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 43 of 95.
“We had the Bill go through all its stages in this House—certainly the Public Bill Committee—once already. It started then in the other place and it has been through Committee here, so introducing at this late stage—when, frankly, there is little opportunity for meaningful scrutiny of it—a provision that strikes at a fairly important constitutional point in relation to the Channel Islands as dependent territories requires further explanation from the Minister. Essentially, the difficulty is that saying that this is just a backstop power is one thing, but the Government giving themselves a backstop power that can be used unilaterally—possibly without any consultation, although I accept that that is unlikely—takes us down a very difficult and dangerous constitutional path.”
“There will be no provision in licensing that will deal with the dangerous and reckless conduct that we have seen west of Shetland, and that we will see in other territorial waters, I think, in the next few months as the political heat is turned up in relation to fishing and the changes that are going to come in on 1 January. I want to make a couple of points before dealing in detail with the reason why new clauses 11 and/or 12 are necessary. The first is on Government amendment 36, which I raised with the Minister in her opening comments. I understand the reasons why a lot of late Government amendments to the Bill have come and I have sympathy with them, knowing the to and fro that there has been between the Minister’s Department and the various devolved Administrations, but the Bill is not new.”
“Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock), who spoke for the Scottish nationalists, said at the start of her speech, there is a lot of uncertainty around the fishing industry at the moment, and that uncertainty is very damaging. It is worth reminding the House that the reason for that uncertainty is the decision by the former Prime Minister, and the current Prime Minister, to enter into a withdrawal agreement that put an agreement on fishing into the political declaration. When that decision was made by the former Prime Minister, I remember that the hon. Members for South East Cornwall and for Moray (Douglas Ross), and others, were rather unhappy about it, as was I, and we are now reaping the whirlwind of that somewhat ill-advised decision.”
“I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. My experience of Government is that there are issues that sometimes just dot around the civil service waiting for a Minister who is prepared to pick them up and give them a go. This issue is not new. I know that the Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), faced a similar dilemma and reached a very different conclusion. I strongly suspect that this has been slipped in at the last minute because officials somewhere wanted to advance it. The Minister should have resisted this. I say to her gently that this will not just be nodded through when the Bill gets to the other place. It will require and get more substantial scrutiny there. As the hon.”
“I hope that the hon. Gentleman feels better for having got some of that off his chest. May I invite him, though, to return to the paths of positivity? He says that he wants to follow the wishes of fishing communities. Look at my new clause 11, which is supported by fishermen, doubtless in his own constituency as well. There is a real need to act on this. Will he join me in urging his own Front Bench to take this seriously, and come forward with serious proposals on it?”
“Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that there is no provision for consultation of any sort in the Bill? This is something that could be done unilaterally. Is that really the way we should be gearing our relationship with the Channel Islands?”
“We have further Australian Strategic Policy Institute reports: “Cultural Erasure: Tracing the destruction of Uyghur and Islamic spaces in Xinjiang” and “Exploring Xinjiang’s detention system”. Surely, now, on the basis of that evidence gathered by campaign groups around the world, there needs to be a formal mission to China headed up by the United Nations to gather the evidence in a systematic manner, in order to move forward in a legal, not just a political, way. That is the opportunity that we have as a member of the United Nations Security Council, and I urge the Minister today to make every progress in that regard.”
“Article 2 outlines the basis on which genocide is to be established legally—that it is “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, although that should not be treated as an exhaustive list. That is to say, to meet the legal definition of genocide, the atrocities committed against the Uyghurs need to be committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Consider what has come into the public domain in recent months in that regard. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute published “Uyghurs for sale: ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang.” We have the report prepared for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China by Adrian Zenz, “Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control”.”
“But the discovery of tonnes of hair taken from members of the minority community in China invoked emotions we as Jews simply could not ignore.” I quote that because the question of genocide, and the evidence required to establish genocide, is now perhaps at the centre of this issue and our examination of it. As others said, this time, nobody can say that they were not told, that they did not know. There is a growing body of evidence that what is being done in Xinjiang province to the Uyghur Muslim population bears all the characteristics of a genocide, and that there is a requirement for it to be called out politically, and acted on legally, as a genocide. The hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling referenced the UN convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.”
“Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) observed, I first held a debate on the treatment of the Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang province in this Chamber on 29 January last year. It is gratifying to see the number of people attending the debate today, which is an indication of the attention that has come to the issue and that interest in it has grown. I was particularly struck in June when Jewish News ran a front-page story with the headline “Chilling echoes”. On 1 October, it ran an editorial revisiting the issue: “When Jewish News ran a front page earlier this year with the headline ‘Chilling echoes’—in reference to the abuse of the Uyghurs and parallels with the Shoah—we didn’t do so lightly. Any hint of a parallel with the darkest chapter in human history is something we’d always caution against.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat). I thank all those who signed the petition to bring this matter to the Chamber this evening. I do not know whether it is a formally declarable interest or not, but I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Uyghurs. My co-chair, the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), would be here, but she is shielding. It is worth reflecting that this is another instance demonstrating that the current procedures for participation in House business perhaps require another visit. In fact, the same is true of the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), who takes a close personal interest in these matters. As the hon.”
“Some 1.7 million children across the whole of the United Kingdom have no access to a desktop, laptop or tablet devices for learning while away from school. That is the scale of the digital divide in this country. The impact of that will be with us for some years to come. What are Ministers doing, along with their colleagues in the devolved Administrations, to ensure that we close that gap once and for all?”
“On Monday, farmers from across the United Kingdom will be demonstrating in Parliament Square to make the point that, to them, future food standards and animal welfare provisions are essential. Will the Secretary of State join me in meeting them to hear from them at first hand about the importance of this?”
“These acts of repression never happen all at once. It is never a single thing that happens immediately. Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern about reports that we are now hearing from southern Mongolia about the start of the same process of cultural and linguistic oppression of the local population? If we do not call it out, we will probably see the same thing happen there.”
“Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), there is a need to get observers and a human rights taskforce, badged under the United Nations, into Xinjiang province and other areas of concern. There is a need to meaningfully use Magnitsky-type sanctions and to look at whether the supply chains of companies selling and operating in this country have been using forced labour and whether British businesses and public bodies should take that into consideration. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 means that we have legal obligations as well as a moral imperative. This comes down to the most fundamental human rights imaginable. We should never forget that human rights are universal. If they do not matter in Tibet and Xinjiang, frankly they do not actually matter here either.”
“The report says that the forced labour programme is overseen by “strict military-style management”, which limits the liberty of Tibetans in an attempt to remove their so-called “backwardness”. There is absolutely no place for such an approach in any working or social environment. We see this obsession with conformity and uniformity time and again in the way in which the Government in Beijing approach their people. There is no place for that in a modern state. The treatment of Tibet is part of the much wider programme that we have seen by the Chinese in other parts of the country. I have a number of points for the Minister. To pick up on a point made by the hon.”
“More than 500,000 people have been enlisted by the programme in the first seven months of 2020 alone; 49,900 of them were directly transferred to other parts of the province, while 3,109, according to the report, were transferred out of Tibet. It is easy to talk about the figures, horrific as they are, but it is worth pausing for a second to reflect on what they actually mean. The figures mean, essentially, that the people of Tibet are seen as tools of the state and are deprived of the right and the opportunity to have any say in how and where they work. They have no freedom to choose how they live their own lives. It is a wilful disregard of human rights and human dignity, and that is why we have a duty to call it out.”
“It starts with the linguistic and cultural oppression, but it never finishes there, and when we see it starting, that is the point at which we should be calling it out. I know today’s debate is not about southern Mongolia—perhaps we can keep that for other occasions—but I would draw the House and the Minister’s attention to some of the recent work being done by bodies such as Human Rights Watch and the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre and the reports that they published towards the end of August. The IPAC report that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green referenced reveals that Tibet now has a significant compulsory vocational training programme and forced labour transfer scheme—straight out of the Xinjiang playbook, we could say.”
“I remember the years when visits to this country under the Blair Government saw protesters shielded away from the site to avoid the risk of offending the delegations, and in 2013, Alex Salmond should have met the Dalai Lama when he came to Edinburgh. However, on all those occasions it is fair to say that the risk of upsetting China, getting on the wrong side of it and then being somehow economically disadvantaged, meant that we made the wrong call and took the wrong turns. I am delighted to see a different approach from this Government and others throughout the western world. It was for that reason that I made the point about southern or, as we often call it, inner Mongolia, because what we are seeing there has disturbing echoes of what we have seen in other semi-autonomous regions in China.”
“By and large I welcome that and I think it a positive change, but I sound a note of caution: when we criticise the regime in Beijing, the Chinese Communist party, we do that because what it does is worthy of criticism. It is not about isolating or demonising China. China has the potential to be a force for good as a massive and growing economy, but when we see that strength in the Chinese economy being used as a malign force in different parts of the world—the way in which China has used its economic influence in Africa, in particular, is worthy of greater consideration—we have not just the right, but the duty to call it out. It is the case, candidly, as the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) touched on, that Governments of all stripes in recent years have been slow to the party on this.”
“I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing this debate. I declare an interest, in that I am also a member of IPAC. I, too, think that IPAC is to be commended for the production of the report that is tagged in the title of the debate. To pick up on the theme first touched on by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), it is heartening to see the attention that issues such as the oppression of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang province and the situation in Hong Kong are now getting. However, it has not always been thus, and we should acknowledge that there has been a significant attitude change in Governments across the developed world towards China.”
“I thank the Minister for that helpful and comprehensive answer. If she has not already read it, may I commend to her the most recent edition of The Doctor , the British Medical Association magazine, which outlines several compelling case studies of GPs who are still suffering, some up to six months after they first contracted covid? There is a growing body of evidence that a number of people continue to suffer with this months after it has been contracted, in a quite debilitating way. Will the Minister build on the work that she is already doing and make the case to the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions in particular to ensure that all those who suffer from long covid get the support that is necessary for them?”
“The speculation in the media today that the Scottish Government are about to introduce greater restrictions in Scotland just as we go into the October school holiday is causing tremendous concern to businesses in my constituency, especially those working in the visitor economy. What comfort is the Chief Secretary able to give them that, at this last opportunity they have for a bit of a boost before the third winter comes, they will be protected and that he will work with the Scottish Government to ensure that they get the support they need?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You are aware that there are a number of reports in the Scottish media today regarding the possibility of increased restrictions in Scotland. It was suggested earlier today that we might in fact be heading for some sort of circuit-break lockdown. As things stand, it is my intention to go home on Thursday to return on Sunday for business on Monday. I am not, at present, sure if that is actually going to be possible. What guidance can you give to Members, especially from Scottish constituencies, who want to be here to carry out their duties in the House, especially in the light of the reluctance of the Leader of the House to allow us the continuation of digital participation to its full extent?”
“I welcome the progress that we have made thus far in getting at least an element of judicial oversight of this inquiry. Like others, I remain sceptical about whether it will be sufficient, but to proceed on the basis that it is, and that the undertakings that the Minister has given the House today are sufficient to do the job, will he now look at the damage that has been done to the availability of postmasters as a whole across the whole country? Communities such as mine rely on them very heavily, and it is becoming more and more difficult with every month that passes to fill those very important positions.”
“The Minister has reeled off an impressive number of statistics, which justify the use of CHIS operations. How many or what proportion of the operations were undertaken by the Food Standards Agency, which will also come under the ambit of this Bill?”
“This is an important matter, which it is good to have put on a statutory footing, but the way in which the Government are doing it is cack-handed. It requires this House to do its job and to improve the Bill before it today.”
“The reliance on the Human Rights Act stands in stark contrast to the position taken by the Government in their submissions to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, where they were adamant that, where an agent is authorised to commit severe abuses such as torture, the Human Rights Act does not apply because—I quote from the Government pleadings— “the state, in tasking the CHIS…is not the instigator of that activity and cannot be treated as somehow responsible for it…it would be unreal to hold the state responsible.” It seems to me that the Government are pleading one case here tonight and a quite different and contradictory case in the IPT. These are all matters to which we can return in Committee. I think we must, and judging by what we have heard from Government Back Benchers today, we almost certainly will.”
“The Minister seems to be suggesting that serious organised criminals can get legal advice or will look for themselves to the face of this Bill, but that they will not look to the face of the Human Rights Act. If these limitations are there, they are there for all to see, regardless of where they are. I would also be more persuaded if it had not until fairly recently been the policy of the Conservatives to repeal the Human Rights Act. If we were to see them return to that position, I wonder what protections would be left. The other point about the protection coming from the Human Rights Act is the one that was made by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) in an intervention on the Minister.”
“Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said, including these organisations in the same breath as the police and military intelligence and other serious operators in this field is seeking to do too much. In fact, it would undermine the substance of the work of the more serious bodies. I am afraid that the answers we have had from the Minister are somewhat lacking in conviction. The idea that the protections or limitations can be found in the Human Rights Act and that they are necessary, because to have them on the face of the Bill would somehow give a checklist to the bad guys that they could use to test and to imperil agents in the field, is, if we consider it in its entirety, somewhat lacking in conviction.”
“This is not dissimilar to the territory we were covering when we considered the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill. Why would it not, for example, include torture? I would say to the Government’s business managers that if, in Committee, this House were to introduce a limitation on murder, sexual offences and torture, the Bill would be virtually bomb-proof when it got to the other place. Thirdly, there is the question of the scope. The Minister referred, with quite disarming elan, to the “10 other public authorities” that are covered in the Bill. I referred earlier to the Food Standards Agency, and others have referred to the Environment Agency and the Gambling Commission. This is a matter of concern because, as the right hon.”
“First, there is the inadequacy of the authorisation, and on that I can do no better than to quote the words of Lord Macdonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, from his article in The Times this morning. He says: “There is no comfort in allowing senior figures in the police or the intelligence agencies the power to sanction lawbreaking, without the need to first obtain independent warrants from judges or some other authority. Under this bill it will be easier for a police officer to commit a serious crime than to tap a phone or search a shed.” The second area that causes me serious concern is the total lack of any limitation on the offences that would be covered. We are back in familiar territory here.”
“However, that we should do so in such a haphazard way, which compares so badly with other jurisdictions, such as Canada, which has undertaken the same business in recent years, puts a duty on this House to engage with the Minister and to seek to improve the Bill at later stages. The House will be aware that I tabled a reasoned amendment, which was not selected. I did that because of the serious concerns I have about the Bill. In the normal course of things, when a reasoned amendment is not selected, one considers whether it would be appropriate to divide the House. On balance, I am persuaded that that is not the right thing to do, but it is important that we should have the opportunity at later stages to give substantial consideration to three particular areas.”
“Member for York Outer also has a history as a Government business manager and has no doubt been in meetings where he is given instructions to go and defend the indefensible, so that the Government can then concede the indefensible and might then be left with what is defensible. It is a tactic that is just a little bit tired and lacks subtlety and nuance. I suggest that this is a good point at which the Government might seek to do things differently. Considering the importance of the matter, my real frustration with this Bill is that it is a colossal missed opportunity. We all know the importance of putting these things on a statutory footing, and it is a significant advance that we should be doing so.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), who made a characteristically thoughtful, measured and knowledgeable contribution to the debate. It is a debate that I am very proud to be part of, because I think the House has approached this subject tonight in exactly the right way. I suspect that we have probably done that because of how the Minister opened the debate. I am also grateful to see him still in his place. He sets a good example that others in government might do well to follow. I am, however, a little bit weary when I consider this Bill, because it looks like almost yet another Bill into which so many other things have been ladled, so that at the end of the day, after it has been through the other place, the Government might get what they want. The right hon.”
“Is not another factor that comes into play after necessity and proportionality human nature? It is human nature for people who work all the time in these specific areas—whether that is customs and excise, the Gambling Commission or food standards—to persuade themselves that the thing that they are doing is the most important thing, and they see the whole world differently. The most zealous enforcers of anything that I have ever come across were television licensing enforcement officers. I can say only that I take some small comfort from the fact that they are not on the face of this Bill.”
“We have had different patterns of behaviour emerging in different parts of the country, but different patterns of behaviour surely demand different answers. The centralisation has got to stop.”
“It was surely foreseeable that there would be some sort of lockdown locally as a consequence of that, and it was surely foreseeable that for many young people—yes, it is a great time in their lives, but it is also a time when they are most vulnerable, living away from home, many of them for the first time, in strange communities—there would be a greater need for mental health support in those circumstances. Despite the foreseeability of all those things, none of the measures have been put in place and, yes, I have tremendous sympathy for those of our students who have been left simply swinging in the wind. One of the biggest difficulties that we have had across the four nations, but especially in Scotland, has been the determination to centralise control.”
“The role of this place is holding the Government to account and saying, “Yes, we were prepared to give you these powers when we did not know, but now that we know what we know, we need better justification than we have had from you.” The other source of frustration is the inability of all our Governments to deal with things that surely ought to have been foreseeable. It surely ought to have been foreseeable that, when we took students back on to campuses, we ran the risk of seeing spikes and hotspots of the sort that we have seen.”
“I can, however, put them in a taxi, although the taxi driver will doubtless have seen some, possibly dozens, of people that day. When we look at the more draconian measures that have been put in place, the element of what we might call “whataboutery” does come into play, because people do ask, “Well, what about this, what about that and what about the other?” The frustration also comes from the fact that—again, as the hon. Member for North Herefordshire said—we did not know what we were facing in March, but we do know an awful lot more now. Revisiting the provisions of the emergency legislation that we put through, I see so little of it being used and so little of it being justified.”
“Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) said, we do need to have again the sense of joint endeavour that we had in the early days, but which we have lost. I think that the public mood, while there is that frustration, is one that is still prepared to do what is necessary and to take the threat posed by covid seriously, but I think that the public are, quite rightly, less likely to tolerate any inconsistencies or illogicalities in the measures put in place. I have to say that, later this week, I would in normal circumstances have taken my parents, who are both in their 80s, to a meeting—with people in relation to the management of their business—in my car. I am not going to be able to do that because it is against the Government’s guidance in Scotland.”
“I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to take part in this debate. It does strike me that the mood of the House tonight is very different from the mood that we saw back in March when we first anticipated having to take measures to deal with this. I have to say that the mood of the House is actually reflected in the mood of the population more widely. There is a palpable sense of frustration that we have reached this point, and I think it has come for a number of reasons. I would say gently to those on the Treasury Bench that if that frustration is to be tackled and dealt with, it is going to require a different approach from our Governments, because what is true of government here in Westminster and Whitehall is also true of government in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff. As the hon.”
“The London School of Economics estimates that a no-deal Brexit could lead to a 63% decrease in exports to the European Union. For the salmon farmers, the crofters producing lamb and the shellfishermen in my constituency, that could be absolutely ruinous. What comfort can the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster give to the people in my constituency whose livelihoods depend on that export market?”
“Will the Secretary of State tell the House what those circumstances are?”
“Surely, the debate of the past five or 10 minutes has exposed the truth of this matter, which is that it is easy to build consensus in the House on provisions relating to civil actions—there is very little exception to that. However, may I take the Secretary of State back to the answer he gave the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell)? He is right in what he says about torture, but the logic of his argument is that torture should be listed in the first schedule to the Bill. He is right to put sexual offences in that schedule because, as the Government says, there are no circumstances in which sexual offences can be tolerated in war, but the logic of not including torture suggests that there are some circumstances in which torture is accepted. That is the logic.”
“The exclusion of torture from schedule 1 raises the inference for any court that—and this is a matter of logic, not of law—there are circumstances in which torture is acceptable. All the Secretary of State needs to do is include torture in schedule 1, and the Bill would have no difficulty.”
“Obviously not, because murder is dealt with by the common law of this country. The Secretary of State is perfectly aware that such a case could still be brought under the exceptional circumstances provisions. The problem he has is that there is no such thing as unexceptional torture.”
“Is not part of the problem that, where suspicion exists, there requires to be an investigation, and that if that investigation produces evidence, there should be a prosecution? By putting barriers in the way of prosecution, we do no favours to those who are accused of criminal acts in the first place, because no line is ever drawn underneath it for them.”
“This presumption will work against that, and at the end of the day, the people who will lose as a result are those against whom suspicion exists.”
“Not to put it there suggests that the use of torture in warfare is in certain circumstances acceptable, and that is a proposition for which there should be no support in this House. In suggesting that, we risk doing ourselves serious damage, and, worse than that, we ill serve those whom we seek to support and to help through the passing of this legislation. The people who will be most damaged by the application of that presumption against prosecution in relation to torture are those who serve and have served in our armed services. As I said in my intervention on the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald), the purpose of prosecution is to prove beyond reasonable doubt that something has or has not happened.”