argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Engagements — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Foreign Trade
Martin John Vickers (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the Government’s commitment to establish freeports. The port of Immingham in my constituency is, by tonnage, the largest port in the country. Does the Prime Minister agree that it would be somewhat remiss to not include Immingham in the freeport programme?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Transportation
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for his campaign for Immingham. It is registered, but my hon. Friend should know that he is one of the most successful campaigners in this House already this year, because the new bridge that he asked for at Suggitts Lane crossing is going to be completed between the summer and the autumn of next year, so he can carry that back in triumph to Suggitts Lane.
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
Neil John O'Brien (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady invited an intervention; I thought it would be unchivalrous not to provide one. Money was provided for my constituency because pubs had been shut. Yesterday, the Labour party voted against shutting pubs at 10 pm, but in favour of shutting down the entire economy instead. The idea that that is a proportionate response is absurd.
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
Andrew Griffith (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady makes important points about the difficulties faced by so many people in the economy. Will she explain how they will be helped by closing down the entire economy? It is the madhouse of fixing the windows or knocking the whole house down.
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
Andrew Griffith (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my right hon. Friend agree that, faced with a choice between a national blunt instrument that would wreak enormous economic damage, and something that is more finely calibrated region by region based on the science, there is no choice to make?
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
Rishi Sunak (Conservative, Centre-right): Having spent weeks indulging themselves with political attacks on this Government’s efforts to protect jobs, Labour have now flipped and support a blunt national lockdown. They will not say how much damage that will do to jobs or livelihoods, they will not say how they plan to support businesses through it, and they do not seem to care about the long-term stability of the public finances. If they did—[Interruption.]
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Social Welfare
Rishi Sunak (Conservative, Centre-right): The most vulnerable have been at the forefront of our mind throughout this crisis, which is why it is clear from the distributional impact of our interventions, which was published over the summer, that they have benefited those on the lowest incomes the most. It is there in black and white: a Conservative Government making sure the most vulnerable are protected through this crisis Any responsible party of government would acknowledge the economic cost of a blunt national lockdown. The Labour party may say it has a plan, but be under no illusion: a plan blind to the hard choices we face—a plan blind to and detached from reality—is no plan at all.
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
Rishi Sunak (Conservative, Centre-right): I know what a difficult time this is for the hon. Lady and her constituents. With regard to underspends—I will come on to this later—I think it is wrong to think of them in that way. That was the Government giving an advance to local authorities to make payments to businesses. That was done on the basis that every local authority will have a wildly different degree of overspend or underspend, which we true up at the end of the process. We could equally have asked local authorities to make payments themselves and reimbursed them afterwards. There is significant financial support both for her local authority and the businesses in her area that have closed down. That was announced by the Prime Minister and I will come on to address that in detail later. It is right that that support is there Let me reiterate our plan. The House will be well aware of the gravity of our economic situation. The latest figures show that our economy grew by 6% in July and 2% in August, but it remains almost 10% smaller than it was before coronavirus hit. Business investment suffered a record fall in the second quarter of this year. Consumer sentiment remains well below its long-run average. Despite the significant support we have provided, the data is beginning to reveal the true extent of the damage that coronavirus has caused our labour market. The latest statistics published just yesterday show employment falling, unemployment rising and welfare claims rising. The revisions that the Office for National Statistics has made to its previous estimates show that unemployment was higher than it thought over the summer I have talked about facing up to the difficult truths clearly, and we are facing an economic emergency, but we are acting on a scale commensurate with this emergency as we address my single biggest priority: to protect people’s jobs and their livelihoods. We have put in place a comprehensive plan to protect, support and create jobs in every region and nation of the United Kingdom. Through more than £200 billion of support since March, we are: protecting more than 9.5 million jobs through the job retention schemes; strengthening our welfare safety net with an extra £9 billion for the lowest paid and most vulnerable; granting more than £13.5 billion to those who are self-employed, with further grants to come; and protecting over 1 million small and medium-sized businesses through £100 billion of tax cuts, tax deferrals, direct grants and Government-backed loans.
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kevin Paul Hollinrake (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my right hon. Friend agree that the best way to protect jobs is to keep the economy open wherever possible? Most other nations are using a local-restrictions approach to deal with this situation, including Germany, which is using lockdowns at a district level, not even at a state or county level. Does he agree that that is the best way forward?
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
Rishi Sunak (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The only sustainable way to protect jobs in the long run is to have an economy that is open and functioning. No amount of support can make up for that There are other things we have done: eased repayment terms on those loans through pay as you grow; delivered on our promise to give the NHS what it needs; backed hundreds of thousands of young people to find good jobs through the kickstart scheme and new investment in training and apprenticeships; created green jobs through the £2 billion green grant programme; showed that we are here for our cultural sector, with the cultural recovery fund and a further support package for charities; and invested hundreds of billions of pounds in the largest, most sustained programme of infrastructure investment the UK has seen in decades. That is comprehensive action to protect the jobs and livelihoods of the British people. It undermines the credibility of the Labour party that, in the face of all that support, it continues to pretend that insufficient action is being taken.
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
Rishi Sunak (Conservative, Centre-right): I will make some progress As the crisis evolves, our economic response will also evolve. What we will see over the winter is a complex picture of some businesses able to open safely and others being ordered to close to control the spread of the virus. Our winter economy plan provides a toolkit to protect jobs and businesses over the difficult weeks and months to come. The plan has three parts. First, the job support scheme will protect jobs in businesses that are open or closed. If businesses can open safely, but with reduced or uncertain demand, the Government will directly subsidise people’s wages over the winter, giving those employers the option to bring people back to work on shorter hours rather than making them redundant. We are expanding the job support scheme to give more support to businesses that are ordered to close. For people unable to work for one week or more, their employer will still be able to pay them two thirds of their normal salary and the UK Government will cover the cost. This national programme will benefit people the same wherever they live and whatever job they do.
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Labor
Rishi Sunak (Conservative, Centre-right): The job support scheme was widely welcomed not just by businesses groups such as the CBI and the Federation of Small Businesses but by the TUC, which I was happy to work closely with to design the scheme. However, she is right. That is not the only thing that we will do to support jobs, which is why we have put in place the £2 billion kickstart scheme to provide fully funded job placements for those young people most affected by this crisis and most at risk of unemployment. Thousands of those young kickstarters will be starting their new jobs this autumn.
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Labor
Miriam Joy Cates (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my right hon. Friend agree that, while we all want simple solutions to this crisis—whether that is the Opposition suggesting full lockdown or an unlimited extension to furlough—there are no simple solutions. This is a highly complex problem. Every intervention and every support scheme will be nuanced and will have to be regionally effective There are no simple solutions. We should not be looking for simple solutions; we should be looking for the right ones.
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
Rishi Sunak (Conservative, Centre-right): I have addressed this previously, in this place and others. There is absolutely no bar on the Scottish Government setting a Budget in advance of the UK Budget. The fiscal framework itself allows for that very possibility. That is exactly what happened at the start of this year, so there is simply no reason why that cannot happen. The OBR forecasts were provided as normal this autumn. Those forecasts are used by officials to make all the necessary calculations. It is simply wrong to suggest that the Scottish Government are unable to set a Budget until the UK Government have.
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kevin Paul Hollinrake (Conservative, Centre-right): I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am one of the 5.7 million business people in this country for whom this is not a theoretical concept but an existential crisis. I listened carefully to the shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), when she talked about business confidence. I agree with much of what she says, although probably not that much in this debate One thing that really damages business confidence is when you flip-flop. To say on Monday that you are willing to support a local lockdown strategy and then to say today that it has to be a national lockdown is totally wrong. That damages business confidence, and it damages consumer confidence. One thing that has bolstered business confidence has been the unprecedented levels of support we have seen from the Treasury and the Government. This is the third recession I have been through in our business, including in the years following 2008, and I have never seen support like this We need to be honest with people when we talk about a national lockdown and a circuit breaker. Are we talking about just one circuit breaker, one hit? The reality is that the SAGE advice says we might need multiple lockdowns, multiple circuit breakers, to keep the virus at low levels. Imagine the devastating impact on businesses and consumer confidence. The shadow Chancellor has to be honest with the business community. She needs to say that this might mean—[Interruption.] I did not hear it in her speech. She needs to say that this might mean multiple lockdowns, multiple hits and multiple costs to the taxpayer, and a devastating impact on businesses. A circuit breaker will buy 28 days. It will put us back in the same place in 28 days’ time—that is what it says. Please be honest with the people. What I would like to hear from the Opposition are some ideas on how we keep the economy open. I have not heard anything from them about how we tackle this public health crisis while keeping the economy open. I have not heard that If we cannot look to the Opposition, we should look to best practice internationally. There is no European country I am aware of that has gone back to a national lockdown. The leader in managing this crisis is Germany, which uses not just a local lockdown policy but a sub-local lockdown policy. It closed down Gütersloh and Warendorf, with 300,000 people per district. That is what we should look at. We should stop looking at wide regional lockdowns and look at sub-local lockdowns. The hon. Lady is looking at a national lockdown, which is the antithesis of what we are talking about.
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kevin Paul Hollinrake (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with that, but it is not either/or. Of course we need to improve test and trace, but that should not mean we have to lock down the entire economy. That is absolutely the wrong thing I have three solutions. The number one thing is that we look at this on a super-local basis. We know that the rate of infection in Liverpool is 670 per 100,000. It is 60 in parts of North Yorkshire, but it varies significantly across North Yorkshire. We need to look at a district-based approach that would increase the amount of ownership and responsibility local people have for managing the crisis through peer pressure and from understanding that their actions would be effective I fully support having different tiers. I supported them on Monday and I support them today. Having said that, the two higher tiers do lead to a difficult situation. Bars and restaurants in tier 2, and restaurants in tier 3, are not required to close. That means they cannot access furlough support. There are two things we could do: extend the furlough support, which is a hit on the taxpayer; or, instead of coming down from six households per table, as it was last week, to one household, we could go to two households. That concession would have a very important effect for lots of pubs and restaurants, which would then be viable The third solution is business support. We need a new iteration of the bounce back loan scheme and the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme, which has been so successful. As my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury knows, we also need to make non-bank lenders part of that new tranche of business support. We need forbearance for SMEs. We should phase support back in, so we move VAT from 5% to 10%, and not back to 20%. We should also phase back in business rates and perhaps stamp duty.
Covid-19 Economic Support Package — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Philip Glen (Conservative, Centre-right): I very much agree with my hon. Friend. That is something that the Chancellor and I are working on as a live issue, and we will report back to the House in due course The second element of the winter economy plan is cash grants. Businesses in England that are required to close for health reasons can now claim a grant of up to £3,000 depending on the value of their property. That is a cash grant, not a loan, that they will never need to pay back and they can use for any business cost. Should the devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales adopt a similar approach, we will make an additional £1.3 billion available to them to help—part of a £7.2 billion total package—further demonstrating the importance of the Union as we face these challenges together I turn to the third component: local authorities. I pay tribute to the efforts of local authority leaders and their officers throughout the crisis, and I pay particular tribute to my own in Wiltshire. Up to £465 million will be made available to those local authorities at high or very high alert to support public health and local economic initiatives. That is on top of the £1 billion to protect vital services, which itself is in addition to the £3.7 billion we have already provided since the spring Let me conclude by saying that, as we have throughout this crisis, we will continue to listen carefully to represent- ations of hon. and right hon. Members on behalf of their constituents, keep the whole of our support package under review and, where necessary, adapt and evolve our response. Members from across the House have made representations today, and the Government will reflect carefully on them I vividly recall coming to the House in March, 209 days ago, prior to the launch of the furlough scheme, to answer an urgent question on jobs. The House made its view plain on that occasion, as it has today. We were listening then, and we are listening now. We will do everything possible to carry this country through the crisis, in the knowledge that we can and we will succeed. We need what the Chancellor has called a consistent, co-operative and balanced approach. The Government will continue to strive for that crucial balance, protecting lives and livelihoods flexibly and sustainably for as long as it takes. That is why I urge the House to support the Government amendment Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
Local Contact Tracing — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Government Operations
Kieran John Mullan (Conservative, Centre-right): Well, it is Many of us in this place who have had dealings with local authorities—as well as lots of our constituents and probably millions of people across the country—would agree that getting everything done by the local authority is by no means a guarantee of success. Just this morning, in news that I am sure was greeted with groans in the Labour Whips Office, it was revealed that Birmingham City Council’s local programme dropped off 25 used swab kits to homes in Selly Oak. Does that mean that local authorities are incapable of delivering? No, of course not. We have problems in the private sector, and that should not bar them from involvement, and we have problems in the public sector too Local authority solutions are not a magic bullet. The quality of leadership, management and organisation varies enormously among local authorities. We all know this, and the Opposition know it. At the election, so many bricks in their red wall fell because residents were fed up not just with Labour at national level but with inept, Labour-led local authorities. After decades in power, they were taking people for granted, with leaders and councillors who were not even up to the job of taking away the bins on time, let alone organising a test and trace programme. The national programme inevitably has challenges, but do Labour Members really think that each and every one of the local authorities will deliver on this flawlessly Local leaders are political. Sadly, time and again we see Members on the Opposition Benches putting politics first. In the past 24 hours alone, they have said that they support local lockdowns but then did not vote for local lockdowns; that national lockdowns were a disaster, but now they want a national lockdown—and they cannot even make up their minds whether they want a two-week or a three-week lockdown. And they want the country to believe that if they had been in charge, all this would have been going smoothly. That is not accurate. When it came to getting children back to school, the national Labour party was kowtowing to national union leaders and doing what they said, and we all know that the local Labour parties are just as likely to be influenced by the unions. I absolutely recognise that there is work that needs to be done, but I am afraid the idea that if we just flick a switch and give it all to local authorities everything will be fine is complete and utter nonsense.
Electricity Generation: Local Suppliers — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Government Operations
Ben Everitt (Conservative, Centre-right): What are the hon. Gentleman’s thoughts on partnering with local authorities, at whatever tier? He mentions community projects at village level, but what about town councils? I am thinking specifically of Newport Pagnell Town Council, which is very keen to get involved in such initiatives.
Electricity Generation: Local Suppliers — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Energy
Scott Leslie Mann (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Cornwall has a vital role to play in battery storage technology, with our recent discovery of lithium in our Cornish tin mines? We will be able to use that Cornish lithium to build the battery technology that he describes.
Electricity Generation: Local Suppliers — House of Commons, 2020-10-14
Topic: Energy
Simon Robert Maurice Baynes (Conservative, Centre-right): On that particular point about additional value to local communities, in my constituency the Corwen hydroelectric project is part of a wider series of community efforts. The benefit of what the hon. Gentleman is proposing is that it would not only help the hydroelectric project, but would incentivise wider activities within the community as well.