Friday March 7th 2025
This View has been written by Midlothian East Councillor Peter Smaill.
The recent announcement last week that the £20m the Conservatives committed to Mayfield in June 2024 is no longer going ahead – is extremely disappointing. Labour’s use of verbal semantics to avoid supporting an area of deprivation is simply a cover of their attitude which is unwilling, not ‘unfunded’.
Our Labour MP Kirsty McNeill, who hides behind the word ‘unfunded’, is experienced enough to know that many longer-term projects are ‘unfunded’.
Labour’s inflation-busting pay-off to train drivers was unfunded; the proposed £18bn Chagos Islands compensation is also unfunded. But a transformational £20 million commitment to Mayfield is ignored.
What is more surprising than Labour reneging on a commitment, is the SNP Leader in Midlothian appears unwilling to fight for it, reverting to her usual nationalist attack lines.
This is in contrast to a recent announcement that the Labour Government will invest up to £20 million in towns across Scotland in its so-called Plan for Neighbourhoods [1].
To our surprise – Mayfield is not on this list [2].
Only Midlothian Conservatives are prepared to fight for continued support for Mayfield. Led by me, I have long supported the ambitions of the In It Together campaign to transform Mayfield, we call on Ms McNeill to admit that the Labour Government’s political messaging preferences have been the cause of the cancellation, not consideration of the needs of Mayfield.
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