Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael suggested yesterday that the Glasgow helicopter crash had struck a particular chord in communities affected by recent ditchings over the North Sea.
The northern isles MP spoke of a “shared experience and reaction” to the fatal incident at the Clutha bar on Friday.
The UK Government minister also vowed that the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), which is still looking into the crash which killed four oil workers off Shetland in August, would be given additional resources if necessary.
In a special statement to MPs at Westminster yesterday afternoon, Mr Carmichael said: “I am sure, knowing that helicopter incidents are by no means unknown in my own constituency, that there would have been a shared experience and reaction to the news that broke on Friday night, from Shetland all the way to the Mull of Galloway.
“It was something which I think unites communities across Scotland.” Asked by Labour’s Shadow Energy Minister Tom Greatrex about extra resources for the AAIB as it investigates the helicopter crashes, Mr Carmichael gave an “assurance” they would be available if required.
Former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy, the MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, was one of many members to pay tribute to the response to the Glasgow crash in the Commons yesterday. Referring to Mr Carmichael, he said: “As him and I share, through Glasgow University, a strong empathy and ongoing attachment with that city, I am sure he would agree with me, as would others, that the sentiments and the sense of the popular song down the generations ‘I belong to Glasgow’, had a particularly poignant ring to them in the hearts I think of every Scot right around the world over the course of this very sad St Andrew’s weekend.”
Shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran, the Glasgow East MP, said: “The whole city of Glasgow, and people across Scotland and the UK, are joined together in grief and shock.
“It has been a dark weekend, but as we heard during the Church of Scotland service at Glasgow Cathedral on Sunday, ‘darkness shall not snatch everything from us’.”