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 70 of 95.
“Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who recalled the way in which the votes were whipped and the way in which the Government really did make every effort to steamroller the motions through the House. He said that he felt vindicated. I know what he meant by that, but I do not sense anything quite as positive as vindication in this. If anything, I feel slightly depressed, because I think that there was an inevitability that was not addressed by the House at the time, and I fear that we would still not address it if we were placed in the same position today. I will say a bit more about that later and about how I think the House should deal with it in the future, but I should first place on record our gratitude to Sir John Chilcot and his team for doing a thorough piece of work.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon). I commend her for her thoughtful and well-informed contribution to the debate. I did not agree with every point that she made—no one would expect me to—but I did agree with her about the tone that we should adopt in our approach to this debate: it right for us to approach it with a degree of humility and to be careful not to reinvent history. I was here in 2003, and I remember those debates. As I listened to the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), I could hear her speaking from the Opposition Benches, but I kept looking over to the Government Benches, because that is where I remember her sitting when she made her speeches in the 2003 debates, and they were very powerful speeches. I well remember the atmosphere described by the hon.”
“It was that sort of double standard in our foreign policy that I hoped we might see the end of after the enterprise in Iraq. Sadly, that does not seem to be the case. In the speech that I made in the debate in 2003, I called for the implementation of United Nations Security Council resolution 242 on the question of Palestine. Sadly, we are no further ahead on that issue today than we were in 2003. If anything, we are further behind. That is why, should we ever find ourselves in this position again, the House must take its duties more seriously. We must ask questions. We cannot accept assertions when we should be given evidence.”
“It was tense and brutal, and deliberately so. It was the creation of that atmosphere that forced many people to vote for the enterprise against their better judgment. It is important that we approach this matter with some humility. The amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) garnered some support. It said that the case for war had not been proven, and that was certainly the view that I took. I was not going to vote for a motion that said we would never go to war in any circumstances, because, like other Members, I knew that Saddam was a brutish dictator. We also knew that he had had weapons of mass destruction in the past. In fact, we had been quite happy to turn a blind eye to that fact because he had been using them against Iran, whose regime we were also quite happy to see removed.”
“To remove the infrastructure of government in the way that was done in 2003 has left a void in that infrastructure that remains a problem for Iraq to this day. The country has never recovered from that, and it provided fertile ground from which extremism flourished. That was all predicted by many of us who questioned the decision to go to war in 2003. The House today is very different from the House that took that decision. Only 172 of the 659 Members who were here in 2003 remain Members today. I calculate that 141 of those 172 voted in favour of taking action, and 21 voted against it. I re-read the Hansard reports of the February and March debates before I came here today, and I was reminded that there was not a happy atmosphere in the House at the time. On that, I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire.”
“What I think is undeniable is that all these decisions and others—Libya is a good example—were taken under a cloud, which still hangs over our foreign policy and our role in the world, as a result of the experience of the debate on Iraq. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) pointed out, it is remarkable that if regime change was the agenda that sat behind the Americans’ intervention in Iraq, they did so little to prepare for its aftermath. The removal of the Ba’ath party from government must stand out as being one of the biggest strategic errors we have ever been party to. It completely failed to understand that many ordinary Iraqis who were engaged in Iraqi government and civic society did so as part of the Ba’ath party because it was the only party in town.”
“With respect, I do not want to get taken down a side alley and into the question of Syria, compelling though that is, but the bombing could not have started on the authorisation of this House on the basis of the motion put to the House and against which the right hon. Gentleman voted. It is interesting to speculate, although not necessarily wholly germane to this debate, what would have happened had the House gone down the route urged on it in 2013—what might then have been the reaction of President Obama, how things might then have moved on, whether we would have been put in the position we were in relation to the vote we took last year on Syria.”
“A very different approach was taken at the time by Canada. Jean Chrétien, the then Prime Minister, said that Canada would not stand with the United States. Now, 13 years down the line, does the hon. Gentleman think that the relationship between Canada and the United States is any the worse for Chrétien’s decision?”
“The hon. Lady is right to identify the need to get more women to come forward and actively complain. Does she agree that one thing that could make a real difference is giving anonymity to the victims of revenge porn? That would bring more people forward to make complaints, which could lead to prosecutions.”
“8. What progress the Government are making on implementing the recommendations of the Womenomics report on the role and contribution of women in the Scottish economy, published in March 2015; and if he will make a statement.”
“As we tackle the economic challenges that face Scotland as a result of Brexit, removing barriers to the full economic contribution of women to Scotland’s economy becomes more important than ever. Professor Sawers’s report offers the Government a road map. Will the Minister ensure that someone in the Scotland Office blows the dust off it, and implements some of the very good, solid recommendations that it contains?”
“Like the Prime Minister, I remember the debates of February and March 2003; we were both elected for the first time in 2001. What I remember is that many of the Members then who asked questions and demanded evidence were heckled, barracked and shouted down. When we have our debate on this report, it is right that, as well as scrutinising the conduct of others, this House should turn some of that scrutiny on itself. We now know that much of what was purported to be evidence in 2003 was obtained from people who had been tortured, having been illegally rendered. Will the Prime Minister give me an assurance that this country will never again base its foreign policy judgments on evidence or information obtained in that way?”
“The hon. Lady is taking a very human angle in this debate—an angle that it is important to remember. Does she not agree, though, that we have an opportunity to set the tone of the negotiations—to say to our current EU partners, “This is the way that we approach this. We won’t let this have an adverse effect on your citizens”? Surely that will make myriad areas of discussion that much easier.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your reassurance. Resignations can come at a bewildering pace these days in Westminster, so can you tell the House whether we still have a Government Whips Office? For the bulk of the debate there has been only one Government Back Bencher in the Chamber. That used to be the job of the Government Whips Office. Have they given up?”
“We look forward to hearing the Minister’s announcement. The last stakeholders’ group meeting convened by the MCA received a risk assessment —a proper, substantial piece of work commissioned from the private sector—that made it clear that removing the tug would pose an unacceptable risk for the coastal and island communities of Scotland. When the Minister makes his decision, will he make sure that that risk assessment is on his desk and at the heart of his considerations?”
“Now that the Crown Prosecution Service has decided that it is not going to prosecute Sir Mark Allen for what he did, will the Prime Minister reconstitute the Gibson inquiry so that we can know what was done in our name, and on whose authority?”
“May I first associate myself with the Prime Minister’s remarks of condolence to all those who have been affected by the dreadful attack in Istanbul? May I offer my personal best wishes to the Prime Minister and his family for life after Downing Street? He has served his country, but he has not done it alone. It is right that we should acknowledge the support that he has had, as we all have, from our families in public service. Before the Prime Minister goes, though, will he attend to one matter that, when he was in opposition, he described as doing enormous moral damage to the moral authority of our country—the involvement of our security services in rendition?”
“She needs to work with local authorities, civic groups and voluntary organisations to ensure that we build the broadest possible coalition against hatred.”
“Like many right hon. and hon. Members, I have over the years campaigned in different parts of the world against human rights abuses. We have been able to do that because Britain is seen across the globe as a tolerant liberal community that has always been prepared to protect all our peoples. Does the Minister share my horror that we should find ourselves in a position today where the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights feels it necessary to urge us to act on this matter? These people are eating away at the fabric of our community from the inside, but they also risk diminishing our standing on the world stage. That is why the Minister is right to act in the way she does, but Government alone cannot do this.”
“The circumstances surrounding the al-Saadi case were one of two sets of circumstances that came to light following the fall of the Gaddafi regime, when documents were found by the organisation Human Rights Watch in the Tripoli office of Gaddafi’s spy chief Moussa Koussa. The content and tone of some of that correspondence is shocking, but it provides an insight into the minds of those responsible. The rendition, it is boasted, was “the very least we could do for you and for Libya.” If rendition was the least that he could have done, I hate to think what might have been possible at the upper end of the scale.”
“All I knew about Libya at that time was that Colonel Gaddafi wanted to hurt my father, and that our family had always been moving from country to country to avoid being taken to him. Now we had been kidnapped, flown to Libya, and his people had us at their mercy.” Khadija’s father, Sami, was subsequently held for six years and severely tortured. That, Mr Deputy Speaker, is why it is important for this House to debate rendition this evening. That act and all that followed from it was done as a result of the efforts of British intelligence officers. These illegal acts were done in our name, and it is right that Parliament and the public should be told what was done by whom and on whose authority.”
“She wrote: “I was 12 years old and was trying to keep my younger brothers and my six year old sister calm. The guards took us to see our mother once on the flight. She was crying and told us that we were being taken to Gaddafi’s Libya. Shortly before the plane landed, a guard told me to say goodbye to my father, at the front of the plane. I forced myself ahead and saw him with a needle in his arm. I remember guards laughing at me. Then I fainted. We were taken off the plane and bundled into cars. Hoods were pulled over my parents’ heads. Libyans forced my mother, sister and I into one car, my brothers and father another. The convoy drove to a secret prison outside Tripoli, where I was certain that we were all going to be executed.”
“I want to say how pleased I am to have secured this Adjournment debate on the subject of the UK’s involvement in rendition. I wish we could find a better word than “rendition” for what this involves. It is a very dry, technical and legalistic term, suggestive perhaps of involvement in a performance of a piece of poetry or a song. It is, in fact, one of those terms that obscures rather than reveals its true meaning. Rather than find another term for it, let me quote the words of Khadija al-Saadi who at the age of 12 was rendered from Hong Kong to Libya in a joint CIA/MI6 operation in 2004. She describes the 16-hour flight in which her father, an opponent of the now deposed Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi, was chained to a seat with a needle stuck in his arm.”
“752.] The view expressed by the Prime Minister today about the investigation of this by the Intelligence and Security Committee is the direct opposite of the view he expressed in 2010. When the Minister replies, will he tell the House when Government policy changed on this and why? Surely public confidence demands that a full, independent and judge-led inquiry be reinstated.”
“At that time, the Prime Minister took the view, and told this House, “For public confidence, and for independence from Parliament, party and Government, it is right to have a judge-led inquiry.” —[ Official Report , 6 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 185.] He expressly excluded the use of the Intelligence and Security Committee for the task. The Gibson inquiry was suspended in 2012 when the documents discovered by Human Rights Watch were published. At that time, the then Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), said: “The Government fully intend to hold an independent, judge-led inquiry, once all police investigations have concluded, to establish the full facts and draw a line under these issues.” —[ Official Report , 18 January 2012; Vol. 538, c.”
“and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) had remained in his post as Director of Public Prosecutions, he would know more about this than he can today, having faced the voters and been elected to the House. So how are we to get to the truth here? The Prime Minister when he was the Leader of the Opposition said of rendition: “As a moral purpose always must be accompanied by moral means, surely we must recognise that, in the last six years, issues like Guantanamo and extraordinary rendition have done huge damage to our moral authority.” —[ Official Report , 21 February 2007; Vol. 457, c. 267.] It was unsurprising, therefore, that in July 2010, in the first couple of months of his time as Prime Minister, he set up an independent judge-led inquiry into torture under Sir Peter Gibson.”
“Will the Minister tell me whether or not there will be such an independent review? Most remarkably of all, the CPS statement of 9 June concludes that the CPS has sufficient evidence to conclude that “the suspect had...sought political authority for some of his actions albeit not within a formal written process nor in detail which covered all his communications and conduct.” Let us pause for a second to consider the significance of that. Officials of the Crown Prosecution Service have evidence that politicians—presumably that means Ministers of the day—were told of an illegal act by British intelligence officers. It cannot be right that officials of the CPS can know that, but we as parliamentarians cannot. It is ironic to think that if the hon.”
“A number of issues arise from the statement made by the CPS on 9 June, and I would be grateful if the Minister addressed them in his reply. The first relates to the review of the decision. The decision itself has been greeted with some scepticism and incredulity. I understand that there is to be a review of it, but that the review will be carried out by other CPS officials, subordinate to those who made the decision. Surely a case of such political sensitivity deserves better than that. There is a precedent for the review of a politically sensitive decision being conducted by lawyers who are independent of the CPS: that was done in the case of the decision not to prosecute the late Lord Janner. I suggest that this is another case in which an independent review is appropriate.”
“At the end of it, a report running to 28,000 pages was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, which announced on 9 June that no proceedings would be taken against the suspect in the inquiry. I shall turn to the question of the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service in a moment, but first I want to address the Prime Minister’s assertion about the rigour of the investigation. As I have said, the Metropolitan Police Service appears to have done a thorough piece of work; the fact remains, however, that the whole investigation only ever happened because, in the chaos following the fall of Gaddafi, someone from Human Rights Watch happened to come across those documents. But for that, we would almost certainly never have known of our country’s involvement in this affair.”
“That is what I understand the position to be, although obviously our knowledge is incomplete. The correspondence continues: “I know that I did not pay for the air cargo but the intelligence on him was British.” To refer to another human being as “air cargo” is just about as degrading and dehumanising as it is possible to imagine. When I raised the issue with the Prime Minister today, during Prime Minister’s questions, he told me that “very few countries in the world would have had such an independent and thorough investigation into an issue like this.” He was right—up to a point. The investigation of the role of senior British officers in the rendition of the al-Saadi family and another one was carried out by the Metropolitan Police Service. It was a thorough investigation, which does the police credit.”
“I certainly agree with the hon. Lady and I think she will find that the Chairman of the ISC himself has said that he sees the need for a measure of reform there.”
“The same batch of documents discovered by Human Rights Watch included CIA flight plans that indicated that the US intended to use Diego Garcia as a stop-over. Will the Minister tell the House why the Government continue to block the release of flight records that could settle once and for all the extent of the use of that territory for rendition? Then there is the reported letter from the then head of MI5 to the Prime Minister complaining about what had gone on in Libya. Clearly, there is no shortage of material for an inquiry to be considering.”
“Of course, I take the right hon. Gentleman’s assurance—indeed, I have to because there is not an awful lot else that we can know about this. However, given the nature of the information that is now in the public domain about authorisation or the request for authorisation from the suspect who has just been told by the CPS that he will not be the subject of prosecution, that is not something that it is appropriate for a Committee of this House to be doing. It is something that requires to be done by a body that is seen to be independent of Parliament and of party, as the Prime Minister himself said in 2010. Beyond the matters about which I have spoken this evening, there are outstanding questions about the use of Diego Garcia for rendition flights.”
“I believe the Minister cares about these things, and that is why he should act.”
“A further compensation claim by another family is currently before the courts. It was reported at the weekend that the Government so far have spent £600,000 in legal fees defending that case, although the plaintiffs are prepared to settle for £3 and an apology for what was done to them. Khadija al-Saadi is now in her mid-twenties. She describes herself and her siblings as “the future of our country, and the future of this region.” She goes on to say: “That future, though, needs to be based on a full admission of what has taken place in the past. No one has ever explained to me who was to blame for what happened to my family.” She is right. That explanation is needed and not just for the al-Saadi family, but for others and all in this country who care about the rule of law and the standing of our nation in the world.”
“I would hope that that would be the case. I suspect it might be a forlorn hope, but we shall see when the Minister comes to the Dispatch Box. Certainly I think there would need to be some very good reason if the Government were not to co-operate with a police inquiry, and at the moment I do not see what that would be. If ever there was a case where sunlight was needed for the purpose of disinfectant, this is it. Only by thorough investigation and disclosure of what has been done in our name, by whom and on whose authority, can we ever have confidence that this sort of thing will never be allowed to happen again. Let us remember the words of Khadija al-Saadi with which I opened this debate tonight. The al-Saadi family were compensated by our Government to the tune of £2.2 million of taxpayers’ money.”
“The civil proceedings relate to only one of the families. The al-Saadi family has already settled, as I indicated in my speech. I appreciate that this matter falls more within the ambit of the Attorney General’s Department than the Minister’s, but does he accept that any review of the CPS’s decision needs to be undertaken by lawyers who are independent of the CPS? If he cannot answer that question, will he get me an answer from the Attorney General?”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a very measured but highly compelling case. He is absolutely right to highlight the position of those who are, as he puts it, prisoners of conscience and political activists. For many in Iran, it is not necessary to challenge the state, other than to hold one’s own beliefs. I bring to his attention the position of the Baha’i community in Iran. In Golestan province, something in the region of 32 Baha’is have been arrested and sentenced collectively to 238 years’ imprisonment.”
“That drives a coach and horses through the argument of anyone who says that being in the European Union is somehow undemocratic or a challenge to democracy. The reality is that, when Britain shows leadership, as we have in the past, it has been good for Europe and, obviously, also good for us. When we win this referendum campaign—I certainly hope that we do—we need to focus on the positive case. It is not a question of sniping from the sidelines; we need to get involved, set the agenda, work with our allies and ensure that the people we represent can continue to benefit from the good things that the European Union has brought.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I was coming on to leadership, but I will tackle the issue now. The European Union has benefited from Britain’s membership countless times in the past. It was the British Government who drove through the single market. It was the British Government who ensured that a country like Poland could come into Europe and benefit from all its opportunities. We should not forget that when I was born, that country was based within the empire of the Soviet Union—a place where liberal democracy was non-existent and where growth and economic opportunity could not take place. Yet we have managed to get that country into a position of being totally democratic and absolutely robust in its economy.”
“They need to know what we really believe—that by participating internationally with a clear agenda and a determination to turn away from narrow-mindedness and the concerns of little groups of people, we can instead think big and be big. With that drive behind us, this country has the capacity for an exciting future ahead.”
“That is why every single US President has told us, in one way or another, that we should be a member of the European Union. That is why every single Commonwealth leader has told us that we should be in the European Union. The only two country leaders that I can think of who are casting some doubt on this matter are those of North Korea and the Russian Federation. If that is the supporter group of the leave campaign, I am staying! It is essential to make the positive case. We must do so not from an apologetic position or as a result of some tepid hope; we should do so out of ambition for our country and our young people.”
“I am afraid not. I am running out of time. All organisations need to be reformed. The other day, I was told to move my car for a reason that I have still not understood. This House needs to reform; all organisations need reform—and the European Union is no exception. The key thing is that we are the ones to drive those reforms. We are the ones who should be constructing the alliances to push through the kind of Europe that we want—one that is competitive, that recognises freedom and that is at the heart of promoting liberal democracy, not just within the EU but beyond it. The question of international impact must also be borne in mind. Europe is the world’s largest single market, but it is also a place of huge influence in the world. We in Britain want to be part of that. We want to shape and develop that influence.”
“I am sure that that is an aspiration with which we can all agree. The independent review established by the Prison Reform Trust and chaired by Lord Laming found that up to 50% of all young people in custody had been in care at some point in their lives. What plans has the Secretary of State to reduce the number of looked-after children who end up in custody?”
“The right hon. Gentleman is making an exceptionally important point: aid alone is not enough. One particularly clamant example that I can offer him of that is this country’s tax treaty with Malawi, which was entered into before Malawi was given its independence. The partnership needs to be recast as one of equals, rather than us having the relationship of exploitation that we had in the past.”
“The Home Secretary will have seen the recent reports that Eliza Manningham-Buller, when she was head of MI5, wrote to the then Prime Minister protesting about MI6 involvement in rendition. This becomes particularly concerning in view of the reasons given by the Crown Prosecution Service last week for declining to prosecute a senior officer of MI6. Will the Home Secretary confirm that that letter was written by Eliza Manningham-Buller, and will she commit to having it put into the public domain?”
“The intended targets of this vicious and homophobic attack might have been the LGBT community of Orlando, but we should regard it as an attack on us all. In a free society, when a group is attacked because they are different and a minority, it is an attack on us all, and that is how we should see it. This is a time for mourning, but that time will pass eventually, and when it does, should the opportunity present itself to the Home Secretary, I hope that she will say, as a candid friend to our friends in America, that they really need to look again at the availability of guns in their country.”
“However, to pick up a point that she made, the statistics already demonstrate that this is a stubborn problem, which will require more action if we are to bring about the changes in attitude that will ultimately see this behaviour reduced and, hopefully, eliminated.”
“Lady and her colleagues well. I am grateful for the indications of support for my new clauses that I have had from members of different parties, including those not represented in the House. In particular, members of the Women’s Equality party are assiduous and effective campaigners on the issue of revenge pornography; indeed, they were the authors of new clauses 61 and 62. The hon. Member for Rotherham, who spoke from the Opposition Front Bench, rightly said that it was only last year that we undertook the criminalisation of revenge pornography. That was a quite remarkable step, and none of us should underestimate its importance.”
“I wish to speak to new clauses 46, 47, 61 and 62, which stand in my name. Perhaps I can pick up where the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) left off, on new clause 2. My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) would normally speak for the Liberal Democrat party on such matters, but he is, unfortunately, absent from the House today through illness. However, the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) indicated that she intends to push the new clause to a vote, and I should indicate that, in the event that she does, my party will support her and her colleagues. To devolve substantial portions of the criminal law in relation to Wales without devolving control of the police force that would then enforce that law seems at the very least to be a little illogical, so I wish the hon.”