argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill — House of Commons, 2016-11-29
Topic: International Affairs
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge). The hon. Gentleman was very robust in saying that the CDC is a gift that keeps on giving, as the aid keeps getting recirculated, but I would gently suggest that if it was as simple as that we would not need international aid at all, because we could just have that gift keeping on giving. It is quite clear that we still need international aid and we need to protect international aid budgets It is clear that there is consensus across the House that the principle of the CDC is a good one; a not-for-profit private sector company that encourages growth and additional investment in developing countries is very welcome. We have heard that it has stimulated growth and investment with varying degrees of success over a long period of time. We have also heard that it is not infallible; it has had issues and is starting to address them in a welcome way. Yesterday’s National Audit Office report shows that there are still further issues to address, so I agree we need a robust debate in Committee to try to pick up on them We have heard about salaries, and excessive salaries have clearly hit the news in the past. Yesterday’s report welcomes progress on reducing average annual salary costs from a high of £154,000 in 2009 to £90,000 in 2015. That is still quite a decent average salary; I think most people could live off that. The report acknowledges that the CDC has expressed concern about staff attrition and difficulties in recruitment as a consequence of lower salaries, but the report also notes that the staff attrition rate has plateaued at about half of its peak in 2012. I also note that salaries have increased again year on year from 2013. That suggests that a balance has been reached between staff attrition and salaries, but we need to watch that salary levels do not keep on increasing year on year. As we have heard elsewhere, £300,000 for a chief executive is a good salary. It is higher than that of the Prime Minister or of the Secretary of State for International Development. That chief executive’s salary has exceeded £300,000 for two years running now.
Leaving the EU — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: What recent discussions he has had with his Cabinet colleagues on the potential effect on the Welsh economy of the UK leaving the EU.
Margaret Ferrier (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Wealth inequality in the British state hits Wales hard, with Welsh gross value added just scraping 71.4% of the UK average. EU structural funds have been key to combating this home-grown unfairness. Will the Minister guarantee today continued future UK funding to replace in full the lost EU regional money?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: I welcome last week’s autumn statement announcement of £556 million for infrastructure in the north of England, but despite that and years of hard work, the M55 Lytham St Annes link road is still not assured. Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister do everything she can to ensure that this vital local project for jobs and employment in my constituency is delivered without further delay?; On a cross-party basis, Jo Cox and I were establishing the National Commission on Loneliness when she was brutally murdered. This work is now being continued by the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) and me. Does my right hon. Friend agree that loneliness is an issue for all our communities, and will she urge her Ministers to engage with the commission as it carries out its work and reports next year?
Angus Robertson (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): A very happy St Andrew’s day to everybody celebrating in Scotland and throughout the world There is literally nothing to celebrate about the humanitarian catastrophe befalling the people of Syria at this time. The situation in the besieged city of Aleppo is described as so bad that it "could be one of the biggest massacres of civilian population since World War II" What can the UK and the international community do to end the suffering of the people of Syria?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: I welcome last week’s autumn statement announcement of £556 million for infrastructure in the north of England, but despite that and years of hard work, the M55 Lytham St Annes link road is still not assured. Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister do everything she can to ensure that this vital local project for jobs and employment in my constituency is delivered without further delay?; On a cross-party basis, Jo Cox and I were establishing the National Commission on Loneliness when she was brutally murdered. This work is now being continued by the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) and me. Does my right hon. Friend agree that loneliness is an issue for all our communities, and will she urge her Ministers to engage with the commission as it carries out its work and reports next year?
Angus Robertson (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): It is extremely welcome that the discussions are taking place in the United Nations, and we wish success to all those who are supporting a humanitarian solution to the crisis. However, things are so bad that the agencies are saying that in Aleppo the situation is a "descent into hell". Time is absolutely of the essence. I know the Prime Minister is seized of this matter; we are in agreement. Can I please appeal to her: can absolutely everything be done now to alleviate the situation of the poor people of Aleppo and of Syria?
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: Government Operations
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): As the Chilcot report concluded, this was very much a personal campaign by the Prime Minister in doing things unbeknown to both Cabinet and certainly Parliament. I am going to address the point the right hon. and learned Gentleman makes, but the question of parliamentary accountability is in my estimation central to this case. Committees of this House have been examining the conduct of the processes of government. If he reads the minutes of the meeting that the Committee to which we intend to refer the question of parliamentary accountability held with the Cabinet Secretary, I do not think he will find much reassurance that there has been a tremendous advance in the process of government. The overwhelming impression is that a headstrong Prime Minister could still create a situation where sofa government drove a country into an illegal war. I suggest that parliamentary accountability and an examination of statements made to Parliament and public against the facts as we now know them would be a valuable additional sanction and tool in restraining future Prime Ministers from any such course of events.
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The right hon. Lady’s position on that issue has been consistent through the years, but that was not the case presented to this Parliament. The case presented to this Parliament was that there was a real and present danger to the United Kingdom that required the abandonment of diplomacy internationally and the immediate process to war.
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I say again to Labour Members that I am not really interested in the civil war in the Labour party; I am interested in the real war that took place and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Therefore, it is reasonable and important to consider whether parliamentary accountability can be a major weapon of this House in making sure such events do not happen again.
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: Government Operations
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I would have been very pleased if the right hon. Gentleman had made it Members from eight political parties signing the motion, but the whole point of the cross-party group, which has been working on this issue for months, is to make it not a straight party political issue. As for attacking the Labour party, I think it is more that Labour Members wish to attack me in this debate, but I do not mind that because I am driving on to make the points of parliamentary accountability and the information we had from the Chilcot report that make it unsustainable to argue other than that this Parliament was grievously misled The report in the Library—
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): If the right hon. Lady will forgive me, I will make some progress The report in the Library from Dr Glen Rangwala analyses this in enormous detail and I hope Members read it, although even that report is not exhaustive. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) in the Chilcot debate in July listed five, as he put it, clear instances of misrepresentation in a single speech from the Prime Minister—in the war speech, the greatest speech of his life, in March 2003. I want to look at just three of the key things that have arisen and that we now know about from the Chilcot report The first of those things is the question of prior commitment. Through the long debates on Iraq, many of us suspected that the Prime Minister had given commitments to the American President which were unrevealed to this House and to the public. The Chilcot report outlined these in spades. The famous phrase "I will be with you, whatever" will go down in infamy in terms of giving a commitment. Chilcot says that after giving such a commitment it would be virtually impossible for the Prime Minister to withdraw from it.
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The right hon. Gentleman will understand that my point was that no evidence or information about these commitments was ever presented to this House or to the general public. Indeed, it was not, as we know from Chilcot, presented to the Cabinet. Only Downing Street officials saw that letter and advised the Prime Minister, apparently, not to send it, which he did anyway. The Foreign Secretary, Mr Straw, saw it after the event. It has been said by some that that phrase did not mean what it clearly seems to mean. I just point out that after the Foreign Secretary did see the letter to President Bush, he himself wrote in a memo to the Prime Minister on 11 March 2003, when things at the United Nations were not going well: "We will obviously need to discuss all this, but I thought it best to put it in your mind as event[s] could move fast. And what I propose is a great deal better than the alternatives. When Bush graciously accepted your offer to be with him all the way, he wanted you alive not dead!" The Foreign Secretary was referring to being politically dead, not really dead like the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. That point shows with absolute seriousness and clarity that there was no doubt in the mind of the then Foreign Secretary of the extent of the commitment that had been made, and there was no doubt in the mind of the Chilcot inquiry when it commented on the range of letters and correspondence to the President of the United States, which it said would have made it very difficult for the UK to pursue any independent policy after the commitment had been made. That is what the inquiry says on the question of prior commitment.
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: Government Operations
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): It is certainly an important point, and it is one that is being pursued by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and other Committees of this House. When the Cabinet Secretary was repeatedly challenged on whether the changes to the flow of information to the Intelligence and Security Committee would make a decisive difference to a Prime Minister who was hellbent on pursuing a particular course of action, answer came there none. It is not enough to say that we are going to change the institutions of government or that we are going to learn the lessons of post-conflict analysis, although we have been promised a paper on that in the near future. There has to be an essence of parliamentary accountability.
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The motion speaks for me and for the other Members who have signed it. I welcome that intervention from the Chairman of the Select Committee. I looked at his robust questioning of the Cabinet Secretary and I am now filled with more confidence that significant recommendations will come forward What Iraq demonstrates is that there are currently no effective checks and balances in our system, that the Prime Minister had the ability to create the circumstances in which this House followed him into an illegal conflict, and that all the memos from the higher echelons of the civil service will not mean a thing—rather like the Cabinet Secretary’s evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. That should be of little surprise to us.
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): In relation to the right hon. Lady’s intervention, I have already corrected one of her hon. Friends and suggested that they carry on to the next sentence after the ones they have cited from Chilcot. Also, the Liaison Committee’s questioning of Sir John Chilcot found explicitly that a reasonable person could not have drawn the conclusions that the then Prime Minister did, and that he presented those conclusions to the House as an advocate rather than as a conveyor of information. I ask the right hon. Lady to go back and look at those points, because they concern every Member of this House regardless of their political party Chilcot shows that we have a system of non-accountability. We waited six years before establishing a proper inquiry and, as we found out in The Observer a week past Sunday, it was structured in such a way as to avoid blame. It was deprived of judicial expertise and could not even pronounce on the legality of the conflict. It was wrestled with over the release of the diplomatic correspondence with President Bush, which more than any other factor provides the Prime Minister’s motivations. It was seven years before it reported. After all this time, some people in the press and elsewhere say, "These things are in the past. Let the dead bury the dead." Many dead people have been buried, the carnage continues, and the real issue, to quote the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), is how to stop it happening again Memories will fade. A whole generation has grown up and reached adulthood since the war in Iraq. Soon, less than a quarter of Members—perhaps none—will have lived through the experience of the vote on Iraq and that fateful decision in March 2003. The motion presents an opportunity to introduce another check and balance into a system that is clearly deficient. It would start a process to create a precedent so that any future Prime Minister will know that he or she will have to account for their actions not only to history, but to this House of Commons. A long time ago, I made a speech in this House in which I suggested to Mr Blair that he might answer to a higher power than this House. I understand that he found it offensive, but I absolutely believe it to be the case none the less. In the meantime, in the here and now—here on earth—is it not important for us to find a parliamentary process by which a Prime Minister who grievously misled this House and the people into an illegal war can finally be held to parliamentary account?
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: Government Operations
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The motion is supported by members of seven parties. It has been made clear this afternoon that Labour Members do not support it, and I think that that speaks for itself, as does the behaviour of some speakers. My point is that the purpose of the motion, which has the support of seven political parties, is to ensure that the House does the job that the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said the inquiry would do—namely, to ensure that democracy was properly served If the House does not examine the outcome of Sir John Chilcot’s findings properly and if it does not look at those issues of accountability, democracy and justice will not have been served. That is the point of the motion.
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: International Affairs
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman was in the House on Monday, but if he was or has read the newspapers he will have seen that I and many of my colleagues signed a letter asking the British Government to take action in relation to Aleppo by way of dropping aid on the city. We are not without answers, and I wonder if he would care to withdraw that suggestion.
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: Government Operations
William Arthur Roger Mullin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker I want to compliment one speech that I heard today, and it is that of the hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale). In his usual understated way, he made some of the most telling observations about why we should still care about what happened and about the need to learn the lessons. I cannot see how it can be argued that we can learn the lessons if we are unwilling critically to review the results of the Chilcot process I was critical when my constituency predecessor in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath set up the inquiry—as I am critical now—that it was not a judge-led inquiry. I have also been critical in the House about Sir John Chilcot’s decision to invoke the Maxwellisation process, because he was not required to do so. That process allowed those who were criticised in the report to be the only ones to be given notice of what was being said about them and the only ones allowed to introduce new evidence into the process. For those reasons alone, this House needs to review and make its own judgment about the evidence. For me and many hon. Members from whom I have heard today, it is most telling that people recognise that the most important thing about the Chilcot report is not his personal views or interpretation, but the evidence that was presented, which this House is required to review I for one have confidence in the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, particularly in its Chairman, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), whom we are asking to take this forward. If there is any reason at all for why we need further consideration by the Committee, it was given by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) when reporting some of his conversations with Sir John Chilcot in the Liaison Committee. He asked a question about Mr Blair and if I quote him correctly, Sir John’s response was: "You would have to ask him." How does this House ask him without asking him?
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: International Affairs
Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I will not give way, and I ask that Members also afford me the respect that I afforded them when they were speaking in this debate We must demonstrate that, a decade on from this disaster, we have listened and learned so that we are not doomed to repeat these deadly mistakes—that is what this is all about. It is about making sure that we do the right thing for the future. We know that the conflict and instability that has engulfed the region in the past few years was undoubtedly fuelled by the ideologically driven recklessness of Blair and Bush, but it is also clear from the lack of post-conflict planning in subsequent conflicts, both in Libya and the humanitarian disaster infolding in Syria, that we have not yet fully embraced the changes that need to take place if we are to play a progressive role in an increasingly dangerous world Parliament must be at the centre of this process if it is to reassert its integrity at the heart of our democratic process in holding the Government to account. That is why the motion supports the current work of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which is examining the lessons to be learned from Chilcot on the machinery of government. This matter is not in the past; it is being spoken of in a Committee, and we are asking that that be extended further Today, MPs have a choice to make, and each of us, but perhaps Labour MPs in particular, has to make an important decision. We need to decide whether we act to address the issues raised by Sir John Chilcot and seek to reassert the place of Parliament at the heart of the democratic process, or whether to stand by while public confidence in this place is eroded even further. In the Lobby, we can stand up for parliamentary democracy and the importance of integrity, or we can look the other way. We can choose to learn from the lessons of the past or we can seek to brush this damning report under the carpet. I know the path that I will choose to take, and I hope MPs from across the House will support me in that endeavour.
Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability — House of Commons, 2016-11-30
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The Minister is making a very balanced speech. In his opinion, having read what he has read, is there a great contrast between the private commitments that the former Prime Minister gave to President Bush and his public statements and assurances to this House?