argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2019-01-16
Topic: Education
Tracy Lynn Brabin (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman so much for giving way. I do appreciate it. I know that we are short of time. Does he agree that there are more children in good and outstanding schools because there are more children? Do his figures include the poorest children?
No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2019-01-16
Topic: International Affairs
Geraint Richard Davies (Labour, Centre-left): Margaret Thatcher famously quoted Attlee in saying that referendums were the instruments of "demagogues and dictators" because Hitler used them to adopt supreme power and, basically, invade other countries after rearming. My reason for having no confidence in the Prime Minister is not simply because she has doubled the debt and created poverty and social injustice, but because she thinks the advisory referendum is an unconditional mandate to Brexit at any cost, in any circumstances, without consulting the people on whether this represents their reasonable expectations The people were offered more money and more trade, and control over their laws and over migration, but in fact they have not got any of those things. We will have to pay £39 billion. There will be a squeezing of the economy, fewer jobs and less trade. We will not be with team EU when negotiating with big players such as China. Northern Ireland will be an open border for immigration via Dublin. We will not control our immigration, and if we did, we would in any case just switch from a cultural neighbour to more distant immigration There is no evidence that the people of Britain support the deal. It is a betrayal of conservatism because it moves us away from our most established market in the world and breaks up the Union. It is a betrayal of socialism because we will have a smaller cake to divide more equally. It is bad for our economy, our security, our environment and our common values It is my view that I have no confidence in the Prime Minister because she has no confidence in the people to make a judgment on the deal she has delivered. If they want it, let us go ahead. If we do not have that vote, we will just wait another two years in the transition period, when we could in fact have a vote on this, decide on reflection it is better for us all to remain and have two years sorting out this country, rather than having this situation where we just talk about Brexit and Britain is burning around us Yes, there will be some anger if we have a people’s vote, but I put it to the House that there will be absolute rage if we do not and Brexit goes forward. People voted to leave; they did not vote to leave their jobs. Brexit is now being seen warts and all, and we are also seeing that Europe is a much more virtuous place than before. It was a massive defeat last night. Yes, the Prime Minister needs to look cross-party at all the options. If we cannot agree any deal, let us put the deal we have to the people, and they can decide whether to continue In the meantime, I am calling for a general election, but if we do not get a general election, we should have a people’s vote. The Labour party should stand up for remain, and when we win that, there should be an election because we will have had a Government who were elected on a strong and stable Brexit but are weak and unstable. We will then deliver a Labour Government and a better Britain.
No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2019-01-16
Topic: Social Welfare
Naseem Akhtar Shah (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for tabling this motion of no confidence, which I will support in the Lobby this evening. I came into politics challenged with trying to make a difference to the lives of the ordinary people of Bradford West—trying to be part of a system that is about putting people first, not about people clinging to power and positions, with self-preservation at the heart of everything they do. I have lived experience of destitution and poverty. A generation later, constituents come to my surgery in sheer destitution, crying because they do not know how they are going to feed their children or meet their basic needs, and the reality of insecure jobs and in-work poverty leads people with dependants further into destitution. We must ask whether this Government are fit for purpose I have spent a short time in the House. Although the final nail in the coffin was yesterday’s catastrophic defeat—the largest defeat of any Government in the history of our democracy—the real tragedy for me and my constituents is that this Government have not been fit for purpose for a very long time. This Government were not fit for purpose when the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights described the level of child poverty in the UK as "not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster" in the fifth largest economy in the world. This Government were not fit for purpose when they pursued a policy of rolling out a hostile environment, which led to the tragedies of the Windrush scandal. This Government were not fit for purpose when they were found in contempt of Parliament This Government are not fit for purpose when they are repeatedly defeated in the courts by single parents and people with disabilities and forced to go back to the drawing board on their own policies. This Government were not fit for purpose when they failed again last year to stop the increase in homelessness on the streets of Britain, and even failed to save the life of the poor man who died outside the doors of Parliament just weeks ago. This Government were not fit for purpose when Conservative Members decided to use food banks for photo ops. This Government are not fit for purpose when films such as "I, Daniel Blake" are no longer a fiction but many people’s reality This Government have consistently acted in the interests of the few, not the many, offering tax giveaways to the rich while viciously cutting services for the most vulnerable in this country. The Government were not fit for purpose when the Prime Minister knew her deal was dead before the recess but chose to sabotage and hold Parliament hostage by delaying the vote. The list goes on. How can those 117 Conservative colleagues who voted that this Prime Minister was not fit to lead their party go back to the electorate and say that she is fit to lead the country?
No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2019-01-16
Topic: Social Welfare
Andrew Francis Slaughter (Labour, Centre-left): The provocation for this debate was the unprecedented defeat of the central plank of the Government’s policy, which should have led seamlessly to a general election. In the Brexit debate earlier this week, I spoke about the threat that Brexit posed to the prosperity, opportunities and security of my constituents and many of my businesses, but I also represent some of the poorest communities in the UK, and although I am proud of the work it does, I am not proud to have the busiest food bank in London Last week, I spent an afternoon at one of St Mungo’s homeless hostels in West Kensington talking to residents and staff. They told me that the annual street homelessness count, to be published on 31 January, would show it had doubled in the last year, and they gave me three reasons: universal credit, the increase in no recourse to public funds and tenancy takeover, which is where drug dealers seize the premises of vulnerable tenants. The war on the poor, the hostile environment and a descent into lawlessness are three of the worst consequences of austerity The cuts in police numbers, especially neighbourhood officer numbers, is putting whole communities at risk. I spent part of new year’s eve at a crime scene in Fulham. An attempted murder led to the arrest of 40 people and the recovery of a number of dangerous weapons. I estimate that half the people I now see in my surgery have problems that would have made them eligible for legal aid before the passage of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. Yesterday, my clinical commissioning group, looking to make £44 million of cuts to its budget, began consulting on reducing opening hours for urgent care centres and GPs. That is not just bad in itself but in direct contradiction to the NHS strategy that calls for an extension of those services to justify the closures of A&Es and emergency beds. For the first time in a generation, we are seeing year-on-year real-terms cuts to school budgets. Inner-city schools do not just educate but give emotional and practical support to families struggling with poverty and poor living standards Perhaps the Government’s worst betrayal is the 80% cut—100% under the former London Mayor—to funding for social housing when 800,000 people are on waiting lists. My local council and the Mayor of London are doing the best they can to alleviate the conditions I have described, but for real change we need a Labour Government. The Prime Minister’s legacy will be to have ruined this country in half the time it took the Thatcher and Major Governments. Enough is enough. We need a general election and a Labour Government.
No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2019-01-16
Topic: International Affairs
Stella Judith Creasy (Labour, Centre-left): The famous phrase is that a fish rots from the head down. It is a recognition that bad leadership infects all that it touches, and what greater example of that could there be than this present Government? The rot is not confined to Downing Street; it is infecting the whole country. Not strong and stable, but stubborn and self-obsessed. Brexit is by far the clearest, but by no means the only, example. The Prime Minister has turned Brexit into a bizarre modern-day Schleswig-Holstein question. Palmerston claimed that question to be so complicated that only three people understood it: one was dead; one had been driven mad by it; and one had forgotten it altogether. The truth is, however, that this is not a complicated situation. It is the Prime Minister’s red lines that have killed her deal; it is her red lines that have driven this Parliament mad; and it is her red lines that are now best forgotten This infectious failure has covered all the bases. This is a Government who cannot organise a tailback on the M20. They are presiding over a shortage of nurses, while stockpiling fridges. They are alienating our EU citizen neighbours, while deporting our Windrush families. They are a Government obsessed with what stickers are on the Speaker’s wife’s car, while ignoring pleas for help with issues such as knife crime. The roll call goes on and on. Universal credit, homelessness, the cost of living, the refugees crying out for sanctuary, the human rights of the women of Northern Ireland—at every turn, this Government cannot get a grip, and those burning injustices burn harder as a result This country is divided, and this Parliament is divided. The deadlock is deepening, not dissolving, and the Prime Minister cannot even be bothered to pick up the phone. No party can continue to prevaricate while the far right grows stronger. That will not stop with Brexit, and Brexit does not deal with the crisis of confidence in our politics that we all now face. We are not the only country facing difficult choices or challenges, but we are the only country that thinks that, because we are the mother of all democracies, there is nothing wrong with how we approach things. Change has to come, for all our sakes, but for that to happen, it has to start at the top and we have to stop the rot.
No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2019-01-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Clive Anthony Lewis (Labour, Centre-left): Some Conservative Members have been calling into question the motivations of the Opposition in calling this no-confidence vote. Let us be clear that yesterday’s vote was not just a defeat but a complete and utter rout. Some Members have talked about historical parallels, but if yesterday’s vote had been a battle, it would compare with the battle of Cannae, in which Hannibal annihilated the Roman army. It was a textbook defeat, just like last night was a textbook example of arrogance and hubris in government Last night’s vote aside, let me run through the myriad reasons why the Opposition and I have no confidence in the Government. In-work poverty is at 4 million people, and homelessness is soaring. Yesterday, we learned in Norwich and Norfolk that 38 of our 53 children’s centres are being closed. Why? Because Norfolk County Council says that the Government’s cuts are forcing that to happen. It was a day of complete shame in my city. Without a hint of irony, the Government, while closing down our children’s centres, have declared Norwich an opportunity area as they attempt to improve failing social mobility. It is a policy akin to attempting to fill up a bath with no plug In education, schools face real-terms funding cuts. In The Guardian today Norfolk County Council, in the media again, is under fire from the local government ombudsman for failing to address concerns and look after children with special educational needs On mental health, after the Prime Minister personally promised to improve that Cinderella service, Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust has been put into special measures again—that makes three times in four years, which is a first for any trust in the country. In this day and age, real-terms funding is down by 13% but demand is up by 50% Let me deal with an issue that the House and, in particular, the Government have failed to adequately address: the impending climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss. Above all else, given the timescales we are talking about, this is a calamity waiting to happen, but the Government are comprehensively failing on it. Time after time, we hear the greenwash from Conservative Members that they will do what it takes on the environment. They slashed solar subsidies, with 9,000 job losses; and fracking has been announced, put forward and is now actually happening, and not just in this country—they are also doing it in China, with taxpayers’ money. The climate science tells us that we need to leave that gas in the ground—80% of it—and that this cannot happen. In the words of that legend of Norwich, Delia Smith, I say to those on the Government Benches, "Let’s be ’avin’ you." Let us have that general election. Let us have that vote. Support this motion."
No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2019-01-16
Topic: International Affairs
Thelma Doris Walker (Labour, Centre-left): I rise in support of the Leader of the Opposition’s motion. As a teacher and headteacher throughout my career, trust has always been important to me: the trust children had in me as their teacher, and the trust that teachers had in me as their headteacher, to understand their needs and make the right decisions on their behalf. Trust in relationships and in the workplace is crucial. Today’s debate is not about whether the Prime Minister has the ability to make decisions on our behalf; it is about whether we trust her to understand the mood of the country, the zeitgeist, and the needs of every region and demographic, and make the right decisions. The Government have suffered the biggest parliamentary defeat in history, been found in contempt of Parliament, overseen the steepest rise in poverty and averaged a resignation per month I trust the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Front-Bench team as people who understand the struggles that many in our country are facing. I trust them to have the compassion and intellect to understand and empathise with the people of this country, and to be able to make the decisions that will improve all our lives Is the Prime Minister a good public servant? Yes. Does she work hard? Yes. Do I respect her? Yes—I respect anyone who devotes their life to public service. But is the Prime Minister a diplomat? Does she show warmth and empathy? Is she able to negotiate with the other 27 countries in the EU, in our interests? Clearly not. I do not trust our Prime Minister to represent our country and negotiate a deal that is in the best interests of the people of Colne Valley—my constituents—or our country For me, this is not just about whether we are in the EU or not; it is about the kind of society that I want my granddaughter to live in. Just before Christmas, my five-year-old granddaughter came into Parliament for the first time, and she loved it. Fast forward 30 years to when she is a grown woman—do I want her to inherit the world determined by this Government? No, I do not. I wonder how she will judge the Government’s handling of Brexit when she is a grown woman. I see it as a full-blown display of incompetence, focused purely on party interests, and as a failure to take strong action to protect jobs and the economy, workers’ rights, environmental protections and national security I do not trust the Government with my constituents’ future, my granddaughter’s future or our country’s future. I have, therefore, no confidence in the Government. I do trust a person like the Leader of the Opposition to understand diplomacy.
No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2019-01-16
Topic: International Affairs
Paul John Sweeney (Labour, Centre-left): When I think of the confidence that I have in this Government, I think about how they have treated the most vulnerable people in our country. When I think of my constituents, I think of a 10-year-old boy who was orphaned when his mother died. Instead of nurturing him, trying to care for him and providing him with security, this Government threatened to deport him. That was a most shameful act and a disgrace, and it is typical of this Government’s hostile environment policy. For that and many other reasons, I have no confidence in this Government. It is about how they have treated my constituents and many vulnerable people across this country. It is also about how they have handled this negotiation in such a feckless and dysfunctional manner. They could not agree ahead of time what their negotiating objectives were. There was no spirit of collaboration, even after the Prime Minister lost her majority in this place. There was no attempt on a collegial basis to agree negotiating objectives for this country and to deliver in the national interest of this country. That was not achieved. Indeed, this Government have subverted democracy at every turn when it suited their interests, even though they do not command a majority of the popular consent of the people, or even a majority in this House of Commons Even though this is a hung Parliament, the Government have packed their Select Committees with Tory majorities by procedural sleight of hand. They repeatedly seek to circumvent or abuse the Sewel convention in their dealings with the devolved Administrations. Indeed, this Government became the first Administration in parliamentary history to be held in contempt of Parliament.
No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2019-01-16
Topic: Government Operations
Danielle Rowley (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that, in Scotland, people will be watching this thinking it is an absolute shambles? The Government rode roughshod over us and we have no trust, no faith at all, in this Government. We need a general election now.
No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2019-01-16
Topic: Government Operations
Paul John Sweeney (Labour, Centre-left): Absolutely. We need a general election because there is no way to clear this impasse. There is a clear lack of faith in the Government and a clear lack of will from the Government to engage productively to reach out to build a national consensus to achieve the way forward. It is now the job of Parliament to take control. The only way to do that is to reset the clock, have a general election and allow a new mandate to be formed in the interests of delivering for the people of this country. That is the only way to do it. That is why I will be supporting the motion of the Leader of the Opposition tonight to bring down this failing Government and to deliver a mandate that will act in the national interest of this country.
No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2019-01-16
Topic: International Affairs
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Mr Speaker Last night, the House rejected the Government’s deal emphatically. A week ago, the House voted to condemn the idea of a no-deal Brexit. Before there can be any positive discussions about the way forward, the Government must remove, clearly and once and for all, the prospect of the catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit from the EU, and all the chaos that would come as a result of that. I invite the Prime Minister to confirm now that the Government will not countenance a no-deal Brexit from the European Union.
Car Production: Solihull — House of Commons, 2019-01-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for being so generous with his time. Let me return to this important point. He is speaking about shouting from the rooftops. Perhaps the most critical point to shout about is taxation. I appreciate the points that have just been made by the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight). There is a global issue, as we have seen in north America and across Europe, on diesel, but it is in the Government’s gift to change taxation and not to penalise. The maximum vehicle excise duty addition that was put in was £560 on a vehicle.
Toxic Air and Children’s Health — House of Commons, 2019-02-19
Topic: Environment
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister is very good at warm words. Why does she not talk to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, because his Department’s plan is to tackle the poisonous air that our children and pregnant women are breathing by 2040? The fact is that children are being poisoned now. Get on and do something about it.
Children’s Hospices — House of Commons, 2019-02-19
Topic: Social Welfare
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): But the fact is that, even with those significant investments, most children’s hospices will still be reliant almost exclusively on fundraising and philanthropic donations. Does the Minister agree that, for there to be a proper footing for children’s hospices, there needs to be a much quicker move towards significant support from the state for these important facilities?
Dementia Care — House of Commons, 2019-02-19
Topic: Social Welfare
Marie Elizabeth Rimmer (Labour, Centre-left): Sadly, there are an estimated 3,000 people over 65 living with dementia in my constituency. It is clear that the social care crisis is a dementia crisis. Alzheimer’s Society research shows that dementia care providers often charge a premium rate of over 40% more than the standard rate. Will the Minister consider introducing a new dementia fund, as part of the Green Paper process, to end the unfairness facing dementia patients and their families?