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 32 of 95.
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is further to the point of order raised by the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting). Successive Ministers have promised that vaccine passports will not be introduced without the prior approval of this House, yet it is reported today that they are going to do exactly that. What can you do, Mr Speaker, to protect the position of this House and to ensure that Ministers keep the promises they have made to it?”
“The right hon. Gentleman is making a very good point, which illustrates the importance of the availability of judicial review. Looking towards what might be coming down the line in this regard, should I make an assumption about having his support on that occasion?”
“I am sure that the House will be on tenterhooks to know, so I can put it out of its misery and tell the hon. Member that I will be more than happy to support his new clause.”
“Without such support prosecution witnesses will be unable to provide witness evidence and this will severely limit our ability to convict perpetrators and dismantle organised crime groups.” Those are the concerns of the Government’s own Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. We have to wonder why we have people in such positions if their advice is to be disregarded in this way. In promoting new clause 43 and amendments 130 and 131, I fully declare that I am something of a cipher for the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association—a declaration I make with absolutely no shame or embarrassment. ILPA has a long and distinguished record in this area and it comprises people whose views should be listened to.”
“Clause 62 works to exclude potential victims of slavery or human trafficking from protections on the grounds that they are a threat to public order or have claimed to be a victim in bad faith. I can put the concerns about this clause no better than Dame Sara Thornton, the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, who, in a letter to the Home Secretary, warned: “I have grave concerns about this clause because it casts a wide net with the potential to prevent a considerable number of potential victims of modern slavery from being able to access the recovery and reflection period granted through the NRM.”
“Member for North East Bedfordshire made an excellent dissection of the effect of clause 62. He said that it was the wrong measure in the wrong place, and he is absolutely right. What we have brought here is more of a scalpel to the Bill, to remove the clause completely. It does sit with other measures in clause 5 in restricting the protections that are available to victims of modern slavery. In our view, this breaks our obligations to support the victims of human trafficking and undermines the fight against slavery and human trafficking. It will make victims less likely to come forward and to co-operate with law enforcement. Ultimately, it will strengthen the hand of the slavers.”
“The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) referred to the credibility provisions. He is absolutely right. The idea that legislation should interfere with the assessment of something around credibility is fundamentally obnoxious. If any right hon. and hon. Members have ever spent any time in the Appeal Court, they will have seen advocates being pulled up occasionally for trying to reopen questions of credibility. The Appeal Court always says, “We are not interested. That was heard by the judge at first instance, and he or she alone can be the judge of these matters.” Trying to set out parameters around credibility in the way that is sought here is dangerous to say the very least. I will touch on the matters that stand in my name. Amendment 3 seeks to leave out clause 62. The hon.”
“I do not often tell tales from outside the Chamber, but I went up in the lift in Portcullis House with the right hon. Member for Maidenhead yesterday—I hope that she will not mind me referencing this—and apropos the House’s consideration of the Bill yesterday, she asked what sort of a debate it had been. I replied, “Suffice it to say that I don’t think anybody would refer to it as being the House at its best.” It is to be welcomed that the temperature of debate today is perhaps a bit more measured. It also illustrates that, on a matter such as this, if one looks around the Chamber and sees the range of interests that have brought forward amendments, it is very easy still to build a consensus around this. The fact that the Government show no inclination or enthusiasm for building or maintaining that consensus is a matter of deep regret.”
“Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) was absolutely right to remind us of the history in relation to human trafficking in this House. He mentioned Anthony Steen, who ploughed a lonely furrow in the early days but was dogged in pursuit of that. I fear that it may not always be what he is remembered for, but ultimately he did a great deal of good in relation to this matter. I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who, as Home Secretary, drove this with an unquestionable commitment—I saw that for myself in government. The fact that we now find the salami slicer starting to work and that, piece by piece, the provisions and protections that we have brought into operation to protect the victims of modern slavery are being taken away is, I think, a matter of regret.”
“I am grateful for the opportunity to make a few remarks about the amendments and new clause tabled in my name and the names of my right hon. and hon. Friends and others. I put on the record my support for the amendments tabled by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), by the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), by the official Opposition, by the Scottish National party, and by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I think you can take it from that selection, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the view of many of us here is that part 5 of the Bill requires some fairly urgent and radical surgery. In general terms, that is something to be regretted. The hon.”
“The Scottish Commercial Music Industry Taskforce understood that the extra money put into the culture recovery fund in the Budget will produce £40 million of Barnett consequentials for the Scottish Government. To date, the taskforce understands that only £9 million of that money has been released, putting our creative and cultural sector at a significant disadvantage. Will the Chief Secretary tell me today, or perhaps in correspondence, when the Scottish Government will receive the remaining £31 million?”
“There is a lot in this statement that is to be welcomed, but the challenge that faces the Minister is that we can undermine it all by continuing to allow overcrowding in our prisons. Some of the prison estate is more than 60% overcrowded. With the prison population forecast to rise by 20,000 in the next four years, why are we not linking this to sentencing policy? The bottom line is that we still send too many people to prison.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: it is not about the numbers; it is about the principle and about living up to our historical obligations. I have seen a number of initiatives of this sort. I will be happy to support this new clause. It remains to be seen what the response will be from the Treasury Bench. Will he join me in putting the message across to the Ministers and officials responsible that this will never just go away? If not today, then sooner or later, these injustices will have to be addressed.”
“There may well be reasons for that in the minds of the Government’s business managers, but, as is the case with trying to wish away the consequences of our foreign policy decisions, they will not carry any water when the Bill gets to the other place, and I fear that, even though the Government will probably get their way in virtually everything today, we will not have heard the last of this Bill yet.”
“It seems to me from my casework as a constituency Member that the immigration system is already so complex that it is virtually impenetrable to those who are not in some way legally qualified—and, as far as I can see, to many who are. It should not therefore be administered in such a way that it is open to the Government to make a profit from these cases. There are already sufficient financial barriers in place for those who wish to have, and need to have, citizenship, and we should not be putting a further financial barrier in their way. There is a whole range of different matters before the House this afternoon, which illustrates to me the fact that this Bill is far from properly scrutinised. We are taking it at a canter this afternoon.”
“Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) said, one of the things we are dealing with here is the basic British sense of decency. We should not be using citizenship as some sort of tool for further punishment; there are plenty of other ways in which people who have done wrong can be punished. However, we do not use fundamental concepts of domestic and international law, such as citizenship, as a tool to do that. The hon. Members for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) and for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) have tabled various provisions on the financial barriers that have been put in place. I was happy to sign the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Streatham, and I very much support those tabled by the Scottish National party.”
“Clause 10 restricts the rights of children who would be born in this country but who would otherwise be stateless. The point about clause 9, which the right hon. Gentleman made very well, is not only that the removal of citizenship is obnoxious but that removal without notice is supremely dangerous. It is perfectly legitimate for Government Back Benchers to point out that the genesis of removal is to be found in the 2002 Act— [ Interruption. ] I see them nodding. However, I would gently counsel them that finding a way of making a measure introduced by David Blunkett, as Home Secretary, even more illiberal and draconian is not necessarily something about which anybody should be particularly proud. It is the removal without notice that is particularly objectionable. As the right hon.”
“We have a fair old mixter-maxter of different amendments, new clauses and other provisions, and as I try to find a common theme, I find this: policy decisions that we make as a country and that we make in this place sooner or later have domestic policy implications. It does not matter how hard we try to ignore them, as we have with the rights of the Chagos islanders, or how hard we resist the logic of our decisions, as we have in the case of the Hongkongers until recent years—eventually they all require to be dealt with. I want first to deal briefly with amendment 2, in my name, which would remove clause 10 from the Bill, and with amendment 12, in the name of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), which would remove clause 9.”
“I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his Bill and I am happy to support it. I hope that it gets Government support at some stage, if not necessarily today, because we should all see this as an important part of the levelling-up agenda. That agenda will never achieve the things that we want it to unless it addresses the imbalance of power between big corporates on the one hand and the individual and the small business on the other. That is at the heart of his Bill, and it is why all those who purport to support levelling up should support it today.”
“The question that will be asked by people in those parts of the country where the ambulance service is already in crisis, such as Cornwall and Shropshire, is: how quickly can they get this money? We are three weeks from Christmas and we are already seeing a crippling of the service in these areas. When will they see improvement?”
“11. What assessment her Department has made of the potential impact on UK farmers and crofters of the planned UK trade agreement with New Zealand.”
“I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have to say to the Minister that her confidence is not shared by hill farmers and crofters, or by the National Farmers Union and the National Farmers Union of Scotland. If the Government are confident in their assessment of the opportunities and threats from this agreement, will they commission an economic and environmental impact assessment, independent of Government, to show that they are correct?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for the support that she has given in the past to the development of tidal stream renewable energy generation. Now that we have the very welcome ring-fenced pot for tidal stream energy, will she charge her Department with the development of a strategy to ensure that we can export that expertise as we move towards commercialisation?”
“Until we tackle that and level the playing field between the producers and the supermarkets—in that regard, we need to get a serious grip and give proper powers to the Groceries Code Adjudicator—nothing in that respect will change.”
“I have a lot of sympathy for the argument of the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) about the shortening of the supply chain, as he called it, but I do not think that any of us should be in any doubt about the complexity of that task. This is essentially about the transport around the country of goods. He mentioned cauliflower. From my family perspective, I come from and was raised in a meat-producing community. The consolidation of abattoirs into large central points is part of that whole process. That did not happen by accident; it was a consequence of the dominance of the supermarkets as the customers for food production in this country.”
“It may not be massively important in those three deals, but the danger is always that, if we allow a provision in one deal, those who come along the line later on will want to follow. Time is against me. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. This is, for us all, an enormously important industry. For communities such as mine, however, it goes beyond important; it is vital to our future.”
“The way in which cattle are shipped from Orkney and Shetland is in cassettes. It was designed by local farmers along with Ministry vets and the shipping companies some 20 years ago, and is there as the gold standard in animal transportation for all to see, but that consultation, were it to be followed through by the SNP-Green Administration in Edinburgh, would be an existential threat to agriculture in the northern isles. I will touch briefly on protected geographical indications. The conclusion recently of the Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein deals—an interesting triumvirate—is causing concern among many food producers. The absence of protection for PGIs, which are very important to us in the northern isles, for our export markets is causing concern.”
“Indeed, it does not stand on its own; as a consequence of the quality of local food produce in Orkney and Shetland, we have seen a significant growth in the visitor economy, because being able to offer good-quality local produce is enormously attractive to those who wish to visit the isles. I often feel, however, that somehow or other that growth has been achieved despite rather than because of Government intervention. Orkney, which is one of the best suckler beef-producing counties in the country, has seen its abattoir regulated out of existence. At the moment, we have a consultation from the Scottish Government about the transportation of live animals by sea. If the proposals under consultation were to go ahead, we would see a massive reduction in the number of days on which we could ship cattle off the islands.”
“It has been fascinating to see that grow over the years. When I was first elected in 2001, we had one and a half whisky distilleries—one full time, one part time—and two breweries. Twenty years later, we have two full-time distilleries, four breweries and four gin distilleries. Lest there be any doubt, I do not take single-handed credit for that growth, contrary to popular belief. We also see the way in which that growth brings with it myriad small artisan producers—people adding value to local produce, which is critical to the success of our local economy.”
“I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I essentially agree with his analysis. Since I am talking about producers, I should perhaps have reminded the House at the start of my contribution of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am an unremunerated partner in my family firm in Islay—I am one of the few people who seem to have found a second job that actually costs them money, rather than bringing it in. To our local economies in Orkney and Shetland, food and drink production is absolutely critical and essential. Orkney has Orkney beef and Orkney lamb, and Shetland has Shetland lamb. Shetland is one of the largest and finest seafood-producing ports in the country, producing Shetland shellfish, as well as our substantial and very valuable aquaculture industry, which produces salmon in particular.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this debate. On the question of crew from outwith the European economic area, does he agree that the problem is that the level of language competence demanded in order to meet the skilled migrant profile will not actually be applicable to many of those seeking to come and work on these boats, and that for as long as that remains the case, the problem will be unresolved?”
“The Minister should speak about that to her colleagues in the Home Office—I very much hope that she will. While there is an awful lot more that I could say about the availability of labour in the processing sector, I see that time is against me. I conclude my remarks, hoping that we may have a more substantial fisheries debate in the main Chamber again in years to come.”
“It all contributes to the feeling among the catchers and processors and exporters that they are just a wee bit embarrassing and a wee bit too much trouble for this Government to care about. When the Minister replies, will she explain how that compensation scheme has been left to work the way it is? I will close on the question of the availability of crew, which is something that everyone in this room has campaigned for. It was a major advance when we got the Migration Advisory Committee to accept that deckhands are, in fact, skilled labour. However, the fact is that we are no closer to a workable solution. The insistence that deckhands should have a B2 level of language competence means that the skilled labour concession is virtually meaningless to the industry.”
“I have been in correspondence with the Minister over one exporter from Shetland who had £50,000-worth of fish that was due to be exported in that first week; he was not able export a penny piece of it. As a consequence, he sold it on the domestic market for £20,000—a loss to his business of £30,000. Had he left the fish to sit and rot, he would have got £50,000 in compensation from the scheme set up by the Minister, but because he mitigated his loss—in the best interests of his business and the taxpayer—he was told, “No. You have sold your fish, so you will not get a penny piece of compensation.” As a result, he is £30,000 out of pocket. In what universe does that make any sort of sense?”
“Those are absolutely critical to producer organisations up and down the country, but the SFC is at best going to meet four times a year. We have to have a mechanism. POs cannot just expect to do their in-year quota swaps four times a year. That business was being done on a weekly and sometimes daily basis under the old arrangements. The Minister will recall the discussions that we had at the start of the year and the utter chaos that there was. What was described then as teething problems seems to continue today. If my children had taken that long to teethe, I might well have put them up for adoption. [ Laughter. ] The teething problems have an exceptionally long tail.”
“Secondly, the terms of the TCA will be changed only if there is a Government strategy, and I am afraid the one common thread that we have heard from every contribution here today is the total absence of any Government strategy on what they will do with fisheries policy now that we are no longer part of the European Union and the common fisheries policy. I would be delighted to be wrong about that. When the Minister answers, we will be listening carefully. At the moment, I see absolutely no sign of it. The hon. Member for Totnes spoke about the SFC—the fisheries committee. That illustrates quite well some of the challenges that we now have because that is where the decisions will be made about in-year quota swaps.”
“As others have said, the TCA did not deliver what was promised. The real difficulty for the Minister and her colleagues now is that the terms of that TCA are such that, despite the protestations of the Prime Minister, come 2026 it is very difficult to see how that will change. First, the consequences for other sectors of any change in relation to the fisheries provisions would be so severe that it is difficult to see any Government in five years’ time making that sacrifice if they were not prepared to make it this time last year.”
“It is worth reflecting for a second or two on how different this debate is today from the ones that we had, it seemed, almost every two or three weeks this time last year in the run-up to the negotiations. At that point, the people who are in the Chamber taking part today, who by and large represent coastal and fishing communities, were squeezed down to two or three minutes at most as there was a progression of people standing up to hail a new dawn. Ultimately, it turned out they did not know the difference between a codpiece and a cod end, and they are more remarkable for their absence today. Even those from fishing communities who were most extravagant in their promises are remarkable for their absence today. Although I am not going to name anyone, I would not want anybody to think that it had gone unnoticed.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Ms McVey. May I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing the debate and associate myself with the remarks from the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) about the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard)? I have seen quite a few Labour Ministers and Front-Bench spokespeople on fisheries in the last 20 years. Without reopening old wounds, they ran the full range of competence and commitment, but the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport was very much at the top end of that range, and we will miss his contributions from the Front Bench. However, I welcome the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) to his place. He has big shoes to fill and I am sure we all wish him well.”
“Before we look forward to the pathway still to come, can we look at the administration of the compensation scheme, particularly in relation to my constituent, who is £30,000 out? Will the Minister meet me to discuss his case?”
“I fear that much of the difficulty that we will encounter in promoting this case will be found along Millbank in Ofgem, which has never been an enthusiast for this sort of diversity in the market. In the northern isles, we have the highest rate of fuel poverty anywhere in the country. We already produce more clean electricity from renewable sources than we can use. We do not have the opportunity of exporting that to the transmission grid, so I am happy to offer us up as an early testbed for community energy.”
“Like others, I congratulate the right hon. and learned Lady on securing this debate. I agree with everything that she has said, but there is an aspect that she has not touched on—the festivals around the country. In Orkney we have the world-famous St Magnus festival in June, which was founded by the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. In Shetland, we have the Shetland folk festival. Those are community enterprises, albeit highly professional ones. The administrative burden for them from having to deal with visas of the sort that the right hon. and learned Lady has already pointed out will be phenomenal. That cultural growth would be an enormous loss for our communities.”
“To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if he will make a statement on the Northern Ireland protocol and negotiations with the European Union.”
“In respect of the question of the role of the European Court of Justice in supervising this agreement, can the Minister explain why the Government now identify that as a problem when it was clearly within the protocol when it was negotiated and signed? The problems of which the Government now complain are all of their own making. They chose to take us out of the customs union and to put a border down the Irish sea. It was a remarkable choice for a supposedly Unionist party to make, but they made it, and we now have to live with it. This is the time for posturing to stop and for mature government to start. A recent Queens University survey found that 52% of people in Northern Ireland support the protocol; I am sure the Minister will agree that that is a significant figure. Will he now get on and make it work?”
“To invoke it in the way of which Ministers speak would be seen as an act of bad faith on the part of the UK Government. What people and businesses in Northern Ireland want and need is pragmatic solutions to be reached and implemented in good faith, not more posturing. Businesses in Northern Ireland are crying out for a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement which would remove at a stroke the vast majority of the disruption for people on either side of the Irish sea, and that is where the Government should be devoting their energy. Will the Minister please update the House on the negotiation of that and other agreements under the protocol?”
“Listening to the Minister today, and to his colleagues on the airwaves in recent weeks, one could almost believe that the terms of our agreement with the European Union and the Northern Ireland protocol were nothing to do with them: “a big boy did it and ran away”. It is almost as if those matters were negotiated by someone else, and were voted through the House in the teeth of Conservative opposition. However, we know that the truth is very different. Article 16 does not exist as a “get out of jail free card” for the Government when they do not like the deal that they have done. It is a mechanism that allows for the taking of unilateral “safeguard” measures if either the EU or the UK concludes that the deal is leading to serious practical problems or causing diversion of trade.”
“I think that that answer was more remarkable for what it did not say than for what it did, but I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for granting the urgent question. It is a shame that it was necessary, and that the Government have not seen fit to offer the House a statement. At the very least, we would have liked to hear some commitment from the Government today that there would be no triggering of article 16 this side of Christmas. The disruption that that would cause would be catastrophic, but still we hear nothing from them. I hope that the Minister will address that point when he replies to my supplementary question.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I am prepared to take at face value everything that she says about Randox, but it does then raise in my mind the question of what exact benefit the company had from engaging the services of Owen Paterson. That being the case, will the Minister commit now at the Dispatch Box to publish the minutes of the telephone conference call of which he was part?”
“Just to be quite clear about this, is the Minister saying that her Department does not hold minutes of that conference call? That, from my experience of having been in government, would be a quite remarkable departure from accepted procedure.”
“The Minister has made it clear that the Government are not going to oppose this motion, so we might reasonably expect it to pass. She said on a number of occasions that she will revert to the House with regard to the question of scope. The motion is very detailed on the question of scope, and we anticipate that it will become an instruction to the Government. Can she give an indication of what material her Department, or any Government Department, might hold that would not be disclosed under the terms of this motion?”