Mr Alistair Carmichael
MP for Orkney and Shetland · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“I do not know whether this is something I still need to declare, Mr Speaker, but I visited the Falkland Islands in 2003 as a guest of the Falkland Islands Government. They have never invited me back.”
“I remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and also that my wife is a practising veterinary surgeon. What is happening was predictable because it was predicted. The Government were warned by the National Audit Office in June last year that they were unprepared for outbreaks of this sort.”
“The Minister is surely aware that there is no route to net zero that does not go through oil and gas hydrocarbons, and that not exploiting resources on the UK continental shelf leaves us reliant on imports, which also has carbon consequences that must be taken into account.”
“The transition to clean energy could be an opportunity to build a different model that would, to use the First Secretary of State’s own words, end “overly centralised decision making and over-privatisation”.”
“I welcome what the Prime Minister just said about strengthening farming. If he is serious about this, one of the first things he can do is ensure that our farmers do not have to compete with imported food that is produced to lower standards than we expect.”
“Q4. Like others, I have always respected the Prime Minister as somebody who was in politics because he wanted to give service to his country, and he has earned our gratitude for that. In my constituency, those who volunteer as coastguard rescue officers also do so from a wish to give service to their community.”
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“The other threat to all built heritage, of whatever age, is climate change. We see that manifesting itself in so many different ways. Skara Brae on Orkney has been listed as a site that, because of its sheer location, is particularly vulnerable to the threat of climate change. It would be an absolute tragedy for our country if we were to lose such a site. I would like to see our Government in Scotland and the UK Government in Westminster come up with a more strategic and co-ordinated approach to ensure that these very important sites are maintained for future generations.”
“It has developed in Orkney and Shetland a tremendous visitor economy, all made up of small and medium-sized enterprises; in particular, there is now an army of well qualified and well trained tourism guides who are able to offer a great visitor experience to people coming to the northern isles. In recent years, however, we have seen an enormous growth in cruise ship traffic. That has been enormously valuable, especially financially, to the community, but there are challenges given the sheer number of people who come to visit sites such as Skara Brae, Maeshowe and the Ring of Brodgar. I commend everybody who has been involved in the management of that influx of tourists, because they have balanced the needs of maintaining the integrity of our world heritage site while making sure it is open and accessible to those who visit our islands.”
“Jarlshof is a 4,000-year-old settlement. Can the Minister give us any update on support for the Zenith of Iron Age Shetland? Obviously, it was never going to be a fast process; we know that. However, if he can give us an indication of what his Department is doing to sustain that process, it would be most appreciated. In many ways, heritage defines what we are about in Orkney and Shetland. It is one of the things that marks us out as being very different from the rest of the country, and we are enormously proud of it. It now brings in a huge amount of business, and a huge number of people from right across the world for tourism. That is both an opportunity and, if we are not careful, something of a threat.”
“However, that is just the start of it, because there is so much more archaeology peppered around the northern isles, and of course we have in Kirkwall St Magnus Cathedral, which is a relatively late addition to our portfolio, being a mere 12th-century construction. Most recently, we have had a very important addition in the Scapa Flow Museum in Hoy, which does a tremendous job in retaining historic artefacts that take us back to the first and second world wars—a time when Orkney and Scapa Flow were at the heart of the nation’s defence. Of course, for some time now, Shetland has been designated a UNESCO global geopark. Earlier this year, the Government gave their support to the Zenith of Iron Age Shetland, which is also acquiring UNESCO status as a world heritage site. There are also Mousa, Old Scatness and Jarlshof.”
“It is a pleasure, Mr Dowd, to serve under you today. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) on securing this debate, and on the way in which he put the case for what he charmingly termed “the far north”, or the start of the south, as we in the northern isles call it. I flatter myself that we know a thing or two about heritage sustainability in the northern isles; we have been doing it for 5,000 years, after all. Since 1969, Orkney has been home to a UNESCO world heritage site—the heart of neolithic Orkney, incorporating Skara Brae, the stones of Stenness, Maeshowe and the Ring of Brodgar.”
“T8. I remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Recent Government pronouncements relating to food security have been welcome, but if they are to be meaningful then farmers and crofters need certainty about the future of Government support and, critically, the amount of money that will be available to fund that. Will the Chancellor tell us when he will engage with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the devolved Administrations about the size of the budget that will be available? In the meantime, will he meet with me and the National Farmers Union Scotland?”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I should perhaps declare an interest, as someone who owns a house that is also heated by oil-fired central heating, however inadequately. The point he makes illustrates well what happens when Government intervene to set targets and to insist that things must be done by a certain deadline. We see that time and again. I can tell him and others now that one of the biggest problems will be the lack of available skilled, qualified labour in rural areas and in other places to install the equipment for these things. Would it not be better if on this occasion we were to use a little more of the carrot and a little less of the stick, as he and I did when we were Whips together?”
“The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) says that we have a common law system whereby common law offences are defined by precedent over many years—sometimes centuries. We are dealing here with a statutory instrument, and statutory instruments are different. That is why in the normal course of things, well-drafted legislation coming before this House has an interpretation section that defines such terms. Can the hon. Lady think of any good reason why we would not have a definitions section in this SI?”
“I do not think that many of them would welcome being labelled as left-wing, and the view taken by the Conservatives in Parliament at that time was very different from the one we hear from them in government.”
“I generally like her speeches best when they are finished, so 12 minutes was not mercifully short. However, I think that for issues such as this, we deserve something more. Some of the interventions we have heard from the Government side of the Chamber have also been quite telling. The right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who has just left his place, said that this was to do with the understanding of the left about protest, as if those who protested were always from the left. I remember that in the early years after I was first elected to this House there were significant protests, causing massive disruption, by those opposed to the Bill to abolish hunting with hounds.”
“Can I first say something about the process this afternoon? The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) highlighted in his speech the many significant issues that this legislation brings to the House, and there are serious debates to be had about the balance between public protest and individual rights. I am not entirely sure that I buy his thesis that the need for protest ended when we achieved universal suffrage, but taking that as we may for the moment, these are significant and serious issues. That is why this House has evolved, over the centuries, a series of measures by which we are able to scrutinise legislation. The Home Secretary spoke for only 12 minutes to persuade the House why this legislation was necessary. I cannot decide whether or not I am displeased.”
“The right hon. Gentleman is actually correct in his recollection but also incomplete, because not all those protests were organised by the Countryside Alliance. I can remember the night when this House debated the Second Reading, and it was impossible for Members of this House to get on to the parliamentary estate because of the violence going on in Parliament Square. So if we are to take a view on the right to protest, that view must apply equally across the board to everybody, of whatever political persuasion, instead of simply, as we seem to be doing today, focusing on one aspect.”
“I can only presume that that is because the territorial extent of this legislation is England and Wales only. However, as the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) said, it could of course affect anybody who comes from there. We define community not just as people who live or work in a place but also those who would be affected by the process, and I wonder how the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) would feel if hundreds of people, or perhaps several thousand, deciding to walk slowly down a road playing flutes and banging a Lambeg drum were to be covered by such legislation.”
“I doubt that the constable who would arrest the right hon. Gentleman has yet been commissioned, but the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) makes a good and fair point. My concern is about not just the process but the weakness in the way in which this legislation has been drafted and brought to the House. On the lack of any proper definition of what constitutes “minor”, for example, we should not be leaving these things to the courts. The courts are not there to fill in the gaps that Parliament leaves behind. There may well be a serious body of case law that will define “minor”, but we know now that it is the job of this House to insert that definition and we are not doing it. I confess that I have been somewhat surprised to hear the enthusiasm of the Democratic Unionists in relation to this legislation.”
“Of course; I will give way in a few seconds. Frequency is at the heart of the offence being created here, and as many people resident in Belfast and elsewhere in Northern Ireland would tell us, in the month of July such incidences are frequently to be found. I give way with pleasure to the right hon. Gentleman.”
“I think the glorious 12th comes in August actually, but I bow to the expertise of those on the Conservative Benches on such matters. In fairness, however, the right hon. Gentleman has a reasonable point, and I understand that the legislation to which he refers pertains only to Northern Ireland and that is perhaps why it is not part of this legislation. Essentially, however, as the shadow Home Secretary said in her remarks, this is an area of law that is already well regulated. Very few areas of lacuna remain within the law and this legislation is not in any practical, meaningful way going to fill any difficulties. What would fill difficulties is a better resourced police force that is better able to engage with people and take on board their wish to protest.”
“The shadow Home Secretary made the point that this is an area where there is already extensive legislation. Problems arise not from the lack of legislation but from the lack of the ability to implement properly and with consent the laws we currently have.”
“I could be wrong because I am hopelessly out of date on so much of this stuff, but I think from memory that the right hon. Gentleman refers to the provisions of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, which was brought into force under a previous Government—a Government for whom I had very little time, but in terms of the way in which they went about their business were a model of parliamentary propriety compared with the mince that has been brought to the Chamber this afternoon. This comes back to the point I made about the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich: there are serious issues here to be decided—serious issues about the balance between the rights of the individual to protest and the rights of the community to go about their business—but this is not the way to deal with them.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way, because that gets to the heart of the matter as far as the other place is concerned. The Government, in bringing the regulations to the House in this way, are riding roughshod over the conventions of this House. We have a system that relies on checks, balances and conventions, so when our noble Friends in the other place come to consider this legislation, might they also be entitled to say that, with a check having been removed, they are entitled to adjust the balance and pay the same regard to the conventions of their House that the Government have done to the conventions of this House?”
“I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, because this again comes to the heart of the process in the legislation we are passing. The proposition from the Government Benches is that it is all right, because the courts will fix out these things. Long before it gets anywhere near a court, it will be a decision for police officers on the street, the borough commander or whomever it will be. Is that fair on police officers?”
“The good news, I suppose, for the right hon. Gentleman is that those seeking to stop his walks or marches would not have to travel 50 miles. They would just have to say that they were affected by it, because that is the definition of community.”
“I remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Might we have a debate in Government time, to be answered by a Treasury Minister, on the budget available for future farming support payments? The current settlement runs only until 2024. The Leader of the House will know that agriculture, of all industries, needs long-term certainty, especially as we redesign the systems for delivering that mechanism. The Government talk a very good game about the importance of farmers and crofters in our food security, but we need to hear from the Treasury whether they will put their money where their mouth is.”
“I anticipate that we will hear the same sort of thing from the Minister that we heard from him in the main Chamber today—namely, that we should be growing local labour. Does the hon. Gentleman hear from his own constituents, as I do, that that labour simply is not there, and that there are reasons why local young people, in particular, are not going into the fishing industry? That is basically because, for decades, they have been told that this is an industry in decline that has no future. We will not turn that perception around overnight when the problem that the boats have is in the here and now.”
“For the sake of argument, let us say that we do manage to train people to the B1 level in order to meet the visa requirements. We have heard from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about the hard, difficult and occasionally dangerous work undertaken on a fishing boat. Is it just possible that people who have achieved the B1 standard of English might then want to take that skill and qualification and do a job that is perhaps more suited to somebody with that level of language skill?”
“Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), did not meet the promises that had been made; indeed, in terms of much of the detail, it was greatly deficient. The trade and co-operation agreement has not delivered the opportunities that were promised, but the industry is nothing if not pragmatic, and it is working towards the renegotiation of that agreement. In the meantime, it would be nice to think that the people who promised the earth but did not deliver at the time would not just keep sticking the boot in while the industry is on the ground.”
“We need a system that actually respects the rights of those who come here and contribute to our industry, and who keep our coastal and island communities growing and thriving, and that respects the rights and entitlements they have as workers in our economy, rather than just pushing them sidewards into the shadows. The fishing industry has been promised a great deal by some in politics in recent years. Without rehearsing old arguments, it is fair to say that many in the industry feel that the promises made to them have not been honoured or delivered. It is certainly true beyond any measure of doubt that the deal done in 2020 by the former Prime Minister but one, the right hon.”
“I have to say that I am just a bit weary with this. We have been going round this course for at least 10 years —possibly more—and we have gone from patch here to fitch there. We have had a reliance on transit visas, which was—bluntly—an abuse of the transit visas system, but it was the only way that fishing boats could get access to the crew they needed. We can absolutely understand why that happened, but it left a lot of people who were coming here as crew vulnerable to a measure of exploitation, and there were stories around the use of transit visas that did no credit to some in the fishing industry.”
“As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Vickers. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing time for a debate on this important issue. I represent Orkney and Shetland. Shetland’s local economy is one third fishing-dependent, and that goes through everything. When I say fishing, I am including aquaculture to get to the one third, although a lot of the skills are transferrable in any event. We have the full range: we have small, one-person, inshore boats, right the way through to the largest pelagic trawlers anywhere in Scotland—apart, obviously, from Banff and Buchan, where there are ones that are just as big. I do not think we want to get into a debate about the relative size of the pelagic trawlers; that is not what we are here for.”
“He knows as well as I do that if that route is taken, there are other opportunities for the English language requirement to be tested and established. The people who come here to fish in my constituency are not coming to stay, because their families are still at home in the Philippines or Ghana. They come here to fish for six, eight or 10 months at a time, and then they want to go home. Why would they not? That is where their family are. They come here and make good money working in an industry that looks after them and offers them opportunities. It is good for them and good for us. Why can the Home Office not just get out the way and let them do it?”
“The basic truth is that if there is no crew, there is no fishing, and if there is no fishing, there is no ability to service the debt. Fishers will doubtless go out of business, and that income will be lost to the community as those families will no longer be able to make money for themselves. If the boats do not go out to sea, no fish will come into the factories to be processed. In that way, the effect of this decision ripples out through every fishing community in this country. We are asking for a simple tweak to a fairly small piece of legislation that will not make a massive difference to the number of people coming here. The Minister spoke today about the desirability of offering visas to people who come here on a route that might eventually lead to indefinite leave to remain.”
“He still owes the bank just south of £700,000—the figure was about £680,000 when I last spoke to him about it. He has always fished with a foreign crew within the 12-mile limit—well, perhaps not always, but certainly in recent times, because he was able to do so. He did so because, that close into shore, he could be certain that he was only catching haddock. If he has to go outside the 12-mile limit, he will be catching a much more mixed fishery—haddock, cod, ling and saithe. He is not allowed to catch cod, ling and saithe, because he only has quota for haddock. Because of the discard rule, he is also not allowed to get rid of them. That is the vicious circle that leaves fishermen having to tie their boats up at the shore.”
“It does not make any sense to me. The hon. Member for Strangford spoke about safety. When boats are out fishing, they will often dodge into those areas to get a bit of shelter in bad weather. If fishermen cannot take their boats there because they are fishing outside the 12-mile limit, they will be exposed to even greater danger. That brings us back to one of the fundamental problems, with which we have been dealing for years: fishermen are forced to fish not where the fishing opportunities exist, but where their visa requirements allow them to. That, again, has to be a case of the tail wagging the dog. The other example I offer is a Shetland fisherman who bought his boat some years ago. The boat and the quota together cost him around £1.4 million.”
“The father tells me that he does the work because he wants to have a business that he can hand on to his eldest son. He tells me, quite candidly, that he no longer knows whether he will be able to do that. He was fishing with fixed gear, within the 12-mile limit, until the day that his ability to do so was withdrawn. The gear is still sitting there, weeks down the line, because he cannot get the crew to go out and shift it. When the Minister responds, perhaps he can explain this point. The waters to be included around Orkney include uninhabited islands such as Rona, Sulisker and Sule Skerry. That takes in waters that, for an inshore fisherman, are about 90 miles from the Orkney mainland. I presume that it was a deliberate decision on the part of the Minister to include Rona, Sulisker and Sule Skerry, so will he explain his reasoning?”
“In the same way that I would hope that they might respect what I can do with my professional background, I respect what they can do with theirs. It does not always come down to what someone has by way of academic qualifications. The hon. Member for Strangford has already said what needs to be done. That tweak is all we really need; the problem for the Minister would then simply go away. I want to offer two examples of what the situation means for fishing boat crews in my constituency. The first example is a family with two vivier crab boats. Like everyone I will talk about, the family have done everything that every Minister in every Government would ever tell them to do. They have worked hard, they have saved, they have borrowed to invest and they have grown their business to provide for the family.”
“All we would be doing would be training people for jobs that they would not ultimately take up. At its root, the problem with the English language qualification is a fundamental lack of understanding in the migration system, and in the Home Office in particular, which seems to equate skill with academic ability. That is a particularly dangerous and—dare I say it?—fairly middle-class view of the world. A lot of people have highly skilled occupations, but have never actually achieved a great deal in terms of academic qualifications, because that has not been the direction in which they have wanted to go. I think what they do is perfectly legitimate. I respect what they do, and what fishermen are capable of doing. I sure as goodness would not go and do it, because it is hard, difficult, dangerous work.”
“That is how we made the progress that got us to the place where that job could be put on the shortage occupation list. That brings us to the English language requirement. The concession that has been made is absolutely meaningless if we insist that the crew who are to be employed under it are capable of achieving that level of English language qualification. As I said to the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), people who have that academic ability will probably not be particularly suited to, or want to work in, a fishing boat. For the medium to longer term, it is difficult to see how there is any meaning to that concession whatever. If we were to get the fishing industry to fund training for people to get to that level, I strongly suspect that they would not be there for the longer term.”
“In the local fleet in Shetland, there are fantastic examples of young skippers taking on big commitments. New boats are coming into the industry, in a genuine and visible commitment to the future of the industry. Those skippers just need a hand up. They are not looking for help—for a subsidy or a grant. They just want to be able to go to sea, to make money to provide for their family and to keep an industry going that is critical to the future of our communities. The history of this issue bears a bit of repeating. We pushed water up the hill for years with the members of the Migration Advisory Committee. We reasoned with them. Eventually we brought them in and beat them up in a Committee Room in the Palace and they accepted that, yes, the job of a deckhand is a skilled occupation.”
“Gentleman’s constituency, that is the situation many skippers face. If the local labour were available, I have absolutely no doubt that skippers would use it in a heartbeat. Every fisherman I speak to tells me exactly the same thing. They say they want a thriving local industry, and they do not want to rely on people coming in on foreign visas, but they also live in a competitive market. The fishermen in my constituency are competing for people who could be recruited into the offshore oil and gas industry, aquaculture or the deep-sea merchant marine. Those fishermen have to compete not just with those industries but with decades of teachers, careers advisers and commentators telling people that the fishing industry has no future, that it is in decline and that no one would want to go into it. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“There are constitutional issues that the hon. Gentleman and I are part of the debate on and have been for some years. In microcosm, the danger the fishing industry faces is thinking that the solution to everything is dependent on where decision making is exercised. Personally, I think it is more important to discuss the principles and policies underpinning decisions, rather than where those decisions are made. A bad decision in Brussels is just as bad as a bad decision in London or Edinburgh—that is probably as far as it is sensible to take that. However, the hon. Gentleman is right that we could have the greatest opportunities and the most magnificent quota and total allowable catches imaginable, but that is absolutely no use if the crew cannot be found to put the boats to sea. In my constituency and others, and I suspect in the hon.”
“The hon. Member forces me to intervene with his second reference to his meeting with the Minister. I am delighted that he got that meeting. On 20 April, when the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines) was answering my urgent question, which the Immigration Minister managed to dodge, she said: “The right hon. Gentleman asks to meet the Home Secretary or the Immigration Minister. I can put that request to the Minister this afternoon, and I hope that it will be agreed.” —[ Official Report , 20 April 2023; Vol. 731, c. 370.] It would appear that her hopes were not well founded. What did the hon. Member do to get a meeting that I cannot?”
“As I said, we have young skippers taking on new boats in Shetland. If their experience is not financially favourable as a consequence of decisions like this, what will that do for the green shoots that the hon. Gentleman and I can see at the moment?”
“I am never going to give up on this. I think we have made that very clear. However, the reason why I am particularly unhappy about this now is that this feels like it is the final word from the Home Secretary. The Fishermen’s Welfare Alliance engaged with the Home Office in detail and at length. It explained everything in incredible detail that even the slowest of learners must have been able to pick up. At the end of the day, it just got told a straight no. There comes a point where we must ask, “What more do we have to do to get this case across?””
“Earlier today in the House, the Minister said that the package had been welcomed by the fishing industry. Who was he talking to who welcomed it?”
“What help is that to the constituent I referenced who still owes £680,000 to the bank, and who cannot go to sea because he cannot get the crew? He will not be around by the time these people are available for his ship.”
“Is it the Minister’s position today that the same people—the same stakeholders in the industry —who have been telling him that they welcome this somehow or other did not realise they had a responsibility to upskill their own workforce?”
“It is in our interests to try to polish this particular item, because it could make a real difference. Sule Skerry is about 90 or 100 miles out from Orkney mainland. Those waters are very different from the ones we are talking about. Boats often go there, and they rely on it for shelter. Including places such as Sule Skerry will put lives at risk. Is the Minister happy with that?”
“All joking apart, this really matters. It is having a massive impact on some of the most economically fragile communities in this country.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way—although we still have an hour and a quarter. He has been generous with his time so far. The hon. Member for Strangford can still take time at the end of the debate, as I recall. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines), told me on 20 April that she would pass on my request for a meeting. That request was to meet not just me, but fishing organisations as well. I do not know whether that maybe slipped her mind, or if there are other bases on which meetings are offered. Will the Minister meet me, other hon. Members who have an interest and fishing organisations, to hear from them, in early course? Those organisations may be different from the stakeholders who have given him the views that seem to inform his thinking today.”
“T7. Those of us who represent fishing communities hear every week of boats that have had to tie up as a consequence of their inability to get crew, because of the Home Office’s refusal to give a bespoke visa scheme for getting crew. We all hear it. Can the Minister assure me that his Department is actually counting the number of these boats, and can he tell the House what it stands at today?”
“When did the Conservative party stop doing that?”