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 24 of 95.
“I beg to move, That this House has considered genomics and national security. Alistair Campbell, of course, might be somebody who will wind up at some point. Notwithstanding that minor quibble, it is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Davies, and to bring what might be seen by some as a slightly niche subject to the House. I am pleased to see the Minister in his place. It is worth stating at the outset why I have initiated the debate and what I hope to achieve with it. Let me first accentuate the positives. Genomics is a great British success story and the opportunities for further advancement in the future are phenomenal. In 2003, two years ahead of schedule, the Human Genome Project successfully sequenced the human genome. Since then, genomic research has transformed healthcare.”
“This is not the sexiest subject that we are going to find, and I suspect that it will not be raised on many doorsteps yet, but consider how the previous exercise in relation to data capture worked out, whereby people understood too late what they had been part of, and the concerns that that raised. This is an opportunity for the Government, just for once, to get ahead of the curve. I would like to hear from the Minister that he understands that and that work is going on within the Government to do exactly that.”
“We need to start to scrutinise the work of Chinese genomics firms that are involved in the UK’s health and research sector in the same way that we currently scrutinise firms in areas such as defence technology, telecoms and CCTV surveillance. There must be no trade-off between research success and the promotion of our democratic values and adherence to standards of human rights. Just as the UK Government eventually opted not to allow Huawei access to our 5G critical infrastructure, they must now consider the threats to our national security of allowing BGI and other companies linked to competitor or hostile Governments to access our genomic data.”
“That is defined as: “Those critical elements of infrastructure (assets, facilities, systems, networks, or processes, and the essential workers who operate and facilitate them), the loss or compromise of which could result in (a) major detrimental impact and the availability, integrity, or delivery of essential services, including those services where integrity, if compromised, could result in significant loss of life or casualties—taking into account significant economic or social impacts; and/or (b) significant impact on national security, national defence, or the functioning of the state.” It defies belief that genomics is not already included in that definition, and that the Government have apparently not even considered putting it in.”
“How do we start to turn this situation round within the limits of what is currently available to us? Other things can probably be done with the legislation that is currently going through the House, but what can we do with what is currently available? I suggest to the Minister that the most important step we can take is to bring the genomics industry within the definition of critical national infrastructure.”
“We need to identify potential issues and put in place structures that will protect data privacy and ensure the proper use of genomic research. If companies such as BGI are not prepared to submit to meaningful compliance audits, we have to stop treating them as if they are trusted partners. At the risk of stating the totally blindingly obvious, once data is shared, we cannot get it back. Although I welcome the Government’s moves last year, including the Trusted Research campaign, led by the CPNI, and the launch of the research collaboration advice team in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, those bodies need to be properly resourced and given proactive mandates to advise and support universities and others engaged in research in this area.”
“Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), in which Ministers stated that “the genomics industry is not designated as critical national infrastructure in the UK”. The truth of the matter is that genomics is playing a role not just in the advancement of science but in economic competition between the UK and our allies on the one hand and competitor states on the other. It is a new front in the defence of the realm. As far as I am able to tell, there have been no cross-departmental discussions at Cabinet level about the involvement of China and its state-linked companies in the UK genomics and bionomics sector. That has got to change. We need much more proactive work, both within the Government and among the Government, industry and academia.”
“On a point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), a recent Times investigation found that no fewer than 42 universities in the United Kingdom that have links with Chinese institutions connected to the repression of the Uyghurs, espionage, nuclear weapons research or hacking. Many of them have had links with Chinese universities carrying out military work. Twenty-one universities, including Cambridge, Sheffield, Leeds and Queen Mary University of London, are partnered with what is termed “very high-risk Chinese institutions”. The reach of BGI into key areas of healthcare and scientific research should be of particular concern. Let me contrast the view of the National Counterintelligence and Security Centre in the USA with the answer given recently to a written parliamentary question asked by the hon.”
“The US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence noted: “BGI may be serving…as a global collection mechanism for Chinese government genetic databases”. It also said that BGI “poses similar threats in the biotechnology sector as Huawei does in the communications sector.” In 2020, the US Department of Commerce added Xinjiang Silk Road BGI and Beijing Liuhe BGI—two BGI subsidiaries—to an export blacklist for “conducting genetic analyses used to further the repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities”. If that is the conclusion of some of our most trusted allies’ agencies, why is the United Kingdom so determined to take a different approach? I fear it may be that we are already further down the road of reliance on companies such as BGI than many in the Government are prepared to acknowledge and admit.”
“It has a lengthy history of collaboration with the People’s Liberation Army, and is just one example of a company that should not be operating without constraint within our institutions. The UK relies on the general data protection regulation to regulate the work of groups such as BGI and hopes that genomics firms such as BGI will follow GDPR, rather than the Chinese national security law, but I genuinely question just how likely that is. As the Minister will know, article 7 of the national security law states that “organisations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts”. That is a law to which BGI is subject. The BGI Group does not submit itself to independent data security or cyber-security audits, and essentially, we are prepared to take BGI on trust. To me, that feels a little naive.”
“Our institutions need to get the most out of international scientific collaboration while protecting intellectual property, sensitive research, personal information and, ultimately, our national defence. Already, it is evidenced that questionable actors are finding a way into the space left by poor regulation, and we risk finding ourselves a few years down the line in the situation we were in some years ago when we had to remove Huawei from the roll-out of the 5G network. Had we acted earlier on Huawei, we would not have had to engineer it out later. In the field of genomics, more attention needs to be paid to the work of the Chinese gene giant, the BGI Group. BGI is one of a large number of Chinese state-linked companies that have been implicated in the repression of Uyghurs and the forced collection of genetic data.”
“Still today, our world-leading universities and thriving genomics ecosystem, combined with our continued role in the western alliance, mean that the UK can lead the way in ensuring that genomics is used for the right reasons and in the right way. However, that will continue only if the right decisions are taken now. More than half our research is a product of international partnerships, and those partnerships need to be based on shared values over the protection of human rights and on reciprocity. The Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure already does important work to protect the integrity of international research collaboration, but we must be more proactive.”
“There is a spectrum of threat involved, which can range from population engineering to improve “population quality” to genetic extinction technologies in bioweapons. Genomics is the next frontier in surveillance for repressive regimes such as China, and in 2022, the Citizen Lab found that since 2016 the Chinese Government had been conducting mass DNA campaigns in Tibet and in Xinjiang, as well as a police-led national programme of male DNA collection, to intensify state repression and control. How are we in the UK mitigating those threats? From Watson and Crick to John Sulston’s vision to map the human genome, applying technology developed by Fred Sanger, the UK has long led the world in this vital research.”
“That regulation has to protect individual data privacy rights and our national security and economic interests. I believe that our regime falls short in the latter aspect, and it must be made fit for purpose. We know the positive applications of genomics, and in the coming decade genomics research could lead to breakthrough therapies for hundreds of genetic diseases. It could also create a truly personalised approach to healthcare and enable us to predict the risk of disease at a population level. However, there are also enormously dangerous applications of the technology. Genomic research could be, and in some cases already is being, deployed to widen global health inequalities, curtail human rights, and threaten global peace and stability.”
“A few years ago, we would have said exactly the same thing about data protection and mass data capture; we simply did not understand the significance of data capture through social media. Well, we understand that better now, and as a consequence we are having to scramble to catch up. If the Minister wants a bit of entertaining bedtime reading in this subject, I recommend Chris Wylie’s book—forgive the vulgarity, but this is the title—“Mindf*ck”. It is about the creation of the Cambridge Analytica model, which used data captured from social media. If we do not learn the lessons of data capture and data protection, we risk the same things happening in genomics and national security. As a country, we need to ensure that we have a suitable regulatory environment that will protect the gains we have made in the genomics space.”
“Absolutely, and the question of the work in our universities and other research institutions is one to which I will turn in some detail later. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to highlight its importance in this debate. Consider, though, what happened in recent years in relation to data protection. Regulation of data use was essentially analogue in a world that had gone digital, and it was therefore possible for a company such as Cambridge Analytica to take advantage of poor regulation and to build a business model that was all about the manipulation of opinion. Genomics is a subject that is often poorly understood outside its own walls.”
“I want to bring the Minister on to the point about BGI. I think we are aggressively agreeing with each other here, essentially because we are talking on parallel lines. Will he address the point about BGI and similar companies, and their need to comply or else be treated differently?”
“There are some things in life where we expect changes to come naturally, organically or incrementally, and there are other things for which change has to be driven, and the approach must be strategic. I suggest to the hon. Member that racial discrimination is something that falls in the latter category. In my own constituency we do not have the same range of ethnic diversity that might be found elsewhere. However, in Kirkwall Grammar School we have a teacher, Theo Ogbhemhe, who has taken a leading role in getting a group of students together in an anti-racism group, challenging discriminatory attitudes and behaviours wherever they are found. That is only possible if the strategy is in place to empower teachers like that.”
“It is apparent from my constituency casework that there are people who have already received the payment through their energy company, but who probably should not have. I ask the Minister to confirm on the Floor of the House what she has told me in correspondence: “Government will not require customers to repay an Alternative Fuel Payment which they have received, even if they use electricity to heat their homes.””
“What will be done to ensure that those people, who are now being told that they should have been keeping the receipts from their weekly shopping since September, are not going to be excluded? Will the Minister tell us how many payments have already been made? How many people will now have to make an application through the portal? How many does the Department estimate will remain off grid but will not receive a payment under this scheme?”
“Will the Minister explain to the House why no offline process—no paper-based process—is in place for that small number of people who remain highly vulnerable? Finally, I turn to the issue of those who rely on solid fuel—peat, coal or logs—for their heating. It is now apparent that they will have to provide receipts. Those can go back to September, but someone who has been buying coal at their shop, perhaps in a small bag, every week since goodness knows when will not have kept their receipts. How are those people, who have incurred the expense, going to get access to this important payment? It is arbitrary to say that solid fuel bought only after September will be eligible for reimbursement. I know a lot of people who will buy solid fuel in the summer months because it is at its cheapest then.”
“It appears to us that they have been excluded from the scheme. Will the Minister explain to us, either now or in correspondence, why that should be the case? The applications that are now having to be made by those who have not received their payment automatically are to be done through the portal. So will the Minister tell us how long it will take for those people to be given a decision? In the event that they are unhappy with the decision made, what will be their appeal process? It is matter of record that there is a significant overlap between homes that are off grid and those that have poor or no internet access. A number of vulnerable elderly people just do not use internet services at all, but there appears only to be an online application process.”
“That is true, but they can also be obtained through the Post Office. Only a handful of the outer islands in my constituency have access to PayPoint, but people can go to their local post office. The information going to the end energy user should surely reflect that. One business in Orkney brought to my attention today the fact that it will not, apparently, receive the payment because it changed its energy supplier at the start of the year. It will not get the payment from its new energy supplier or from its former one, which, again, appears to be a fundamental unfairness. The issue relating to district heating schemes does not affect many communities, but it very much affects Lerwick, where Shetland Heat, Energy & Power provides a district heating scheme to many local households.”
“If the Government are to implement their own regulations, those applications will be refused. That will leave us in the manifestly unfair situation whereby, for two households in exactly the same situation, one will be in receipt of the £200 payment and the other will not. The Minister has already told me in correspondence that there are no plans to claw back payments that have been made. That being the case, what will be the remedy for those whose application through the portal is refused? I look at the information that has been put into the public domain on the way in which tokens for people on prepayment meters can be paid out, and I look at the information that has been given to me by my own energy company, and they both say that the tokens can be redeemed through PayPoint.”
“I declare an interest, as my home is off grid. We are heated by an oil-based central heating system, and I have received the £200 alternative fuel payment from my energy company, Octopus Energy. The Liberal Democrats support this scheme but, like others, we have very serious concerns about the way in which it has been constructed and implemented. I have liaised with the Minister through correspondence and at Business questions last week on the fact that a number of people whose homes are heated entirely by electricity should not, on my reading of the regulations, have been given the alternative fuel payment, but on the basis of the modelling used by the Department, they have been given it. Others in an identical situation will now have to make an application through the portal that went live yesterday.”
“By the time that we come to deal with the alternative fuel payment pass-through requirement regulations on Tuesday, can the Leader of the House assure me that the Minister will be able to answer the very basic questions that my constituents are asking? The payments started landing last week, and people who did not expect to get them are getting them, while people who are obviously entitled to them are not. I am being inundated with questions, with people asking me whether that money will be clawed back. They will want answers to those questions. They should have had them by now, but will they at least get them next Tuesday?”
“There are 47,000 dead—my constituency has 44,000 people in it. That gives a sense of what we are facing in human terms. On the subject of refugees, many of those who have been displaced will of course want to stay and rebuild, but they may want to send some of their family to join family here. Would this not be a great opportunity to give a lead in the world and set up a scheme for those who have connections here in the same way that we did for those fleeing war in Ukraine?”
“The Minister has a long-standing record in this area; I thought she might be jumping to get to the Dispatch Box to answer my question. We have to accept, though, that although we were making very good progress on reducing and eliminating the use of single-use plastics before covid, the measures that were necessary during lockdown did see a lot of that progress reversed, and there is now a need for a renewed and reinvigorated approach. Unfortunately, in Scotland we have a rather poorly designed deposit return scheme that risks further damage to the cause of reducing single-use plastics, so will the Minister join me and other Members across the House in designing a strategy for the eventual elimination of single-use plastics that can enjoy everyone’s support?”
“From our end of the country, we see things through the other end of the telescope. We have an enormous surplus of renewable energy generated in Orkney but no way to feed it into the grid because of grid constraints. Using the availability of that energy to charge cars and other electrical devices is a real opportunity for us. We have the ReFLEX project, which was born of that very opportunity. However, does this situation not tell us that we need to have a fundamentally different way of thinking about the grid and how we use energy, and a greater degree of decentralisation than we have ever had?”
“The Chair of the Select Committee prompts me to reflect that I am one of the handful of people here who had an active part in the last period of direct rule, in about 2004 or 2005. It was just about the most inadequate procedure imaginable, which is a high bar to clear in this place. Ultimately, without a functioning Assembly, and without direct rule or joint authority, the people who lose out are not the politicians, but the people who rely on public services.”
“May I take the Secretary of State back to his answer to the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes)? If he is not ruling out ever leaving the convention, is he then not ruling out ever breaking the Good Friday agreement?”
“The Minister told us a few minutes ago that part of the problem here is human rights lawyers who abuse and exploit our laws. That is obviously very serious, Mr Speaker. Any lawyer doing that needs to be stopped, so could the Minister tell the House how many solicitors, advocates and barristers have been reported by the Home Office in the last 12 months to the regulatory authorities?”
“Well, that will really show them, won’t it? There is really only one reason for having a meeting like this: to keep that man talking until the rozzers arrive with a stout pair of handcuffs. As I understand the Minister’s position today, the approach of His Majesty’s Government to sanctions for people like this is that they allow us to deliver robust messages. If that is the strategy—and it has been for some years now—can the Minister offer the House the list of areas where progress has been made as a consequence? In what way have things got better for the Uyghur population in Xinjiang?”
“I thank the Minister most warmly for that answer. She illustrates perfectly the need for my private Member’s Bill, which would allow Parliament to make this most important appointment, rather than the Government. The post has been vacant for 10 months already. In the third quarter of last year, no fewer than 4,586 potential victims of modern slavery were referred to the Home Office—38% up on the previous year. What is it about their record on this issue that makes the lack of scrutiny so attractive to the Government?”
“In every other area of fisheries science and management, when facing something for which we do not know the cause, we proceed according to the precautionary principle. The Minister clearly does not know the cause of this incident. Last year and in the year 2020-21, English water companies discharged sewage into waters containing shellfish on no fewer than 59,079 occasions, lasting more than 432,695 hours. According to the precautionary principle, should we not be stopping that, instead of giving it the green light for another 15 years?”
“Social value is not restricted to these shores. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that China has a very prescriptive regime, particularly in relation to people in Xinjiang province. In this country, Hikvision produces CCTV equipment for councils. Does he agree that the Government need to be much more careful about allowing such companies into the UK market?”
“For those who are getting support for alternative fuels, what reach does the Minister expect the scheme to have for those whom the Government have identified as relying on alternative fuels, and how long does he expect it will take for the remainder to get their money?”
“The only surprising aspect of this whole sorry affair is the fact that anyone is surprised by it. Young people are placed in totally unsuitable accommodation, and are then left there while the Home Office fails to process applications for them and, indeed, for all asylum seekers. This was always going to happen. On 16 December the Minister announced a £15,000 extra funding package for local authorities, which is due to expire at the end of February. Is he telling us today that that additional money—not the standard money—will continue after 28 February?”
“We have to look at the probation service, the criminal Bar, the prosecution service, the police and the education system, so that we stop treating the criminal justice system like the man who follows the elephants with the bucket and shovel every time the circus comes to town. We need to get to people at a stage in their life when we can make sure that they do not enter the criminal justice system in adulthood.”
“It is over 20 years since I left legal practice as a criminal court solicitor, so I hesitate to draw on my own experience, not least because it was in another jurisdiction. However, I strongly suspect that there was nothing in the reviews ordered by the Minister that he would not have heard in a slightly less sanitised version by spending some time in the Bar common room of any court or in any police station, probation office or social work office anywhere in this country. The measures that the Minister refers to are, as far as they go, sensible and good. He is to be commended for taking them. However, when the next review comes—sadly, we know that there will be a next review—can we get away from the silent thinking that we just look at the probation service as if it stands in isolation?”
“In Orkney and Shetland, we have the highest rates of fuel poverty anywhere in the country. The premium paid by the poorest people in my constituency takes the advance situation and risks making it catastrophic. We have another problem on top of that, as we cannot get any energy company to install meters in new-build houses in the northern isles. When the Minister next speaks to the energy companies, and when he has stopped them installing meters that people do not want in the rest of the country, can he ask them to send some engineers to the northern isles to install the meters that new house owners need?”
“If the Minister were to go online to book a test in my constituency today, he would find that in Shetland, the earliest date is 18 weeks away and in Orkney, there are no test dates available. That is quite apart from the continued lack of availability of off-road motorcycle testing. The history of the DVSA in Orkney and in Shetland in particular in recent years has been frankly pitiful. When it comes to the next performance appraisal interview with the chief executive of the DVSA, could the Minister prevail upon her to find a day or two to come north and see for herself the effect that her stewardship has had on our communities?”
“Whatever concerns there may be about the process as a whole, I can only welcome in the warmest possible terms the announcement of funding for the new Fair Isle ferry. In that announcement, the Minister has given hope for a future to one of the remotest and most economically and socially fragile communities in the country, and I am enormously grateful for that, as are the people of Fair Isle and Shetland as a whole. Of course, that does come at the second time of asking, so I pay tribute to the council officials and officials in the Department, who have worked together to learn from the experience of the first time of asking. Will she assure me that if Orkney Islands Council now comes back for a second time of asking with its also very worthy project, it will be given the same help and support?”
“Does the Minister share my frustration that after so many years monkfish is still regarded as a data-deficient species, given its very high value to the Scottish fleet?”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I remain to be convinced whether the Secretary of State understands the effect of a gender recognition certificate, but surely it is now apparent that he does not understand the concept of parliamentary accountability. For as long as I have been in this House, if the House were to be made aware of a Government document or publication of any sort, it would be placed in the House of Commons Library. It was not sent by email to individual named members. Surely all Members of this United Kingdom Parliament have an interest in knowing the Government position. There is no good reason for this unprecedented departure from previous processes.”
“If the Minister has regard to paragraph 15 in what purports to be the statement of reasons, he will see that it states: “It is practically and legally undesirable for all, including in particular the individual holder of the GRC, that a person will have one legal sex in Scotland and a different one in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.” Is he satisfied that this test of practicality and legal desirability or undesirability is sufficient to meet the tests set out in section 35?”
“Paragraph 20 of the purported statement of reasons says that one of the barriers that would be encountered is existing IT infrastructure. Has the hon. Gentleman ever come across a case in which, apparently, the law has to be designed to fit IT infrastructure, rather than IT infrastructure being designed to fit the law?”
“The inability of businesses in my constituency—those that offer food and drink and send out hampers, the various craft businesses, and the whole range of other companies that have diversified their business model in recent years to incorporate mail order—to send out their products has been catastrophic. We have felt the impact more acutely than any other part of the country. This is a regulated business, and it is clear that Ofcom has certain powers at its disposal to protect the universal service. It is surely necessary now for it to come forward. Instead of entertaining talk from Royal Mail about how it can reduce the universal service, Ofcom should look at how it uses those powers to protect it.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali) on securing the debate. This issue clearly requires a debate, with more time, on the Floor of the House. The current parlous state of industrial relations within Royal Mail has been felt particularly acutely in the Northern Isles. A number of people have spoken about the position of various courier companies and the poor quality of their service. However, for many businesses in my constituency, the option of moving from an unreliable Royal Mail service to those other companies is simply not open to them, because those companies do not operate in the Northern Isles. That is why the universal service is particularly important for us.”
“I am sure that we are all pleased to hear from the Minister that the Government remain committed to implementing all the Williams recommendations. Presumably, therefore, the Home Office has a plan for the implementation. Can the Minister tell the House what the target date for completion of that plan is?”