argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Harassment in Public Life — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Civil Rights
Stephen John Doughty (Labour, Centre-left): I am sorry to say that I, too, have received threats. A fake bomb was sent to my office. I have experienced homophobia. I have had threats of hanging, and I received a threat this week from someone who said that all traitors should be shot We have to accept that there is a plague on all our houses when it comes to the operation of some parts of the fringes of our political parties. I am sick and tired of the abuse that individuals receive in my own party. A party member told me that hanging was too good for me. I am sick and tired of abuse such as I received during the Scottish referendum, when I was told that I was a dirty traitor to the Celts. When we see the sort of abuse that Conservative Members have received from certain newspapers and elements in their own party, we simply have to stand up and say, "This is not acceptable." Social media has a massive part in this. The Home Secretary has referred to the action that Twitter has taken today—I welcome that action—by banning Britain First and the two individuals who created the tweets that the President of the United States retweeted. Will she speak to social media organisations and tell them that they need to get their house in order? They have had three weeks to take action, and they did not do so until today. They need to sort themselves out.
Harassment in Public Life — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Civil Rights
Catherine Elizabeth West (Labour, Centre-left): Will the Home Secretary join me in condemning the behaviour in my constituency this weekend of an individual attending the William Hill darts championship who got dressed up as the shadow Home Secretary, put that on Twitter, and began making insults and using racist and demeaning language? Is the Home Secretary pleased, as I am, that the venue in my constituency was able to eject the individual and that we have robust approaches to dealing with this? Will she condemn it, and will she perhaps look again at whether we can do anything more in relation to licensing to ensure that, at sporting events and in entertainment venues, we are doing all we can to clamp down on racism or disgusting and demeaning behaviour to those in public life?
Harassment in Public Life — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Civil Rights
Angela Christine Smith (Labour, Centre-left): It appeared during those terrible days following the murder of Jo Cox—16 June 2016—that the politics of hope and unity would triumph over the politics of division and hatred, but, sadly, we were wrong and we are now in a much worse place than we were at that moment. The intimidation is not just from anonymous people on Twitter, but even between colleagues attacking each other in this place—my heart goes out to those who were attacked last week—and division between those on Government and Opposition Benches, although I consider friendship to be above politics, as well as from our councillors and some of our party members. Will the Home Secretary ensure that any action taken includes consideration of the need for our political parties to understand that intimidation and abuse from Members is as bad as intimidation and abuse from anywhere else?
Harassment in Public Life — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Civil Rights
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): Mr Speaker, the first thing you did as Speaker, as is required, was to go to the House of Lords and demand the traditional privileges of this House. At the top of that list is freedom of speech. We should be able to speak our mind without fear or favour and, for that matter, to vote without fear or favour. What we have seen over the past week is a deliberate attempt to humiliate, to bully, to intimidate and to prevent people from doing what is their democratic right. We will not be a Parliament—we will not be a free Parliament—if we continue to allow that to go on The worst of it is that there is a concatenation here. Yes, the newspapers, with the authority they have, are putting horrible stories on their front pages and effectively lining people up as if they should be politically shot. An amplification then goes on through social media. But there are also international actors involved in this. There are Russian bots deliberately seeking to intimidate Members of this Parliament I do not believe for a single instant that the Government are taking this seriously enough. At the beginning of my time in Parliament, I might have got one death threat a year; it is now one death threat a week and several a month. Until we see real action—until I know that a police officer will one day ring me back and say, "We have done something about it. That person is going to prison,"—I honestly will not believe that the Government really know what is going on out there.
Harassment in Public Life — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Mixed Topics
Elizabeth Anne McInnes (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Home Secretary agree that it is high time we brought back respect in public life? This is not just about MPs, but about the people who provide our public services. When I was told by a constituent during the last election that it was part of my job to take abuse, I spoke to a local police officer about it and he said, "Welcome to my world." Does she agree that we must lead by example on these Benches?
Harassment in Public Life — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Civil Rights
Christopher Philip James Elmore (Labour, Centre-left): Mr Speaker, you will be aware that I joined this House in May 2016 after a by-election. Before that election, newspaper articles claimed that I did not live at the address I did live at. Despite the Labour party offering proof, without doubt, that I lived at my home address, articles were run saying I did not live there. After my election, I received countless numbers of tweets from people saying they were looking through my lounge windows to see how my furniture was laid out. I lied to my partner—she now knows this—when I referred that to the police, because I was terrified she would want to move out of our home I was a councillor for 10 years and I had to move because my address was public when I sought election. I have asked the Home Secretary whether she could change it so that councillors receive the same protection as MPs. I had to move because constituents put dog excrement through my door. This behaviour is not just linked to MPs, but to councillors too. May I also ask that by-election candidates, with all the scrutiny they receive from the written and social media, are given support, particularly if they are then elected to this House and have never experienced that type of abuse before?
Harassment in Public Life — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Civil Rights
Peter John Kyle (Labour, Centre-left): The most common question I get asked by young people these days is, "How do you put up with all the abuse?" I know the Home Secretary will find that as heartbreaking as I do. Young people know that a corruption has entered our politics, whereby people now believe that if somebody honestly disagrees with them they are unprincipled. As soon as we accept the principle that somebody is unprincipled simply for disagreeing, that opens the door to all sorts of really bad behaviour. This cannot be tackled purely with legislation. What can we do to drive this notion out of our body politic?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Daniel Joseph Carden (Labour, Centre-left): Did the big banks not lobby for this change, and are they not likely to benefit from the surcharge that has replaced the levy? Did not bigger, riskier banks pay more than other banks in the system?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Daniel Joseph Carden (Labour, Centre-left): A branch of Barclays bank in County Road in my constituency has closed, and I know that many other Members will have fought to keep local bank branches open. Are the Government willing to take any action—at least in the case of RBS, which we partly own—to ensure that high-street banking is still available to the most vulnerable and elderly constituents whom we all represent?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): Will the Minister look into a situation that a number of us have had letters about? In the case of certain banks, including HSBC, where a person who is on a bank’s pension retires, that retirement pension is deducted because of their old-age pension. I do not expect an answer right away, but will the Minister look into that?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Daniel Joseph Carden (Labour, Centre-left): Is it not right that these banks, some of which were bailed out by, and may well look in the future for bail-outs from, the public, are treated slightly differently from other companies across the UK economy, and that we should have a public register for that reason?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Peter Christopher Dowd (Labour, Centre-left): I rise to speak to the amendment and new clauses in the name of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and others. Banks have a crucial role to play in the proper and smooth functioning of our nation’s economic wellbeing. In addition, it is important to ensure that the banks are not all lumped together with a one-size-fits-all approach for the purpose of a bank-bashing session, as was suggested by Conservative Members. Further, it is neither reasonable, fair nor sensible to homogenise the people who work in the banking sector as either saints or demons. Neither beatification nor demonisation of the banks is appropriate; it does no credit to the complexity of the landscape facing us. It is important when dealing with fiscal issues relating to banks that we keep a sense of proportion during the process. That is why it is important to ensure that, in an objective sense, we examine the context in which the Government have decided to cut the take from the bank levy. So, what is that context?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Peter Christopher Dowd (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is nothing if not persistent in asking that question. We are dealing with the bank levy, not the political opinions of the shadow Chancellor. I will be happy in due course to pitch our policies against those of the Conservatives.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Other
Peter Christopher Dowd (Labour, Centre-left): I know that the hon. Gentleman was disappointed when he was unable to ask that question last week because the Whips wound up his ability to do so. The reality is that that is of absolutely no relevance to the matter in hand. It does not matter; it is a complete irrelevance. We are in danger of getting swamped by red herrings.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Daniel Joseph Carden (Labour, Centre-left): On the topic of the shadow Chancellor, it was he who called for an independent assessment of the bank levy, the balance between fairness and competitiveness, and how the Government’s calculation was arrived at. Does my hon. Friend support the shadow Chancellor in that call?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Other
Peter Christopher Dowd (Labour, Centre-left): Of course I am more than happy to support the shadow Chancellor, because that is the very point that we are trying to make—[Interruption.] I referred to red herrings a moment ago, and I hear Conservative Members mentioning Marxist herrings. That is very witty; it is nice to hear a witty comment from the Conservative side on occasions.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): It is probably right to look at the history, rather than listening to the made-up stuff coming from Conservative Members. Let us be clear that the financial crisis started with Lehman Brothers in America. We recapitalised the banks, and we kept our triple A rating so that we could borrow to bail out the banks in the first place. The Government are trying to take the credit for something that they did not do.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Peter Christopher Dowd (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is right. Conservatives always try to take the credit. They take responsibility for the good things and no responsibility for the bad things—it is the way they are made The banking levy was not designed to ensure that the banks received enormous and unprecedented bail-outs from the taxpayer, such as the £76 billion of shares the Government purchased in RBS and Lloyds. It was designed to make them pay their fair share. In fact, the very concept of a levy was developed at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh in 2009. It was championed by the previous Labour Government, who subsequently introduced the bankers’ bonus tax. In the coalition’s 2011 austerity Budget, the Government decided to dump the bankers’ bonus tax and adopted the bank levy. At the time, Labour made it clear that the levy threshold was far too low in comparison with the money that would be raised if the Government stuck with Labour’s bonus tax. Instead, Ministers wilted under pressure from the banks and set the levy at a puny £2.6 billion.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Peter Christopher Dowd (Labour, Centre-left): Yes, because the sector returned to profitability after a Labour Government supported it throughout. That is why the sector has returned to profitability. Ultimately, if a Labour Government had not gone in and supported the sector, there would have been no banks, no profits and no tax whatsoever. I remind the hon. Gentleman of that one.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Peter Christopher Dowd (Labour, Centre-left): First, we did not regulate the banks in the United States, where it all started. I ask the hon. Gentleman—I have said this a number of times—to go and look at "Freeing Britain to Compete," the document produced by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) for the shadow Cabinet in, surprisingly, August 2007.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Peter Christopher Dowd (Labour, Centre-left): "They were not the Government" is shouted across the Dispatch Box, but that brings me to the point I am making. The bottom line is that chapter 6 of "Freeing Britain to Compete" called for significantly less regulation of the banks. As I have said before, the right hon. Member for Wokingham effectively said in that document that the Labour Government at the time believed that, if we did not regulate the banks, they would steal all our money. Many people out there believe that that is, in effect, what happened. The taxpayer had to bail out the banks. Why did the taxpayer have to bail them out? Because of the lack of regulation. The shadow Cabinet at the time ratified a policy of less regulation. If we had followed the right hon. Gentleman’s exhortations, as ratified by the shadow Cabinet, we would be in an even worse state. I ask the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) to go and have a look at that one.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Other
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): Now that the hon. Gentleman has demonstrated that his memory is fully functioning, will he answer the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas)? Does he recall the comments made by the former Chancellor, who was shadow Chancellor at the time? It appears that the views of shadow Chancellors are quite important to Conservative Members.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Ian Colin Lucas (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful argument about local banking. Does he therefore support the Labour party proposals for the introduction of regional banks? A nation such as Scotland could have its own banking system to serve local communities, rather than the incredibly centralised system we have now.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): Given that the Government are the major shareholder in one of the banks to which the hon. Gentleman referred that has closed and left his community devoid of proper facilities, does he not agree that it is time for the Government to step in and use their shareholder clout to ensure that bank branches stay open?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Alexander Gordon Martin (Labour, Centre-left): In 2009-10, the banks were recovering from the worst position they had been in since the 1930s. In many cases, they went under and needed Government support to get out. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that it would therefore have been extraordinary if the banks were not making more profit in 2016-17 than they were in 2009-10, that that is the reason why there is more take from the bank levy than there was in 2009-10, and that it is not simply because the Conservatives have reduced the amount of it?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): I am very interested to hear the hon. Gentleman give us his rhetoric about history. What, at the time, were the suggestions from the Conservative party in terms of dealing with the impending crash? Anecdotally, I know that chief execs of banks were talking about money running out at cashpoints. What would the Conservative party have done differently in 2008 from what happened under the Labour Government?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): If we are going to trade quotes across the Chamber, the then Member for Witney, who was the leader of the Conservative party at the time, said: "I want to give you…less regulation." If we are talking about regulation and the state of the banks at the time, the Conservative party is as culpable as anybody else.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Jonathan Neil Reynolds (Labour, Centre-left): Will the hon. Gentleman be reasonable or fair enough to acknowledge that while it is entirely possible to say that the system of regulation on the eve of the financial crisis was not adequate— no one is making the case that it was—surely it is illogical and ridiculous to suggest that the Conservatives would have been doing anything different. After all, the banks themselves were not aware of the level of risk they had undertaken, so it was no surprise that the regulator did not appreciate it. One cannot claim that the Conservatives advocated anything different from the overarching framework of regulation that existed at the time.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is setting out in her excellent speech exactly the same point as that made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth): reducing the bank levy will have a direct impact on community services. Could the services she has mentioned be saved if the Government were to drop their plans to cut the bank levy?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Housing
John Francis Spellar (Labour, Centre-left): Can the Minister give us any indication of his Department’s estimate of the cost of this measure and of the incidence—how it falls— in different regions of the country? In other words, how much is it going to cost globally and what other housing could the Government have built with that money? Equally importantly, how much of this will be in the south-east and how much in other regions?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Housing
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for taking a second intervention from me. To my earlier point, though, there are fewer than 15 properties currently on the market in Stoke-on-Trent between the value of £250,000 and £300,000. I say again: the average wage in Stoke-on-Trent is £100 a week less than the national average. How will young people in Stoke-on-Trent benefit, when the housing supply does not exist and the wage level will simply not allow them to purchase a property of that value?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Housing
Alison McGovern (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for giving way, but he simply did not answer the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar), who quite legitimately asked him where the money from this cut is going. The Minister talked about the average gain that will be made. Will he tell us the average benefit to a first-time buyer in the west midlands?
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Housing
Jonathan Neil Reynolds (Labour, Centre-left): This country is in the grip of a severe housing crisis that the Conservatives have allowed to spiral out of control over the past seven years. Making sure that people have a roof over their heads and can raise their families somewhere safe, decent and affordable is more than just a matter of sound public policy—it is surely a yardstick of a decent society. At the moment, we are falling short of this yardstick to a degree that is shameful for one of the world’s most affluent nations Now, after seven years of Tory government, the Government say that they have noticed the problem, yet it is on the brink not of being resolved but rather exacerbated. The Chancellor’s autumn Budget, from which the measures in the Bill are drawn, falls woefully short in addressing the scale of what is needed. Since 2010, house building has fallen to its lowest level since the 1920s, rough sleeping has risen year on year, rents have risen faster than incomes and there are almost 200,000 fewer homeowners in the UK.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Housing
Jonathan Neil Reynolds (Labour, Centre-left): Labour’s record in office is 2 million more homes, 1 million more homeowners, and—something that is particularly important to me as a Labour councillor during some of that time—an incredible investment in social housing. In local government, we used to ask whether we could ever fulfil the backlog in repairs that the Thatcher and Major Governments had created, but we did, and it made a tremendous difference to people’s lives. The one headline-grabbing move that the Chancellor made in the autumn Budget was the abolition of stamp duty land tax for first-time buyers up to the value of £300,000. I acknowledge that this was a Labour policy included in our manifesto for the June 2017 general election, but we were very clear in that manifesto that the measure should be proposed only if there were accompanying measures to increase supply. Without these, stamp duty land tax cuts risk further inflating a housing bubble that is snatching the idea of home ownership out of reach for the younger generation.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Housing
Jonathan Neil Reynolds (Labour, Centre-left): Members have become accustomed to the fact that the number of homes that the Government claim to build is not always the actual number that are built. I will get to some of that record of failure later in my speech.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-18
Topic: Housing
John Francis Spellar (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is talking about land banking by the big house builders. Is not the evidence of that the utterly obscene bonus being paid to the chief executive of Persimmon, which is so outrageous that the chairman of the company has seen fit to resign in disgust?