All articles written by Alistair Carmichael MP on PoliticsHome.com

21 Dec 2023 Home affairs

The Family Breakup Bill Is A New Low For The Conservatives

Countless families who planned to reunite in the UK have had their hopes dashed by a cruel, arbitrary threshold.

11 Sep 2023 Communities

With the Tories and SNP left flailing in Scottish waters, the Lib Dems can swim to victory

A possibly apocryphal story tells of a military commander who was told his forces were surrounded. His response? “Perfect. They can’t get away from us this time!”

11 Apr 2023 Home affairs

Detaining child migrants is a stain on our country – it is not a solution to deter small boats

You know that a policy is unlikely to succeed when it fails the “laugh” test. So it proved when Parliament heard Robert Jenrick’s solution to the “small boats crisis” – a barge. Take all the people on small boats – and put them into one big boat.

13 Mar 2023 Economy

The Chancellor must step up support for whisky distillers suffering from rising energy costs

When you imagine energy-intensive businesses, there are obvious examples that spring to mind. Images abound of grand factories and industrial towns, steel producers and mass manufacturers.

27 Feb 2023 Foreign affairs

HSBC must end support for Beijing’s crackdown

When the pioneering Scotsman Thomas Sutherland founded the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in 1865, he did so on the promise of ‘sound Scottish banking,’ renowned for its fairness, dynamism, and community service.

28 Nov 2022 Books & culture

'Grisly': Alistair Carmichael reviews 'Executions'

This well curated exhibition exploring the history of public execution in London has a few gruesome moments but – thankfully – lacks the horror of contemporary capital punishment

22 Nov 2022 Foreign affairs

The UK must sanction Chinese officials guilty of human rights abuses

We currently live at a time when democracy is under threat in various geopolitical arenas across the globe.

15 Jun 2022 Brexit

The government’s threat to leave the ECHR to fulfil its Rwanda policy risks breaking the Good Friday Agreement

What a difference a day makes. In less than 24 hours Boris Johnson has gone from pretending to be a defender of the Good Friday Agreement, to threatening to remove the legal underpinnings of peace in Northern Ireland altogether.

14 Apr 2022 Home affairs

Dystopian plan to offshore refugees to Rwanda will do nothing to fix our failing asylum system

It takes some effort to be both inhumane and incompetent. That, however, has become Boris Johnson and Priti Patel’s calling card.

11 Apr 2022 Home affairs

If the UK is to be a home for Hong Kongers, they need more than an entry ticket

It has been more than a year since Britain stood tall on the world stage and opened its doors to Hong Kongers fleeing Beijing’s tyranny through the introduction of the British National Overseas (BNO) visa scheme.

28 Feb 2022 Home affairs

The Government cannot call out Putin with authority while mounting a civil liberties crackdown of its own

Across Russia in the last few days, thousands of people have come out to protest in solidarity with Ukraine and against the invasion of their neighbour ordered by Vladimir Putin.

15 Nov 2021 Parliament

There should be far more rigorous financial rules for MPs

Last year I fought to ensure that MPs for rural and island communities would be able to participate remotely in Parliament during the height of the pandemic. I did so to ensure that our communities got the same representation as anywhere else, regardless of geography or personal circumstances.

24 Sep 2021 Economy

Parliamentary pensions should not be invested in Chinese companies complicit in human rights violations

The government must join the US in introducing an entities list banning UK investment in Chinese companies directly complicit in the oppression of the Uyghurs.

08 Sep 2021 Coronavirus

Domestic vaccine passports are a counterproductive, illiberal gimmick – the government must think again

Governments can always come up with reasons to chip away at individual liberty. Uniformity and conformity, after all, makes life easier for them.

13 Jul 2021 Political parties

EVEL was never an adequate solution to democratic inequality in the UK

EVEL was a divisive and counterproductive step and its repeal is welcome. Unless we defeat the roots of the problems in our democracy, however, the EVEL in our politics will always come back to haunt us.

18 May 2021 Home affairs

Our broken immigration system needs to change

Fail to end the Tories hostile environment for once and for all and the scenes of Glasgow last week will soon become the scenes of Manchester, Birmingham, London or Cardiff.

05 May 2021 Political parties

As long as the SNP sees independence as the most important issue, Scotland will suffer

Pro-EU voters in Scotland who vote for the SNP or for independence are being conned by a party that will always hold internationalist values second to the priority of independence.

22 Apr 2021 Home affairs

Boris Johnson should keep to his word, and choke off any attempts to introduce voter ID

“If I am ever asked, on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am… then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.”

11 Mar 2021 Home affairs

Harry and Meghan’s British citizenship should not be up for debate

The government is slyly misusing their powers to remove citizenship and using the veil of populism to justify this abuse. It is time to curtail these powers, no matter who they are applied to.

09 Feb 2021 Brexit

Only when Boris Johnson accepts responsibility for flaws in the Northern Ireland Protocol can we find a lasting solution

What is needed now is level-headed governance and a recognition of responsibility by those who created the Protocol in all its flaws, so that we can mitigate as many of them as possible.

27 Jan 2021 Home affairs

MPs must vote against ‘licence to kill’ Bill

The Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill still gives far too many public bodies sweeping powers to grant total legal immunity for informants to commit crimes.

15 Jan 2021 Brexit

Let’s stop using the fishing industry as a political football and work together to untangle Brexit red tape

Scottish fishermen have been losing £1M each day for the past week because of Brexit disruption. They need urgent support from the Prime Minister, not excuses and uncertainty.

21 Nov 2020 Foreign affairs

Boycotting the G20 can help improve Human Rights in Saudi Arabia

With Saudi Arabia reeling from the effects of Covid-19 and with an incoming Biden administration promising to focus on climate change, now is the time to put pressure on the regime to improve its human rights record

03 Nov 2020 Defence

Torture has been illegal in the UK for over 300 years – today the Overseas Operations Bill will overturn this

The Overseas Operations Bill will not deliver adequate protection for our armed forces personnel – rather, it will reduce their rights.

02 Nov 2020 Communities

The UK’s digital story of unequal outcomes has been laid bare by the pandemic

Those living and working in the countryside must have the same digital access as their urban counterparts. It’s time for government to rise to the rural connectivity challenge

13 Oct 2020 Foreign affairs

Honours should not be awarded to police officers involved with human rights violations

It is unconscionable to witness the Hong Kong honours system rewarding police officers responsible for the abuse of HongKongers. The UK government must impose Magnitsky-style sanctions to demonstrate our commitment to global human rights.

14 Sep 2020 Brexit

The UK risks losing all moral authority on law-breaking if the Internal Markets Bill goes ahead

The UK Internal Market Bill strikes at the future constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom as a unitary state. There is still time for us to reject this murky path the government have decided on.

07 Sep 2020 Home affairs

The Immigration Bill provides an opportunity to end ‘inhumane’ indefinite detention

Immigration detention should be a last resort, yet the Government detains thousands of people a year for months on end. We have tabled amendments to the Immigration Bill to impose a 28-day time limit.

25 Feb 2020 Foreign affairs

Alistair Carmichael: Talk of 'Global Britain' is meaningless if we fail to stand up fro Hong Kong

Support is growing across Parliament for a more active response in the face of clear infringements by China on Hong Kong’s historic rights, writes Alistair Carmichael

18 Jul 2019 Foreign affairs

'Mentioning human rights in meetings' will no longer cut it – we must hold the Saudi Regime to account

As the UK looks to leave the European Union and seeks to build trading partnerships elsewhere the question will be asked – what price is trade with Britain? Pursue trade deals with despotic regimes while ignoring their human rights abuses and we risk losing our good name in a fire sale, warns Alistair Carmichael MP.

11 Apr 2019 Foreign affairs

The people of Hong Kong look to the UK to keep the promises we made to them

Former Liberal Democrat Cabinet minister Alistair Carmichael writes following his Urgent Question on the guilty verdict handed to pro- democracy activists in Hong Kong.

06 Nov 2018 Culture

The Treasury would be £4.6billion better off after 10 years if VAT is cut for the tourism industry

Former Secretary of State for Scotland Alistair Carmichael writes ahead of his House of Commons Adjournment debate on the potential effect of a VAT reduction on the tourism industry.

22 Jul 2018 Political parties

Julian Smith needs to explain himself to Parliament over pairing fiasco

Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Alistair Carmichael calls on his Tory counterpart Julian Smith to explain himself to MPs over the pairing row that has engulfed the Tory party over the past week.

01 Feb 2018 Environment

British farmers & crofters must be listened to in the debate on post-Brexit agriculture

Former Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael MP writes ahead of his Westminster Hall debate on ‘the policy framework for agriculture after the UK leaves the EU’.

31 Oct 2017 Environment

Hammond threatens 'economically fragile communities' every time he plunders our successful Scottish Whisky industry

The Liberal Democrat MP, Alistair Carmichael, says the Treasury must stop treating the Scottish Whisky industry as a 'cash cow'.

09 Jun 2016 Home affairs

Refugee families divided by lines of Home Office rule book

The Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael writes for PoliticsHome ahead of his debate today, questioning the Government’s refugee family reunion system that is tearing families apart.