argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Covid-19: Scottish Universities — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Education
Alister William Jack (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The Department for Education has been engaging closely with ministerial and official colleagues in Scotland to discuss a range of higher education areas that are affected by covid-19. I am also pleased to say that the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), is meeting Universities Scotland’s funding policy group later this week.
Covid-19: Scottish Universities — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Education
Alister William Jack (Conservative, Centre-right): Funnily enough, I have spoken to the Education Secretary on that very subject. The UK Government are providing considerable funds to support research by Scottish universities, as indeed they do for other universities in the UK. Regarding the shortfall for universities, which I believe has been highlighted, I am told that that is largely due to the policy of the Scottish Government over the past 10 years of giving free tuition to Scottish nationals and charging English students and overseas students more. I have to say that that element of the budget is, and always has been, devolved and it is absolutely the responsibility of the Scottish Government to rectify that problem.
Covid-19: UK-wide Response — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: International Affairs
Craig Whittaker (Conservative, Centre-right): As we know, different parts of the United Kingdom are experiencing this pandemic at different rates, so it is right to be flexible and to move at different speeds, as we have seen. But will my right hon. Friend confirm that he remains fully committed to working constructively with the Scottish Government, so that we can, as he says, get through this crisis together as one United Kingdom?
Rescheduling of COP26 — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: International Affairs
Douglas Gordon Ross (Conservative, Centre-right): Clearly, decisions will continue to be taken on COP26 when it is rescheduled. The point about the 30,000 delegates is important, because that will make COP26 in Glasgow—a UK-secured summit—the biggest-ever summit, delegate-wise, in the United Kingdom, and that is something we should celebrate. We will continue to work on the valuable point that the hon. Gentleman has made. Glasgow will be ready to host this outstanding international conference.
Growth Deals — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Andrew Griffith (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for his reply and for his Department’s excellent work in delivering these growth deals for Scotland. But does he agree that we now need a growth deal for the whole United Kingdom based on free enterprise, an export boost from new free trade deals, and locking in some of the productivity gains we have made during this crisis on a transition to a more digital and cashless economy?
Growth Deals — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Douglas Gordon Ross (Conservative, Centre-right): I do agree that as we come out of this pandemic we have to ensure that steps are taken to protect and restore people’s livelihoods, which are clearly at the forefront of everyone’s minds at the moment, because a strong economy is the best way to protect jobs and fund vital services that are required. I am certain that city and growth deals in Scotland and across the UK will play their part in helping to achieve this.
Oil and Gas Industry — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Energy
Douglas Gordon Ross (Conservative, Centre-right): In my role in the Scotland Office, along with the Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth, there is regular UK Government engagement with the Oil and Gas Authority and with the wider industry to discuss the significant levels of Government support available to it as part of our unprecedented package of support to business.
Oil and Gas Industry — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Energy
Jacob Young (Conservative, Centre-right): This is an extremely difficult and uncertain time for oil and gas companies in Scotland and across the UK. I am sure my hon. Friend shares my concern about the impact this uncertainty is having on thousands of people who work in the sector, so will he outline what support is available to British oil and gas workers, and will he work with the sector to prevent job losses during this pandemic?
Oil and Gas Industry — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Labor
Douglas Gordon Ross (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. This is an issue that has been raised in my own constituency. People in Moray travel around the world working in the oil industry. Clearly, the coronavirus job retention scheme is open to the oil and gas industry. Oil and Gas UK has reported that about 30% of respondents to its recent business survey said that they were successful in securing that funding. I would encourage others to look at that as an option to protect their workforce.
PPE Procurement — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: International Affairs
Douglas Gordon Ross (Conservative, Centre-right): The UK Government are working tirelessly to procure PPE both internationally and domestically for UK-wide distribution. This is in addition to the Scottish Government’s own procurement processes. We are working with the devolved Administrations to ensure that the different parts of the UK do not compete against one another in the international market, and that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office can make a single approach to foreign Governments.
PPE Procurement — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: International Affairs
Douglas Gordon Ross (Conservative, Centre-right): As I said in my opening remarks, the UK Government are committed to ensuring that we work as a United Kingdom, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has taken a lead on this issue to ensure that that can happen. I have had regular discussions with Donald Macaskill of Scottish Care about PPE, but also about the outstanding work that our care workers are doing in care homes and around the community across Scotland and the whole of the United Kingdom; they deserve our praise for what they are doing.
Engagements — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Transportation
Richard John Holden (Conservative, Centre-right): Today I submitted a formal expression of interest for a new rail line between Consett and the Metrocentre, connecting my constituency to the heart of the north-east in Newcastle. As part of the levelling-up agenda, may I ask the Prime Minister for his support for this scheme, as my constituents have supported him and me?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Transportation
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend on his imagination and his plan for a new railway. It is entirely in keeping with our infrastructure revolution, and I can assure him that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will be getting back to him. I note that Nexus has already identified several possible extensions of the Tyne and Wear Metro scheme, which may be of advantage to his constituents.
Engagements — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): I must respectfully disagree with the hon. Gentleman. We are working very closely not just with our colleagues in the Government in Northern Ireland but with our colleagues in Dublin. I had a very good conversation with Leo Varadkar the other day and we saw eye to eye on the way forward. There is a huge amount shared between the UK and Ireland, and it will continue to be so.
Engagements — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Labor
Christopher Lionel John Loder (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very grateful for my right hon. Friend’s hard work, and in particular, his commitment to doing whatever it takes to help people to make ends meet during this pandemic, but in West Dorset I have many constituents who were employed before 19 March who are not eligible to be furloughed under the job retention scheme—particularly those who have changed jobs. Will he look at this area again to see, please, what he can do to help those who have slipped through the net and those who have no financial support at this time?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Social Welfare
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes. We have pushed back the cut-off date in order to help people, but we are also looking to support people who are in difficulties with some temporary measures on welfare, as he knows—the significant £1,040 increase in universal credit standard allowance and the working tax credit basic element. If there are particularly hard cases, and there will be hard cases, I say what I have said before to the House: I am happy to take them up on my hon. Friend’s behalf.
Engagements — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Labor
Lucy Allan (Conservative, Centre-right): Unemployment in the under-24 age group has already doubled in Telford compared with this time last year, and it is clear that the aftermath of the pandemic will hit our young people hardest, with disruption to education and training, as well as job losses. I know that my right hon. Friend is passionate about opportunities for young people, particularly in areas such as Telford, which has suffered disproportionately in previous recessions. Will he ensure that the recovery strategy focuses on young people and equipping them with the skills they need to survive in a post-pandemic economy and, indeed, thrive in the longer term?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Education
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right to speak up for the young people of Telford and their immense potential, and that is why we will be supporting her and them with a new national skills fund worth £2.5 billion, so that young people can be at the very forefront of our effort to come out of this epidemic.
Conduct of Business After the Whitsun Recess — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Government Operations
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): Mr Speaker, may I first recognise your commitment to ensuring that the House operates as fully as it can while adhering to guidance from Public Health England? Your dedication and that of the House Clerks and digital team has been instrumental in establishing the hybrid proceedings that allowed us to return after Easter but as you have always agreed, the present arrangements were only ever envisaged as temporary, because they fundamentally restrict the House’s ability to perform its functions fully. Complaints about our debates becoming stilted, scripted affairs are one thing, but the impact on legislative scrutiny is another Under the hybrid proceedings, the time this House is able to spend debating legislation faces being cut by around two thirds. I am sure all Members will agree that each and every one of the 36 Bills put forward by the Government in the Queen’s Speech deserves the proper level of scrutiny. We have to recognise that if we persist with the present arrangements, it will become harder to make progress in a timely fashion. That is why, in line with Government advice for those who cannot do their jobs from home, I am asking Members to return to their place of work after Whitsun We will not be returning to the crowded, bustling Chamber of old. We will be observing social distancing. As a member of the House of Commons Commission, I was reassured yesterday by the progress being made in making the parliamentary estate a covid-19 secure workplace. That work has been expertly led by Marianne Cwynarski, the head of governance and central services, and I particularly commend her for her efforts in ensuring that staff already coming in to work in the Palace have the support they need Only yesterday, Mr Speaker, you organised the test of a new system for Divisions that will ensure Members can vote while remaining 6 feet apart. We will minimise the number of other passholders on the estate, strongly encouraging MPs’ staff and others to continue working from home. We will continue to work closely together in consultation with Members across the House, not least the Select Committee on Procedure, on the appropriate next steps We will need to understand from the House authorities where adaptations can be implemented, as the Procedure Committee itself acknowledges is key, without prejudice to the House’s ability to carry out its business effectively. At the same time, we will want to ensure that any steps taken are in line with the Government’s advice to the country at large I will consider the Procedure Committee’s views very carefully and keep these issues under review, but I would finally like to reassure those Members with underlying health conditions who have been told to shield or are receiving specific Government advice about their health that we are working with the House authorities to see how they can continue to contribute to proceedings within the House.
Conduct of Business After the Whitsun Recess — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Government Operations
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): The point made by the right hon. Gentleman about Prime Minister’s questions is fundamentally trivial and beneath him, and therefore I shall ignore it. I am very sorry that he does not think that proper scrutiny of the Government is an essential task in a democracy. I think that is an extraordinary position for a former member of a Government, and a leading figure in the Liberal party—if it has leading figures—to take. Democratic accountability is fundamental to how our system works The right hon. Gentleman, from his eyrie in the Shetland Islands, tells us that a remote system does not work well enough. He then says that we should none the less continue with it. As Members of Parliament, I think we have a duty to return to doing our work thoroughly, properly, and effectively, and that is what we will do, in line with Government advice and the five tests, and by ensuring a safe working environment. I reiterate my thanks to Marianne Cwynarski for what she has done. People working in the House, employees of the House, are able to work safely, and the numbers expected to come in are not thought likely to rise significantly when the House returns after Whitsun.
Conduct of Business After the Whitsun Recess — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Government Operations
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): The Government’s advice is clear: work from home if you can. But what I and many others have increasingly realised is that this House cannot work effectively without meeting physically. Take last week for example: no debates on secondary legislation; no Public Bill Committees; no Delegated Legislation Committees. Compare that to a fairly standard and not particularly busy physical sitting week, such as the week commencing 2 March. That week the Commons considered the stages of four Bills instead of one and nine statutory instruments instead of none. In addition to Chamber time, the House held seven Delegated Legislation Committees and four Public Bill Committee sittings. I therefore very much welcome my hon. Friend’s valuable point that MPs’ work is absolutely essential and that we cannot do it from home.
Conduct of Business After the Whitsun Recess — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Government Operations
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): I think the issue is that members of staff of MPs do not need to come in. They clearly can carry on working from home. There is no change there, and numbers coming on to the estate will be limited. What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that we are facing exactly the same issues as other workplaces where working from home is not good enough. These are not unique to us. We are in the same situation as the rest of the nation, and we should not think that Members of Parliament are some special priestly caste who must be treated differently. We should stand with our own constituents.
Conduct of Business After the Whitsun Recess — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher Stephen Grayling (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the comments of the Leader of the House. It is clear to me that although the House authorities have done a fantastic job in seeing us through the last few weeks, this is not a sustainable way to run Parliament in the future. May I seek my right hon. Friend’s reassurance that this model, which some people seem to think can be a model for the future, will not now be applied to projects such as restoration and renewal, which, in my view, would again create a situation in which Parliament simply could not function properly?
Conduct of Business After the Whitsun Recess — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Government Operations
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): We are listening to the representations that people are making about the difficulties that they face with regard to attending the House. The Procedure Committee has looked at a number of these issues and written to you, Mr Speaker, about the return to physical proceedings, and I have had representations from a number of Members The reality is that Parliament is most effective when it meets physically. The hybrid parliamentary proceedings have allowed only a small proportion of Parliament’s functionality to take place. As we have seen in this sitting, with Members being cut off, the hybrid proceedings have limited Members’ ability to represent their constituencies across the country. What we will do is to return physically in a way that is advised, and properly orchestrated and organised, in accordance with the recommendations from the Government and, indeed, from the House of Commons authorities.
Conduct of Business After the Whitsun Recess — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Government Operations
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my right hon. Friend for the invaluable work that she and her Committee have been doing, and for the suggestions that they have made about how we can make the hybrid work and how we can get back to a real Parliament. We see in her absence the difficulties with a hybrid Parliament. I am glad that the technology was able to reconnect her, in voice only, but being here in the flesh does have advantages The motion of the House stands, but to allow it to be effective it requires subsidiary motions that will lapse. Of course, the Government take motions of the House very seriously and wish to ensure that their details are reflected in the way the House operates, although sometimes these are matters more for Mr Speaker than for the Leader of the House.
Northern Ireland Protocol: UK Approach — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful for the welcome that the hon. Lady gives to the approach that we are taking, and grateful also for her commitment and her party’s commitment to supporting the implementation of the protocol in a way that safeguards the gains of the Good Friday agreement The hon. Lady says that as a result of the implementation of the protocol there will inevitably be checks on not just animals but agri-food products, but, as she is aware, those checks already exist for live animals. Checks are already carried out in the port of Larne and the port of Belfast. We will of course exercise any new checks on agri-food products in a proportionate way, but in doing so we imagine that the proportion of goods that will need to be checked will be very minimal. Of course, because of the very, very high standards that we will maintain in this country on SPS—sanitary and phytosanitary—matters, people can have absolute confidence that the quality of goods that are being placed on the Northern Ireland market is of the highest level. The hon. Lady asked about the cost of the checks. We will be working with HMRC in order to ensure that the checks are as light-touch as possible and integrated, for example, into the operation of VAT returns and other processes with which businesses are already familiar. We are confident that Northern Ireland’s businesses and HMRC can work collaboratively in the course of the remaining seven months before the transition period ends in order to have a system that is operational, light-touch, effective and unobtrusive The hon. Lady makes a point about tariffs. Of course, tariffs would apply only in the case of there being a zero-tariff, zero-quota free trade agreement with the European Union. The European Union is committed in the political declaration to securing such a zero-tariff, zero-quota arrangement, in which case the provisions in the protocol for the remittance of tariffs would not be required. I refer her to paragraph 27 of the Command Paper, which makes it clear that if it were the case that there were no agreement and that tariffs did have to be levied, the Government would "make full use of the provisions in the Protocol giving us the powers to waive and/or reimburse tariffs on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, even where they are classified as ‘at risk’ of entering the EU market." So there would be no additional costs for businesses The approach that we have taken, as the hon. Lady knows, is designed to ensure the maximum level of security for the businesses of Northern Ireland. If the protocol is implemented in line with our approach, that means that they will have unfettered access to the rest of the UK’s internal market and also free access to the EU’s single market. That is a great prize and one that I believe all businesses in Northern Ireland would want us to help them to grasp.
Northern Ireland Protocol: UK Approach — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: International Affairs
Theresa Mary May (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his statement. Will he confirm that, as from 1 January 2021, Northern Ireland —that is, a part of the United Kingdom—will be required to abide by EU regulations on certain goods until at least 2024 and potentially indefinitely?
Northern Ireland Protocol: UK Approach — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for her question. Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to her for her work during her time as Prime Minister to ensure that the position of Northern Ireland could be secured within the United Kingdom even as we left the European Union. It is the case that there will be EU regulations and aspects of the acquis that will apply in Northern Ireland until 2024, but of course she draws attention to a very important point. If the workings of the protocol are viewed by the people and parties of Northern Ireland as onerous, too much, intrusive and unacceptable, they have the opportunity to vote them down in 2024. That is why it is so important that we design an approach that can continue to command consent.
Northern Ireland Protocol: UK Approach — House of Commons, 2020-05-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): Skill, guile and dexterity are all virtues that we associate with the hon. Gentleman, so if he wants to join the Government negotiation team, he would be more than welcome on board. The point about customs infrastructure and customs checks is a misunderstanding on his part. We want to ensure, as he recognises in his question, that the people and businesses of Northern Ireland have the opportunity to benefit both from their secure position within the United Kingdom and access to the EU market. Northern Ireland’s history, its traditions and its geography put it in a unique position, but the proposal that we put forward today means that there is no need for new customs infrastructure and at the same time Northern Ireland stays within the customs territory of the United Kingdom. I know that the hon. Gentleman is an enthusiast for border posts and would want to have them not just at Belfast but at Berwick, but my own view is that our United Kingdom is better off without them.