Question time for General Election candidates

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the East Kilbride News.

We continue our build up to next week’s General Election by quizzing the candidates standing in the East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow constituency.

In choosing the questions, we tried to concentrate on areas which have not been devolved to Holyrood.

Therefore, we did not seek responses to questions on issues such as health and education. While the block grant the Scottish Government receives obviously impacts on spending in these departments, decisions are made by our elected MSPs.

Our questions related to Brexit, the prospect of a second Scottish independence referendum, fighting terrorism and its proponents in the wake of last week’s attack in Manchester, the closure of HMRC’s tax offices in East Kilbride and what one thing they would like to achieve in parliament should they be elected.

You can read our special feature containing all of the candidates’ responses on pages 4 and 5 of today’s paper.

Next week we will carry personal statements from each of the candidates who will make the case for your vote.

Elsewhere in the paper, and there is an interesting feature on pages 10 and 11 in which one of the News reporting team took on the ‘blindfold challenge’ with Guide Dogs Scotland.

The charity are raising awareness of what they do and the help they try to provide people robbed of their sight.

There is a cracking Halfmerke Primary picture special on page 24 when the pupils were visited by STV.

And check out page 31 for pictures from the Eaglesham Beer Festival.