask everybody in Shetland to do just that.”