Emergency Covid Contracts

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

Thank you, Mr Speaker; I appreciate your zeal and I think you are right.

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. We have tried throughout to be transparent, but I have set out some of the very good reasons why it has been difficult sometimes to publish the contracts in a timely way. This has been a very complex process where we have had to surge teams at very short notice and go back through all the paperwork, looking across different IT systems across different Departments. That has been a challenge that I have tried to address, as has the Department of Health and Social Care. My understanding is that all PPE contracts are now transparently published. We are working through them all in relation to comms and have a programme of work under way to make sure that we have transparent publication. I completely agree that it is important that we offer reassurances to the public on how taxpayers’ funds are used.

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

The Government were able to award contracts using their high priority lane because this House gave them the power to do so. We did it, effectively, on trust. Will the Minister now repay the trust that this House placed in the Government by publishing the details not just of the contracts that were put through that high priority lane, but of those who introduced the contractors to the Government, the basis on which it was thought appropriate to put them through the high-priority lane and the economic outcomes of those decisions?

[Julia Lopez]

I thank the right hon. Member for his inquiries. As I say, 47 went through the high-priority lane, and discussions are under way on the extent to which we can be transparent about that because of commercial sensitivities. However, as I said, all PPE contracts have now been transparently published.

Covid-19 Update

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, indeed I can.

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

If this inquiry is to achieve everything that we would want of it, then it must be the pre-eminent vehicle by which the voice of those who have lost loved ones in this pandemic will be heard. I am pretty certain that Ministers, officials, health professionals, business interests and others will all have good-quality legal representation in that, many paid out of the public purse. Can the Prime Minister give me some commitment today that bereaved families will also get the necessary support to ensure that they have the same quality of representation, so that their voices will be properly heard?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I believe that is vital, because the inquiry must learn from the direct experiences of the bereaved who have suffered so much. They will provide invaluable evidence for the inquiry. It is also, plainly, a matter of justice and fairness. I fully accept the point that the right hon. Gentleman raises.

Northern Ireland Protocol: Implementation

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is striking that every political party in Northern Ireland, every political party in the Irish Republic and every political party in this House recognises that a mistake was made. It is important that we take this opportunity to recognise that trust has been eroded, and rapid work to restore that trust needs to be undertaken.

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

On behalf of my party, I join those who have expressed sympathies and sent good wishes to Edwin Poots.

May I invite the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to join me in condemning those who were responsible for the attacks yesterday on Alliance party offices in Northern Ireland, including those of the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry), and to make it clear that there is no place in our politics in any part of this United Kingdom for that sort of intimidation? Do those attacks not illustrate the importance of using the time available to us in the grace period to get things right, so that we do not see what his colleagues elsewhere in government have called “teething problems”, come the end of that grace period? So much of this paperwork can now be done digitally. Are the Government going ahead in that direction?

[Michael Gove]

I am always grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his interventions, because he so often talks good sense, and I find myself uncomfortably agreeing with him—not all the time, but a lot of time. He is absolutely right: the threats that have been issued to Alliance party and other political and community leaders in Northern Ireland are totally unacceptable, and we need to stand together against that sort of behaviour. He is also right that we need to help business to use the online and digital facilities that the Trader Support Service provides, to ensure that commerce can be as trouble-free commerce as possible across the whole United Kingdom.

Northern Ireland Protocol: Disruption to Trade

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 13th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. There have been problems at Dublin port, and the Irish Government have responded to concerns and introduced easements. His first point is an even more important one. I do not want to shift any responsibility away from my own shoulders and those of my colleagues in dealing with specific protocol issues, but he is absolutely right; covid—and, in particular, the French Government’s understandable but robust response to it—has affected trade overall. It is important that we put that into the picture in order to provide the necessary context.

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

I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that I have lost count of the number of occasions on which he has stood at the Dispatch Box and given us all sorts of assurances that there would be no barriers to the free movement of goods between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. It gives me no pleasure to reflect that that is manifestly now not the case. We do at least, though, have a grace period to get things right, and it is up to the right hon. Gentleman to ensure that that happens. Will he confirm whether the changes to groupage regulation to which he referred will also be effective for traders exporting from the rest of the United Kingdom to the European Union, especially for seafood exporters? And while he is at it, why did we not have a grace period for exporters of perishable goods such as seafood? Surely that would have been sensible—with the benefit of hindsight, at least.

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his points. It is important to stress first that it is the case that there is unfettered access for goods going from Northern Ireland to Great Britain. The new processes that the protocol has created are about trade from Great Britain into Northern Ireland, and it is those specific challenges that we are addressing at the moment.

The right hon. Gentleman makes a point about groupage that is entirely right. Our response to the challenges faced by hauliers and traders must be one that works not just for access to Northern Ireland but for access to the rest of the EU. It applies particularly to those who are responsible for perishable goods, including the many outstanding companies in his constituency which, thanks to his kindness, I have had a chance to talk to about the challenges and opportunities of Brexit. On his final point about hindsight, let us wait and see for a wee while yet before we can all definitively say what has been successful and what has not.

Public Health

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

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

It is pleasure to make a short contribution to this debate, which has been compelling to follow. The constant thread we find, no matter which way people will vote tonight, is enormous frustration in all parts of the House, the roots of which are to be found in the fact that the Government have lost their way in tackling covid. There is a lack of coherent strategy and of route maps from one tier to the other. I say to those on the Treasury Bench that my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I will not take part in the Division tonight; we feel it would be irresponsible to leave the country in a situation where we did not have regulation after midnight, but that should not necessarily be taken as a green light for the Government to continue to act in this way in the future.

I also hope that the listening extends not just to the Department of Health and Social Care, but to the Home Office. I am sure I was not the only Member who looked at the TV screens at the weekend and saw police officers in London enforcing the Home Secretary’s rule of two. People speak about the cost of the cure being perhaps greater than that of the disease and we tend to think of that in financial terms, but clearly the way in which we have tackled covid has a cost that goes well beyond that. I have little sympathy for those arrested on the streets in London at the weekend. I agree with almost nothing that they say, but it is important that in this House, of all places, we should be able to support their right to assemble, and to protest peacefully and within the law. We walk away from that at our peril, because these freedoms were hard-won and if we give them up, they will not be easily brought back.

I wish to say a few short words about the position facing the travel industry, which is in many ways the Cinderella service in all this. I have been speaking to travel agents in my constituency. In the early days they kept their doors open. They were having to work around the clock to process cancellations and the rest of it, making sure that people got refunds. Since then, they have seen their business fall off a cliff. There is lots of help out there for other aspects of hospitality, and rightly so, but these are people who are now being left with nowhere to go. These businesses work not in weeks or months, but in months and years, and they are being left behind. There are very few simple things that require to be done, but the Government have to listen to them now.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am sorry that the hon. Member is failing to see it, because I thought I explained it quite clearly with the Ukraine example. We also see in other operations how the use of law has undermined the combat effectiveness of the armed forces. We see time and again in operations the opportunity for an individual with nefarious intent to try to bring legal action against the MOD to prevent operations.

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

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will not give way any more; I had two interventions and they are done. We see again and again how legal intervention could be used to try to prevent operations. That, absurdly, prevents the armed forces from doing exactly what they are there for: to be the strong defending the weak. Instead, soldiers deployed on lawful operations will not be able to act in defence of the most vulnerable. The Bill clearly intends to go some way towards dealing with that. I do have a criticism of the Bill in that it does not go far enough to prevent multiple investigations, but the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) will agree with me on that. It is true that it goes some way, but not nearly far enough.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Atherton]

I am just about to say that they, too, should be afforded certainty that the unique operational pressures placed upon them will be taken into account. Prosecution decisions are made on alleged historical offences, and I understand that there will be some debate in this House on that matter.

I have spent the past few weeks scrutinising the Bill line by line in the Public Bill Committee, along with a number of other Members. Is the Bill perfect? No, it is not, but it is infinitely better than where we are now. No Bill or Act will ever suit all people in all circumstances, but which group would object to this Bill the most? It is the group who would lose out the most: the unscrupulous human rights lawyers. Service charities welcome the Bill, although I acknowledge that they have some reservations. But all service personnel and veterans want to be and should be supported by the Government, their politicians and their people. After all, they are prepared to, and do, put their lives at risk for us, and this is the duty of care these service personnel want. This Bill goes some way in offering that support, and I welcome it.

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

I am grateful to you for the opportunity to take part in this debate, Mr Speaker. As the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) indicated, it bears a remarkable similarity to the one we had on Second Reading, because, it would appear, of how matters were proceeded with in Committee. That is unfortunate, because on Report the House is charged with the more detailed scrutiny of the sort we would normally expect to have and the Bill will be the poorer for its lack. I have listened with care and attention, occasionally trying to intervene, but I am struck by the fact that so many of those who speak in favour of the Bill continue to do so on the basis of seeking somehow to limit civil claims being brought against the Ministry of Defence.

The hon. Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) spoke about lawfare and made a good point; I speak as a distantly former solicitor and the behaviour she refers to was disgraceful. However, the way to deal with such utterly disgraceful behaviour lies with the regulatory authorities for the legal profession; it is not necessarily for this House to start driving a coach and horses through the important protections we all enjoy, which ultimately benefit most of our armed forces personnel. I do not understand why part 1—an interference with the prosecution and the creation of a presumption against prosecution in criminal cases—will make any difference to the spectacle we saw in relation to lawfare.

Let me deal briefly with the provisions tabled by the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). His suggestion in new clause 1 is sensible: judicial oversight of some sort for investigatory processes in the context where, as we all know, it is difficult to come by evidence, because it has to come from a theatre of conflict. That sort of protection is sensible, and it is unfortunate that the inadequacy of our proceedings today will not allow his proposal the sensible scrutiny and debate it deserves.

However, I wish to focus the bulk of my remarks on amendment 1, tabled by the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). For me, the operation of the presumption against prosecution in relation to torture is the most egregious aspect of this Bill. I suspect that if we could sort that—I am pretty certain that it will be sorted when the Bill goes to the other place—then we could probably fairly easily build a consensus around the Bill: the sort of consensus that, by and large, we manage to achieve most of the time in relation to the conduct of and support for our armed services.

I was struck by what the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) said about the various protections that he claims are within the Bill and how that would still make it possible to bring prosecutions in the exceptional circumstances envisaged by its authors. There is some merit in his proposition, but it did occur to me that if these provisions are adequate for torture, they should also be adequate for protections against sexual offences—but sexual offences are carved out in schedule 1 expressly because they should never be countenanced under any circumstances. It is absolutely right that they should be carved out in schedule 1 for those reasons, but it is for those reasons that torture should also benefit from the same sort of exemption that we have seen in respect of sexual offences.

The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden touched on Belhaj. I will say only this: let us remember that the Belhaj papers were only found, following the fall of Gaddafi, entirely by accident. That is how difficult it can sometimes be to obtain the evidence of torture.

Covid-19 Update

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the people of Warrington for everything they have done; I know that they have had a very tough time. It has been tough to control the disease there, as it has been across many parts of the country, and they have done a great job in bringing the R down. I think there is the prospect of a much brighter future ahead if we can make a success of these national measures and open up again in December, to give people the chance of some shopping and economic activity in the weeks leading up to Christmas and beyond.

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

We all know that those who want to break up the United Kingdom love nothing more than a manufactured grievance, but I have to tell the Prime Minister that he does nothing to help those of us who want the United Kingdom to stay together when he is the one manufacturing the grievances. His position in relation to the future access to furlough funds for Scotland and the other devolved Administrations is unfair and untenable, and it has to change. He does not need to take my word for it; he can ask the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, who takes exactly the same view.

EU Exit: End of Transition Period

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct that no deal is in nobody’s interests. The fact that the First Minister of Wales or the Mayor of London are holding out the prospect of an extension to the transition period does not contribute to the concentration of minds and—to be fair to the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves)—the productive work required in order to secure a deal.

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

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?

[Michael Gove]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. One of the things that the Government have always stressed is that in the event of a no-deal exit, the sectors that would be most adversely affected by tariffs would be in the agriculture sector, with red meat producers particularly hard hit. That is why we are anxious to avoid that outcome and to secure a deal. Come what may, there will be new processes, but also new markets, for producers in Orkney and Shetland. I will work with him to make sure that, in whatever eventuality, we support the high-quality producers in his constituency.

British Overseas Troops: Civil Liability Claims

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer]

That is a really good question, and I thank my hon. Friend for it. The way that this is going to change lives is by ending the uncertainty. If you have served on operations and you have not committed an offence, you will not be endlessly hounded by those who seek to bring spurious human rights claims. Let us remember how the IHAT process started. We had Public Interest Lawyers driving around Iraq, essentially acting as legal team for the Mahdi army—it was absolutely bizarre. This will change the experience for service personnel, veterans and their families and provide certainty for them and for victims, to clear this mess up and restore fairness to the process.

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

It should be possible to build an easy consensus in the House on protection for those who have given service in the past, but the Bill that the Minister claims to have drafted himself does a lot more than that. A prescription and limitation on actions brought in respect of torture, crimes against humanity and war crimes is a significant departure on which he will not build a consensus and for which those who give service in our armed forces would not want people to be protected. Will he look again at that provision?

[Johnny Mercer]

I am happy to look at any aspect of the Bill, but let me be clear: the retrospective application of the Human Rights Act to the battlefield is inappropriate and has caused a lot of the problems that we have had. We want to restore the supremacy of the law of armed conflict in the Geneva conventions. We do a good job of holding our people to account. We are not going to allow the legislation that the right hon. Gentleman mentions to be abused and used in a way that it was never designed to be used in order to bring claims against our service personnel and make their lives a misery.

Covid-19 Update

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I say to my right hon. Friend—I should have said this to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts)—that we are in very regular contact with all the devolved Administrations. We are much more in lockstep than might be thought. On the particular matter of hospitality in Wales, I hear him loud and clear, and I think that point will be heard loud and clear in Cardiff. We look forward to hearing further announcements.

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

If people are to take advantage of this freeing of restrictions, they must have confidence in the judgment of the Prime Minister and those around him. He must surely realise that recent events have done some damage in that regard. If he wishes to repair some of that damage, will he end the much-ridiculed quarantine period for people coming here from overseas?

[The Prime Minister]

First, may I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for last week mistakenly believing him to be someone who wanted to break up our United Kingdom? I unreservedly withdraw that aspersion. I know that he and I want to keep our Union together. On the quarantine issue, however, I must say to him that I think it is very sensible for this country to have measures in place to protect our population from vectors of disease coming back into the UK from abroad. That is the right thing to do.