Alan Reid, Liberal Democrat MP for Argyll & Bute, welcomed the SNP Government’s Friday 13th climbdown on their forestry sell-off plans.

Mr Reid was speaking after Environment Minister, Roseanna Cunningham, announced that the SNP Government had “decided
not to take leasing any further”.

Mr Reid said, “This is a tremendous victory for the community in Argyll & Bute who had strongly opposed the SNP plans to sell our forests. I am delighted at the SNP climbdown. However, it is important to realise that the SNP only abandoned these plans after they realised that they couldn’t get their sell-off plans through the Scottish Parliament. It is still SNP policy to sell our forests and we must all be on the alert to make sure that they don’t try again to sneak these plans through.

“The SNP tried a lot of dirty tricks in this campaign. They falsely accused me of not inviting the then Environment Minister to the public meeting in Lochgilphead where 240 people opposed the sell-off. Email correspondence proves that I did. They even falsely accused me of paying for a campaign leaflet with taxpayers’ money. However, none of these tricks worked.

“Today’s victory shows how people power can defeat a Government.”