FINALLY, the Scottish Government is drawing closer to a decision on re-opening East Linton and Reston stations.

I have been actively applying pressure on the transport minister to meet the funding gap, re-iterating the message from passionate rail campaigners.

East Lothian Council and Scottish Borders Council have shown commitment throughout this project and, until now, progress has been blocked by the Scottish Government.

However, last week, Humza Yousaf proposed to increase Scottish Government funding, which gets us closer to re-opening both stations.

There is, nevertheless, still a shortfall of £1.24 million for East Linton and £1.18 million for Reston stations.

Discussions are now tabled to push forward on how to plug this funding gap and let’s hope for good news.

It’s not been a great week for Humza – he’s been plagued by reliability issues and overcrowding on ScotRail trains. Each day, cancellations and delays create misery and chaos for commuters.

Analysis has revealed train delays cost the Scottish economy £233,000 per day. That is a staggering amount of money lost to mismanagement.

It’s clear that under the SNP, Scotland’s national and local train network has been neglected to the point where Abellio may lose their contract through poor performance.

Moving to Brexit, astonishingly the SNP are looking at a separate ‘Norway-style’ deal for Scotland. A hard border would be created between Scotland and the rest of the UK – Scotland’s largest trading partner.

This kind of agreement would also leave Scotland subject to EU regulations over which we had no decision-making powers and influence – a slight dichotomy to the First Minister’s idea of an independent Scotland.

It’s important to remember that we voted in the referendum as one United Kingdom, we will negotiate as one United Kingdom, and we will leave the European Union as one United Kingdom.

If only the Scottish Government would concentrate on what really matters to local people. Centralisation doesn’t help communities and sadly we’ve seen SNP ministers preside over the closure of Haddington Sheriff Court to much public opposition.

We now hear that civil cases are piling up in the Edinburgh courts, causing a backlog and chaos.

I challenged Annabel Ewing MSP about this very issue. She replied by saying that the number of cases being dealt with had improved – choosing to ignore the civil case backlog and referring to criminal cases only.

When will this concentration of central government power stop? The SNP are out of touch with local democracy and local communities no longer have a voice.