Helicopter Crash (Glasgow)

Charles Kennedy Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

I commend the hon. Lady for her response and for the approach that she has taken. We have been in close contact throughout the course of this weekend and I very much expect that to continue. If I may say so, the ability of the Government, the Opposition and the Scottish National party to work together is the very least we can do in these circumstances. To take any other approach would be wholly inappropriate, given the magnificent response we have seen from the people of Glasgow.

On the question of the early report of the air accidents investigation branch, it would be impossible to give any undertakings at the moment. I can say that the earliest possible publication of the interim report will be made. I very much hope that in the course of the investigation any information that can be supplied to the families will be supplied. Should there be any difficulties in that regard, my office, and I am sure the office of the Secretary of State for Transport will stand ready to address any issues.

On the support to be given by Glasgow city council, the council is best placed to deliver that support. It has all the facilities in the communities and knows best where to find the people who need assistance and comfort. I am in regular contact with the leader of Glasgow city council and I value the strength of the working relationship between his office and mine. I am confident that should there be need for assistance from Her Majesty’s Government in Westminster, he will not be slow in asking. We will do everything within our power to give him the assistance he needs.

[Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)]

On behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I thank the Secretary of State for Scotland for his well-judged comments and for the content of his statement, which we all endorse completely. He and I share a strong empathy and ongoing attachment to the city, through the university of Glasgow. I am sure he and others will agree that the sentiment and sense of the song popular down the generations, “I Belong to Glasgow”, had a particularly poignant ring to it in the heart of every Scot around the world during this sad St Andrew’s weekend.

In rightly paying tribute to the emergency services and to ordinary citizens for what they have achieved, and are continuing to achieve, at considerable risk to themselves as a result of these appalling events, I ask my right hon. Friend to thank one other branch of public life that we, across the political spectrum, do not always praise in this House: the media. The broadcast media—BBC Scotland, in particular, but the commercial sector in Glasgow and the west of Scotland in general—and the print media have shown great responsibility and sensitivity to those involved, particularly to those who have lost loved ones. We hope that that will be maintained, and that the privacy of those who are having their loved ones returned to them will be respected in the future, too.

[Mr Carmichael]

My right hon. Friend reminds me that he and I share the experience of having gone from the west highlands in our latter teenage years to be students at the university of Glasgow. I revisited my own time there recently and carry with me to this day fond memories of the warmth of welcome that was given to me and the strength of community I found as a west highlander arriving in Glasgow in the early 1980s. I am sure my right hon. Friend’s experience was the same, and I am certain that it is the strength of the community that has produced the remarkable response we have seen in the course of the last three or four days.

With regard to the self-denying ordinance of the media outlets, I think my right hon. Friend is correct to draw attention to the restraint exhibited thus far, and I am sure that he shares my hope that that approach will continue.