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.”
The complete record
Every one of 4,707 lines we hold for Mr Alistair Carmichael, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 22 of 95.
“I will speak to amendment (c) in my name and in those of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and—though it came too late to be printed on the amendment paper—the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) . Amendment (c) would, as it states, disapply subsection (2) of proposed new section 50A of the Serious Crime Act 2007, “in relation to an alleged offence that relates to conduct involving— (a) torture or inhuman, cruel or degrading treatment or punishment, or (b) the violation of a person’s sexual integrity.” It is worth saying that the Bill that has come back from the other place is significantly improved on that which was sent to it. I posit the thought that, had the Bill started out as it stands today, an amendment such as mine would probably feature.”
“The right hon. Gentleman is being sufficiently general in his terms that I do not think that anyone, even from the fishing industry, would disagree with him. However, he may want to look northwards to the experience of the Scottish Government with their consultation on highly protected marine areas. There is a great deal of advantage in hastening slowly in this area. The right hon. Gentleman really must bring fishing, coastal and island communities with him. Otherwise, he will end up doing something that is ultimately counterproductive to fish conservation. If the right hon. Gentleman can demonstrate the benefits in a small number of areas first, there will be more support from coastal and island communities.”
“The right hon. Gentleman has to bear this point in mind. He wants to exclude fishermen for rewilding purposes, but fishermen find themselves excluded from other fishing opportunities as well because of cables, pipelines, aquaculture and offshore renewables. It is a salami-slicing effect. Does he agree that if we are to be effective in creating marine protected areas, or highly protected marine areas, we have to look at it in the round, and not just the HPMAs in isolation?”
“14. If he will have discussions with the Secretary of State for Business and Trade on the potential merits of implementing a ban on importing goods produced in occupied territories.”
“I think it would be uncontroversial to say that we would not import goods from Crimea, so why it should be any different when we are dealing with the Occupied Palestinian Territories, I simply do not understand. Looking forward to any future trade agreement with Israel, can the Minister assure me that any such agreement would include a clear territoriality clause to specify that it applied only to the sovereign state of Israel, and not to any part of those territories occupied by her in 1967?”
“Is the Minister really asking the House to believe that such an amendment would act as a pull factor? Is he saying that people will come here because of the possibility that we might pass an amendment giving asylum seekers the right to work? If that is his case, it is particularly poor even by his standards.”
“Despite the right hon. Gentleman’s best efforts, and he is a model of clarity on this, it is still like trying to knit fog. Does not the fact that we are dealing here with an amendment he has tabled that has subsequently been affected by a Government amendment to the original Bill illustrate the total inadequacy of trying to deal with a Bill like this in this way?”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Office if she will make a statement on visas for foreign workers taking employment in the fishing industry.”
“Those fishermen have done everything that every Minister in every Government have asked of them. They have worked hard, saved and invested, but they are now left facing ruin. This is a betrayal on the scale that we saw when Ted Heath said that our fishermen were expendable.”
“If they are to go to sea at all, it will have to be further out, which could bring them into conflict with other sectors that are already fishing there, and will inevitably compromise safety in an industry that is already acknowledged as one of the most dangerous. The excluded areas are very widely drawn and, in Orkney, include uninhabited islands, some of which are 90 miles from the Orkney mainland, making a difficult situation catastrophic. One Shetland fisherman told me last week that he currently works inside the 12-mile limit because he has quota only for haddock. If he has to fish outside the 12-mile limit, he will catch not just haddock but ling and saithe, for which he has no quota and which he is not even allowed to discard. What would the Minister have him do?”
“On Thursday last week, however, the Home Office announced that there would be no such scheme for the fishing industry and, furthermore, that the temporary arrangements that have been in place for the fishing industry would be ended with immediate effect. My first ask of the Minister is this: will the Home Secretary or the Immigration Minister agree to meet me, with a delegation of fishermen’s organisations and Members from all parties, to discuss the details of this? We need answers from the Home Secretary. Why is the fishing industry not allowed the same opportunities given to people working in aquaculture and offshore renewables? Why was no grace period allowed for fishermen to make alternative arrangements? The people who will be most affected are those fishing in inshore waters using both fixed and mobile gear.”
“I have to say that fishermen listening to that will have seen it not so much as an answer but as an insult. As you will know, Mr Speaker, this issue has been raised on many occasions in the House. The fishing industry has for years struggled to source the labour that it needs to function properly, and has looked beyond these shores to meet its needs. Those in the fishing industry have worked hard to construct a scheme that would meet their needs, and its details—written by the Fishermen’s Welfare Alliance—have been under consideration by the Home Office. It is, to all intents and purposes, identical to schemes made available to workers in aquaculture and the offshore renewables industry.”
“May I associate myself and my party with the expressions of condolence to all those who have suffered acts of violence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the recent upturn in violence? May I press the Minister, though, because he is at risk of conflating the positions of the Palestinian Authority, who are not a sovereign Government, with the Israeli Government, who are a sovereign Government, and as such have responsibilities towards the Palestinian people as an occupying force? Will he confirm that in any dealings and agreements with the Israeli Government, it is made explicit in writing that any agreement applies only to the sovereign state of Israel, and not to the Occupied Palestinian Territories?”
“Last week, the Home Office announced that it would not be setting up a bespoke visa scheme for the fishing industry of the sort that is already available for people working in fish farms and in offshore wind farms. It also told skippers that crew previously employed by them under a temporary scheme had to stop working immediately. As a consequence of that announcement, in fishing ports around the coast today, many fishing boats are tied up unable to go to sea. It is the only time that this Home Secretary has been successful in our stated ambition of stopping the boats. The Prime Minister and his party promised our fishermen a sea of opportunity if they would support them, but what is the point of a sea of opportunity if they cannot get crew to fish in it?”
“Anybody who has the right to be here has the right to feel safe and secure in being here. In the past couple of years, to their credit, the Government have allowed in excess of 100,000 Hongkongers to move to this country, but we know that the intimidation and persecution has followed them. In universities up and down the country, they are shouted down, and they continue to be intimidated. These police stations are part of the infrastructure that enables that. To borrow a phrase from the Foreign Secretary, is it not time that we should be pulling down the shutters on them?”
“I think the Minister has a sound case in relation to what the Government have done on beer duty. What is less clear, however, is why they have chosen to treat spirits so differently. Spirits are also an important part of the on trade. What will the impact be on the spirits trade from the differential that the Minister has now baked into the duty system?”
“We heard a lot from the Minister about the harmonisation of duties, but the House has heard the truth of the matter. The position in relation to on-sales consumption of beer will widen the gap. It simply makes no sense. If the Minister can answer no other question when he comes to respond, can he answer this: what strategy are the Government seeking to deliver by bringing forward a duty increase in excess of 10%? I do not see it. It flies in the face of the Treasury’s own data and contradicts it. It is difficult to understand what the purpose of it is, other than simply an attitude that says, “Well, you’ve had it good for a few years now, so we’re going to treat you differently and it’s time for you to take some of the pain.” An industry as important as the production of spirits deserves rather better consideration from the Treasury.”
“He said that he was disappointed the Chancellor acted in the way he did. I think we can all very much share the disappointment of the Secretary of State for Scotland. For the avoidance of doubt, I did let him know that I would be referring to him in the course of my speech. Our real disappointment, however, is that, having publicly disagreed with the Government on the matter, I have a strong suspicion that if it is put to a Division he will be in the other Lobby. It is all very well to wring your hands, but if, when the moment comes and the Division bells ring, you are not prepared to do what you know is right for such an important industry in Scotland in so many of our communities, then I feel we are, as politicians, failing in our duty to our constituents and those whom we seek to serve.”
“It is clear that the effect of this measure will be inflationary and have a detrimental effect on the economic growth that we are all supposed to be pursuing. The Chief Medical Officer tells us that we should safely consume 14 units per week—I think I have read this correctly—per week. If we are to consume 14 units of cider, we pay £1.13 in tax. If we consume 14 units of wine, we pay £3.36 in tax. But if we consume 14 units of spirits, we pay £4.06 in tax. To put it another way, Scotch whisky, and spirits as a whole, are taxed 256% higher than cider, and 16% higher than wine. It was presumably for that reason that the Secretary of State for Scotland is reported in The Scotsman as having argued against it. This was not some source quoted as saying that, but the Secretary of State himself.”
“Indeed, Treasury data illustrates the point well, because a recent history of cuts and duty freezes has actually had a beneficial effect on revenue brought in. For some reason, we now seem determined to introduce a duty increase that will have an inflationary impact, and for some of the most economically fragile communities in the country that will have the effect of stymying growth. The position laid out by the Minister on sales of beer was exceptionally interesting. He will be aware that spirits account for one third of the serves of alcohol consumed in this country, but less than one fifth of the units consumed. On the other hand, beer has 60% of the units consumed but accounts for less than 50% of the serves.”
“Three months later, to then turn around and whack a duty increase on spirits in the region of something just north of 10%, makes us wonder what the Government are trying to achieve. When I was Secretary of State for Scotland, along with Danny Alexander, who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, we argued successfully for a 2% duty cut. In 2015, the Red Book of the day said that that would bring with it a reduction in the amount of duty received and revenue brought in, but in point of fact we brought in more revenue with a lower level of duty than had been the case before it was cut. If we are trying to do something that will bring in more money to the Treasury, surely a duty freeze, at the very least, should be on offer.”
“Occasionally other interests are declared, but we still have only two producing distilleries. They are very important to our local community, not just in relation to the jobs they provide directly, but because of the spin-offs—the visitor centre, the merchandising, and the visitors that those distilleries bring to the community. Whisky tourism is enormously important, and it is it enormously important that the whisky industry has confidence that the Government are on their side. I am afraid that the signals we have seen from this Government in recent months have been, if I am to be kind to them, mixed at best. The Chancellor was right to say in December that there would be a freeze on duty. We welcomed that, as I am sure did others.”
“So it is important that we have a coherent strategy for the excise duty on these products. The difficulty I have with what I hear from the Treasury Minister is that it is difficult to discern exactly what the Government are trying to achieve in this Budget. Scotch whisky in particular is very important to the UK as part of our manufacturing base. Indeed, it is an enormously important part of our export portfolio. It is also critical for many of the most economically fragile communities that can be found around the highlands and islands of Scotland. I was born and brought up on Islay, and people will know the importance of the whisky industry, and in recent years the growth of whisky tourism to that economy. In my constituency we have Highland Park and Scapa.”
“Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) will speak to her amendments, which do relate specifically to Scotch whisky, but I have had discussions with her, and she tells me that SNP Members are in fact minded to support our amendment, instead of pursuing their own. She will doubtless speak for herself, as she always does, later in the debate. When we consider that 70% of the gin produced in this country is, in fact, produced in Scotland—my constituency has no fewer than four gin distilleries, and we find that situation replicated across Scotland—the impact of rises in duty are not just going to be felt by areas that produce Scotch whisky. We have also seen a number of distilleries appearing in recent times—a much smaller number, but it is significant none the less—producing rum.”
“Thank you, Dame Eleanor. It is perhaps not a novelty to see you back in the Chair, but it is still a great pleasure none the less. I am delighted to serve with you in control. I rise to speak to amendment 7, which stands in my name and those of my hon. Friends. In doing so, I should indicate at this stage that it is my intention to divide the Committee and establish opinion on it. The effect of amendment 7 would be to freeze the level of duty on the production of spirits. The Minister kept saying these are Scotch whisky amendments. He maybe knows me too well, but I would readily concede that many other spirits will be affected by this, and they are just as important. I think the hon.”
“As my hon. Friend says, these are often some of the more hard-up areas of the country, but the truth of the matter is that down the years they have contributed enormously to the GDP of this country and they have the potential to do more. We are not looking for any special treatment. We are not looking for any favours or handouts. All we are looking for is a fair crack of the whip.”
“May I take up the point about small producers? Deerness distillery, in my constituency, is a family-owned business that is seeking to move into whisky production. Surely, as a small producer in a market dominated by big corporates, it should be given the same opportunity to grow as a brewer. Why, in principle, should there be any difference in their treatment?”
“The Minister is making our case himself, so presumably he will be joining us in the Lobby—as, indeed, the Secretary of State for Scotland should be doing—or else accepting my amendment.”
“The Minister needs to look at the actual data relating to the revenue brought in over these years of cuts and freezes, because the story that it tells is very different from the forecasts on which he relies. He should remember that in 2015 the forecast was for a 2% reduction, but in fact there was a 4% increase. When will the Government become a bit more realistic about the effect of their own policies in this area?”
“It remains to be seen whether the Government have honoured their manifesto pledge on police numbers, but we already know that the number of police community support officers on our streets is down by 33%; when are the Government going to restore those numbers?”
“I welcome the relative novelty of a Home Office statement, instead of Home Office Ministers having to be brought to the Chamber to answer an urgent question. If this statement is a yardstick by which statements can be expected, the House will be better served in the future than it has been in the recent past. The measures in the consultation are eminently sensible, and I do not think there would be any challenge from Members in any part of the House, but the Minister is kidding himself if he thinks that this process is going to shift the dial at all in reducing violent knife crime. What would make a difference is visible police presence in our streets.”
“1. What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the compatibility of the Illegal Migration Bill with the UK's obligations under the European convention on human rights.”
“I somehow suspected that the answer would be something like that. The Attorney General knows that I am one of her admirers, and long have been so, right back to the days of her maiden speech, when I remind the House she said: “The European convention on human rights is a masterful document, and we must remain a signatory to it...In this country, the courts are unable to quash an Act of Parliament. It seems we need to re-state that, while our courts should have regard to the decisions of the ECHR, these are on the same footing, and Parliament is sovereign.” —[ Official Report , 25 June 2015; Vol. 597, c. 1113.] Will she confirm that that thinking still informs her assessment of these questions? If she can, I think the rest of us can join up the dots for ourselves.”
“Will the Minister speak to his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to see, first, if they know what is going on? Secondly, if they do not, will they find out? Thirdly, what will we be doing in the long term to protect these vital national assets?”
“I take the Minister’s recent comments to be a notification that I will be having a constituency visit from him. I look forward to that. However, can I take him back to the question of energy security and just remind him that there is more to energy security than what we produce and where? It is also about the protection of infrastructure and the assets around it. All this week, we have had a Russian tug, the Nikolay Chiker, steaming up and down to the east of Shetland in the vicinity of the pipeline servicing Brent and Ninian. This morning, the tug has gone around to the north-west of Shetland and is now doing the same thing in the vicinity of the pipeline servicing the Laggan field to the west of Shetland. It is a merchant vessel, but we know that the Russian military often purpose merchant vessels in this way.”
“I think the House should be more generous to the Minister and acknowledge the true genius of this announcement. Only this Home Office team could think that the answer to the problem of growing numbers of people in small boats was to bring them all together and put them into one big boat. Armando Iannucci himself could not improve on that. But if the Minister is confident in his projections about what is going to happen to the backlog of asylum applications, why is the extra capacity going to be necessary?”
“On fiscal events, the Minister will be aware that there was dismay in the Scotch whisky industry at the decision not to reverse the double-digit duty hike previously announced, while introducing a freeze on duty for what the Chancellor called “warm ale”. How is that consistent with the Government’s previously stated policy of reforming spirit duty to support the Scotch whisky industry?”
“I am well up for that challenge. We know that the Secretary of State for Scotland argued against the increase in duty. One wonders what it was that the Minister found so unattractive in that argument; perhaps we will now get some of the answer. I do not know whether the Minister regards it as a detail, but when will we see spirit duty reform? Can she give us a date?”
“The right hon. and learned Gentleman is making an interesting and worthwhile point, but in practical terms, knowing as we do the ruthless efficiency of the Home Office, how likely does he think it is that it would ever marry up that baby coming to this country without papers with the person seeking to come 20 years later?”
“Lady’s speech today and her forensic dissection of those parts of this Bill that impact on the Modern Slavery Act that she brought through, I found myself almost weeping with nostalgia for her time in the Home Office—for the intellectual rigour, the political substance and the determination to do what was right by some of the most vulnerable people living among us.”
“I particularly enjoyed the contributions from the right hon. Members for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I served in government with the right hon. Lady for five years, and I do not think we need to wait for the 30-year release of papers to learn that relations between her and some in my party were not always easy in that time. Having said that, equally we do not need to wait for the 30-year release of papers to know that relations between her and some in her own party, possibly in the Treasury and No. 10, were not always easy in those years. Of course, relationships in Government are not always easy. However, listening to the right hon.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright). To pick up on his last point, the truth of the matter is that we do not need legislation for safe and legal routes. If I thought for one second that the Government were acting in good faith when they made references to safe and legal routes, I would have a lot more time for the contents of this Bill, but I see no evidence of that good faith. He and his right hon. and hon. Friends may have to reflect on that when they consider their position at later stages of the Bill. Everything in this Bill is all about electioneering and politics; it has nothing to do with the creation of a safe and legal route or a workable system of migration, or indeed with stopping the small boats coming across the channel, as we all want to do.”
“Nobody is saying that it has caused a massive increase or spike in any particular problems, but now, for the sake of sheer political positioning, we are going to return to a situation in which children will be placed behind razor wire in places such as Dungavel.”
“I also remember, I have to say, successive Home Office and Immigration Ministers in the then Labour Government standing up at the Dispatch Box and saying that I was a bleeding-heart liberal, and that this was just something that we had to live with and nothing could be done. Of course, as we know, there were things that could be done, and they ultimately were done—we did them five years later. I think it tells us quite a lot about the journey that the Conservative party has been on since those years in 2011 and 2012 that the Government feel it necessary to reintroduce detention for children. We have had 10 years without it now, and what have the bad consequences of that been? I do not see any.”
“The points that I will focus on relate to the question of detention and, in particular, the detention of children. The detention of children is something that I thought we had seen the back of. Although that initiative was driven by my former colleague, Sarah Teather, when she was the Minister with responsibility for young people, I again pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead, who did so much to support it in the Home Office. It was an absolute stain on our country that we kept children locked up in immigration removal centres such as Dungavel in Scotland. I remember visiting Dungavel—it must have been in 2007 or 2008.”
“And the evidence. The lack of evidence and impact assessments runs like a silver thread through the Bill. Have the impact assessments been done? Will they ever be done? If they have been done, will they be published? The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) made much of that in his speech, and he was absolutely right to do so. I was tempted to intervene on him to say, “Hold on a second here, man. You shouldn’t be going so fast; you should allow the Minister to get to his feet and tell us the position.” But the Minister did not do so then, and I suspect that he will not do so now, either. There have been times when I have seen Ministers on the Treasury Bench look more uncomfortable than the Minister for Immigration did when listening to the speeches of his right hon. Friends, but I am struggling to think of when that might have been.”
“The Minister is sitting there shaking his head. If he wants to intervene and tell me I am wrong about this, I am more than happy to take his intervention.”
“I hope that the Minister gets a hold of Hansard tomorrow, reads what he has just said and, as my mother used to say to me, takes a long, hard look at himself, because the idea that that is a justification for locking up children is absolutely disgraceful. For him to try to draw and to invent a causal link where none exists is a consistent line of the way this Government act. It is the same way that they tried to draw a causal link between the Modern Slavery Act and those coming in small boats—it just does not exist.”
““Unconscionable” is one of the more polite and measured terms that we could use about it. I reflect on the fact that when I visited Dungavel in 2007 or 2008, my own children were about six and 10 years old. The staff in Dungavel did a phenomenal job to mitigate the horrors of what they were dealing with, but at the end of the day, we were keeping children behind a razor wire, lockdown institution, and that was downright inappropriate and unacceptable. Nobody will ever persuade me that we should treat any child differently from the way in which we would want to treat our own.”
“That is the sort of ruthless efficiency of which the Home Office is capable. Are we seriously hearing now that we are going to start sending people back to Hong Kong because they happen to have come here before the start of the British national overseas visa scheme? Dame Rosie, I feel that I have detained the House for long enough—that is probably a matter of consensus among Members—but when it comes to Divisions, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches will do everything that we can to improve the Bill. However, ultimately, there are pieces of it that simply cannot be left to stand.”