argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Daesh: Genocide of Minorities — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Robin Caspar Walker (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an important point, and Daesh’s ignorance and denial of the historical and cultural nature of the area is crucial. I studied the early caliphate, and in that period many leaders of the Muslim world described the classical world that they took over as a garden protected by their spears. Is it not tragic that Daesh’s perversion of Islam is so different from the vision set out by those early caliphs?
Daesh: Genocide of Minorities — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
David John Warburton (Conservative, Centre-right): I could not agree more. The cultural demolition is explicitly linked to the genocidal aims that we are discussing To say that Christians and Yazidis are victims of genocide is not to minimise the terrible suffering of others in the region. In a debate held on a similar motion in another place, Lord Bates was entirely right to point out that it is often Muslims who suffer the greatest brutality at the hands of Daesh. Over the past six months, the United States Congress, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the US Secretary of State have all declared that Daesh is committing genocide.
Daesh: Genocide of Minorities — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Civil Rights
James Gerald Douglas Howarth (Conservative, Centre-right): That is a very good question. I have not had the privilege of meeting the people that so many hon. Members across the Floor of the House have met, but I have been extremely moved by the testimonies that have been recounted today. I do not see how any normal person listening to our debate could possibly come to any conclusion other than that this was genocide and is genocide to this day, and that Christians, Yazidis and others are being wiped out. As many hon. Members have said, those actions are intentional. They are not a by-product of some other policy. The intention is to wipe them out I want to be brief, so I will conclude by saying that there are three powerful reasons for taking action and why the Government should listen. First, we are a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, so let us refer this matter to ourselves. That should not be too difficult. We have an important role in the UN that we should fulfil. Secondly, to the great tragedy of this nation, our fellow citizens are unfortunately involved and are steeped in blood. They are complicit in this genocide. We therefore have a locus. Thirdly, we are a Christian country. Fellow Christians are being persecuted. We cannot, as my noble Friend Lord Forsyth said in the other place, "pass by on the other side."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 March 2016; Vol. 769, c. 2157.] We owe it to them to take action. As we will be reminding ourselves tomorrow, our sovereign is also the supreme governor of the Church of England. This is a part of our country. I want to finish by referring to the words of my constituent Major General Tim Cross, who said when giving evidence in the other place recently: "There can be no doubt that genocide is being carried out on Yazidi and Christian communities—and the West/international community’s failure to recognise what is happening will be to our collective shame in years to come" I hope that the Government will listen to the collective words of this House and the other place and act on the behalf of the British people against the appalling genocide of our fellow Christians and so many others.
Daesh: Genocide of Minorities — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Civil Rights
Tobias Martin Ellwood (Conservative, Centre-right): This has been an excellent debate. Time prevents me from answering all the questions, so I shall do as I have done on previous occasions and write to hon. Members in detail. Some excellent ideas and thoughts have emerged, such as the protection of mass graves and the appointment of a global envoy for religious freedom. I will be in touch on those matters I begin, as others have done, by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing this important debate. I have listened, No. 10 has listened and the nation has listened to the will of the Chamber today. That is important. I commend the efforts of Members in all parts of the House who have worked tirelessly to ensure that the voices of those who have been murdered, persecuted or silenced by Daesh are heard The harrowing accounts that we have heard today of the brutal persecution of Christians, Yazidis and other religious and ethnic minorities are heartbreaking. Some of those communities lived peacefully side by side for generations before that barbaric organisation forced them to flee their homes. Daesh’s crimes go beyond the horrors of rape and murder; it has destroyed a generations-old culture. The Government have repeatedly made clear our utter condemnation of the unspeakable crimes that Daesh commits against Christians, Yazidis and other communities, including Muslims, who still account for the majority of victims. We are working tirelessly to defeat Daesh and put an end to that violence This is not the first time that I have commented on this matter; it is the third time. I repeat what I said in Foreign and Commonwealth Office questions last week. I believe that genocide has taken place, but as the Prime Minister has said, genocide is a matter of legal rather than political opinion. We as the Government are not the prosecutor, the judge or the jury. Such matters are for the UN Security Council. However, we have a place—
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
David Anthony Andrew Amess (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend might not be aware of this, but I, as a fellow member of the Administration Committee, have changed my view on this matter, and I now very much agree with him because I believe that this change would be a false economy. We must hang on to this tradition and cherish it.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Civil Rights
Michael Tyrone Ellis (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not just the laws of the land that are printed on vellum? Such things as the Torah scrolls that are used by members of the Jewish community are printed on vellum. If the sole provider of vellum in this country were forced to close because of the House of Lords stopping our use of vellum, that might inconvenience other people and force them to source their items from outside this country—assuming that they are not already doing so, which they might well be.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
James Whiteside Gray (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising an extremely important point. She is quite right that if some complicated piece of machinery were required at great cost, meaning that it would take us years and years to pay that off, it would be important to take that into consideration. However, the fact of the matter is that any corner shop—any printer in the land—can print on vellum. I have been informed by printers—there are two in my constituency who would be delighted to do it—that the £56,000 that is currently spent is a great deal too much, and that they would do it for significantly less.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
James Whiteside Gray (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady will have a chance to make her points later. I am interested that she is apparently opposed to the motion The difference in cost will be pretty marginal, so let us move on to the substance of the matter. If we were to change to paper, I would be very surprised if the cost was as low as the House of Lords has indicated. The county of Hereford has announced this week that it has just opened a new archive centre at a cost of £11.5 million. Paper, of course, requires all sorts of special care over the years, whereas vellum, as can be demonstrated by a glance at the records in the Victoria Tower, survives for generations—hundreds of years—without any care whatsoever. It can be put in a cupboard and it will be as good as when it went in.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Rebecca Elizabeth Scott Harris (Conservative, Centre-right): When I last had a proper job, I worked in local history publishing. We published John Morris’s translation of the Domesday Book and relied heavily on other archives, such as materials in the parish chest, that were written on vellum. I will not ask my hon. Friend to comment on whether I would be much the poorer had those things been written not on vellum but on paper, and it had disintegrated, but does he agree that we would be much poorer as a nation in our understanding of our history had such things been written on paper?
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
James Whiteside Gray (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. Were I a nimble enough speaker, I would leap from the place where I am in my speech to the point to which she refers. However, I will talk in a moment about the things we have today because they were made of vellum but which we would not have if they had been made of paper.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
James Gerald Douglas Howarth (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend mentioned the debate in 1999, when Mr Brian White raised the issue, as a Milton Keynes Member, because the factory would have had to close. I made the point in that debate that down the other end of the building, there was an Act of Parliament dated 1497 that was on view to the public. It was not a facsimile or a replica; it was an Act of Parliament—it bore the sovereign’s signature and it was legible. We know that vellum lasts 500 years, but we do not know that any other material will last 500 years.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
James Whiteside Gray (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend speaks with passion from a position of great expertise, and he is absolutely right. When I was going through my personal archives recently, I was interested to come across my grandfather’s certificate as a graduate of Edinburgh University. I have it here—this is not an aide-mémoire, Mr Speaker. He graduated in engineering in 1903, and his certificate is absolutely as it was when it was first printed. It has simply been sat in a cupboard in my family’s house for 120 years, and it is as good as new.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Timothy Paul Loughton (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend on the great campaign he has run on this issue. Is it not slightly ironic that the year after we celebrated the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta—a document that is essential to our constitution and was written on vellum—their lordships are considering doing away with vellum? Is he aware that while the laws in the Republic of Ireland are written on vellum, I am not aware of any plans to scrap that tradition there?
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
James Whiteside Gray (Conservative, Centre-right): They have plenty of cows in Ireland, as we do in this country, and my hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Had Magna Carta been written on paper, it would have been lost by around 1465, before the birth of Henry VIII—it would not have survived to his times. Let us think of other great documents such as the Dead Sea scrolls, the Lindisfarne gospels and the Domesday Book—all were written on vellum. The Codex Sinaiticus in the British Library was commissioned by the Emperor Constantine in 350 AD. We can look at it today and turn its pages; it is exactly as it was when it was written, and it is as clear as anything. Can one imagine a piece of paper from 350 AD surviving? The oldest complete bound book in Europe, the St John’s Gospel, was put into the coffin of St Cuthbert in the year 687 in Durham cathedral, and it can still be read today as clearly as when it was written because it is on vellum. The use of vellum guarantees that no matter what happens in the future—war, floods, riots or anything else—Acts of Parliament will be preserved for all time The third reason why I think it vital to maintain vellum is that William Cowley and sons in Milton Keynes, the last remaining manufacturers of vellum, supply services to the British Library, the Bodleian and records offices up and down the land. If the parliamentary contract is withdrawn, there is at least a chance that the firm’s six employees would no longer be there, meaning that everyone who requires vellum services would have to go to America, because there are no other vellum manufacturers in Europe Why on earth, for the sake of some £20,000 a year, if that, should we be considering doing away with a craft of this kind? Why would we want to close down an ancient business? Why should we be considering changing a 1,000-year tradition of this place? Why should we downgrade Acts in the way that is suggested? To me, it is beyond understanding. If Members care for the traditions of this place, if they care for crafts and if they care for Acts of Parliament, they will join me in the Aye Lobby today.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. Many Members wish to participate in the debate, so there will have to be a five-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, which will be open to review, depending on progress. We must start with five minutes with the intention of not exceeding that limit.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me make it clear at this stage of the debate that this is very much a matter for the House. Although we on the Treasury Bench offer our support, it remains a matter for the House.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
Alexander Paul Beresford (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) on initiating the debate. It has forced me to do an awful lot of homework and get hold of some real facts and figures, so that I can pass them on to the House as they have been presented to me Vellum has been used to record Acts of Parliament for only about 170 years. The oldest surviving parliamentary records are on parchment, which is a very similar material. The oldest surviving archival paper records date back to 1510, which is just 13 years short of the date of the oldest parchment record. Those paper records are the manuscript journals of the House of Lords. It appears to me, on the basis of viewing and research, that records kept on vellum and those kept on archival paper in the same environment last equally well.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Michael Tyrone Ellis (Conservative, Centre-right): If we put that one supplier out of business, it is not just parliamentary Acts that will be affected. I understand from the Office of the Chief Rabbi that the Torahs used in this country are not in fact made here, but if that one supplier were to close down because Parliament stopped using it, Torahs and many other non-parliamentary items would not be able to be made here, and the work would have to be exported elsewhere.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
Rebecca Elizabeth Scott Harris (Conservative, Centre-right): Both Houses of Parliament will soon enjoy the ceremony and tradition of the Queen’s Speech. Does the hon. Lady agree that it would not be a favourable idea to save money by getting the Queen to make a webcast from her sitting room?
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher James Skidmore (Conservative, Centre-right): I should declare an interest, not only as a part-time historian who spent a large part of his youth burrowed away in the National Archives researching Tudor history, but as the chair of the all-party group on archives and history. The group has more than 100 members in both Houses, and has been fortunate to have as its secretariat the Archives and Records Association of the UK and Ireland, the leading professional body for archivists, record managers and conservators in these islands. The ARA has about 2,500 paid-up members, who have naturally raised concerns over the possible change in the recording of Acts of Parliament from vellum to archival paper, which I wish to reflect in my speech There has been a lot of debate on this issue and strong feelings have, naturally, been expressed. That is entirely understandable, as vellum, and parchment, its sheepskin cousin, is at the core of our national heritage. Vellum has been used to record some of the most important events in the history of these islands, not just Acts of Parliament. It is still actively used by our conservation community to repair and extend the life of our existing ancient manuscripts. Vellum is also a highly practical material. It is durable, accessible and much more resistant to fire and water than any kind of paper. It is also an alkaline material. Paper is more fragile, and it is acidic and deteriorates much more quickly over time.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Michael Tyrone Ellis (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend agree that the even the highest quality archival paper is going to last only about 300 years, and even then it would cost a lot to maintain in the right humid conditions, whereas vellum can be kept just about anywhere on a shelf and will last 5,000 years?
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher James Skidmore (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right: with vellum, we know it will last. It has already stood the test of time, as any historian or archivist will verify, through its continued existence over centuries. With paper, we can only guess how long a printed version will last; it depends on precisely what paper is used, what ink is used and how the resulting document is stored.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
Alexander Paul Beresford (Conservative, Centre-right): I had better repeat what I said earlier. In this House we have been recording on parchment equivalent since 1497 and on paper from 13 years later. Having looked at the paper, the parchment and the vellum, I can say that they look the same.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
Michael Tyrone Ellis (Conservative, Centre-right): I think that I have heard the hon. Gentleman refer in the past to the Chartist movement and to other historical aspects of this country. Vellum does not only record positive things. Vellum in society—history—records positive and negative things. If he hates most of the history of this country—perhaps he does not—does he not want to record that history, whatever it says?
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. Before I call the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), I should emphasise that I am looking to call the shadow deputy Leader of the House at approximately 6.35 pm. I simply make the point that interventions are perfectly orderly and proper, but if there is a profusion of them colleagues on the list wanting to be called to speak will not be called. I am afraid colleagues will have only themselves to blame, to put it as bluntly but politely as I can. Let us help each other.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Ranil Malcolm Jayawardena (Conservative, Centre-right): Traditions are an important part of our country, our way of life and, indeed, our Parliament. Without them, this House would be a duller, drearier place. As we know from history, once traditions are torn down, it is all but impossible to revive them. On the question of vellum, I am tempted to defer to Edmund Burke’s view of society as a contract between the living, the dead and those who are not yet born. I have no wish to deprive future generations of the ability to touch and smell the records of their past. In fact, we have a duty to our descendants to leave behind an abiding physical record of our laws and customs, just as our forebears, in their turn, did for us Without doubt, vellum is the natural document to last the ages. Without vellum, we would not have the Domesday Book, nor would we have been able to mark more than 800 years of Magna Carta, with all the historical significance that the four surviving 1215 copies added to our celebrations in Odiham in my constituency and elsewhere. It is entirely due to vellum that awe-inspiring texts such as the St Cuthbert Gospel from the 7th century have survived for so long. Even by the most generous estimates, the archive paper that the other place has proposed as a substitute to vellum has nothing like its lifespan As our methods of documentation move into an increasingly digitised world, we will gradually lose the ability to experience historical artefacts and to immerse ourselves fully in the study of the past. Every time a dusty volume is replaced by a PDF, and every time a print newspaper transfers to the internet, we gain something—our lives become more efficient and the pursuit of knowledge becomes easier—but we also lose something: the tactile elegance, the timeless simplicity and the physical permanence of record-keeping When it comes to preserving this valuable tradition, I believe that Paul Wright, who works for the vellum manufacturer, put it best when he said, "If it’s precious, put it on vellum." If we in this House have the confidence to make and enact laws, we must also deem them worthy of preserving through the ages.
Record Copies of Acts — House of Commons, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
David John Warburton (Conservative, Centre-right): I wonder whether we are belittling ourselves slightly. Yes, vellum is almost immortally permanent and—from the Domesday Book to the equally wondrous Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2016—has faithfully freighted and defended its contents. If we ditch it for a ream of A4 80 gsm paper, or whatever it might be, our descendants will watch as the laws governing them gradually putrefy, wither and dissolve. Yes, that might be an advantage for many things, but is not this about more than a practical issue I am sure that hon. Members will agree that every day we sit in this place and hear soaring flights of Ciceronian oratory from both sides of the House. This place bears witness to an indefatigable tide of facts, figures and predictions, all of which are dispensed with rhetorical clusters of clauses and sub-clauses nesting like Russian dolls, and held up with towering eloquence. Is it not fitting for the laws, Bills and Acts in which those words are made manifest to be conveyed and preserved in a manner worthy of their breadth and nobility I am sure hon. Members will remember "Gulliver’s Travels", in which one Lilliputian inspired awe in the others because he was taller than his peers by the breadth of one fingernail. We must not be guilty of the same—of thinking small and measuring ourselves against one another instead of taking the wider view and the historical perspective, and reflecting the enormous historical significance and distinction of this place We have faced this hurdle before when, with great irony, the distinguished and noble Members of another place sought to end a millennium-long tradition. While balancing precariously on a quivering tower of ritual custom and convention, they thrust their ancient swords in the direction of another small part of our heritage, and their efforts were thwarted. I, for one, hope we will resist them again In this place, the thought ought to be not, "Can we make do?" but, "Can we do no better?" I am delighted that so many Members support this motion. As negligible as a politician is, and however much today’s Lilliputian thoughts might seem perishable, it is incumbent on us today to uphold their imperishability.