argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
European Union (Future Relationship) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
Jennifer Elizabeth Randerson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): The Prime Minister is fond of claiming world firsts, and he has one here: we will be the first nation in the world to put up trade barriers as the result of a trade deal. This is the first trade deal that creates additional bureaucracy: 23 working groups, a partnership council and some 4 million new forms— every one of them a non-tariff barrier deterring free trade and increasing business costs—along with £13 billion of expert red tape for business and 50,000 new customs agents needed, only half of whom have so far been trained Logistics businesses are at the sharp end of this. They have reduced rights to trade in the EU. They estimate that each delivery to and from the EU will take a full day longer, with obvious price implications for goods in our shops. In today’s world of optimised business chains, that will inevitably encourage many businesses to move to the EU. Last week we saw how quickly queues build up at our ports. We saw the impact on surrounding areas and how unprepared the Government were; they could not even manage to provide the basics of food and toilets for hauliers stuck in the queues The automotive industry is also at the sharp end. Today’s vehicles comprise parts from many countries. Although there are some useful provisions on rules of origin, it will still require additional paperwork and data gathering, and that means additional costs. The timescale is hopelessly short; the industry believes that a phase-in period is critical, but we are not getting that. Of course, businesses are not ready There are huge uncertainties built into this deal, because it is based on today’s standards, and standards change, particularly in vehicle manufacture and aviation, as technology advances. Each change needs a complex approval process, with potential penalties. Of course, this is just a framework deal, subject to endless reviews and supplementary agreements For all these reasons, and many more, I will vote against this tonight, because I will not vote to lose my voice on so many rules that will govern my life. I will not vote to reduce the rights for young people to study and travel abroad. I will not vote for more bureaucracy. I will not vote for job losses in the auto industry, aviation and haulage. I will not condone lower environmental standards, and I will not condone this charade of scrutiny. Be in no doubt: this Tory Government must bear responsibility for what follows. This is not getting Brexit done—it is just the beginning.
European Union (Future Relationship) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-30
Topic: International Affairs
Dick Taverne (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, when Chamberlain came back from Berchtesgaden with a piece of paper proclaiming "peace in our time", he was greeted with almost universal acclaim. When Johnson came back from Brussels with his free trade agreement, he was greeted with adulatory praise from most of the Conservative press and his party. It was, he announced, the realisation of the claims made for Brexit in the referendum and in the last Conservative manifesto. Well, will it really be the journey into the sunlit uplands? Not according to the vast majority of economists, for reasons powerfully argued in this debate by several speakers. I believe that Johnson’s Panglossian optimism will prove no more justified than Chamberlain’s belief in "peace in our time" We will probably continue to wallow in nostalgic complacency: "We are the best, especially when we are fighting alone", "We won the war", "We have a special relationship with the United States and the Commonwealth —who needs the Europeans?" As a result, we are likely to fall behind our European colleagues in economic growth; we already have the lowest productivity of any advanced European country. The great deal that Johnson has will be no help to our services industry, which makes up 80% of our wealth. There is great uncertainty among manufacturers about the new bureaucratic delays at borders. In addition, we may well find that Johnson has created an irresistible desire for independence in Scotland, which wishes to remain part of the EU, and may set Northern Ireland on the path to a referendum for a united Ireland. Part of Johnson’s legacy could well mean the end of the United Kingdom, leaving us as a relatively small, chauvinistic and isolated country with very little influence in an increasingly hostile world. Is that really what Brexiteers voted for?
European Union (Future Relationship) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
Timothy Francis Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the Prime Minister and his colleagues have a nasty habit of telling us to sing "Land of Hope and Glory" while selling key sectors and interests down the river. Last year it was Northern Ireland, now it is Gibraltar and the fishing industry, and it has become clear that our creative industries too are being sacrificed on the altar of so-called sovereignty We have been assured by Ministers countless times of the value they place on the arts, but they have now abandoned one of our most successful sectors, already heavily battered by Covid lockdowns, to its own devices. The noble Baronesses, Lady Bull and Lady Bakewell, are absolutely right. In the trade and co-operation agreement, our hugely successful audio-visual sector is specifically excluded. They represent 30% of all channels in the EU, but if they are not to be subject to the regulators of every single country, they will need to establish a new hub in a member state We can look in vain for anything that helps our touring artists, particularly musicians, actors and sports professionals, with the ending of freedom of movement for UK citizens. From January, when freedom of movement ends, anyone from the UK seeking to perform in an EU country will need to apply for a costly visa for that country, carnets for their musical instruments and necessary CITES permits, and even, perhaps, provide proof of savings and a certificate of sponsorship from an event organiser. No wonder a petition seeking the UK Government to negotiate an EU-wide touring work permit and a carnet exception has gained over 200,000 signatures in record time, and no wonder UK Music and the ISM have expressed their dismay On top of this, quite apart from its dramatic impact on the creative industries, there are huge gaps in the agreement. Services are barely covered, despite making up 42% of our trade with the EU. There is no deal on recognition of professional qualifications, no deal on data adequacy, no membership of the Erasmus scheme for our students, as we have heard, and very limited recognition of the needs of the tourism, travel and hospitality industry, especially given the catastrophic impact on jobs that Covid is forecast to have on the sector. This is a failure of negotiation on a grand scale Our architects and engineers, who have made a huge impact on the built environment on the continent over the past 40 years, will have no right to work in the EU. Service industries, global business and tech companies who depend on data exchange with the EU will have no assurance that data flows can continue after six months. Our UK students, 15,000 of whom have taken advantage of the Erasmus scheme each year for exchanges and work placements, will no longer take part To describe this as a thin deal does not quite cut it; the Bill implementing it hugely erodes parliamentary sovereignty. "Negligent" and "ignorant" are words that describe it most aptly.
European Union (Future Relationship) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-30
Topic: International Affairs
Ian Wrigglesworth (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I find it quite astonishing that a Conservative Government should introduce a Bill such as this. During the 1990s I was chairman of the northern region CBI. At conference after conference I listened to Conservative spokesmen promising a bonfire of red tape. The same dubious cry was taken up by David Cameron, and more latterly by Boris Johnson Yet here we are, facing a Bill that will not have proper scrutiny and gives businesses no time for preparation. It will increase the number of forms that have to be filled in by in excess of 200 million. It will cost businesses anything up to £15 billion. As my noble friend Lady Randerson pointed out, it will require at least 50,000 additional customs officers, along with thousands of additional public servants in government departments and quangos. This is a bonfire not of red tape, but of business, and it presents an uncertain future for financial services. It is a perverse and retrograde step by a Conservative Party captured by an ideological, anti-European group, fuelled by populist, xenophobic nationalism. As the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast, this bonfire of business will directly lead to a fall in GDP and to us being poorer, particularly those at the bottom of the pile That alone is a very good reason for voting against the Bill, but there is an even more important reason. As my noble friends Lady Northover and Lord Wallace of Saltaire said, it represents a damaging change in role for the United Kingdom that is wholly against the interests of its people. Never has there been a time since the Second World War when we need close allies and the closest co-operation between the nations of the world more. As the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, there never has been a time when we needed closer dialogue more, and a forum in which to solve world problems that we all face together Instead, we have the politics of slogans straight out of the Donald Trump playbook of making America great again. We are told we will have a "Global Britain". We are told we are going to "Take back control". They are meaningless slogans. As Churchill said after Dunkirk: "Wars are not won by evacuations." This Bill is facilitating an evacuation and will do great damage to the country. For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, it should be opposed. I shall vote against it tonight with great enthusiasm.
European Union (Future Relationship) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-30
Topic: International Affairs
John Warren Shipley (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): In today’s debate, we have heard a lot about sovereignty. The Government have prioritised sovereignty over the benefits of frictionless trade but by "sovereignty" they have meant the sovereignty of the UK Government, not that of the nations of the UK or of individuals, and there are consequences of that approach First, as demand rises in Scotland for independence, this Bill represents another step towards the break-up of the UK, as many in Scotland seek their own sovereignty rather than being constrained by UK sovereignty, having voted to stay in the EU. Several speakers have recognised the dangers, but there has been a more constant assumption that sovereignty relates only to the UK level—that is a dangerous assumption Further, this Bill represents a clear loss of sovereignty for individual UK citizens. For example, UK citizens working in the EU will in future be able to travel visa-free within the EU only for 90 days in a six-month period. A work visa will now automatically be needed for a UK citizen selling goods or services in an EU country. Surely we need easier travel arrangements for those working. In addition, there should be visa-free cultural work passports to cover the whole of the EU in one document As we have heard, a UK citizen may well have professional qualifications, but those qualifications will no longer be recognised across the EU as they are now. There is hope for bilateral agreements, but they will, even if successful, take time to negotiate Each of those matters represents huge barriers for very many individuals, many of whom are young and just trying to earn their living. For young people, I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, and several others that the abolition of the Erasmus scheme is short-sighted. What about all the broken promises over sovereignty in fishing? There were promises to regain control of British waters, but they have not been delivered. There will no longer be quota swaps, as there are now, and there will be no exclusive 12-mile limit, which used to be a red line for the Government. So there is no return of real sovereignty for our fishing industry. What about the sovereignty of Gibraltar 24 hours before the end of the transition period? I hope that the Minister is going to tell us From tomorrow, we begin years of continuous negotiation with the EU from the position of a supplicant trying to make an agreement work that is thin in content but heavy in regulatory structures. There will be lots of technical committees, new customs checks, rules of origin checks, customs forms, systems of arbitration and lots more red tape than we have now. I fear that the complexity will not prove attractive to potential future inward investors wanting access to the EU single market from the UK.
European Union (Future Relationship) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
John Kevin Sharkey (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, this is a bad deal, a bad Bill and a bad way of dealing with Parliament. The deal and the Bill do not address the major component of our national commercial life, our service industries, as was pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy. The Bill is hastily put together and contains at least one howler about IT systems, as was pointed out by the Times. There will be others buried in the detail—detail we are not allowed to scrutinise. The Bill also contains the mother of all Henry VIII powers in Clause 29. This gives Ministers carte blanche to amend laws without going anywhere near Parliament. The time given to parliamentary scrutiny of this Bill is effectively zero. We could easily have extended the transition period to allow proper consideration. Choosing not to do this was a deliberate political decision to bypass Parliament The Hansard Society, of which I am a former chair, published a note on the Bill this morning. It describes Parliament’s role in scrutinising the Bill and the TCA as a "farce". It concludes that: "Parliament’s role around the end of the Brexit transition and conclusion of the EU future relationship treaty is a constitutional failure to properly scrutinise the executive and the law." This matters not just because the devil is in the detail, as always; it matters because this bypassing of Parliament is directly contrary to the professed aim of Brexit to take back control of our laws—for laws to be determined by the UK Parliament As things stand, the Bill will receive Royal Assent today without any effective scrutiny at all. This is an exercise in executive power and not parliamentary lawmaking. It is hard to see who really gains from the Bill and agreement, apart from a faction within the Conservative Party. Certainly, the country as a whole will not gain; the economy will shrink. Our fishing industry feels betrayed. Our car makers will struggle, as cumulation becomes more difficult to work around. And our vital services industries, the engines of our prosperity, will lose out The Government have pointed to the tariff-free and quota-free access to EU markets as a sign of success, but that takes no account of the huge additional burden of red tape that will fall upon our businesses. Anyway, all this access is conditional. If the EU does not like our regulatory regimes, it can impose tariffs as it chooses. If sovereignty is to have any real meaning, it must mean parliamentary sovereignty and not executive fiat. If it is to mean that, Parliament must reassert its right and duty to scrutinise and amend. We need to decide how we do that.
European Union (Future Relationship) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-30
Topic: Foreign Trade
Richard Newby (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Leave out from "that" to the end and insert "this House declines to allow the Bill to pass because it fails to meet the undertakings given to the people of the United Kingdom by the Prime Minister and other members of Her Majesty’s Government as it (1) implements the first free trade deal in history to put up new barriers to trade that will harm businesses and impose additional costs on consumers in the United Kingdom, (2) ends the mutual recognition of professional qualifications, (3) deprives the United Kingdom’s financial services sector of passporting rights, (4) deprives police in the United Kingdom of direct, real-time access to European Union law enforcement databases, (5) ends the United Kingdom’s participation in the Erasmus+ student exchange programme, (6) does not provide a grace period for businesses to prepare for and adapt to the new rules, and (7) will result in lower economic growth and less revenue for key public services; and because Her Majesty’s Government has failed to provide sufficient opportunity for Parliament or the public to scrutinise it properly."
Procedure and Privileges Committee — House of Lords, 2020-12-14
Topic: Government Operations
Richard Newby (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I apologise for detaining the House. I had not intended to speak but, as the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, took the trouble to explain what he understood to be my views, he goaded me into speaking. I apologise for detaining other noble Lords on that basis The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, said that no arguments were put in the committee and that it took a "cavalier and partisan" decision. He then explained the argument I put, so there was some inconsistency there. Actually, the committee took quite a lot of time on this issue, a number of arguments were advanced and a vote was taken. The problem for the noble Lord is not that there were no arguments; it is that he did not like them and then he lost the vote For the avoidance of doubt, this is the argument that I made, and other members of the committee must decide whether or not it weighed with them. At a time when all elections in England and Wales are postponed—all local elections, the mayoral election in London and all by-elections—for the House of Lords to have a by-election in those circumstances would make the place look even more ridiculous than it does whenever we have such elections The noble Lord mentioned that there are by-elections in Scotland, so there should be no bar to a House of Lords hereditary Peers by-election. There are by-elections in Scotland and my party was fortunate to win one. It is possible to hold by-elections in England and Wales today, but the Government decided, and this House agreed, not to do so. There are and will be none until May. It therefore seemed logical to apply the same principle to by-elections of hereditary Peers. We can revive our discussions, as we will at the end of January to see what we think then On behalf of the committee, I object to how, when the noble Lord loses a vote, he dresses it up as the committee not operating properly. The committee operated absolutely properly. There was a long debate with strong feelings on both sides. There was a vote and the noble Lord lost. End of.
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-14
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): There is almost no one left in the Chamber who has not spoken. This has been an interesting debate and, no doubt, the Minister is carrying away lots of advice from some of the Benches. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Liddle, for their passion. If that passion is matched by votes in the event that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, decides to ignore the advice of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and press this to a vote, I will have more excitement because otherwise, it is merely a rhetorical gesture The noble and learned Lord set out his view on devolution. It is quite clear, as was set out a number of occasions, that in the structural fund process, which this will herald the replacement for, the devolved authorities were in the driving seat of deciding where and on what the money was spent. It is not clear from anything the Minister said today, or in answer to questions last time, that the Government will not seek to impose things on the devolved authorities. The Minister said there would be governance structures; it would be interesting to hear how those governance structures will be introduced and what the Government envisage. In other words, do central Government have the veto in deciding what goes where? In the end, that is the difference between this being genuinely consultative and, as we have heard described around the House, a Westminster-knows-best process. Consultation is fine but only if it is adhered to My final point on the quantum of money and its distribution comes back to a question I asked earlier. I think the Minister said that the amount of money envisaged to go into the shared prosperity fund is equivalent to that which came through the structural fund. The Minister also indicated a much broader remit for spreading that money around than was the practical reality of the structural fund. How will the Government manage the process of certain areas that have been particularly well funded through the structural fund, such as Cornwall and Wales, getting less money if there is no increase in funds and they are spread more widely? Furthermore, the European Union distributed that money using classifications of need, so how will the UK Government develop those? Do the Government envisage that they will be different, and can they undertake that they are transparent In conclusion, if the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, decides to call a vote, we on these Benches would support it, but there are a lot of questions we would be grateful if the Minister could answer.