Salmond hails Liberal Democrat Alex Cole-Hamilton's anti-fees record

At First Minister's Questions today, Alex Salmond name checked Edinburgh Central Liberal Democrat candidate Alex Cole-Hamilton.

Brandishing a newspaper in response to a planted question on tuition fees from Christina McKelvie, he pointed out a photgraph of Alex Cole Hamilton with a no fees banner.

It was good of him to remind us all of Alex's long record as an anti fees campaigner and student activist. Alex was President of Aberdeen University's SRC as an independent and joined the Liberal Democrats because of the way we'd delivered on abolishing tuition fees in the first Holyrood Government. Then we faced a Labour Party who had promised not to introduce them south of the border and had, and who wanted a similar scheme in Scotland.

As I have said before, our conference in Dunfermline, just 3 days before the Browne Report came out, affirmed our commitment to free university education with the blessing of the Scottish leadership. Alex spoke passionately in that debate as I posted at the time.

Alex is in a close fight with Labour for Edinburgh Central. The voters have a clear choice between Alex, who has more than a decade of experience and commitment to free university tuition and Labour, who are going to be putting forward a plan which is not a million miles from the one the coalition are introducing down south.