Oral Answers to Questions

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, indeed I urge York council and councils across the land to take up the offer of mass lateral flow testing—it is a very exciting possibility. It is, as I said, one of the boxing gloves we hope to wield to pummel this disease into submission—the other is the prospect of a vaccine—and that is what we will do continuously throughout the weeks and months ahead. But I must stress that the way to get ourselves in the best position to achieve that is to make the current restrictions work so that we can come out well, back into the tiers on 2 December.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The Prime Minister will doubtless recall meeting my constituent Ronnie Norquoy on board his crab boat Carvela when he visited Stromness and Orkney in July. I know Mr Norquoy told the Prime Minister about the problems caused by the Migration Advisory Committee classing deck hands as unskilled labour. Since that conversation—which must have landed quite well, because he was allowed back on to dry land safely —the Migration Advisory Committee has changed its advice so that deck hands are now regarded as skilled labour for whom visas can be issued. The Home Secretary, unfortunately, refuses to implement that advice. Will he put the Home Secretary straight on this one, please? Get it sorted.

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. It is a subject in which I have a keen interest, because I had a wonderful morning on that crab boat where there were fantastic, prodigious quantities of crabs that, as I recollect, were being sold to China. I will make sure that the Home Secretary is immediately seized of the matter and that we take it forward. That is one of the things that we are now able to do thanks to taking back control of our immigration system, which, alas, his party opposed for so long and would reverse if it could.