The Liberal Democrats will today step up their campaign to get the north-east a fairer share of investment for transport projects, housing and local authority funding.
MPs, MSPs and councillors have teamed up for the Fair Deal scheme, which they hope will spur the Scottish Government into action on projects such as Kintore railway station and the dualling of the A96 Aberdeen-Inverness road.
Today, the group will launch a petition urging the SNP to invest in the north-east and “start digging”.
The group – which includes MPs Sir Malcolm Bruce and Sir Robert Smith, north-east MSP Alison McInnes and councillors from both Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire – launched the campaign at their party conference in the city last month, armed with a spade to enable First Minster Alex Salmond to get started on his government’s so-called “shovel ready projects”.
Now they hope their Fair Deal for the North-East petition, which they will be taking to people around the region, will add to the pressure.
In a joint statement, the group said: “It is time the voices of people in the north-east were listened to by the SNP.
“Too often the SNP government thinks it’s sufficient to say that they have a plan to invest and they will get to it some time in the future, after the referendum. In the meantime, the energy capital of Europe is forced to cope with a transport infrastructure which grinds to a halt daily and is starved of the government investment which economic growth demands. People are rightly fed up of being short-changed.”
But the SNP has accused the Lib Dems of “sheer hypocrisy” and said it was their Tory partners in the Westminster coalition who had cut the Scottish Government’s funding.
A spokesman for Local Government Minister Derek McKay said: “Just last month we announced a £170million rail investment programme for the Aberdeen-Inverness line that will make journeys shorter, more frequent and more comfortable.
“We are also taking forward key projects like the £650million city bypass that the Lib Dems failed to deliver when they were in office, and which will generate over £6billion in investment to the north-east over the next 30 years.
“We have also delivered a world-class sports village, a state-of-the-art dental school, and new community health facilities at Foresterhill.”