argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Law and Crime
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): Yesterday, 444 people made the dangerous crossing in small boats, which suggests that the deterrent effect of this policy is not getting through. That is the highest number in two months, since 681 crossed the day after the Home Secretary announced this policy. Does that not suggest that this is not the time for her to be cutting the National Crime Agency? Do we not need a bit of joined-up thinking on dealing with this situation and the illegal traffickers?
Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Law and Crime
Andrew Francis Slaughter (Labour, Centre-left): As Home Secretary, the right hon. Lady has a responsibility to uphold the rule of law. She cannot only approve of courts when they make decisions in her favour. Will she take this opportunity to affirm her support for the whole of the justice system, including the European Court of Human Rights and our membership of the European convention? All we have heard from her today are smears and mudslinging directed at lawyers, courts and judges.
Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Law and Crime
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): Can the Home Secretary confirm that the Home Office itself withdrew people from the flight on Friday and yesterday because it accepted that they were victims of torture or trafficking? She has already been asked that question; she did not answer.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Transportation
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State rightly says that billions were pumped into the railways during the covid pandemic. That money kept the system going, and a lot of people worked very hard to keep it going. The train operating companies were preserved and supported, and they did very well during that period, as did many others in the private sector. Why is he now punishing the people who kept the railway system working, and who do all the difficult jobs on the railways, with job losses, inadequate pay and a loss of morale? Should he not talk to their representative unions about the real situation on the railways and work with them to ensure we have an effective, efficient and secure rail system for the future?
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
Lilian Rachel Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): Precisely because of the potential disruption, and instead of calling today’s debate, should the Secretary of State not be taking action to try to resolve these disputes? When did he last meet industry leaders and trade unions to try to get that resolution? Has he had a discussion about bringing in ACAS to resolve this dispute? If he has not, will he commit to doing so now?
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Transportation
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): The question was raised as to whether the Secretary of State or the Government had met the RMT, and he basically said, "Let the negotiations go". I cannot recall the exact phrase he used. Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the RMT, has written to him today, "I am writing to seek an urgent meeting with the Government, without any preconditions, to discuss the national rail disputes prior to the planned strike action next week, and I would be grateful if this could be arranged without delay." Will he respond—[Interruption.] We are trying to resolve this matter. Will he respond immediately to Mick Lynch, positively, that he will meet the union now?
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Transportation
Marsha Chantol De Cordova (Labour, Centre-left): I have been trying persistently to get the Secretary of State’s attention so that he would give way, but he wants to play politics throughout. He talks about wanting to protect hard-working people like those in London, so why will he not commit to meeting the Mayor of London to get a proper sustainable funding plan for Transport for London so that people can use the transport network and get to work?
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Government Operations
Rachael Helen Maskell (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. It is unfortunate that he has misjudged the tone of this dispute. We are talking about—[Interruption.] Shh. We are talking about the livelihoods of public servants and about their job security. If he was serious about resolving this dispute, not only would he insist on coming to the table; he would be open to listening to what the unions have to say. Why won’t he?
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Transportation
Louise Margaret Haigh (Labour, Centre-left): I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I am afraid that it is pathetic that the Government have chosen to petition the Official Opposition when in fact the Transport Secretary has not held a single meeting with either the unions or the industry for over two months to prevent this action from going ahead.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
Louise Margaret Haigh (Labour, Centre-left): What difference does the hon. Gentleman think it would make if I condemned the strike? The only person who has it within their power to resolve this dispute is sitting opposite me now. The clue is in the name. My title—
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Transportation
Louise Margaret Haigh (Labour, Centre-left): My title, Madam Deputy Speaker, is the shadow Transport Secretary. If the Transport Secretary would like to put his hands up, admit failure and step aside, I would be happy to take control. The fact is that the train operating companies have not been given their negotiating mandate by their Department for Transport, so they cannot even negotiate directly with the trade unions now. The Secretary of State has responsibility and he is completely failing to show it.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Transportation
Louise Margaret Haigh (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is right. Where we have leaders in charge who are showing responsibility and stepping in and negotiating with the unions and employers, we have resolved disputes. This Transport Secretary has no time to resolve the biggest dispute in modern history. What has he found time to do instead? Looking back at his Tik Tok over the past couple of months, I can see that he had plenty of time for videos, for sit-on lawnmowers, for Spaghetti Junction, and for impersonating Jeremy Clarkson. He spent a collective total of three-and-a-half hours on the media covering the back of his weakened, discredited, law-breaking Prime Minister. He has also found time to grandstand over this pathetic motion in front of the House today, but he has spent not one single second in talks to resolve these disputes. Frankly, it is unbelievable But whether it is the chaos at the airports, with security queues snaking out the door, and thousands of families missing out on their hard-earned holidays, or the looming rail strike, set to be the biggest since 1989—when, coincidentally, the Tories were also in Government—the response from the Transport Secretary is the same: to cast around for someone else, anyone else, to blame. It is nothing short of a dereliction of duty and an insults to the hundreds of thousands of passengers who depend on this being resolved The truth may actually be even worse than our usual missing-in-action Transport Secretary. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that Ministers would prefer to provoke this dispute and play political games rather than resolve it.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
Michael Lee Amesbury (Labour, Centre-left): It seems that we have a Tory Secretary of State for strikes—a Secretary of State giving the green light to strikes. There is an offer on the table from the General Secretary of the RMT. The shadow Secretary of State has clearly referred to ACAS. Does she agree that this is about talk, talk and about negotiation? This is about all those parties—the employers and the trade unions—meeting together. Should the Secretary of State not be taking up that offer from the RMT Union?
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
Louise Margaret Haigh (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Secretary of State could call in ACAS this afternoon in order to take this dispute forward, but, instead, despite repeated promises made to the public, this Government have slashed 19,000 rail services, hiked up rail fares, and presided over near-record delays. The insane system that they have created means that private operators, handed millions of pounds for failing services, will be protected throughout the strike. Those operators have no incentive to settle this dispute. They will carry on collecting their fee and the taxpayer will foot the bill. That is the reality of the Conservative mismanagement of our railways Finally, let me say this loud and clear: the tens of thousands of workers who keep our railways running are not the enemy. In 2020, the Secretary of State called them "true heroes". They kept our country served and stocked during the pandemic. They are cleaners, technicians and apprentices—the very same people to whom the Prime Minister promised a "high-wage economy" before presiding over the biggest fall in wages in a decade. Just six weeks ago, the Transport Secretary and his colleagues confected outrage about the illegal decision to replace 800 P&O workers with agency staff. He even called on the public to boycott P&O, but in reality he is acting directly from P&O’s playbook. The only difference is that he wants to make it legal. Today, the Government have shown their true colours: they want to gut the rights of British workers. How do they think scandals such as P&O can be avoided or even properly punished if they are going to take the axe to the limited protections that workers currently enjoy? Labour will always fight for fair pay and a decent wage for working people. However, rather than do their job, desperate Tory Ministers are spoiling for a fight to distract from their chaotic, discredited and aimless Government.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
Louise Margaret Haigh (Labour, Centre-left): The public will not forgive the Government next week, when children are missing their school exams, patients are missing their health appointments in the face of the biggest backlog in NHS history and low-paid workers cannot get to work, if the Government have not lifted a finger to resolve any of it. What the public need right now is a firefighter; instead they have a bunch of arsonists. If the Secretary of State is remotely interested in doing his job, he will accept our amendment, drop the toxic political point-scoring, and get round the table to prevent these strikes.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
Stephanie Louise Peacock (Labour, Centre-left): The Chair of the Select Committee has talked about engaging with the trade unions, which I know he has done positively. Does he agree that his Government should get around the table, facilitate those negotiations and talks and take some responsibility?
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Transportation
Tahir Ali (Labour, Centre-left): I come from a maintenance background and I know how maintenance works. When you get rid of engineers, you cannot replace them. You cannot decide one day that you have got rid of 500 too many maintenance staff or engineers; they are specialist workers who need training over the years. Once they have gone, so has the knowledge Drones and technology can replace people to some extent, but not to the extent being proposed. How do you suggest that the jobs that will be affected will not put at risk the safety of the people using the trains and lead to future crashes that would cost the lives of transport people?
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Transportation
Lilian Rachel Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman knows that I have a great deal of respect for the work that he does, but what conclusion does he draw from the fact that there are no rail strikes going ahead next week in Wales, where there has been an active, responsible Government seeking to bring people together and resolve issues? Is it not precisely the point that active government can get the two sides together and attempt to resolve the issues?
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Government Operations
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): Let me clarify one point if I may. There has been reference to RMT donations to individual Members and the declaration of interests. I thought the declaration of interests was annual, but I make it absolutely clear that the RMT contributed to my constituency party during the general election, which I declared properly and of which I am proud. RMT members were the first to move at the TUC that the Labour party should be established; that union is part of our movement. I am proud to be supported by it and I am proud to be part of the RMT parliamentary group. That gives me a relationship with workers in the railway estate in my constituency, which enables me to speak with some authority—I try, anyway—on rail matters. Let me put that to rest: I am proud of the support that it gives to my constituency party.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): If it is on that, no, because there are more important points to be honest We need to return the debate to what the dispute is about. I refer to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). The union has three demands in the negotiations so I will make three points. The first demand is for no compulsory redundancies—compulsory is the key word. There has never been a time when the RMT has not negotiated job losses, but there has always been a principle that they should not be compulsory. I remember that Bob Crow never lost a dispute, and neither has Mick Lynch, because they are sensible about the nature of the disputes that they get into.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): Let me press on The union’s second demand is to get some form of inflation proofing of members’ incomes, and who can blame it when inflation is rising by anything between 7% and 11%? That is what ordinary working people want.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): Let me press on Let us also be clear about wages in the industry, which are linked. The median wage is £31,000. Drivers are largely represented by ASLEF, so the vast bulk of people who we are talking about are station staff, cleaners and others whose wages range between £20,000 and £30,000. We are not talking about people on very high wages, so inflation proofing is important to them at the moment The third demand is where we have some problems—I understand that. It is that when there are changes in jobs and conditions of work, they should be subject to negotiation and—this is the difficult bit—agreement. We know that this dispute will be settled at some stage, so the issue is how bloody it will get. What we all have to do, as I say on the RMT parliamentary group as well, is to facilitate an exchange that enables a resolution That is why today’s letter is important. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle is right to say, "Well, it was unconditional", but it is unconditional from the Government as well. At the moment, it is important to just get everyone through the door. The Government have not put conditions on and neither has the union. The union has not asked for conditions from the Government, and nor should the Government ask for conditions from it. Often, in organising a ballot about industrial action, time limits are in place. At this time, when we are faced with the disruption that is there, an act of good faith such as sitting in the same room is important—it might not work.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman knows what these negotiations are like. My background is the National Union of Mineworkers, then the TUC and so on—I have been a trade unionist for the last 50 years—and in every sort of negotiation, the key issue is just getting through that door. Once we get through that door and are face to face starting those negotiations off, anything can happen. We have all been there, and we can have a bloody great row, but at least we are talking. That is all the RMT is asking for Let me just say that Members need to know the atmosphere at the moment. I have been talking at various union conferences—I was at Unison yesterday and all the rest—and there is a concern that we are going back to the 1980s, and I saw what happened in the 1980s. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), who is here, was an active miner at the time, and I was a member of the NUM head office. What happened then was that there was a Government will to somehow take on the trade union movement, and we got described as the "enemy within" If anyone thinks it is to their advantage politically to start taking the RMT on as the enemy within in this situation, they are sorely mistaken, because it is not just about the RMT. At every union conference I have been to, there is a real anxiety. There is an anxiety about protection of their members against this cost of living crisis, and I have to say that there is an anxiety about protecting themselves against some of the threats that have come from the Government—minimal services, bans on overtime and all the rest—which is inflammatory when we are trying to get a negotiated settlement.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): Perhaps I pointed in the wrong direction, but I meant no disrespect to the hon. Member I have talked at several trade union conferences and I have been consulting trade unions in my own constituency, and the big fear at the moment is that their members are facing a potential avalanche of costs coming at them, and they have had their wages largely frozen for 12 years, with some having in effect had a wage cut. They do not see any light at the end of the tunnel, and they see a Government now threatening intimidatory legislation to undermine trade union rights further, so then we ask the question: what do they do? All they can do—this is all that is left to them—is to withdraw their labour, and that is what we are seeing This is not just in the RMT. Unite has 100 disputes taking place at the moment. The general secretary of Unison has for the first time—I have never heard this before—said to Unison members, "Go back to your branches and prepare for action." The PCS is in dispute as well. If we look at what is happening, it is because we have working-class people frightened for their futures and deeply insecure about their futures. They are faced with a Government who, to be frank, on this particular issue will not even open the door for a meeting. That is why the atmosphere has been so fouled at the moment. I just think that Conservative Members should know that this is not the time for braying speeches; it is a time for consideration and an element of responsibility to be introduced into this debate.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Lyn Carol Brown (Labour, Centre-left): I know, and I am very fond of the right hon. Gentleman. His constituency is not completely dissimilar to mine. We both know that we have additional people using food banks, and that those people are in work. There is a huge amount of fear—reasonable fear—within our communities about people not being able to afford to put food on the table and pay their rent. Does he agree that the Government have a responsibility to get round the table, protect livelihoods, and show some respect and concern for those who are suffering from the cost of living crisis?
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
Ian Robert Byrne (Labour, Centre-left): As a proud trade unionist, I start by paying tribute to all rail staff in Liverpool, West Derby and across the country. I stand in absolute solidarity with them and am fully behind their demands for improved conditions, terms and pay and to safeguard the safety of the public. To be absolutely clear, the industrial action that will take place next week is the result of the political choices made by this Government, who are calling the shots. They are a Government who have shown every day they have been in power, throughout the pandemic and in this cost of living crisis, their complete disdain for rail workers and their disregard for their pay and conditions, job security, safety and welfare. It is shameful We can see where this Government’s loyalties lie from the way that they were so quick to bail out the private operators who continue to make vast profits while on the other hand bringing this despicable motion to Parliament to attack key workers who are demanding fair pay and conditions. The strikes are absolutely a last resort and the RMT has been talking to employers and Ministers for almost two years to find a resolution. A key part of the dispute is that employers will not withdraw the threat of thousands of compulsory redundancies pushing many rail workers into poverty in the middle of the worst cost of living crisis in living memory. For passengers, that will also mean increased risks to safety and critical infrastructure with fewer staff on the trains, including the removal of guards and catering staff, cuts to cleaning and the closure of all ticket offices. That is not modernisation; it is a managed decline of our railways. The public should also be aware of the consequences of the proposed cuts that are being fought by the RMT: that our railways would be less safe. How can that be acceptable in the world’s fifth richest country It would be interesting to know how many Members across the Benches have been on strike to ensure their families’ wellbeing and future. How many realise what it entails to go out on strike as an absolute last resort? I was on strike for six months, locked out of my factory, to save jobs in the printing industry. It is a time of stress and worry about the future and what it may hold for your family. The absolute hypocrisy of a Prime Minister and Government who trumpet soundbites about an economy built on highly paid and highly skilled jobs while bringing motions to this place that go against protecting the jobs he desires.
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
Tahir Ali (Labour, Centre-left): Members vote to go on strike as an absolute last resort. It happens when everything else has failed. In the strike action planned for Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, I will show my solidarity by joining trade union members wholeheartedly. Would Government Members do the same and show solidarity with the working class?
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
Ian Robert Byrne (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with my hon. Friend. Why did we not see the same urgency in calling out British Gas for using fire and rehire? Where was the anger and the motion calling out P&O for its disgraceful sacking of its entire loyal workforce by Zoom? There has been a total absence of leadership, a total absence of standing up to those rogue companies and a complete absence of any legislation in the Queen’s Speech to protect workers Trade unions are a force for good, unlike the Conservative party, which is responsible for the worst living standards in living memory and continues to let millions of people shiver and starve in their own homes because of the political choices it makes.