Welcome to the third and final part of my interview with Alistair Carmichael MP, the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip.

When I spoke to him on Monday night, Alistair was just about to go into the last Parliamentary Party meeting before the Recess.

NHS Reform and potential changes to the Government’s plans had been in the news all day, so I asked him, given our Conference’s very clear view on the matter, how it was all going to pan out.

Well I mean I think we are already seeing from announcements today that this is an ongoing process I’m not sure where it’s going to end but it’s quite clear that some element of change is coming and again you have John Pugh, Norman Lamb and indeed Nick Clegg himself trying to address those issues which cause genuine concern amongst party members and voters.

On the Today programme this morning they were drawing a very clear link between our party conference debate and the changes that are now being spoken of.

It’s quite clear that the fact that we debated the issue in the way that we did has an influence that works its way through to the top of Government and that’s something that all our members should feel  exceptionally pleased and proud of.

And, finally, I wanted to put his powers of persuasion to the test. I have on numerous occasions in recent weeks expressed my annoyance and frustration at the use of the phrase Alarm Clock Britain.  I totally get the philosophy behind it – that we’re trying to help those people whose income is too much to get any help from the State, but too low for a decent standard of living, and certainly too low for them to build up any sort of nest egg to fall back on if they lose their jobs for some reason.   This is Alistair’s take on it:

Alarm Clock Britain is just one way of addressing a group of people  that I think we’ve neglected in the past and that is the people who work hard, do the best they can for themselves and their families who feel neglected by the State. Those people’s contribution to the community has got to be given more recognition. I’ll give you a good working example. When I was many years ago a hotel manager, I used to spend half an hour a day scrubbing pots and washing dishes with the kitchen porter at the end of the breakfast service. It wasn’t entirely altruistic because it was the point in the day when the Kitchen Porter was under the most pressure and if he managed to find his feet at that time, it meant that the kitchen ran smoothly for the rest of the day.

Being a kitchen porter is difficult, unpleasant hard work, but the hotel couldn’t function without kitchen porters and by demonstrating as the hotel manager a measure of respect  for the work they did, they felt better about it and everything ran more efficiently within the hotel.  If you are doing a difficult, unpleasant, unglamorous job and you haven’t got a great prospect of doing more than that, then I think that the fact that politicians think about your position is important.

He didn’t actually answer my question, which was more about the label than the philosophy, but I think the example is more real and makes more sense than the words coming from Mr Reeves and Mr Clegg. That’s Richard Reeves of course. Andrew can do no wrong.

If the Carmichael managerial philosophy is to help and support everyone in his team, even if it means taking time out of his day to help with the really hard jobs,  then you can see why he’s exactly the right person to have in his role. It was good to coax him out of the shadows for a little while and get a little bit of insight into his work.  Obviously he held a lot back. I think of all the accounts I’d want to read in decades time about our first experience of Westminster Government in 80 years, his would be top of the list.