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 23 of 95.
“Earlier, we were talking about returning people. I was privileged yesterday to meet a group of Hongkongers, who are among that privileged group of people who came here by a safe and legal route. They still have their problems, of course: their journey did not end when they arrived at Heathrow, and they still have to deal with the trauma of leaving friends, family and others behind in circumstances where they would ordinarily have chosen not to do so. However, I heard a quite remarkable story from one person who did not come through the safe and legal route because her arrival predated that visa scheme being opened up. She told me that her twin sister had been here, but had left the country, and now she was being told that she would need to leave because the Home Office had confused her biometrics with those of her twin sister.”
“It will come as no great surprise to the hon. Lady that I do. That brings me to thinking about what we do here. There is a danger that those of us who follow the evidence and actually care about what will happen if this dreadful piece of legislation is ever implemented disappear down the rabbit hole of trying to improve, amend and mitigate it. We have all tabled dozens—hundreds, some of us—of amendments, but this piece of the Bill has simply to be excised. I will be seeking to divide the House on clause 11 stand apart, because, frankly, there is no mitigation and no polishing of this—I avoid the vulgarity, but everyone knows what I am talking about. There is no way we can polish and improve on something that is so fundamentally removed from the way we would tolerate our own children being treated.”
“I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, because this is so important. There are so few of us now who remember what it was like. When children come here, they are thrown into association with some of the worst people imaginable. Some of the people I saw in Dungavel absolutely needed to be in detention, but the idea of holding them in the same facility as children just took that inhumanity to another level.”
“I wonder if the Home Secretary sees the inconsistency between saying in one breath that there is no such thing as petty crime, and then in the next one boasting that crime has fallen, but only if we exclude fraud from the figures. May I bring the Home Secretary’s attention, though, to the question relating to homelessness? Of course, it is welcome that we are going to be directing vulnerable individuals towards appropriate support, such as accommodation, mental health or substance misuse services. Can she tell the House, however, why it is that something as basic as that is not already the case, and what she thinks these vulnerable people will find when they get to the point of accessing those services?”
“T7. Every time I speak to those running sub-post offices in my constituency, I hear the same message: the various packages that are available and the business models are simply not sufficient for them to run a viable business. What will the Government do about that, or are we just going to wait until it becomes a crisis?”
“The Minister will be aware of the remarks of the Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, saying that the Palestinian village of Huwara should be wiped out. She will also be aware that he has said: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” Denying the existence of a people and calling for villages to be wiped out takes the level of rhetoric to a new level of unacceptability. With people like that now at the heart of the Netanyahu Government, is it not imperative that we do what we can to offer some protection to the Palestinian people by recognising, as a matter of urgency, the Palestinian state?”
“The right hon. Lady is making excellent points. She served as Energy Minister, I think, and I am reminded that the best part of 20 years ago one of her predecessors as Energy Minister, Brian Wilson, was promoting the case for an interconnector to go down the west coast of the United Kingdom and through the Irish sea. That did not happen, essentially because of concerns in Ofgem about the danger of stranded assets. I think her idea is a good one, but does she agree that in order to achieve it there will have to be a fundamental rethink about the way we regulate the industry?”
“On the subject of planning and the delays that are associated with it, I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman is aware that, in Canada, the time from consent to installation for a tidal device is around three years, whereas in this country, it is seven or eight. It comes down to something as simple as the fact that we do all the different impact assessments and the rest of it sequentially, when with a bit of imagination and creativity, they could all be done side by side.”
“If we are to change the way in which we generate energy, from it being produced in large amounts in a small number of places to a much more diffuse pattern of generation, we have to find different ways of doing that.”
“Member for South Northamptonshire also spoke about local involvement in planning decisions. There is one other item that I would commend to her in terms of managing these issues: local benefit. Communities that are to have a wind farm, for example, have the opportunity to see some money coming back directly to their community, which makes an enormous difference. In my own parish, we have a development of five wind turbines that provides a fund, which is administered by the local community council. My student sons have both benefited from that fund in terms of support given to them during their years at university. The support provided by such funds is small but meaningful.”
“For years, to my certain knowledge, the debate has been bedevilled by easy options, and that remains true about some parts of the debate today. I remain to be convinced about nuclear, either in its own right or as a source of baseload, but sceptics like me have to then ask, “Well, where does the baseload come from?” From my point of view, there are enormous opportunities from developments such as tidal energy, which I will come on to as it matters a lot to me and my constituency. There is also the issue of storage and, beyond that, the flattening of the curve through supply-side and demand-side management. Again, it is all about balance. There is no silver bullet here; there is no one technology, area or direction of travel that will solve all our difficulties. The right hon.”
“I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) on bringing this subject to the House. Her metaphor of the three-legged stool is a very good one. If we can move away from the immediacy of the problems, this debate allows us a few minutes to think about the issue in a more strategic manner. The point about the three-legged stool is that it works as a stool only if it has all three legs. If we take away any one of the three legs—affordability, security or decarbonisation—the other two will not achieve their purpose. The debate is often frustrating and ill served by false, binary choices. The point about a “trilemma” is that the choices that have to be made are about the balance of the progress we make on the three heads of the challenge, as well as the different means by which we seek to achieve them.”
“Absolutely. We make progress on these things incrementally, so if we can get to that situation that would be music to my heart and to the hearts of my constituents. In Orkney, we already generate more energy from renewables than we can use in our own community. However, as the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) observed earlier, because of the way in which the market is regulated and structured, we actually pay more for it. That is something that generates not just energy, but an enormous amount of resentment in the community as well.”
“There are many other things that we should be doing, such as managing supply and demand and increasing the amount of storage and smart grid—something that offers great opportunities for those who can turn on their washing machines at the other end of the country using their smartphones, although I suspect that it would be a bit more challenging for the members of the community who would benefit most from opportunities of that kind. The right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire has done us a great service in initiating this timely debate. I hope that its strategic aspects have been heard and understood on the Treasury Bench, and will be acted on.”
“Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid), the production of oil and gas in the North sea or to the west of Shetland is much less carbon-intensive than importing it from other parts of the world. The point, surely, is this: it is not an either/or. There is no route to decarbonisation and achieving net zero other than one that goes through oil and gas production. I do not want to see the future generations of my constituents working in oil and gas. I do want to see them work in renewables, but I think that that will be much more likely if we take a long, hard, clear-eyed look at what happens in the future with oil and gas production on our own continental shelf.”
“It is a visual illustration of transition, but again it shows just how ill served we are by binary choices. All the time, we seem to be told, “You can have renewables or you can have hydrocarbons, but you can’t have both.” That is dangerous nonsense. We have allowed production of oil and gas on the UK continental shelf to decline in recent years, and it has been to our detriment. It was never put in these terms at the time, but I cannot think why anyone ever thought it would be a good idea to rely on Vladimir Putin for the purchase of our gas and Mohammed bin Salman for the production of our oil when we have a rich resource on our own doorstep. As we heard from the hon.”
“With the synergy between oil and gas, we have been at the forefront of the country’s energy needs for 40 years now, and the development of offshore renewables is the obvious next step. When I speak to apprentices, as I did during National Apprenticeship Week last month, they tell me that although they are starting apprenticeships in the oil and gas industry, they fully expect to have transitioned to something different by the end of their working lives. For the past 40 years, my constituency has been home to the two largest oil terminals in western Europe: Flotta in Orkney and Sullom Voe in Shetland, which provide a visual demonstration of the just transition. EnQuest, the terminal operator at Sullom Voe, is now working on projects involving hydrogen, carbon capture, use and storage, and offshore electrification of production.”
“To my mind, that is an abuse of the privilege that it has been given by successive Governments. Orkney is home to the European Marine Energy Centre, which is just about to celebrate its 20th anniversary. It has been at the forefront of the development of tidal stream energy generation; no doubt it could now play a similar role in the development of floating offshore wind. Like other hon. Members, I was delighted to see the ringfenced pot in the round 4 allocation, but I share the concerns of the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber. That is not just me speaking; the UK Marine Energy Council, RenewableUK and Scottish Renewables have all reacted badly, so I hope that the Department is already thinking about how to maximise the opportunities by getting some of the money back.”
“It is galling that although we are leading the way in decarbonised energy production, we end up paying more because we are part of a market that is regulated for the UK as a whole and that relies too heavily on the wholesale price of gas, as we are now seeing. Let me just vent parenthetically for a second or two about the energy company SSE and its occasional choice simply to stop paying people who are entitled to feed-in tariff payments. I always seem to have at least one such case on the go among my constituency casework. Just last week, I was able to secure eventual, long-overdue repayment from SSE of £72,000 to one farmer in my constituency. That was money that SSE owed him and there was absolutely no reason for it not to pay, but for arbitrary and unaccountable reasons it seems occasionally just to decide to stop paying people.”
“In many ways, Orkney and Shetland demonstrates the energy transition issues and the trilemma in microcosm: we have long, dark, cold winters, we have poor-quality housing stock and we are off the mains gas grid, so we do not have the same opportunities for access to cheaper heating as other parts of the country. The affordability element therefore very much matters to us. We generate more electricity from renewables than we can use for ourselves, but because of how the market was regulated until recently, when we finally got consent for a cable to the Scottish mainland, we have not been able to maximise the benefits.”
“The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. With a commitment to the principle from the top, everything underneath tends to fall into place. There is another aspect of community benefits in which we may have missed a trick in Scotland recently. Although we missed out on a sovereign wealth fund, apart from in Orkney and Shetland, in the 1970s, there would have been an opportunity to generate more of a sovereign wealth fund from offshore renewables in the ScotWind round. We missed the boat this time, but I hope we can make up for it in future.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making an important point. For the last quarter of a century, the House has proceeded in relation to the peace process in Northern Ireland—and today is about the peace process, let us be quite clear about that—on the basis of bipartisan or non-partisan politics. For that reason, my party will be joining his and the Government in the Lobby.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. He touches on the most important part of the debate. The issue is not just that farmers face increased energy costs, but that that is part of the overall package. They have labour shortages and are under the cosh in just about every way imaginable. Consequently, if they are not able to meet the demand, other food sources will come through trade deals, and once they fill that gap in the market, we will never get them out.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. Nothing in life is free; eventually, somebody has to pay for it. This trend has been driven by Governments of all colours for decades. The most significant move towards a cashless society was the Labour Government’s decision to prevent people from being able to access pensions at the post office by handing over a pension book, and insisting that all pensions go into bank accounts. There will have to be a different culture in Government before they have the authority to lecture banks.”
“On the question of Hong Kong, is it not obvious that one reason why the Chinese Government did not honour the terms of the joint declaration was that they were given lots of signals from this country that we did not really care that much about it and that we were quite glad to be shot of Hong Kong? Signals matter, and the signals that we send every time we prefer trade to human rights are entirely the wrong signals to be sending.”
“The hon. Gentleman has given a comprehensive tour de raison of the issues. Considering it as a whole—I get a sense that he is coming to his peroration—does he think it reasonable or sensible that the integrated review refresh that we heard about on Monday now does not classify China as a threat?”
“That would be a good point at which the Government could start. If the Minster could express a view on that, I think we would all consider our time today to have been very well spent.”
“I have no doubt that the correction was initiated by officials as a consequence of the representations that they then had. Clearly, they were not of a mind to stand up to those representations and the pressure that was being put on them. Genomics needs to be part of our critical national infrastructure; the Government need to move on that. From what we see, the time has now surely come for BGI Group itself to be the subject of a security review by the United Kingdom Government. If we are to be serious about the way in which we rebalance our relationship with China, we need to get the balance between trade and human rights right. The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and I were both members of Cabinet in the golden age, so we have seen how it used to work. We understand that that has to change.”
“In his reply, the Minister responding said something quite remarkable: “I had been prepared to pay tribute to the work of BGI” —that is the Chinese genomics giant— “when my officials pointed out that at that point Genomics England was suffering several hack attacks from BGI each week.” —[ Official Report, 8 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 120WH.] I know that he was talking off script at that point. I could tell because I was watching him; I could also tell from the way the blood drained from the officials’ faces. The next day in Hansard , there was a letter of ministerial correction. It said: “There is no evidence of attempted hacking of Genomics England in 2014 from BGI.” —[ Official Report, 9 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 2MC.] Stalin at the height of the Soviet Union could not have improved on that.”
“It highlighted the importance of understanding that for all those Hongkongers who have settled here, their arrival is not the end of the story; it is just the beginning. The trauma of leaving their home in the way they had to will have caused many other issues, and our obligation to support them did not stop when they cleared passport control at Heathrow airport. My more significant point is about not so much the position that has been outlined at some length, but the approach of Ministers and Government officials in response to it. Today in the main Chamber, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster managed to make a whole statement about TikTok without using the words “China” or “Chinese” once. Last Wednesday, in this very Chamber, I initiated a debate on genomics and national security.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who secured the debate. I am reminded of the days when I used to have to read case reports. I would read the lengthy and definitive judgments and then I would come to one that just said, “I concur”, and I would fall on it like manna from heaven. To the two hon. Gentlemen who have already spoken in the debate, I say, “I concur”. I will make two points. My first is about the position of people coming here from Hong Kong under the British national overseas sponsorship scheme. Last night, I had the enormous pleasure of spending time at a symposium at the London School of Economics, run by the Hong Kong Public Affairs and Social Services Society.”
“The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said in the Chamber today that China is “the most significant state threat faced by the United Kingdom”. Does that form of words encapsulate Government policy? I have to say, many of us would have been happier to read that in the IRR.”
“Forgive me if I am a little irritated, but this feels like human rights for slow learners. Surely it makes no difference whether it is for the smuggling or for the use of drugs—the death penalty should not be tolerated. Since 2015, we have not had a single public condemnation or appeal from a Prime Minister or a Foreign Secretary in relation to a Saudi death penalty case. Is that as a result of a change of policy? I have to say to the Minister that I suspect that the Saudi Arabians actually know that we do not like the use of the death penalty. They are not embarrassed by private representations, but they might be embarrassed by public representations, which have made a difference in the past.”
“May I renew my call for a debate or statement in relation to the operation of the alternative fuel payment scheme? I have heard from no fewer than 126 constituents who use electricity to heat their homes. Almost half of them have received the payment, and half of them have not. The Government have said that they will not claw back payments that have been made incorrectly in these circumstances, so it seems to be utterly random whether someone gets the money or not. At the end of the day, it is also exceptionally unfair.”
“I congratulate the Minister on a quite remarkable achievement: he made that entire statement without once using the words “China” or “Chinese”, which I think tells us quite a lot about the way in which the Government approach matters like this. This is the right thing to do, but I have to say to him that playing whack-a-mole like this—one week it is Huawei, next week it is Hikvision, and the week after that it is TikTok—is no substitute for a coherent cross-Government strategy. If he really wants an evidence-led, proportionate piece of policy for Government, why do the Government not now move to include genomics in the definition of critical national infrastructure?”
“Gentleman—who, I understand, wishes to be known as “the wolf of Whitehall” in future—has posted a meme on the app saying, “I’m not leaving.” Madam Deputy Speaker, how do we get some clarity on the Government’s messaging here? Surely a risk is a risk, whether it is on a Minister’s private phone or one provided by the Government?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will be aware that, earlier today, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster came to the House to make a statement on the security of Government devices. Apparently, in the future, Ministers and officials will not be allowed to have TikTok on their Government-provided device. I am sure that much of the support in the Chamber for that came as a result of the presumption that many of us made: that it would mean that we would no longer have to endure the sight of the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero on this young person’s app. It is now reported, however, that the right hon.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the woeful lack of attention received by the sector, which is important for communities such as the ones that I represent. Can I suggest that what we really need is Government and Governments who operate in the same direction? At the moment in Shetland, we have the Shellvolution project, which brings £4.4 million to develop low-carbon, sustainable mussel farming—something that is good for the whole of Scotland—and is funded by both the UK and Scottish Governments. At the same time, we have a consultation on highly protected marine areas that is focused almost exclusively on inshore waters, which was today described to me by a local businessman in Shetland as an existential threat to the industry.”
“Next month, I will be joining the team from HyImpulse at the SaxaFord spaceport in Shetland to see the hot fire test of its new HyPLOX75 motor. Like many companies in the sector, it is very keen to know when we will get an announcement regarding the space flight phase 2 programme. When will we get that announcement? If we are not going to go ahead with that programme, what will the Government be doing to encourage companies like HyImpulse to do their business in Scotland?”
“It is, of course, for Ministers and officials to stand up to or buckle to pressure as they choose, but the Official Report belongs to Parliament. Mr Speaker has been robust in other areas in defending the rights of parliamentarians against outside pressures, especially those coming from China. What can you and he do, Mr Deputy Speaker, to bring the same protections to bear in respect of the Official Report ?”
“At no stage did the Minister’s office contact me to make me aware of its intention to correct—or, perhaps more accurately, alter—the record in that way. Can you clarify for me, Mr Deputy Speaker, whether that conforms to the rules surrounding changes of that sort? Secondly, is this not an abuse of the procedures for correcting the record? It is not a matter of detail, but a flat contradiction of what the Minister said. In Westminster Hall, the Minister was recounting an incident of which he had personal knowledge. There was nothing to correct. The only explanation that I can see is that the company in question, BGI, has got at the officials in the Minister’s Department and that they have buckled to the pressure.”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. On Wednesday of last week, I initiated a debate in Westminster Hall on the subject of genomics and national security. In the course of that debate, the Minister responding—the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), who has been notified of this point of order—stated that the Chinese genomics giant, BGI Group, had been responsible for several hacking attacks on Genomics England. The next day, on 9 March, a letter of correction was published in the Official Report at column 2MC: “An error has been identified in my response to the debate. The correct response should have been…‘There is no evidence of attempted hacking of Genomics England in 2014 from BGI.’” —[ Official Report, 9 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 2MC.] First of all, that correction was brought to my attention yesterday by a journalist.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right that we had the super sponsor scheme in Scotland, which everybody thought was a great initiative, but did it not fall foul of the point that the hon. Member for Harrow East made—namely, that we thought the problem was over when we got people to Scotland? We did not see it as a long-term exercise, and as a consequence, we have had almost 2,500 people living on cruise ships, which the British Red Cross rightly says is completely inappropriate for their needs. We are going to be dealing with these situations many times in the future. We must learn from the mistakes we have made this time and understand that, when the refugees arrive here, that is the beginning of the story, not the end.”
“I think we can all accept that there is a legitimate role for the security services in combating disinformation campaigns from foreign, hostile states. However, a recent report from the campaign group Big Brother Watch showed that in 2020 a number of British citizens had their social media posts featured in monitoring reports produced for the Cabinet Office by the British Army’s 77th Brigade. Will the Secretary of State tell the House: is the 77th Brigade still monitoring social media posts of British citizens, and, if so, for what purpose and under what authority?”
“If compassion and concern for the rule of law are not enough to speak to the values of hon. Members, I can offer them one further reason, which is simply that it will not work. It will not achieve the deterrent effect that it seeks to claim. We have been told this before. We were told that the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 was going to be the Act that would solve the problem, but what has happened since that came into force? The numbers have gone up and up. The truth is that many people who deserve and are entitled to asylum at present will not get it if the Bill passes. And what will be the consequence of that? They will be sent away and many of them will die. That is why this House should reject the Bill tonight.”
“We may choose to vote against it because of concerns about legality, both in respect of our domestic legislation and our international obligations under treaties. It is difficult for those on the Treasury Bench to deliver lectures to those in Beijing in relation to adherence to international law if we do not live up to the same standards ourselves. As the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said, we can choose to reject the Bill on the basis of the impact it will have on our world-leading modern-day slavery legislation. We can even reject it because it lacks a basic sense of British compassion. I was a Minister in the Government that abandoned detention for children for immigration purposes, and I am horrified to see the Conservative party seeking to restore it today.”
“Listening to the hon. Member for Gedling (Tom Randall), it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that somehow or other we have gone back in time. In much the same way as people in the 19th century spoke about the deserving and the undeserving poor, today we have landed in a place where we have the deserving and the undeserving desperate. The hon. Gentleman referred to the number of men who crossed the channel, but he may not be aware that 7,177 of those who crossed the channel last year were children. The characterisation that he and others have made today is not borne out by the statistics provided by the Home Secretary and the Home Office itself. There are many different reasons why hon. Members should vote against the Bill this evening.”
“As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have been on this journey with him since that quite remarkable Westminster Hall debate in 2016. We said then that we needed the money; we got the money, but now we find that there are structural problems still standing in the way of the progress we need. To me, that says that there is probably nobody in charge of the strategy within the Department. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if we can achieve anything in this debate, it will be to hear a commitment from the Treasury Bench that somebody will take charge of this strategy and make it happen?”
“I speak about this publicly from time to time, and I am always struck by the number of people who say to me, “Thank you for doing that, because this took my father”—or their brother, their neighbour, their friend or whoever—“and I had no idea that this had been their life experience.” When I was growing up, 40 or 50 years ago, a cancer diagnosis really was not talked about—it was almost taboo—and I think we are in the same place with brain cancers. If we are to make the progress we need, we all have to start talking about this much more. The experience has to be shared.”
“Numerous genomic applications, including non-invasive prenatal genetic testing, DNA-based forensics, genetic disease diagnostics and covid-19 surveillance are now commonplace. Indeed, covid exposed the importance of genomics in monitoring new variants and enabling targeted interventions at a community level. The industry is already worth billions and it will only grow. But we all know that where there are opportunities, there are also risks—and that is where I want to take the Minister’s attention today. I have been a Minister; he has been a Minister. We all understand that although government can do many great things, it is often clunky and finds difficulties responding when science and technology bring change at a quite bewildering pace, which is exactly what is happening here.”