argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Recall of MPs Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-10
Topic: Mixed Topics
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for that very brief Second Reading speech, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for the meticulousness with which she has pursued this delicate issue—although perhaps not for some of her slightly ungenerous little comments in moving her amendment There are a number of difficult issues here. There are issues of potential intimidation and certainly issues of electoral fraud that require that a marked register be assembled and is available to those who want to check against impersonation—so we are conscious both that this cannot be an entirely secret process and that there are arguments that it should not be an entirely public process. The Government have considered this and consider that we can designate a process that guards against impersonation but which also provides some safeguards against intimidation As I said in Committee, signing a petition, particularly in person, is unavoidably, to a degree, a public act. However, that does not go so far as sanctioning the publication of the full list of those who have signed the petition—the marked register—as is implied by the Opposition’s amendment. I agree that regulations should specify—
Recall of MPs Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-10
Topic: Civil Rights
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I hope that I will be able to explain, as I continue, what some of the safeguards against intimidation might be The regulations should specify that the marked register will be available for inspection, although, as at elections, that will be dependent on certain restrictions and an application to the petition officer. There are also some protections we can provide, such as choosing not to mirror the provision at elections where the marked register can be requested as a document for campaigning purposes by political parties and candidates. There is a good argument here that inspection should be allowed for reasons of preventing personation, but that the document itself should be kept securely and used only to test whether or not personation has been attempted Furthermore, the wording of the amendments implies a degree of ease of access to, and publicity of, the marked register, which does not exist even at elections. Those who wish to view the marked register must justify to the returning officer, or the Chief Electoral Officer in Northern Ireland, where problems of intimidation exist very clearly, why they need to inspect the marked register itself and could not glean sufficient information from the full register. Inspection is under supervision and the law specifies that, although handwritten notes are permitted, portions of, or indeed the whole of, the marked register may not be copied down I hope that this provides the assurance needed. There is only a small amount of space between the Government’s intentions for the regulations and the spirit of the noble Baroness’s amendments. There will be a marked register and it will be a document which can be made available for inspection—although, as I have said, there will be controls mirroring those at elections and, in some respects, further controls in that the Government do not intend that copies should be made available for campaigning purposes, for the very evident reasons given. I also accept that signing is, to a degree, a public act, although there will be those who prefer to sign by post and avoid attending a signing place; that is their choice to make. I also see the merit in the petition notice card making clear the degree to which signing is an open process; it will therefore ensure that suitable wording is included before it is user tested. However, I believe that the regulation-making powers in the Bill are sufficient to deliver the policy outcomes under discussion. I therefore thank the noble Baroness for the care that she has taken to ensure that we address this delicate and difficult issue. I hope that we have satisfied her and, on that basis, I hope that she will be able to withdraw her amendment.
Recall of MPs Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-10
Topic: Civil Rights
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, this debate has ranged very widely. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for raising the Bill of Rights. I was thinking about it last week when looking at Magna Carta and how these various things pull together. The British constitution has parliamentary privilege as one of its core elements, and we recognise that in this Bill we are walking a delicate line between the maintenance of parliamentary privilege and the inclusion of a greater degree of popular sovereignty alongside parliamentary sovereignty. It is a delicate balance that we all wish to maintain Perhaps I may say what a pleasure it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, again. He told me in the corridor that he had been lying in his hospital bed at two o’clock in the morning watching Lords debates on his iPad. What he did not tell me was whether they kept him awake or provided him with a cure for insomnia As I understand the Standards Committee report, which I have not had a chance to read in full yet, it takes us rather closer towards the model which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, would like than we have been before. It is a progression to move from a lay minority to an equal proportion of lay members and MPs, which is probably what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, would regard as moving in the right direction. It is a progression but not a reversal; it is not a radical overhaul of the entire Bill.
Recall of MPs Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-10
Topic: Other
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I will certainly take that back and see what the Government can do. I hope that I have provided constructive answers to a very constructive debate, and I urge my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Recall of MPs Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-10
Topic: Other
Paul Tyler (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful to all Members who have contributed to this debate. I wish that we had had a general debate of this nature rather earlier in the process on this Bill. The central point is that my noble friend has just said that he does not agree with our solution. He does not appear to agree with that of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, either, but he seems to recognise that some solution is necessary. That leaves us in a most extraordinary situation. The Government agree that this is unfinished business, yet they have produced no solution. I am afraid that that is an unsatisfactory situation.
Recall of MPs Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-10
Topic: Civil Rights
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, again, this debate has ranged fairly widely. I am happy to discuss further with the noble Lord, Lord Hughes of Woodside, the level at which abortion law should be dealt with. I remember that some years ago the most obscure protocol to the treaty of Rome was added to a revision negotiation by the Irish Government, which said, "Nothing in this treaty shall countermand Article 39"—I think it was—"of the Irish Constitution", which meant "Keep off". About six months later, the Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow asked that this should be devolved. As soon as we are into multi-level government, the question of what level you do things at—at which level you decide that prisoners should have the vote, to take a hypothetical example—begins to be contested among the different levels. We now have several levels, and I am happy to talk about that further We discussed some of what we are discussing now, in not dissimilar terms, on the then Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, in which the Government were very much concerned in particular about the possibility of foreign money coming in through various umbrella groups and intervening in and influencing election campaigns. I recognise that there is a potential problem here, but we think it can be contained Here as elsewhere, in drafting the Bill, we employed the regulatory regime for campaign spending and donations drawn from existing electoral law. The proposed campaign rules for recall petitions follow those for referendums. In referendums, you have to report your spending at the £500 limit. In recall campaigns, £500 buys you a very small amount of activity. It does not seem to us that the image which the noble Baroness depicted almost, of a gentleman arriving from Switzerland with plastic bags with cash in them to distribute to various local householders, is a likely one; or, if it were to happen, that it would not appear in the Guardian or the Mail very quickly. We therefore think that £500 is the de minimis amount.
Recall of MPs Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-10
Topic: Other
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am merely talking about the difficulty of having one accredited lead campaigner on either side. That takes us too far into the referendum campaign. The question of how one gets towards agreeing one accredited campaigner will need, I suspect, a good deal more than eight weeks to sort out.
Recall of MPs Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-10
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher Rennard (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I rise briefly to support the sentiments expressed by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. I very much hope that the Minister will perhaps, in this short debate, explain to us how the Government think this legislation should be reviewed, given the many potential traps within it that have been outlined during the various stages of our debate. A little earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, tried to entice me and others to support his amendment on the basis that the Labour Back Benches agreed with the Labour Front Bench. I have never found the proposition of the Labour Back Benches agreeing with their Front Bench automatically to be an enticement to support the arguments that they have put forward. In relation to this Bill, I have noted that, on occasions when the Opposition Front Bench and the Government Front Bench are agreed on a piece of legislation, but across all parts of the House great reservations are expressed about how the legislation might actually work in practice, as opposed to in the theory of the party leaders—who perhaps in haste have agreed to introduce measures such as this—we should keep that legislation under proper review. We always talk about the need for more post-legislative scrutiny, and I would very much like to hear from the Minister how the Government think that might be undertaken in this case.
Clandestine Migrants — House of Lords, 2015-06-08
Topic: Immigration
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. Does he agree that proper management of the EU’s external border is the key to solving these issues, and that the UK is in a far better position within the EU to influence member states than it would be if it were outside the European Union? The Minister also mentioned the Dublin regulation and the fact that more than 12,000 illegal immigrants who claimed asylum initially in other EU states had been deported from the UK as a result of that regulation. Will he tell the House whether that regulation would still apply if the UK were no longer a member of the European Union?
Clandestine Migrants — House of Lords, 2015-06-08
Topic: Immigration
Sarah Ludford (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): The Minister referred to European instruments and my noble friend took up that theme, but I want to ask about carriers’ liability, which is also the subject of an EU legal instrument. Like the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, I heard John Vine, a former borders inspector at the weekend saying that there had been no sanctions on hauliers or confiscation of vehicles where they were found to have been carrying irregular migrants—he implied that there had been none at all. Is that the case, and, if so, why? Why have there not been any sanctions for breach of carrier liability legislation?
Clandestine Migrants — House of Lords, 2015-06-08
Topic: Mixed Topics
Rosalind Scott (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, first, I wish to declare an interest as a member of the board of the Harwich Haven Authority Does the noble Lord agree that the early finding of such people is not just a matter of politics but of humanitarian decency, because the impact on those who are not found in such conditions is catastrophic? Can he assure the House that proper attention is being paid to the rest of the ports community and not just to the Border Force, because it is the wider ports community which is more likely to have the first inkling that something is not right? Perhaps they need a bit more help in understanding what they should be looking for and how we can help to prevent these catastrophes turning into a humanitarian disaster.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-30
Topic: Civil Rights
Sally Rachel Hamwee (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, as we are in Committee, I would like to ask the Minister a question which I told the Bill team I would ask him, but which I forgot to include in my previous remarks. Why do the offences clauses, up to and including Clause 10, not receive a mention in the Home Office’s human rights memorandum, except a reference in the summary at the start of the memorandum? One would have expected that, having created new offences, they would have deserved some attention in that document.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-30
Topic: Other
Sally Rachel Hamwee (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the Official Report will not record the facial expressions around the Chamber in response to the Minister. I think I follow what has been said, but whether it is a sensible way of writing legislation I rather doubt. Legislation should say what it really means and not leave us struggling to justify such really quite difficult wording. I am tempted to press this to a Division, but we have a lot to get through today so I will not take the time now, but who knows? I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-30
Topic: Mixed Topics
Archibald Kirkwood (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I hope I can say on behalf of the Bishops’ Bench that the offer of a meeting is welcome. If we can do that in association with the Children’s Society, that meets our immediate request and I would be happy to operate on that basis.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-30
Topic: Other
Sally Rachel Hamwee (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful for that response. The Minister’s comment that the explanation in the notice would vary according to the circumstances is an interesting one which I welcome because standard-form official explanations which are not designed for particular circumstances are often pretty much unreadable. One cannot necessarily work out quite how they apply. I hope that by highlighting that, I am not causing the hearts of people outside the immediate part of this Chamber to sink with the extra work that might be required in that regard. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-30
Topic: Other
Sally Rachel Hamwee (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I cannot say that I am comfortable about notices applying for an indefinite or unlimited period. There may be concerns about the detail of the notice. I obviously need to read the noble Baroness’s explanation. I should also wait to see what response we get to my later amendment, which is on appeals against notices. These issues all go together, and I would like then to consider where we have got to in the round. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Electrically Assisted Pedal Cycles (Amendment) Regulations 2015 — House of Lords, 2015-03-03
Topic: Mixed Topics
Susan Kramer (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): That the draft regulations and draft orders laid before the House on 14 and 16 January be approved Relevant documents: 20th and 21st Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, 25th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 24 February.
Child Exploitation in Oxfordshire — House of Lords, 2015-03-03
Topic: Mixed Topics
Meral Hussein-Ece (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the Minister referred to local authority councillors and how they should be at the forefront of making sure that this sort of practice is mitigated and investigated properly. Is he satisfied that local authority councillors are given proper training and made to understand that they have the responsibilities as corporate parents? I was a councillor in two London boroughs, and had approaches from staff and individuals when they were worried about cases of sexual abuse, and the staff were not doing enough about it, so they came directly to me. I took on the role to make sure that this went straight to the chief executive and that it was investigated properly. But I encountered time and again that a lot of local authority councillors do not understand that they are corporate parents and have responsibilities that they should take very seriously.
Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill — House of Lords, 2015-03-03
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Benjamin Stoneham (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I support the thinking of both the previous speakers because there is a problem with late payment. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, has a lot of business experience of this, particularly working with small businesses—and the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, also has a lot of experience in the business world. The argument here is really that the Bill is a move forward. It is trying to open up the issue of what terms companies are offering and attempting to make sure that they are properly reported However, the Labour amendment is unduly prescriptive and there will be a lot of unintended consequences if companies are forced down from their current credit terms of 60 or 90 days to 30 days. There would be the bureaucracy of quarterly payments and quarterly reporting and the information that would have to be provided on what is in those quarterly reports. We have to be clear that this is a very prescriptive amendment, which to be properly considered would need a great deal of consultation with business, particularly small businesses, on its consequences—because they could be quite dramatic I suspect that first there would be a big jump in the number of invoices being queried; that would be bound to happen. This would inevitably damage the legislation’s attempt to make companies more accountable and for the first time properly report publicly what they are doing—instead of having the information just drift out as a result of complaints from suppliers. People will be able to see what companies are doing, and the companies can be held accountable. It seems that that is the first stage. If there are consequences we want to look at, it would be better to deal with them gradually, so that we get genuine improvement on payment terms, rather than setting up a very bureaucratic and prescriptive solution that could damage a lot of companies and even deter business.
Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill — House of Lords, 2015-03-03
Topic: Other
Richard Newby (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I think I said that the second group would be subject to affirmative resolution. My understanding is that the two issues that we are debating will both be subject to the affirmative procedure. If I am mistaken, of course I will write to the noble Lord.
Ebbsfleet — House of Lords, 2015-03-03
Topic: Housing
Eric Lubbock (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, we, too, welcome the statement that £1.5 billion is being made available to the large-sites programme. I know that had already been announced, but that has been taken a stage further with the news that Bicester has applied for funding under the infrastructure support route, as mentioned in the Statement. The Minister did not quite answer the question put to him by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, about whether the £200 million that will be made available to Ebbsfleet for infrastructure is supposed to cover the whole of the cost of the infrastructure development or whether some money has to come from other sources and, if so, what they are. The Minister said that was a matter for the UDC to press forward. Will it be able to come back to the department if the £200 million proves insufficient or does it all have to come from private sources, which is what the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked The Minister said that the first £100 million is to fund infrastructure and land reclamation and to kick-start development. Will he amplify that a little? What does he mean by "kick-start development"? I understand that a lot of work has to be done on the infrastructure because the state of the land means that a lot of remedial work has to be done on it. Does "kick-start development" mean that part of the £200 million that has been allocated for Ebbsfleet is for the construction of homes or facilities for the people who live in the homes? I know that the funding of schools has already been arranged with the developers. It would be useful if the Minister could say a little more about how that will work. If the developers are responsible for providing public services, such as schools or health centres, it would be useful for us to know that at the start The Statement says that—
Ebbsfleet — House of Lords, 2015-03-03
Topic: Housing
Eric Lubbock (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I will try to be as brief as possible. What is the work required to drive forward development which the head at Ebbsfleet is now discussing with others? Will the Minister be a little more specific about that? Will he amplify what was said in the Statement about the development framework for the area? Will he give us some indication of what the baseline data which are to be provided are and the timescale for them to be provided? Finally, local authorities are to administer the planning service for the UDC for a transitional period. What does he envisage that will be? When will the UDC be in a position to take over the planning functions that it will ultimately have to deliver?