Alistair Carmichael MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Jul 2026 · Coastguard Volunteers: Remuneration and HMRC Guidance · Hansard source

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  I have spoken to you about taking interventions today, Mr Shelbrooke. So many people are in the Chamber that I am afraid I have agreed to take just one—from the hon. Member for Isle of Wight East (Joe Robertson), who is running the drop-in session. I hope that somebody has been counting and listing the people in the Chamber, to highlight the importance that we all attach to this issue. It is critical that the Minister should understand what that sense of pride and duty means. I am afraid that the senior management of the MCA apparently have no understanding of it at all; their handling of the issue has been heavy-handed to the point of being disgraceful. Instead of engaging and consulting, they have produced a scheme that fundamentally rewrites the contract between the agency and the CROs. As a result, we risk seeing CROs walking away from the rescue service, to the point of losing the critical mass of people needed to provide the service.

• 1 Jul 2026 · Coastguard Volunteers: Remuneration and HMRC Guidance · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered HMRC guidance and remuneration of coastguard volunteers. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Shelbrooke. I welcome the Minister to his place. This debate is timely, because I am angry and offended by what the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is doing to our coastguard rescue officers. I believe that the changes being introduced, following the recent Court of Appeal judgment, risk hollowing out a crucial emergency service that is relied on by people in my constituency and other coastal and island communities around the country. I believe that the changes should be paused so that a proper and meaningful consultation can be held, and then brought back in a shape that respects the contribution and service given by coastguard rescue officers and secures the future of that service. I want the Minister to understand just why this matters as much as it does, so let me take the House back to 8 December 1963, some 20 months before I was born. At 3 am on that date, the trawler Margaret Wicks, of Fleetwood, ran aground off the coast of the Mull of Oa, on the island of Islay. The report of that grounding from the time recorded: “The Margaret Wicks went ashore on the Mull of Oa, a wild isolated part of Islay where there are few roads”— one, in fact— “at 3 a.m. on 8th December. Within…hours, the Mull of Oa company, who live in a small isolated community about three miles away, were on the scene. Shortly afterwards the Port Ellen company arrived, having carried their life-saving gear for two miles across very rough, boggy terrain from the road where they had left their lorry. The trawler was hard ashore, close in under a steeply sloping cliff 250 feet high; and the Volunteer-in-Charge, Mr. John Lockhead, took his men down the cliff to a point about 20 feet above the bows of the stranded vessel, from which they carried out the rescue. A whip and breeches buoy was used, and within half an hour the first survivor was landed. The other 14 were brought ashore uninjured within the next hour. The Islay life-boat and H.M.S. Hampshire were both lying off shore, unable to help because of the rocks which surrounded the wreck.” One of the men who was part of the Mull of Oa company was my father. He and his friends and neighbours were awarded the Minister of Transport’s shield for best wreck service of the year for 1963-64, jointly with the Lerwick station in Shetland—for obvious reasons, I am relieved that it was called a draw. The rescue of the Margaret Wicks is part of my family’s story. My father will celebrate his 95th birthday next month. I spoke to him about the rescue last night; he recalled it with total clarity and in great detail. He told the story not boastfully, but with a pride rooted in an understanding that this is part of what it means to be an islander or to live in a coastal community. Our communities produce fishermen and other seafarers, so coastguards and lifeboat volunteers go to those who are in difficulty and distress on our shores because, if it were necessary, we would want the same to be done for those about whom we care. Of course, the modern coastguard service is very different from the one that my father was part of in 1963. Now, the crew of the Margaret Wicks would most probably be lifted by helicopter rather than by a breeches buoy, but the same sense of pride and duty motivates coastguard volunteers today as it did my father and his neighbours six decades ago. I heard that same sense of pride and duty when I met CROs in my office in Orkney on Saturday—incidentally, we were in my office because I was not allowed to meet them in the coastguard station. I heard about the four days that they spent searching the coastline for a young monk who had gone missing from the monastery on Papa Stronsay. I heard from CROs in Shetland about the role that they played a few years ago when a winter storm brough catastrophic failure to the local electricity network, leaving parts of our community with no power for over a week.

• 1 Jul 2026 · Coastguard Volunteers: Remuneration and HMRC Guidance · Hansard source

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  Apologies for de-knighting you earlier, Sir Alec. I thank all hon. Members who took part in the debate and recognise in particular the contribution from the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Lara Bird). We welcome her to the community of Westminster Hall. I did not remember to count early enough, but I think that we had at least 32 Members of Parliament in this Chamber at the start. In addition, I had indications from the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton), my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) and the hon. Members for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume) and for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) that they would have been here also.

• 1 Jul 2026 · Coastguard Volunteers: Remuneration and HMRC Guidance · Hansard source

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  Possibly the least surprising thing that the House will hear today is that I agree with every word of that. In my view, what is being proposed is so fundamentally disrespectful of CROs. Despite that sense of pride and duty and the importance of the service that CROs provide to coastal and island communities, we risk losing many who currently give service. Senior management in the Maritime and Coastguard Agency—here, I single out the chief executive for particular criticism—are so removed from the service that CROs provide to communities that they are prepared to see it destroyed. Either they do not understand the people they are paid to manage or they do but are indifferent to the consequences of their actions. Either way, it is apparent to me that there is a crisis of leadership within the agency. That is what makes the issue a problem for the Minister. The people who do understand the CROs are those whose job it is to recruit, train and manage them. Go back 10 or 12 years: the MCA made a strategic shift of resource away from coastguard stations to put extra into the training of CROs. Money was spent on better equipment and training for the volunteers. That took time, but it worked. I give the agency credit for what it did then. I have watched Dave Sweeney, my local coastguard operations manager in Shetland and Orkney, as he has built and shaped a network of teams across the northern isles. That has not been quick or easy, but it has worked. It is the coastguard operations managers and their other full-time colleagues who have been charged by the senior management of the MCA with communicating and driving the changes now being proposed. Since this debate was announced, I have been contacted by a number of them who have told me how the issue has been handled within the agency. That has been truly shocking and displays an organisation with serious cultural and management issues to address. The representations have come to me in confidence and I shall share them, suitably anonymised, with the Minister after this debate. Suffice it to say that they lay bare a truly shocking approach to management that is based on a culture of bullying and a lack of respect for the people on the frontline. One in particular describes the manner in which the issue has been handled within the agency: “Every full time coastal officer in the UK has this week been called to a meeting led by the Assistant Chief Coastguards from Southampton. These meetings were non-negotiable, all FTOs”— full-time officers— “must attend. These meetings have taken place in secret, in hotel meeting rooms or MCA business suites. On entering the meeting room, FTOs are informed that under no circumstances should any information be leaked from the meeting until July or we risk losing our careers. FTOs are informed that they may not record or take pictures of PowerPoint slides nor take any notes on the shared information as this will all be sent out in due course. Delegates at the meeting are demanded that they must and I mean ‘MUST’ toe the agency line that we are in support of the withdrawal of remuneration even if we do not believe in it or have moral issues with it. FTOs are told that we must deliver the message to all Coastguard Teams in the UK and must not deviate from the message. We were told that if we did not agree with the policy then we must get over it or risk losing our jobs…One Assistant Chief Coastguard stated ‘you can get on the bus or join the party, or you can get off and leave the service’ thus insinuating that our full-time jobs are at risk if we do not do as we are told…We raised a concern that we will need to work extra, we were told to ‘just suck it up’ by one Assistant Chief Coastguard. We asked if extra hours and evenings incurred overtime and were told absolutely not. We are working over our 37 hours for free all because the UK Government have made a decision and we need to deal with the consequences. Another Assistant Chief Coastguard shouted at delegates because we all asked too many questions”. That is the position in which these changes are being driven. For as long as I have known it, the MCA has been a body with challenges, but the situation that has been described to me is on another level altogether. To undertake changes of this nature and scale in this way is unacceptable for any public body. To risk leaving coastal and island communities with no resilience in moments of crisis is not just unacceptable but unconscionable. That is why I make this earnest plea to the Minister to intervene. Pause what is being done, bring in someone from outside the service to examine in short order the way in which these changes have been made and communicated, look at the culture within the service, and work out how to recognise the work that CROs do in a way that is compliant with the law and respects their efforts. It cannot be beyond the wit of man. The chief executive has failed to engage with volunteers since the remuneration announcements, and appears to be having leadership struggles at the top with other senior officers. This is an issue that matters beyond measure to communities such as ours. I hope the Minister will hear our simple ask. I hope he understands from the sheer number of people here today the importance that we attach to it and acts accordingly.

• 1 Jul 2026 · Coastguard Volunteers: Remuneration and HMRC Guidance · Hansard source

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  This is the intervention.

• 1 Jul 2026 · Coastguard Volunteers: Remuneration and HMRC Guidance · Hansard source

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  I am bereft, Sir Alec. I do hope that nobody goes back and looks at the footage of me when I was inadvertently leaving my jacket open in that manner. As I was saying, a number of other Members wanted to be here. I listened to the Minister. He is telling me—telling us all, in fact—that the problem is the law, and I am thinking to myself, “My goodness, if only there were something that the Government could do about the law.” I do not honestly know what the answer is—I am not without sympathy for the position in which the Minister finds himself—but I do know what it is not. It is not to take away the terms and conditions that people have served under up until now and to treat them with the utter disregard that the chief executive and the senior management of the MCA are displaying. I again suggest to the Minister that we need to pause this, work it again, properly, talk to the CROs in a respectful and engaging manner, and then come back with something that focuses not on the process argument that we have heard and that we understand, but on the outcomes, because the outcomes for our communities, if we do not get this right, will be catastrophic and I do not want that to be happening on my watch. Question put and agreed to . Resolved , That this House has considered HMRC guidance and remuneration of coastguard volunteers.

• 1 Jul 2026 · Coastguard Volunteers: Remuneration and HMRC Guidance · Hansard source

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  I know of no CRO who gives their time and skills for the money, but the way in which they have received financial recognition in recent years has enabled them to make their contribution. That is especially true for the self-employed: many paid by the hour in their day jobs will lose out financially. They knew that system when they signed up, but now it is being changed and they are expected to carry on as they did previously. That is not reasonable and does not respect the contribution that the CROs make.

• 1 Jul 2026 · Coastguard Volunteers: Remuneration and HMRC Guidance · Hansard source

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  You know me too well!

• 1 Jul 2026 · Coastguard Volunteers: Remuneration and HMRC Guidance · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Minister for his recognition; I am sure that his words will have been heard and appreciated. Some 17% of CROs are now members of the GMB. The threshold for voluntary recognition by the agency would be 10%. As a Labour Minister, does he agree with me, a Liberal Democrat, that this would be a good moment for the MCA to recognise the GMB as a union for CROs?

• 24 Jun 2026 · Farming Road Map and Profitability Review · Hansard source

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  I remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I welcome the publication of the farming road map. It may not have been rushed, but it is welcome none the less; all we need now is a revised food strategy, and the Secretary of State’s homework will be up to date. Is the implementation of the Batters review still being pursued as a discrete piece of work, or is it being subsumed into the farming road map? In as far as that relates to the operation of the market, why is she not involving farmers’ unions from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? The Secretary of State refers to DEFRA as a growth Department. Agriculture accounts for 0.6% of UK GDP at the moment, so if we follow the road map and she gives leadership to the industry, what would she want that figure to be in the future?

• 24 Jun 2026 · North Sea Oil and Gas · Hansard source

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  I am keen to emphasise the great breadth of agreement between myself and my hon. Friend on this matter. She is absolutely right about the future of jobs. She knows that I chair the all-party parliamentary group on marine energy. Marine renewable technology is developing and will be able to provide jobs for my constituents and others in the future, but it is important that we keep the critical mass of the oil and gas industry, because if these people lose their jobs now, they are not going to sit on their hands and wait for AR9, AR10, AR11 or whenever it is that we can actually get commercially exploitable marine renewable energy.

• 24 Jun 2026 · North Sea Oil and Gas · Hansard source

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  How confident is the Minister that he can maintain the infrastructure in the North sea and to the west of Shetland, so that oil and gas can be brought onshore, as well as through floating production storage and offloading units, without new licences?

• 24 Jun 2026 · North Sea Oil and Gas · Hansard source

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  Much of what the hon. Lady says is correct, but she is setting oil and gas up in opposition to the development of renewables, when they absolutely are not. I do not believe there is a long-term future for the oil and gas industry, but we will need oil and gas in the future. We are talking not just about the long term, but about the short to medium term. That is the whole point of a transition: it is about how we get from here to where we want to be. There is no way of getting to the renewables future without going through oil and gas first.

• 24 Jun 2026 · North Sea Oil and Gas · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman comes to the crux of what we mean by a transition. The difficulty for the Government is that, on the current trajectory of development, we risk reducing at a speed that means we will lose the critical infrastructure and end up pushing the whole industry off a cliff. If we do that, we will have no just transition.

• 24 Jun 2026 · North Sea Oil and Gas · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has come to a point of some interest. We talk about oil and gas as if they are one commodity, but they are very different things, of course, and she will know that the gas that is to be extracted in the North sea and also to the west of Shetland is brought ashore and goes straight into the UK market. The point about a global market and a global price for oil is well made, but oil and gas are different.

• 24 Jun 2026 · North Sea Oil and Gas · Hansard source

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  Each time, the hon. Lady says, “Instead of that, it’s this.” It is not an either/or; it is an “as well”.

• 18 Jun 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  May we have a debate in Government time on the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s proposed changes to the way it compensates those who give their time as coastguard volunteers? The agency’s current proposals are causing massive concern among volunteer coastguards in my constituency and right around the coastline. We risk seeing those volunteers being forced to walk away, leaving communities without the necessary protection as a result. Surely the Leader of the House can agree that not to take on board those concerns before making the changes demonstrates a fundamental lack of respect for those who volunteer their services in this way.

• 21 May 2026 · Industrial Strategy · Hansard source

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  The largest sector of the manufacturing base is food manufacturing, but it was deliberately left out of the industrial strategy. As a consequence, food manufacturing is now facing rising input costs, especially from energy, and is unable to get the assistance that the Minister just referred to. The Food and Drink Federation thinks that food price inflation could get to 9% or 10% this year. With the benefit of hindsight, do the Government think that it was possibly a mistake to exclude food manufacturing from the industrial strategy?

• 21 May 2026 · Middle East: Economic Response · Hansard source

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  I remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Last year, suckler beef farmers in my constituency were getting paid £7.30 per kilo for their finished product on the hook. Yesterday that was down to £5.75, and it is still falling. The price paid to dairy farmers for their milk is through the floor. Arable farmers are struggling after two catastrophically bad harvests. The red diesel duty cut is welcome, but it will not help farmers who are struggling with rocketing fertiliser prices or, indeed, those who are required to heat glasshouses. Opening the door ever wider to food imports risks undermining domestic food production. If food security genuinely is national security, surely our food producers and manufacturers should have access to the same support as other critical sectors. Will the Chancellor look again at adding food and drink to the Government’s industrial strategy, so that they can access the same support as other sectors?

• 20 May 2026 · Processed Russian Oil Products: Sanctions · Hansard source

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  For years, Ministers on the Treasury Bench have told us that oil is traded as a global commodity, so it makes no difference where in the world it is taken out of the ground and that, as a consequence, we can wind down production on the UK continental shelf—availability of supply would continue. Given what the Minister has had to announce today, is he satisfied that that argument still holds water?

• 26 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T8. Airlines are already adding fuel surcharges to ticket prices as a consequence of current events. That may not be surprising, but does the Secretary of State agree with me that, if they are going to do that, they should at the same time publish a trigger point, so that customers will know when those fuel surcharges will be removed from ticket prices?

• 26 Mar 2026 · European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service · Hansard source

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  I think I can speed things up there, because I can tell the Minister exactly what the impact has been. Since we lost access to EGNOS, the number of cancellations to island communities has trebled, which in turn has put up the cost of tickets, and occasionally air ambulance flights are unable to get in. That has been the cost of coming out of EGNOS, and it is about time we found our way back into it. Will the Minister meet me, and perhaps his hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton), to find a way of progressing this without any further delay?

• 26 Mar 2026 · European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service · Hansard source

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  12. What recent discussions she has had with the aviation industry on the potential merits of the UK rejoining the European geostationary navigation overlay service.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Middle East: Economic Update · Hansard source

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  Shetland is home to one of the largest onshore wind farms in the country, the operators of which are paid millions not to generate electricity because of grid constraints. As a result, the announcement this morning of a trial of discounted energy rates for communities such as ours will be met—possibly—with some excitement. When will we hear the details of how that will work and what it will mean in terms of reductions to the bills of my constituents?

• 19 Mar 2026 · EU-UK Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement: Negotiations · Hansard source

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  Obviously, there are real opportunities to be had from the completion of an SPS agreement, but those who import fresh produce, in particular citrus fruit, are concerned that imports from countries outside the European Union will become more difficult and more expensive as a consequence. May I encourage the Secretary of State to engage more vigorously and in greater detail with the Fresh Produce Consortium, which brought these concerns to my desk recently?