Covid-19: Hospitality Industry

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

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

The hospitality industry is of enormous importance to the Northern Isles, and an integral part of our well- developed visitor economy. Hospitality, I like to think, is something that comes very naturally to us in Orkney and Shetland. Indeed, we were described by one visitor to me a couple of years ago as being “dangerously hospitable”—I know exactly what he meant.

It is worth reflecting that this time last year, those in the visitor economy and hospitality industry were saying that local businesses feared that this situation would last for three winters. We would come out of six quiet months, and instead of the six good months that would normally be expected, businesses would be quiet, then there would again be the six quiet months of the winter. That is where we now are, except that this time last year, we believed, and indeed hoped, that we would be coming out of this. It is now clear that we are in fact some distance from being out of it. It is clear from the limited opening that we had in summer last year, that when it arrives, recovery will not come at a uniform pace. For self-catering businesses in Orkney and Shetland, business returned easily, but for the bed and breakfasts and hotels, it was a much more difficult path back to recovery.

It is also the case that in communities such as mine—I am sure this is true of rural communities across the whole country—the hospitality industry and the visitor economy are integrated with just about every other sector in our local economies. The craft industries, such as knitwear and jewellery manufacturers, depend on it. We have also seen the depression of hospitality across the whole of the United Kingdom; in Orkney and Shetland, that means that the premium producers of beef and lamb and the fish and shellfish producers are also suffering, because the restaurants are not open to take their products.

It feels like we have all had a year on a life support machine, as far as the visitor economy is concerned. Even as we emerge from that, it is still going to be necessary for some of the intensive care to continue. For the Government, that means that we cannot have immediate withdrawal of things like the furlough scheme: they will have to look at a tapering-off of that support, and it will have to be looked at sector by sector, and possibly even region by region. As others have said, the reduction of value-added tax for the hospitality industry has been of massive importance, and indeed there is a strong case, which many of us have made over many years, for it to become permanent. I do hope that that is something that the Treasury will now consider.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I, too, am pleased to take part in this most significant debate today and I pay tribute to those who succeeded in bringing this again to the Floor of the House.

Like many Members over the years, I have visited Auschwitz. It was some years ago, as part of a visit organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust with schoolchildren from my constituency. I pay particular tribute to the HET and its chief executive Karen Pollock for doing such amazing work in this area. It was, for me, a day that I will never ever forget. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) spoke a few minutes ago about the impact of seeing the photographs of the then Princess Elizabeth at Anne Frank’s house. For me in Auschwitz, it was not a single photograph but in the hall at the end of the visit where there is pinboard after pinboard after pinboard of photographs that were taken from the wallets of those who had been taken to the camp, exactly the sort of photograph that I carried of my own family in my wallet at the time and which we all doubtless do. It was at that point that one understood the sheer enormity and human cost of what had been perpetrated there.

It is absolutely right that we should have this debate today as an act of remembrance, but I would say that to ensure that we properly honour the memory of those who were murdered in the holocaust, we in this House and elsewhere have a duty to redouble our efforts to ensure that this never happens again to the Jewish people or to any other people in any other part of the world.

Today, I want to pay particular tribute to the British Jewish community for all that they have done when confronted with what they have seen happening in Xinjiang province to the Uyghur Muslim population. The Jewish News in particular has taken a brave and courageous stand. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis spoke powerfully this week about the resonances that he, as a Jewish man, could see from Xinjiang province of what his own people suffered in Europe in the 1940s. They were powerful words to which we should listen and pay the most careful attention.

What happened at Auschwitz and elsewhere in the 1940s came, at the end of the war, as a surprise and certainly as a shock to many people, but we now live in a very different age where information travels around the world much more easily than it ever did. Nobody will ever be able to say that they did not know what was happening in Xinjiang province and that they did not know what was happening to the Uyghur Muslims. We cannot now look round, while at the same time paying tribute to those who have perished.

CCRC Decision on 44 Post Office Prosecutions

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I pay tribute to the Chairman of the Justice Committee for all the work he has done and for the report the Committee published last week. I am always happy to speak to the Attorney General, and I will definitely take consideration in due course of that report.

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

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 of the 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.

[Paul Scully]

I absolutely see the right hon. Gentleman’s point. This may well be a contributing factor, but there are plenty of other factors that make it difficult to recruit postmasters, particularly in areas such as his. However, we will do whatever we can to fill those places and keep that network up.

Horizon: Sub-Postmaster Convictions

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

With regard to the scale of the issue, I agree with my hon. Friend that this has gone on for so long and has involved so many people who have suffered as a result, some with their lives, as we have heard. The point is that the mediated settlement was between the Post Office and the sub-postmasters who took out that group litigation. I am pleased that it came to a conclusion, but, as a result of that, the Government cannot enter into a new discussion with the Post Office on that basis.

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

It is noble of the Minister to offer himself up as a human shield for the Post Office in this way, but I hope that, when he returns to the Department today, he will tell his officials, who, I fear, have perhaps not briefed him as well as they might have done, and Post Office senior management that this review will just not cut it. He says that this is a complex case spanning a long period of time, and he is absolutely right about that. That is why it requires a judge-led inquiry. That is what will happen eventually, so why not just cut to the quick and do it now?

[Paul Scully]

I keep hearing that. I keep hearing the words “judge-led inquiry” and then I keep hearing that we need to move this on as quickly as possible. The point is that the terms of reference within this review are the same as a judge-led inquiry.

Anti-Semitism

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

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

I am grateful for the opportunity to make a short contribution to this quite remarkable debate.

As the beneficiary, as I now see it, of white Presbyterian privilege, this has been a humbling and illuminating experience. Like the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), I was brought up in a time and a place where we were taught that this was something of history. Like her, I now realise that it is certainly not something of history—if, indeed, it ever was—and anybody who thinks that it is could do worse than listen to the quite remarkable speeches of the hon. Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth).

The Secretary of State, in opening the debate, said that we should approach this subject with humility, and he is right about that. In truth, this is something that affects us across the political divides, because as political parties, we are reflective of the society in which we live. I confess freely that I have been on something of a journey. When I was first confronted with the spectre of anti-Semitism in our society and in my own party, I was too quick to excuse it, because frankly I could not believe that it could be a feature of otherwise sensible, rational people. I now realise that it is.

We find all around us so much casual anti-Semitism—the clichés, the stereotypes and the references even to “these people”. I now find myself in a position where, when I do see it, I am not prepared to be forgiving in any way, shape or form. It is incumbent on us all who reject it to call it out when we see it.

I do not want to dwell on matters relating to other parties. It appears to me as an outsider looking in that there is a problem within the Labour party, but we would be wrong to think that it is a problem just for the Labour party. If Jewish people do not feel comfortable within the Labour party or any other party simply because they are Jewish, it is a problem for us all who have faith and confidence in our political system.

The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) said that anti-Semitism was a racism like any other. With respect, and without wanting to get into the semantics, I do not believe that to be the case. For some reason, anti-Semitism and racism are a pernicious force that we find throughout history and throughout the world, as others have said. How we respond to that is up to us. We must not allow it to be a force that divides us. It can be a force that unites us, as long as there is unity in tackling it and rejecting it.