Covid-19: Contracts and Public Inquiry

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

I might give the hon. Gentleman another turn, but let us just put some facts on the table.

In June, 2,000 people in Scotland who tested positive for covid had attended a Euro 2021 event. I am no killjoy. I am quite happy that they attended. I will be attending a Euro 2021 event tonight to watch England vs Denmark. I am quite happy that many thousands of Scots made the journey to London to watch that game, in which their team performed admirably—far better than we did. The idea that the Scottish Government had no power in this matter is ludicrous. If they really thought that this variant was such a concern and that we should have closed the borders, they should not have allowed people to come down in their thousands. The evidence shows that those people are now super-spreaders of covid in Scotland. The hon. Gentleman should not pretend that the Scottish Government had no power in this matter.

Having said all that, I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, who has now returned to the Chamber, for introducing this debate about covid contracts, because it gives me the opportunity to talk about two covid contracts that are far more important than all the other guff we have heard today. Those contracts are, first, the contract that this Government—indeed, my right hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock)—signed with AstraZeneca to procure a vaccine, along with all the other ones that we took a risk on procuring before the rest of the EU. That has brought liberty to millions and saved the lives of thousands, for which we should all be grateful.

The second contract is one that we will not find a copy of, and there was no procurement for it, but again it is of fundamental importance: it is the social contract that exists between the Government and the governed on the basis of when we are expected to give up our precious rights because an emergency exists and when—the key question for me—those rights should be returned because the emergency has passed: a fundamental point given the Prime Minister’s statement on Monday.

The first contract was the generic process through which the UK Department of Health and Social Care negotiated contracts for those vaccines and delivered them in a way exceeding almost all other major nations, delivering millions and millions of doses. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) for saying in his intervention that that was the one thing the Government got right, but, boy, that one thing is more important than anything else: it is the way out of the mess; it is the way we get out of lockdown; it is the ways we save millions of lives. And it is not just lives in the United Kingdom that are being saved; it is not just lives in every corner of this precious Union. The AstraZeneca vaccine contract was negotiated so it would be produced at cost. The significance of that enormous contractual point is that the vaccine has been spread around the developing world. We have seen 400 million Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines go into the arms of the poorest in the world. We should be incredibly proud of that. This Government have an incredibly honourable record in what has passed.

Covid was one of the greatest crises the world has faced; it was completely unprecedented, and every time we have had to make a choice we have been between a rock and a hard place, but the only way out of it, as we all knew, was through vaccines, and we made the right call at the right time, which no other Government in Europe made at that point, and we should be proud of that contract, and it is far more important than all the other stuff mentioned today.

On the second point, the social contract, this is my first opportunity to respond to the enormous announcement we heard on Monday—one I am so grateful for—that we will be returning to normal, restoring our precious freedoms. I believe in the social contract; it is implicit—we all have our own interpretation of it—but at its heart must be the idea that Government have certain powers but they can only use them in exceptional circumstances, if those circumstances are truly an emergency.

Tonight, as I said, thousands—millions—of people around part of the Union will be going to watch a football match. They will be crowded in pubs. The idea that we are still in an emergency is for the birds, and that is because of medical science, and I am profoundly grateful; it is because of the first part of the contract that I spoke about, but because of that we must start taking decisions that restore freedom and return this country back to normal.

I understand that some people are nervous, because I have had emails from constituents who voted in all ways for all parties—and in all ways in the referendum, in case anyone tries to make that link. Some people are still nervous; they worry and think we should still have to wear masks after 19 July and that the Government should still keep measures on. I have no idea where the Labour party stands on this; as far as I can see, they want us to remain in lockdown, but, as the Prime Minister said, if not now, when? Let me answer that: if not now, it is never, because the whole point of the social contract is that if we allow the state to keep that power for too long, it will not come back. The default disposition of the state must be that its citizens are free and that they are only not free in exceptional circumstances, and I believe those circumstances have now passed, and that is because of the vaccine; there are still high numbers of cases, but they are generally not resulting in significant ill health, and because of that we can unlock this lock- down.

[Mr Carmichael]

For the record, I agree with a lot of what the hon. Gentleman says with regard to the social contract, but if his analysis is that we are genuinely out of the end of the emergency period, then surely the same question—if not now, when?—should be applied in respect of the start of the inquiry?

[James Cartlidge]

I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman and that is a fair question. My own view is that to most of my constituents the question of how soon the time comes when, for instance, they can sing in a choir in a church or go to a nightclub or gather inside with family and friends and loved ones without fearing that they are breaking the law, is more important than how soon the Westminster bubble can get excited about something that will take months and months and months and be pored over by legal people and many others.

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[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

If I may, I am going to return to the subject of the motion, which is about methods of scrutiny of the United Kingdom Government.

It has been clear from the outset of the current Prime Minister’s term of office that this is a Tory Government who abhor scrutiny. Shortly after he took office, the Prime Minister tried to shut down Parliament completely. He did so because he was finding its scrutiny of his Government’s hapless progress towards Brexit tiresome. But it is Parliament’s job to scrutinise, and no matter how tiresome hon. Members on the Government Benches may find the subject of the debate, it is actually rather important.

I say to the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) that I suspect that his constituents, like mine, also care about how their hard-earned money is spent by his Government. They are rightly concerned because two court cases so far—there are others in the pipeline—have revealed that there are major question marks over whether this Government have abused their privilege to line the pockets of their mates.

This Parliament, when it was unlawfully prorogued, sat again only because of the intervention of the courts. That is an indication of how important the rule of law is, and one of the many reasons why the UK Government want to reduce both the scope and the availability of judicial review.

An unlawfully prorogued Parliament is dangerous for democracy, but so is a supine Parliament, and this Parliament is, frankly, a shadow of its former self. Regulations impinging on our basic civil liberties during the covid crisis have been rushed through with the minimum of parliamentary debate. It is not just urgent business regarding covid that this Government treat in a cursory fashion in this Parliament. Earlier this week, we saw a Bill with major implications for civil liberties—including the civil liberties of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community, who are protesting outside Parliament this afternoon—go through without proper debate or scrutiny because of the ridiculously short time that the Government allocated to hundreds of new clauses and amendments.

The brutal fact is that this Government do not like evidence-based policy making. In fact, they do not like evidence full stop. They like to run the country and the four nations of this Union free from scrutiny or accountability. They like to do so based on their little Britain, me first ideology and the personal ambition of Ministers—Ministers who have not dared to show their face in the House this afternoon—who look only to their mates for assistance, in return for handsome remuneration and keeping records minimal.

The way in which the Government have handled the emergency covid-19 contracts typifies that approach. The sad thing for British parliamentary democracy is that it is only through judicial processes instigated by concerned citizens acting through the Good Law Project that the full scale of this Government’s chicanery has come to light. So far, the Good Law Project has brought two successful legal challenges against the Government’s handling of pandemic-related procurement, but there are quite a few more in the pipeline, and I suspect there will be more than two successes to come. The two successes so far have established that both the former Health Secretary and the current—for now—Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster acted unlawfully. That is a really serious matter, and we would be failing in our duty as an Opposition if we did not bring it to the Floor of the House.

Over and over again, we have heard representatives of the Government try to argue that in the case of the Good Law Project v. Minister for the Cabinet Office, the Court did not find the Government guilty of any actual bias. That is a total red herring, however. The Good Law Project did not seek a finding of actual bias; it sought a finding of apparent bias, which is a well-understood legal term. The test for apparent bias in the law of England, and indeed that of Scotland, is whether the

“circumstances would lead a fair minded and informed observer to conclude that there was a real possibility, or a real danger,”

that the decision maker was biased. That is the test that the Court applied.

Looking at the contract awarded by the Cabinet Office, the Court found that a fair-minded and informed observer would conclude that there was a real possibility that the Government had awarded a significant contract to a company on the basis of bias. In layman’s terms, that means that the Court found that the Cabinet Office awarded a lucrative contract on the basis of favouritism. Even in the middle of a crisis, that is illegal. It is illegal because that money is not the Government’s, but the taxpayer’s. It is my constituents’ money; it is the money of the constituents of the hon. Member for South Suffolk; and it is the money of all our constituents.

These court processes have brought to light emails that would never otherwise have got into the public domain. These emails show that the much-maligned newspaper The Guardian newspaper and openDemocracy were right last year when they alleged that there was institutional cronyism at the heart of the British Government.

[Mr Carmichael]

I very much share the hon. and learned Lady’s analysis of the work of openDemocracy and the Good Law Project. On the subject of emails that are only now coming into the public domain, does she agree that intervening to delay the publication of data relating to care home deaths in Scotland, as a story in The Scotsman indicates that Fiona Hyslop did, was, at the very least, ill advised?

[Joanna Cherry]

I am not aware of the detail of that allegation, but, like the right hon. Gentleman, I was elected by my constituents—for my sins—to come to Westminster to scrutinise the actings of the British Government. Just earlier this year, a whole bunch of MSPs were elected to scrutinise the actings of the Scottish Government, and that is for them to do. Today, I am focusing on this Government.

The point I want to make—I am coming to a close, because I know others want to speak—is that the sunlight that these two judicial reviews have shone on the Government’s back-door dealings shows why a judge-led inquiry is so important. Even when this Government lose in court, they cannot tell the truth about the reasons why they lost. That is why the power of a judge-led inquiry to compel witnesses and the production of documents will be so important. Not telling the truth, or indeed not telling the whole truth when on oath is a very serious matter. In a judge-led inquiry, doing so would have the sorts of repercussions that ought to make most people—even in this Government—think twice. Witnesses are far less likely to get away with prevarication and obfuscation under questioning from lawyers, supervised by a judge. An approach to government that involves saying, “The cat ate the paper trail” or, “My redaction pen is my trusty shield” will not cut it in a judge-led inquiry. Obstructing judicial orders for documents constitutes contempt of court, and experience shows that that threat in a judge-led inquiry often brings to light records that would otherwise have found their way to the virtual shredder.

There is something wrong with British democracy, in that a Government elected by only 43.6% of the UK-wide vote can rule like a dictatorship, treating this Parliament as an inconvenience. Seen from Scotland, the situation is even worse: this Government have no mandate in Scotland, and the party that does have a mandate—the Scottish National party—is frequently treated with contempt in this House. In the past few days, we found out what most of us already suspected: the Prime Minister has so little respect for democracy in Scotland that he wants to close Scotland’s Parliament down. He does not need to worry too much about this Westminster Parliament, because he has already emasculated it.

The rule of law is our only hope. That is what the Good Law Project’s successful cases show: the only way that we can get to the truth of what this lot have been up to is by litigation and a judge-led inquiry. No wonder they are so desperate to limit the scope and availability of judicial review, and no wonder they fear a judge-led inquiry.

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

I am pleased that the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) took us back to the position pertaining to March last year, because that is a very important piece of context for this whole debate. It informs the decisions we took then: what we knew about the likely course of the pandemic and how much, in fact, we now know was probably guesswork. I will return to that, because I think it is an important piece of context for the decisions that this House took then and the accountability we are now entitled to demand of Government for the exercise of the powers that this House gave them at that time. Effectively, we gave them the powers on trust.

My right hon. and hon. Friends will support the motion in a Division; however, by way of clarification, we will do so because of the words that SNP Members have put in it, not necessarily because of many of the arguments that they have advanced in support of it. The inquiry requires to be early. There is no real justification for a delay until the spring of next year. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) spoke about the social contract. As I said to him at the time, I very much share his analysis. In fact, it is because of that social contract, which essentially comes down to the relationship between the citizen and the state, that an early and thorough, but not overly lengthy, inquiry is absolutely necessary.

To go back to the spirit of March 2020, there was a genuine sense of national endeavour. It was a rare moment in public life, because there was a sense that—in that much misused and overused phrase—we were “all in this together”. It pains me to say that many of the things that we have seen and heard, and that we have discussed today, have done so much to damage and diminish that sense of national endeavour. The earliest possible clarity and resolution of these things—to pick up the words of the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire, the earliest opportunity to decide what is hyperbole and what is hard fact—matters for our politics as a whole.

I was here when the House voted to go to war in Iraq. I believed then, and have believed since, that that was a major strategic error in the United Kingdom’s foreign policy. That was in 2003. It took until 2016 for us to get the Chilcot inquiry report—all 12 volumes and executive summary of it. I do not think that it is hyperbole to say that by the time the report came the moment had somewhat passed. Personally, I still use that report—six volumes act as a laptop stand, and the other six ensure that the door will not blow shut if I open the window. That, I am afraid, is the danger that faces us, and it is why we have to have an early start to the inquiry. If the need for restrictions has passed, as the Prime Minister and so many of his Back Benchers have told us, surely the time has come for us to start that work.

I am sympathetic to the views of those who act as scientific and medical advisers, but the inquiry, when it comes, will have to deal with so much more than just the public health aspects. We need a bit of sympathetic and strategic planning of the time to be taken. The matter that we are talking about today—covid contracts—is exactly the sort of thing that could be dealt with in the early stages of the inquiry, which is why we should be able to start it.

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)]

On the comments that the right hon. Gentleman makes about some of the aspects that could be considered now, yes, we are coming towards the end of the pandemic, but we are still in it. Considering that some fiscal measures will go on until at least September, does he not agree that we should wait until we can review the pandemic as a whole and then make meaningful conclusions, as opposed to trying to make quick ones now? Surely we do it right or we do it quickly.

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[Mr Carmichael]

Actually no: it is not an either/or. I think it is eminently possible to have a quick and dirty analysis. In fact, given that we may be looking at further waves, vaccine resistance and the rest of it, I think it is very important that we do have an early analysis of some of the public health aspects. However, that should not be a barrier to a fuller and more thorough analysis of things when we have the full facts available to us. As I say, other public inquiries have proceeded in that way, and I see no reason why this one should not.

The reason why I think it is particularly important that we have an early start is that, as we read in many of the newspapers, the Government’s intention is possibly to go to the country in a general election as early as 2023. An inquiry that starts now might have a fighting chance of bringing at least preliminary decisions to this House and to the public before that point. One that starts in the spring of next year—we know that spring is a moveable feast in Government calendars—will almost certainly still be doing its work when it comes to a general election in 2023, if that is when we get it.

The point is that, in March last year, this House gave a lot of power to the Executive—unprecedented amounts of power. Those powers for the most part, actually, have been unused, but still the Government insist on holding on to them, because that is in the nature of Governments. Once Parliament gives power to the Executive, the Executive are always very reluctant to give it back. We can go back as far as the granting of the power to force people to carry identity cards in 1939. We might have thought that that would finish in 1945, but in fact it was the early 1950s before a court ruled that the emergency had passed and the carrying of identity cards was no longer necessary.

I also want this inquiry to look at what the decision-making process was to ensure that we continued with these emergency powers, because I would suggest that the moment had probably passed in September of last year and had almost certainly passed by March of this year when we renewed them for the second time. So there are questions that can be answered now. They must be answered now, and it is in the interests of politics and the standing of this place that they should be answered now.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I hope that Members will now keep their speeches to under five minutes, because then everybody will get a chance to speak.

Covid-19 Update

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Part of the purpose of the international testing regime is to get genetic sequences to spot variants, which we cannot do from a lateral flow test. That is the literal answer to my hon. Friend’s question. More broadly, the approach we are taking instead is to try to drive down the costs of PCR tests. Bringing a private market for PCR tests for travel has led to a significant reduction in cost, and that is another good example of harnessing private markets to improve people’s lives. The companies involved are strongly incentivised to deliver tests for a lower price. That is the approach we have taken for the reason I set out, and that is the decision we have made.

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

The Royal College of General Practitioners, the Doctors’ Association UK and the British Medical Association have all expressed concern about the adequacy of communication with patients about the proposals for data sharing. From the answer that the Secretary of State gave to the Opposition Front Bencher—the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth)—and to my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), he obviously disagrees with that, but in the interests of making data-based decisions, can he tell the House what his Department is doing to assess the level of patient awareness about what will happen if they do not opt out by 23 June?

[Matt Hancock]

We are doing work in this area and talking to all the relevant bodies. Aside from some who have not yet understood the full importance of high-quality usage of data in the health system, actually, the vast majority of people, including the BMA, the Royal College of GPs and others, can see the benefit of getting this right. So we are working with them. The goal, though, is really clear—to use data better in the NHS because data saves lives.

Covid-19 Update

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this important issue. I know that this is an important announcement for him and his constituents, representing as he does a significant number of constituents from the Indian diaspora. We have managed to reduce somewhat the turnaround time for the sequencing of positive tests, but we are also introducing a new type of test that can detect not just whether someone is positive but whether they have one of the known variants without having to go through a full sequence. That can give us a snapshot much, much faster—within a matter of hours—of whether a positive result has one of the known variants, before sending it off to sequencing so that we can see any new variant that we do not know about. We are introducing that technology. It is starting in the Lighthouse lab testing facility in Glasgow and we are rolling it out across the system. It is an important tool to make sure that we can get the turnaround time of spotting the variants down faster.

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

It is quite astonishing that the Secretary of State’s statement had absolutely nothing to say about the Government’s plans for vaccine ID cards—something that has apparently been trialled. Only last week, the Equality and Human Rights Commission told us that vaccine ID cards, and possibly even the mandatory vaccination scheme that he is trumpeting today, could be unlawful, yet this House has had no opportunity to express a view on them at all. When are the Government going to come clean and share their plans for vaccine ID cards with this House?

[Matt Hancock]

I refer the right hon. Gentleman to my previous answer, which is that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is leading a review on this area that will report in due course.

Coronavirus

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

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

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green), who posited many of the absolutely central questions in this debate.

I readily confess that I find this a slightly frustrating experience, and it does come to the heart of the House’s role in scrutinising legislation. Many of the issues that are central to this legislation are about the definition of the relationship between the citizen and state. To try to deal with these matters in a four-minute time limit is a level of ambition to which not even I—notwithstanding the fact that I am a Liberal Democrat—am able to aspire.

It is worth recalling that, when we enacted this legislation last year, we were trying to imagine what the future would look like. We did not know what would be the course of the pandemic or how this place would work, so we were right to be cautious and we were right to trust the Government with our freedoms, but a year on we know an awful lot more than we did then.

As the hon. Member for Bolton West has said, it is surely apparent that many of the powers we gave to the Government in the Bill last year were not needed or have not been used, and some of them have not even been enacted. As he said, 252 people have been charged with criminal offences under this Act, with not one single prosecution as a consequence. That and that alone should surely be ringing alarm bells on the Treasury Bench about the advisability of continuing with this.

Of course, it will always be the case that when we give a Government a power, they will want to hold on to it. We can go back to 1939, when this House said it was okay to have an identity card scheme. Did the Government stop the identity card scheme in 1945? No, they did not. They held on to it, and it took a private citizen to raise a court case in 1952 before we saw the back of the identity card scheme.

Mention of identity cards brings me to vaccine passports and the idea, today, of some sort of certification of people’s vaccine status that will allow them to get a pint in a pub when pubs reopen—or a measure of whisky if that is their preference. I have to say that this idea of vaccine passports is a dangerous one. It is the very thin end of a thick and illiberal wedge that we approach with caution. It raises all sorts of questions. If it is okay to force people to carry a piece of paper or a card to confirm their health status in relation to this particular virus, once we have conceded that principle, where does it take us? Is it then going to be okay for people to carry a piece of paper, under some future Government, that says they are HIV-negative, or whatever it is?

[Mr Steve Baker]

I am no stranger to the right hon. Member. I am confident that it will be even worse than he imagines. It is bound to be an app on our phones with face ID that leaves behind an enormous swathe of data everywhere we go.

[Mr Carmichael]

Indeed. I do not think the hon. Gentleman was in the House in 2006, when Labour tried to introduce identity cards, but I remember the objections, which were forcefully put by the then Opposition—the Conservative party—regarding the need for a register, or a database of its use. That is exactly where a vaccine passport scheme would take us back to.

I do not know whether many on the Treasury Bench have ever worked in a bar for a living. I did it for five years, before I went to university to do my law degree. If those on the Treasury Bench think that the best way to bring us in this country to a place where we become the sort of “papers please” society that we have always resisted in the past, is by doing that through pubs, I warn them that they are sadly—or perhaps happily—mistaken. Such a situation would put those who work in our pubs in the most unpleasant and difficult situation, and inevitably lead to complacency. It all would mean that instead of continuing to focus on masking, social distancing and the rest of it—those measures will be necessary to avoid a spike in infections, if and when we reopen licenced establishments and elsewhere—we will inevitably end up with a spike in infections.

For all sorts of reasons, both practical and due to matters of high principle, the Government are currently going in the wrong direction. If the House gives them carte blanche and offers them a black cheque to go in that direction, by renewing the provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020, we will not be doing the job that our voters sent us here to do.

Covid-19

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I want to use the very short period of time available to me this evening to talk about one particular industry, based on a conversation I had with a local businessperson just this afternoon, and that is the wholesale sector.

For communities such as those in Orkney and Shetland, the wholesale sector provides a range of business services that goes well beyond the support of local retail businesses. Its operation, done from small family businesses, is vital to the efficient operation of our health service, our care homes and our schools. The Scottish Wholesale Association tells us that the pre-covid level of its businesses was some £2.9 billion, with 6,000 employees. In the last year, they have already lost 10% of their workforce. In the first lockdown, food service members of the SWA lost 80% of their business on average. For some, it was as high as 95%. After the ending of that lockdown and the easing of restrictions, they restocked and started up their businesses again, only for many of them to find that the tier system then slowly strangled their operation. Currently, food service wholesalers are operating at 30% of their pre-covid levels.

To give credit where it is due, the Scottish Government introduced the Scottish wholesale food and drink resilience fund—a lifeline for the 40 or so businesses that were able to take advantage of it—but even then, they did not reach every business that needed the help. It was supposed to be a six-month package, but it has been overtaken by events. It has become a three-month package because, with no or very few sales in January and February, the support from that fund has effectively become those businesses’ sales; it has not been the reserve that it was supposed to be for fixed costs. The SWA is now looking for an immediate top-up of the fund in the region of £50 million, and that is needed now, not in the next financial year.

I have spoken about the wholesale sector, but I could have spoken about many others. I could have talked about the hospitality and visitor economy; the same thing would have been true. As my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said, we are coming to a point where the continuation of lifelines such as the furlough scheme and business support grants will be crucial. If we do not keep these lifelines going, frankly, we have to wonder why they were put in place at all.

Covid Security at UK Borders

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to take part in this most important debate, as the Minister called it. The Liberal Democrats will support the official Opposition at its conclusion. We agree with the motion, and we welcome the limited steps that the Government have announced, though of course it is, yet again, too little, too late. I would say in passing that there must surely be a limit to the number of times we can hear Government Ministers “welcome this most important debate”—we have had two already today—and then see them decline to put their MPs through the Division Lobbies at the end of it. If it is that important, they should surely take part in the Division at the end.

It was unfortunate that we did not get to hear from the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), who was originally on the call list to speak. She has apparently been given the opportunity to spend more time with the national executive committee of her party. Time will tell whether it is an astute move of party management to give her time on her hands, but I am sure that those of us who regularly take part in such debates will miss her contributions from the Front Bench.

All around the world it is there for anyone who cares to look to see that those who are most successful in tackling the spread of the virus are those who crack down hardest and earliest. Unfortunately, in this country we have a Government that can always be relied on to do the right thing, but only once they have tried everything else. We hear today the news that the South African variant of the virus is now to be found in several United Kingdom communities. It is already too late to keep it out, but it not too late to stem the flow and to mitigate its worst effects.

The frustration that I have, and that I hear from my constituents time and again, is that the Government are prepared to spend eye-watering sums of money, but then undermine the effectiveness of that by trimming at the edges. If ever there were a case of the ship being spoiled and lost for a ha’p’orth of tar, it is seen in the way in which the Government act. We know—this is the biggest frustration of all—that in a few weeks’ time we will be back here when the Government will do exactly what the Opposition parties are asking them to do today, but by that time we will see the consequences of their misjudgment, which will be measured in lives that have been lost unnecessarily. That, surely, is a tragedy for us all.

Long Covid

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I congratulate and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for having applied for and secured the debate, and also for setting up the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, which is so important in giving this House a voice in the detailed response to the issues thrown up by the covid pandemic.

One point that I really want to get across in the short time available to me is that so little is yet known about long covid. We have an emerging picture, but those in Government have to demonstrate a bit of humility in their response, accepting that we do not yet know the full picture of how this will affect people. There must be more flexibility in how the system responds to people who are affected in this way. The point has been made to me by constituents that there is a lot of crossover between the symptoms and treatment of people with long covid and those who suffer from ME; I think that point was also made by the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). Certainly, looking back over the years at the way in which the benefits system has coped with people who suffer from ME, let alone the medical profession, we can see that this will be a problem with which we shall have to come to terms for some considerable time.

I want to share with the House one email I received from a constituent, which illustrates very well the way in which, unfortunately, people are so often left to fall between the gaps. This constituent had two part-time jobs. She worked as a tourist guide and had another job on two days a week. She wrote:

“Because of the 50-50 rule I wasn’t eligible for SEISS, so, when I was made redundant…at the end of my Furlough, I sent my P45 in hoping for Job Seekers Allowance. I have just had a phone call to say that I am ineligible for JSA as my Class 2 contributions as a self-employed person don’t count and I wasn’t”

making class 1 contributions for

“long enough… I pointed out that I paid Class 1 contributions and tax for over 40 years. She apologised and said that only the last 2 years count! I’m ineligible for UC due to my husband’s pensions (he’s 77). That means I will have to take out my minimal work pensions (the total in one pot is about £65!) in order to survive until my State Pension kicks in in 13 months.”

I am afraid that that shows the way in which too many people have been left behind and excluded from the provision that the Government have made.

Things could have been so different if only the Government had been prepared to listen to those of us who said at the start that there was a role for a universal basic income in meeting the challenge to our society.

Covid-19 Vaccine Roll-out

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The House might be relieved to know that my right hon. Friend and I agree with each other on the need to ensure that, as the vaccine is rolled out to vulnerable groups, we monitor the impact of the vaccine on reducing cases, reducing hospitalisations and reducing the number of people who sadly die from this disease, and take that basis for the judgment of how soon we can lift the restrictions. He and I want to lift the restrictions as soon as is safely possible, and the question of the judgment on how safely is one that we will have to monitor and debate in this House over the coming weeks and months.

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

When we speak about vulnerable groups, will the Secretary of State assure me that we will not forget those who are homeless? We know that people who are homeless, especially those who are sleeping rough, suffer many disadvantages and barriers to accessing healthcare at the best of times, quite apart from any pre-existing mental or physical health conditions that they have. What steps is his Department taking to ensure that we reach all vulnerable people, whether they are homeless or not?

[Matt Hancock]

That is an incredibly important consideration, both on the grounds of social justice and because all of us can pass on the disease to others, so it is right, fair and practical that we must ensure that everybody has access to the vaccine. The community roll-out will be the primary means by which we can reach some of the most vulnerable, including the homeless, whom the right hon. Gentleman mentions. That will be an important consideration in the roll-out.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

I could not agree with the hon. Gentleman more. The Government’s £8 million Wellbeing for Education Return programme, which is to support staff to respond to the emotional, mental health and wellbeing pressures that some children have experienced during the pandemic, is in place. As I have said, the last train the trainer session took place last week and those trainers are ready to go into primary schools to assist both teachers and parents to recognise when children display early signs of emotional distress or mental health issues as a result of the pandemic. I have been working closely with the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), to ensure that this programme is in place to address exactly the needs that he has highlighted.

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

What steps he is taking to support people with long covid.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jo Churchill)]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would welcome yesterday’s announcement that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network will work with the Royal College of General Practitioners to develop guidelines to support patients and practitioners in the treatment of and recovery from the disease. This follows on from the NHS launch in July of the Your COVID Recovery service, which provides personalised support for individuals. In addition, we are funding research into covid-19, including a study of 10,000 patients who were admitted to hospital with covid, building our understanding of the long-term effects and helping direct those improved treatments that are needed.

[Mr Carmichael]

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 she 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?

[Jo Churchill]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that statement and I will read the document that he mentions with interest. It is a new disease on which we are still gathering evidence and data, so that we know how we can best support the individual in their recovery and, arguably, in their new covid-tinged life. I assure him that that is precisely what I shall be doing—looking at the evidence base and making sure we work with the colleges and general practitioners to ensure that we get the right answers.

Covid-19

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Commons Chamber

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

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 that 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. 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 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. The role of this place is in 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. 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 has 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. 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.