I HOPE everyone is having a nice summer, despite the lack of sun so far!

Last week, I met with local health and social care bosses to discuss the closure of Belhaven Hospital, the Blossom House care home, the in-patient beds at the Edington and The Abbey care home in North Berwick.

The message I received was depressingly clear: these facilities will not be coming back, and any further care home provision will have to be delivered either by independent care home providers or through the expansion of care-at-home packages – which are woefully overstretched.

This confirms what we have all known for too long: under John Swinney and the SNP, our services are getting poorer, and many Scots are now paying more in tax for the privilege.

This sense of poorer services also extends to Labour-run East Lothian Council. According to a league table, East Lothian came 26th out of the 29 mainland Scottish councils.

On health, East Lothian ranked 18th. I receive many complaints about the lack of healthcare services, with people frequently having to raid savings or borrow from relatives to go private.

Education ranked even worse, 27th out of 29. Immediate action must be taken. Investing in teacher training, improving classroom resources and enhancing extracurricular activities must be prioritised.

And our railways are struggling too. I recently met with ScotRail to discuss the reduced timetable and the disruption it is causing.

During the meeting, I encouraged rail bosses to work with the Scottish Government, which now runs ScotRail, to get things back on track before people lose faith in our rail services.

Across the board, the SNP Government and our Labour-run local council must quickly get their acts together.