argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Northern Ireland Assembly Members (Pay) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-21
Topic: Government Operations
Sylvia Eileen Hermon (Independent, Unknown): When the Secretary of State last made a statement to the House covering this particular issue, she made it clear that she wanted the Northern Ireland parties to make "full and final representations" to her on it, but she did not clarify when the closure date was for full and final representations. Will she confirm today that that date is before the end of this month and that she will therefore be free to cut MLAs’ salaries before the end of March?
Northern Ireland Assembly Members (Pay) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-21
Topic: Government Operations
Sylvia Eileen Hermon (Independent, Unknown): I thank the Secretary of State for being so generous in taking a second intervention so quickly. Will she also confirm in the House, for the record, that all representations made from Northern Ireland political parties will be published, so that the public can see that the general consensus across the political parties is that they want to see MLAs’ salaries cut?
Northern Ireland Assembly Members (Pay) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-21
Topic: Government Operations
Sylvia Eileen Hermon (Independent, Unknown): I have great sympathy with what the Secretary of State has said about not cutting allowances for staff. They should not be punished because the MLAs are not sitting and have not sat for 14 months. However, the Secretary of State said that she was "minded" to follow Trevor Reaney’s recommendation, delivered on 20 December 2017. Does that translate into cutting MLAs’ salaries when she is given the power to do so today? That is what the people of Northern Ireland want to know.
Northern Ireland Assembly Members (Pay) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-21
Topic: Government Operations
Sylvia Eileen Hermon (Independent, Unknown): It is a delight to follow the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson). I put on the record that I am absolutely delighted that, at long last, the Secretary of State has taken legal powers to herself, through this Bill this afternoon, to cut MLAs’ salaries. She has made it quite clear that she is not going to cut the staff allowances, with which I agree, but she must be decisive. She has been given the powers in this legislation, which will go through all its stages by the fast-track procedure, and she should not shy away from taking decisive decisions about cutting MLAs’ salaries. The fact that she has made it quite clear today that the £500 pay increase that was due to MLAs on 1 April will not go ahead is absolutely brilliant news. People in Northern Ireland will be thrilled and delighted by that, but she needs to go further The Secretary of State referred to the fact that there was "clear public concern"—it was such a nice phrase—about MLAs being paid their full salary since the Assembly and the Executive collapsed 14 months ago. "Clear public concern" is a very pleasant way of describing what has been mentioned to me in the clearest terms of fury by my constituents and people beyond North Down. They have expressed their rage, disgust, anger and fury about MLAs receiving their full salary. Therefore, beyond announcing today that the £500 increase will not go ahead on 1 April, the Secretary of State must not dither any longer about using the powers that she will be given and entrusted with today to cut MLAs’ salaries Reference has been made time and again to "hard-working MLAs." I do not detract from that—we do have hard-working MLAs—but let us just look at that title. MLAs are Members of a legislative Assembly. They are supposed to be legislating and taking Executive decisions. They have not been doing that for 14 months The Assembly collapsed in January 2017. It was exceedingly good of Trevor Rainey, a very distinguished civil servant, to come out of retirement to do his independent report on salaries and allowances, reflecting the disrepute into which this issue has brought the Northern Ireland Assembly. Many people have expressed to me their view that, if this issue were not dealt with firmly, why on earth would we have a Northern Ireland Assembly? So the issue of MLAs’ salaries is corroding public confidence and public respect in the Assembly and I do not want to see that. I want to see the Assembly and the Executive restored for the betterment of all of our people in Northern Ireland. Although I do not wish to detract from those who have been described as hard-working MLAs, they are not doing the full range of functions for which they are receiving their full salary. If they are not legislating and not taking Executive decisions, they absolutely do not deserve to receive their full salaries.
Northern Ireland Assembly Members (Pay) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-21
Topic: Government Operations
Sylvia Eileen Hermon (Independent, Unknown): In the meantime, the Secretary of State has been bold today. I encourage her to continue in that vein and to be very bold in terms of following the excellent recommendations of Trevor Rainey, bearing in mind the disrepute into which the Assembly brings itself if MLAs continue to receive their full salary. That is not doing MLAs any good at all, despite their hard work.
House of Lords Reform — House of Commons, 2018-05-16
Topic: Government Operations
Questions: What assessment he has made of the potential merits of the recommendations of the report of the Lord Speaker’s Committee on the size of the House of Lords.
Brett Charles Anthony Elphicke (Independent, Unknown): Does the Minister agree that the size of the House of Lords now makes it ungainly, that it is politically unbalanced and that it has become democratically very detached? Is not it time that we looked in more general terms at the future of the House of Lords?
East Coast Main Line — House of Commons, 2018-05-16
Topic: Transportation
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Independent, Unknown): May I remind the Secretary of State of a previous experience with public-private partnership on the railways—namely that in the London underground? It was forced on the Mayor of London and Transport for London, who resisted it very strongly. The scheme collapsed in disorder, very expensively. Tube Lines and Metronet—the two private companies involved—stuffed their pockets with money before it collapsed back into the public sector. Is that not going to happen again with this scheme?
Leaving the EU: Customs — House of Commons, 2018-05-16
Topic: International Affairs
Brett Charles Anthony Elphicke (Independent, Unknown): My right hon. Friend is making a powerful argument, but beyond the doctrine of collective responsibility and making sure that one can have conversations in government, in what world does it make sense that we should disclose our own Government papers—our own Government secrets—to the other side in a negotiation?
Leaving the EU: Customs — House of Commons, 2018-05-16
Topic: Law and Crime
Sylvia Eileen Hermon (Independent, Unknown): I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman had the opportunity last night to hear the interview on "Newsnight" with the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who talked about the New IRA dissidents—a chilling title—who are willing to exploit Brexit. Will he and his colleagues call on the Government to put redacted copies, so that no confidential names are mentioned, of the Chief Constable’s security briefings to Ministers in the House of Commons Library?
Leaving the EU: Customs — House of Commons, 2018-05-16
Topic: Law and Crime
Sylvia Eileen Hermon (Independent, Unknown): The Minister and the House will be well aware of the comments that were made public last night by the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland about the threat from the new IRA dissidents who will exploit Brexit. That is in the public domain, so will the Minister give a commitment that redacted copies of those security briefings will be made available in the Library, or, if not in the Library, to the Brexit Committee and its Chairman? That is already in the public domain through the words of the Chief Constable.
Government’s EU Exit Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-31
Topic: Macroeconomics
Sylvia Eileen Hermon (Independent, Unknown): Since the Conservative party governs with the support of the 10 Democratic Unionist party Members—of whom I am not one—I am very curious to know whether any Member of the DUP will have advance notice of this economic analysis ahead of the Select Committee or, indeed, in addition to the Select Committee.
Government’s EU Exit Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-31
Topic: Macroeconomics
Brett Charles Anthony Elphicke (Independent, Unknown): Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I also welcome you back to your place? You are much loved in this Chamber, and you have been deeply missed The best thing to do with these forecasts is not to hand them to the Brexit Committee but to put them in the nearest waste bin. I will explain why. I backed remain in the referendum, partly on account of the Treasury’s forecasts in April 2016 setting out what it thought would happen in the case of a vote to leave the European Union. It provided two scenarios: "shock" and "severe shock". There were no categories entitled "success" or "continued economic brilliance for our country". The "shock" scenario predicted recession and a sharp rise in unemployment. It also predicted that GDP would be 3.6% lower and that unemployment would be 500,000 higher, with 74,000 jobs being lost in the south-east alone. It wanted to ensure that everyone understood how badly every single region of the country would fare.
Government’s EU Exit Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-31
Topic: Macroeconomics
Brett Charles Anthony Elphicke (Independent, Unknown): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am looking at the forecast of 500,000 more unemployed, and it relates to the beginning of 2018. The Treasury produced a little chart showing just how bad it would be, how joblessness would rise and how if people did not vote the right way they would lose their jobs and be visited by recession Under the second category—"severe shock"—it was forecast that GDP would be 6% lower and that unemployment would increase by 800,000. Those forecasts made me think that there was a big risk involved, and that we ought to back remain. I advised my constituents to back remain, but they advised me that they did not agree and that they wanted to leave, by a margin of about two thirds. So I thought, "Well, we will make do, and try to secure the economy as best we can, because things are obviously going to be really dreadful and I am really worried about the employment situation." But what has actually happened? I have not seen a recession. In fact, growth has continued in this country. There are 32.2 million people in employment, and 1.4 million unemployed. That is an unemployment rate of 4.3%, and unemployment is at a 42-year low. Rather than going up by 500,000 or 800,000, it has in fact fallen by 250,000 We do not hear about that from Opposition Members, do we? We do not hear them saying, "Well, wasn’t that Treasury forecast completely and utterly wrong?" All we hear them saying is, "Don’t be mean to civil servants who come up with forecasts that are hopelessly wrong." We do not hear them asking why those forecasts were wrong. There has been no recession, and GDP and employment have continued to grow. It is hard to think of any part of that dossier that was correct. Indeed, it is now notorious as the "Project Fear" dossier I have asked questions about this in the Treasury Committee, of which I am a member, and every time I ask a Bank of England official or a Treasury official about it, they shuffle nervously and sometimes give a little cough. Sometimes they say, "The reason we did not have a massive rise in unemployment and a recession was that the Bank of England cut interest rates by 0.25%." Interest rate cuts can be assimilative, but I am not sure that a 0.25% cut really made that much difference to 500,000 jobs. I think that the Treasury’s predictions in April 2016 were wrong, and if they were wrong before, the chances are that they could well be wrong again.
Government’s EU Exit Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Brett Charles Anthony Elphicke (Independent, Unknown): Again, my hon. Friend makes a forceful point, and these people are not just in the Treasury The shadow Secretary of State—a knight of the realm, I should add—was kind enough to come down from St Pancras to see us in Dover recently. Grandly, he came down to tell the people of Dover that we ought to retain the benefits of the single market and the customs union. Everyone understood what he meant. He meant that we should stay in the single market and the customs union, that we should continue to have a trade policy made in Brussels rather than in Britain, and that we should continue to have uncontrolled EU immigration into this country with completely open borders. My constituents are very clear on one thing: they do not want uncontrolled immigration into this country. It has not helped them or their families, and they do not feel that it is helped their prosperity. They do not want trade policy to be made in Brussels. They want it to be made in Britain. That is why this Government are right to be leaving the single market and the customs union This is not a question of forecasting; it is a question of a mandate. That mandate was handed to us by our electors when they voted to leave the European Union. I understand that there are those on the other side who wanted to remain and who still want that. I respect that. I do not really respect their constantly re-fighting the referendum, but I respect the fact that they feel passionately that we should be back in Europe. However, that is not my mandate from my constituents, and it is not the mandate given to a lot of Opposition Members who represent constituencies in Wales and in the north of this country, who ought to spend a bit more time talking to their electors on the doorstep and a bit less time at grand dinner parties enjoying elite establishment-type conversation about how terrible it is all going to be Let me move on from Hampstead to the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean). She was absolutely right that we cannot predict the future, so why is it that the EU-funded CBI so passionately wants Britain to stay within the single market and within the customs union and says that businesses do, too? The answer is that it loves the regulation produced by Brussels, which helps to keep things in their place, but we need to become more competitive as a country. If we become more competitive, we will grow more quickly.
Government’s EU Exit Analysis — House of Commons, 2018-01-31
Topic: Macroeconomics
Brett Charles Anthony Elphicke (Independent, Unknown): I will not give way as I have given way twice already The Treasury analysis was wrong in the first place. The Treasury did not predict containerisation or innovations such as the internet. We are about to have an automation revolution, with cars driving themselves, and a revolution in solar power, which will reduce our unit energy bills, and this country is well placed to become much more competitive than any Treasury forecast would predict, but we can all see that that kind of future is coming down the road. To make sure that we embrace that future, this country needs maximum freedom, maximum discretion and the maximum ability to diverge from the policies and laws of the European Union and to embrace the wider world In the future, 90% of global economic growth will not come from the European Union, but from the world outside the EU. Over the past 40 years, it is an historical fact that the EU’s share of global GDP has fallen from 30% to just 15%. That is relative decline. We do not need to see relative decline. The future for this nation is global.
Department for Transport — House of Commons, 2018-02-27
Topic: Transportation
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Independent, Unknown): The Government said recently that they wanted to see the elimination of diesel traction on our railways in a few years. How can they achieve that if they are going to cancel all the electrification schemes?
Department for Transport — House of Commons, 2018-02-27
Topic: Transportation
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Independent, Unknown): I rise to speak about railway costs, the way they have exploded in the past 25 years and what I think now needs to be done. I will speak, by way of example, about the incredible increase in the costs of rail electrification The Minister and his departmental officials may have seen the illuminating recent article in the Rail Professional journal by Don Heath, a brilliant railway engineer who led and masterminded the electrification from Hitchin to Edinburgh in the late 1980s and early ’90s. In his article, he describes how that was done and achieved so efficiently. It is a fascinating read. He concludes by contrasting the costs of that earlier electrification with present-day electrification costs. It is almost beyond belief that, stripping out inflation, costs are now seven times greater than when the east coast main line was electrified. They have multiplied by seven times in real terms. I urge the Minister and his officials to read Don Heath’s piece. The modern, bloated costs of electrification have led directly to the abandonment of the Great Western scheme to south Wales, Bristol and Oxford, the Kettering to Sheffield electrification, as well as electrification from Manchester to Leeds The ballooning cost of railway track work in general is not new. It happened very soon after privatisation and has continued. In my early days in the House, I raised these costs several times with Transport Ministers. I had been informed by sources inside the industry that track maintenance costs had risen fourfold and track renewals fivefold since privatisation. At no time did Ministers say that my figures were wrong, and the Secretary of State once said that costs should be reduced by 80%. It was astonishing. A little later, however, Network Rail agreed that track maintenance should be brought in-house. Sadly, the inefficiencies that had developed in the private contracting sector were brought in-house, too, the same methods having been brought in-house together with the same people to manage them. I also pointed out to the then chair of Network Rail that the thick end of track maintenance and thin end of track renewals overlapped and that leaving track renewals outsourced while insourcing track maintenance was illogical. He grimaced but did not challenge my view There is now a dwindling resource of expertise in the industry, with a handful of older British Rail-trained engineers often trying to pick up the pieces of mistaken work on the tracks. The loss of skills is a major problem that can be addressed only by rebuilding a dedicated, comprehensive, in-house, permanently employed cadre of skilled railway engineers and operatives. British Rail had that, and it worked. British Rail has been wrongly maligned, when it actually worked "miracles on a pittance"—not my words but those of the rail regulator some 15 years ago. It had the lowest railway costs in Europe, except for Sweden; now our railways are the most expensive in Europe. The answer to the problem is obvious, and I urge Ministers to think on it.
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: Border Arrangements — House of Commons, 2018-02-28
Topic: International Affairs
Sylvia Eileen Hermon (Independent, Unknown): What a task—I will keep to it. Will the Minister take a few moments just to confirm to the House that the Irish Government have accepted that there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland and, just as importantly, that they have accepted that there will no border down the Irish sea?
Northern Ireland Finances — House of Commons, 2018-03-12
Topic: Government Operations
Sylvia Eileen Hermon (Independent, Unknown): I listened carefully to the Secretary of State’s statement and noted that she was decisive in announcing an increase in rates in Northern Ireland. I was extremely disappointed, to put it mildly, that she continues to dither about cutting the salaries of MLAs. Does she not recognise and accept that it is morally indefensible that MLAs should continue to receive their full salary in the absence of a functioning Assembly for 14 months?
United States Tariffs: Steel and Aluminium — House of Commons, 2018-03-12
Topic: Foreign Trade
Sylvia Eileen Hermon (Independent, Unknown): May I commend to the Secretary of State the experience of Bombardier? In recent months, it risked losing thousands of jobs because of unfairly imposed US tariffs of 300%. The winning formula for defeating that proposal—and having it unanimously thrown out in the US—involved a combination of trade unions, management, local MPs and Ministers right across the Government, along with the personal intervention of the Prime Minister when she spoke to President Trump at the Davos economic summit. That strategy worked for Bombardier, so may I commend it to the Secretary of State and suggest that it is repeated in order to protect the steel industry in the United Kingdom?
Devolved Government — House of Commons, 2018-02-07
Topic: International Affairs
Sylvia Eileen Hermon (Independent, Unknown): I would like the Secretary of State just to take a few moments to explain to the House and the people in Northern Ireland the level of engagement with the smaller parties in Northern Ireland—the Alliance party, the Social Democratic and Labour party, and the Ulster Unionist party—in the recently resumed talks. I have had it reported to me that they had a cup of tea and a bit of a chat, and said, "Thank you and goodbye, see you on Thursday." I cannot believe that that was the level of engagement, so would the Secretary of State give some reassurance about the level of engagement with smaller parties, please?
Police Grant Report — House of Commons, 2018-02-07
Topic: Law and Crime
Brett Charles Anthony Elphicke (Independent, Unknown): I am listening carefully to my right hon. Friend. I agree completely that he was right to reject the representations from the Opposition that proposed cutting police funding by 10%. Will he tell the House something about the reserves held by forces, because a number of them seem quite substantial?
Police Grant Report — House of Commons, 2018-02-07
Topic: Law and Crime
Brett Charles Anthony Elphicke (Independent, Unknown): My right hon. Friend says that the right level for reserves is about 5% of revenue, but Gwent police’s figure is 42% and that for North Wales police is about 24%. Does he know any reason why the reserves of those police forces are quite so high?
Police Grant Report — House of Commons, 2018-02-07
Topic: Law and Crime
Brett Charles Anthony Elphicke (Independent, Unknown): I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I gently point out to him that the average reserve level is 15% overall, so Kent is well below the average. The PCC is saying that he can continue to manage as things are for the next year, but that in due course this opportunity is going to be exhausted and there will need to be greater scope—and of course there will. That is important, but it is also important that we do not just bury our talents in the soil but use them effectively, wisely, and well The Minister and the Government were right to reject representations from Labour Members at various points that the police budget should be cut by 10%, and right to reject unfunded spending commitments. We hear about how 10,000 police people can just be magicked out of the ground with no basis on which to fund that spending. There are two important elements. First, we must have a sense of reality. Secondly, we must make sure that we support the police in what they do: give them adequate resources; do not just have reserves mouldering away in the bank; and concentrate resources on the frontline, with more officers on the beat in Dover, Deal, across Kent, and across the nation.