argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Oversight of Solicitors — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Mixed Topics
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): May I urge the Solicitor General to do more about solicitors up and down the country who are carrying on their business in a very strange and devious way? I have been talking to representatives of the insurance industry, and I understand that clusters of solicitors are making false claims relating to holiday insurance and whiplash. We know where those dodgy solicitors are, but the current regulation does not seem to be working. What is the Solicitor General going to do about it?
Fashion Industry — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Mixed Topics
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that question. He is right that the UK fashion industry is a £32 billion industry. Areas such as my own in West Yorkshire have a long and proud tradition of textile manufacturing, weaving and spinning—I have the Sirdar factory in my Wakefield constituency—and of reusing and recycling: industries are using shoddy and mungo in mattresses, carpeting and bedding. So this is a proud industry. We found that no one is speaking for the end-to-end industry. There are people focused on the high street and people focused on the British Fashion Council side of things—all the exciting creativity—and then there are the textile manufacturers, but they are not really altogether in one group. We think that they need to speak with one voice Last week, I visited the UK Textile Centre of Excellence in Huddersfield, where I saw some of the plasma technology and digital laser technology that it is inventing to reduce fashion’s footprint and to give clothing antimicrobial properties so that it becomes more waterproof. So instead of processes using chemicals that wash off and wash down the drain, they are done at reasonably low temperatures with no chemical or water discharges. This is the future of fashion. We are inventing it here, but it is being exploited by a US company, which will shortly be listing on AIM—the alternative investment market. We need to keep this home-grown technology in our country. We have fantastic heritage brands. I am wearing a John Smedley sweater, made in Derbyshire, which has been worn at least 1,000 times—and darned. It offers lifetime repair and reuse services, as do Church’s for shoes and Burberry for raincoats, which are made in the constituency next door to Wakefield: the constituency of Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford. We have to celebrate what is good and shut down the bad things.
Fashion Industry — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Mixed Topics
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is a passionate and committed member of the Committee. We were thrilled to be hosted by the V&A. Its amazing "Fashioned from Nature" exhibition contains earrings made out of little birds 150 years ago, showing how we have consistently stolen from nature to decorate ourselves. There is nothing new under the sun The hon. Gentleman is right about our very large Committee hearing. We are breaking all sorts of new bounds with this Committee. When we launch the report we are going to have some cartoons to accompany it. I think that will be a first for Parliament, too. As the right hon. Member for Wantage says, the real value of a garment comes not in its price but in the number of times it is worn. That is where we get real value. A £50 garment worn 100 times is better than a £5 dress that is worn just once.
Fashion Industry — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Alexander David Sobel (Labour, Centre-left): I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, our Committee Chair, for her foresight in bringing this inquiry forward at this time. It is absolutely the right time. Does she agree that it is shameful that one of the top 10 fashion retailers in this country, Kurt Geiger, refused point blank to provide evidence to our Committee? It must come forward with evidence before we get to the final report.
Fashion Industry — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Civil Rights
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): Yes. I thank my hon. Friend, who is also an enthusiastic participant in this inquiry. I had to do a bit of convincing, but this has been quite a revelation for us as a Committee. To have a nil response from Kurt Geiger is extraordinary. It is not too late for it to give us its response. I hope it will listen—its public relations firm is probably writing it a desperate note at the moment—and I hope its chief executive will take this issue on board. I will make one other point to the House. This House passed the Modern Slavery Act 2015. It is not clear to me which brands have or have not submitted modern slavery statements. I hope journalists listening to this debate do their own research into that.
Fashion Industry — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Mixed Topics
Kerry Gillian McCarthy (Labour, Centre-left): Trying to make ethical choices as a consumer can be really difficult, whether for food or fashion. I must admit that after sitting through one session I came to the conclusion that we would all be walking around in brown paper bags—recycled paper, of course—because there seems to be a problem with almost every type of clothing. Does the Chair of the Committee agree that the onus cannot just be on the consumer to shop around? We must require manufacturers and retailers to step up to the mark and make sure that what they put on the market is ethically sourced, whether it be in terms of labour, materials or the way they treat their workers and so on.
Fashion Industry — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Immigration
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Lady for her interest in this subject. Yes, we did hear such evidence, particularly in relation to Turkey and the Syrian refugee crisis. We heard about two 15-year-old Syrian boys working in a factory. The problem with the current model is that the factories are sending in auditors, but everybody knows when they visit. The factory looks spick and span and shiny, and they get shown the official set of accounts. A different set of accounts goes to the tax authorities and there is another set of accounts that controls workers’ wages. The whole supply chain is almost created to incentivise the abuse of manual workers, often women manual workers or what we would class as child manual workers, and we are just prepared to turn a blind eye. The fashion industry has been marking its own homework for far too long The traffic light labelling initiative is interesting. What we have tried to do with the 16 different initiatives is look at the landscape that exists at the moment, which is fragmented, complicated and difficult, to see how we can bring it all together and see what is being engaged with. I hope we can tackle some of these very bad labour abuses, not least in our own country.
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Mixed Topics
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is making a compelling speech. He is right that the situation has been ongoing for a very long time. The parliamentary ombudsman said—I have read some articles on this today—that people still have not yet been fully compensated, and some of them have actually died. We have raised this issue time and time again over the years. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who will speak shortly, has done a hell of a lot of good work on this. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on securing the debate.
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Katherine Anne Green (Labour, Centre-left): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman and his co-chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), on all the work they have done. I should declare an interest, in that I had an Equitable Life policy. I lost a very small amount of money, but over 2,000 of my constituents will have lost much more Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in addition to the financial benefits the Treasury would draw from money recirculating, doing such a thing would also mean that those former policyholders who are now having to look to other financial instruments to raise cash—such as equity release, which is equally inappropriate for them—would be protected from having to undertake other risky financial measures to sustain themselves in their old age?
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Fabian Hamilton (Labour, Centre-left): I start by paying tribute to my all-party parliamentary group co-chair, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who has given an excellent introduction and who has worked very hard indeed in the nine years that he has been in the House to try to bring about the justice that we all want for the victims of the Equitable Life scandal. I am sad that, after so many years of debating the issue, we are back here again today talking about the continuing losses suffered by hundreds of thousands of Equitable Life policyholders. They invested in the world’s oldest life assurance company in the belief that they would be able to live a comfortable old age, but instead, after a lifetime of saving, they find themselves sometimes destitute and often much poorer through no fault of their own. How have we arrived here, nearly 20 years after Equitable Life closed its doors to new investors and nine years after the Government promised to ensure that the losses incurred by Equitable Life policyholders would be fully compensated? I hope that hon. Members will permit me briefly to go back over some of the history of this sorry tale in order to give the House and the public some answers to these questions. My first involvement in the Equitable Life saga was to speak in a Westminster Hall debate that I led on 24 June 2009. In that debate, I spoke about the serious issues facing so many of our constituents since the crash of Equitable Life following its inability to meet obligations and promises made to investors over decades In July 2008, the parliamentary ombudsman published her first report on Equitable Life, entitled "Equitable Life: a decade of regulatory failure". On 11 December that year, the Public Administration Committee produced a report entitled "Justice delayed", in which it stated: "Over the last eight years many of those members and their families have suffered great anxiety as policy values were cut and pension payments reduced…Many are no longer alive, and will be unable to benefit personally from any compensation."
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Mixed Topics
Alexander David Sobel (Labour, Centre-left): I should like to thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for making the case for Equitable Life members. I should also like to pay tribute to my constituents, Ray and Marjorie Dunn, who have been brilliant campaigners for the Equitable Members Action Group. They have made these exact points: this has been going on for a very long time, and many pensioners are now well into their retirement and living in pensioner poverty because the Government have only partially compensated them. Is it not time for the Government to make up for their past mistakes?
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Other
Fabian Hamilton (Labour, Centre-left): Yes, indeed. I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for making that point. I know Ray and Marjorie Dunn very well—they correspond with me regularly—and I know that my hon. Friend has been a champion of their case and of many other cases in his constituency. I will go on to say a bit more about how I think they should be compensated.
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Domestic Commerce
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): Would my hon. Friend accept that one of the biggest problems is that we have had so many investigations into Equitable Life, and that it was not helpful that the previous Government did not accept the case of the financial ombudsman, right at the beginning? There was a lot of, dare I say, confusion and deliberate misleading, but that report was very clear on where the blame should lie. This has not helped the case of the Equitable Life fundholders.
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Fabian Hamilton (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. The ombudsman’s report did indeed make it clear that this was a catastrophic failure of regulation, and that the Government bore considerable responsibility for compensating those who had lost out. I will go on to say more about that in a minute The Public Administration Committee also stated: "We share both a deep sense of frustration and continuing outrage that the situation has remained unresolved for so long." That was more than 10 years ago. On 5 May 2009, Ann Abraham, the then parliamentary ombudsman, published a second report, "Injustice unremedied: the Government’s response on Equitable Life", in which she stated: "I was deeply disappointed that the Government chose to reject many of the findings that I had made, when I was acting independently on behalf of Parliament and after a detailed and exhaustive investigation." She concluded: "In this case, I am satisfied that the injustice I found in my report to have resulted from maladministration on the part of the public bodies responsible for the prudential regulation of the Society has not so far been remedied." There was certainly no shortage of reports—just a shortage of justice for those who had, through no fault of their own, suffered huge losses in the life savings they had accrued over years of hard work.
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): Order. I am not going to complain about the length of that speech, but if Members can try to speak for under 10 minutes, that would help the situation. All our constituents need the help and support of this House, and we need to hear these passionate speeches, but please try to help each other. The good news is that Sir Desmond Swayne has offered to undershoot in order to pull some time back.
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Mixed Topics
Mary Theresa Glindon (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for that question, which I will be addressing later It is frustrating for us to know that justice has not been done, but how much worse must be the anger and frustration of those who feel cheated? Today’s motion specifically calls upon the Government to make a commitment to provide full compensation to victims of the scandal, with the end of austerity now in sight. EMAG’s demands have been put forward reasonably. As the Chancellor announced in the Budget that austerity is over, it seems that the statement by one of the Minister’s predecessors, following a meeting with an APPG delegation two years ago, that the demands—the payment scheme funding for the pre-1992 annuitants and the £2.6 billion funding to recompense fully the 895,000 victims—could not be met because of public purse constraints, even if they were spread over a period, and because it would run contrary to the Government’s efforts to restore sustainability to the public finances, is no longer applicable. That has been mentioned by previous speakers, and I think the Minister will hear it again Paying these victims what they are owed will not only be doing what is right but will send out the message that people can and should save for their retirement, in the knowledge that the Government will protect them if such a scandal, heaven forbid, were ever to happen again. I hope the Minister will be able to assure Members present that the Equitable Life victims we represent are no longer subject to the constraints of austerity. It is shameful that the years of austerity were ever used as an excuse for the Government to deny their responsibility for paying these pensioners and future pensioners their entitlement My message to the Minister and the whole Treasury is that, in these times of trouble and uncertainty, they should take the opportunity to restore some faith in the Government and our Parliament by, at last, paying the Equitable Life policyholders their rightful due.
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): I fully concur with the points my hon. Friend and Conservative Members have made about the importance and dreadful nature of this scandal, and about the hard work that has been done by many local people. We have a group in my constituency, and its co-ordinator wrote me a moving and poignant letter about the problems that local people have has as a result of the Equitable Life scandal: some 2,000 people in my constituency have suffered. Once again, I concur with what he is saying and thank him for making this valuable point.
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Karen Elizabeth Lee (Labour, Centre-left): It is estimated that there are around 1,500 victims of the Equitable Life scandal in Lincoln, and I have been working closely with some of them. After years of campaigning, nearly 1 million people are still being told that their compensation is limited to less than a quarter of the loss that they have suffered, and many of those savers are nurses, teachers, civil servants and shop workers. They are not people with stocks of wealth to keep them in their old age. They have worked hard all their life and put money aside for a secure and peaceful retirement, just as the Government advised them to do. It is therefore completely unjust to expect them to accept only a fraction of the losses caused by administrative errors that were out of their control. In 2010, the Government accepted in full the parliamentary ombudsman’s findings that the victims of the scandal should be promptly compensated for their losses, and that those losses were directly attributable to chronic failures by the Treasury and regulators. The former Chancellor, the previous Member for Tatton, stood up in this House in October 2010 and implied that, despite accepting the ombudsman’s findings in full, the Government could not afford to allocate more than £1.5 billion for victims due to his choice of embarking on a damaging and counterproductive austerity project. It is worth remembering that, although there is cross-party support for this cause, every Member here knows that it was ordinary people who suffered under austerity, at the same time as very wealthy people got tax cuts, and those tax cuts were clearly the Government’s priority at that point.
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Other
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. During my brief intervention during the debate I was unable to mention that I have a close relative who was one of the policyholders and he has suffered as a result. I should like to add that for the benefit of the record.
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Other
Rosalie Winterton (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Member for his intervention and for giving me prior notice of it. I am sure that the House will appreciate it that as soon as possible he has been able to register the fact that he had a relative who was involved in the scheme.
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Other
Rosalie Winterton (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the right hon. Lady for her point of order. I am afraid that I was not here to hear what the Leader of the House said. It is not for the Chair to rule on possible discrepancies, if there are any, between statements from one Minister or another. However, she has put her concern on the record. The Treasury Bench will have heard her concerns. There is obviously the opportunity at business questions next week to raise this, but in the meantime if further clarification is required I am sure that the right hon. Lady will know that there are various ways in which she can raise that in the course of next week.
Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Other
Rosalie Winterton (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman has put his finger on the different interpretations that have been made of what the Leader of the House said. However, as I say, those on the Treasury Bench will have heard that there is perhaps a little confusion about exactly the position, and that it might be wise to clarify that before too long.
Maintained Nursery Schools — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Mixed Topics
Daniel Stephen Zeichner (Labour, Centre-left): It should absolutely not be. The one thing we can all probably agree on is that we would like all these providers to have a sustainable future. I have every sympathy for the other providers, who are also struggling with an underfunded system.
Maintained Nursery Schools — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Other
Rosalie Winterton (Labour, Centre-left): Order. Just before I call the next speaker, I am anxious to ensure that everybody has a good time slot and so I urge hon. Members to take 10 minutes and no more. In that way, we will be able to get everybody in and they will be able to have an equal amount of time.
State Pension Age: Women — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Civil Rights
Darren Paul Jones (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that our constituents look to us and to this place to get action, and that the Government’s leaving this situation to be dealt with in the courts shows a failure of the political process? The WASPI women—the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—should not have to go to court to have their voices heard.
State Pension Age: Women — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Other
Antonia Louise Antoniazzi (Labour, Centre-left): That is exactly the situation we are in, and it is really sad—it upsets me, and it is frustrating. My constituents ask me what is being done, where we are and what we are doing, and this debate is an opportunity for the Government to respond to those questions.
State Pension Age: Women — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Immigration
Tracy Lynn Brabin (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is being empathetic and humane in her statement. There are nearly 6,000 WASPI women in my constituency, one of whom—a nurse called Sue—has been told she has to work another six years. The situation would be manageable if the Government were not so entrenched in their position of not agreeing to transitional arrangements. Does my hon. Friend agree on that?
State Pension Age: Women — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Eugene Joseph Dromey (Labour, Centre-left): First, let me congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. There are 30,000 WASPI women in Birmingham and they are Birmingham’s best. They helped Birmingham and Britain, and they deserve justice and not to have their plans for retirement completely jeopardised by the Government’s shameful behaviour thus far. Does she agree not only that they deserve justice in terms of transitional arrangements, but that everyone should do everything they can, and that if Andy Burnham can introduce free fares in Greater Manchester for WASPI women, Andy Street can do the same in the west midlands?
State Pension Age: Women — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Mixed Topics
Rupa Asha Huq (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making an impassioned, compelling and informed case. We have all had letters from people complaining not necessarily about what has been done, but about the way it has been done. I had a letter from Christina Fitzgerald, who has osteoarthritis, which makes it difficult enough to work as it is. One would think the Government would learn from their mistakes, but is my hon. Friend as scandalised as I am by the fact that only last week they snuck out another change for WASPI women? For people of mixed-age couples, from here on in, it will be only when the younger one reaches pensionable age that either of them will be allowed to claim their pension credit. Is not this yet another case of women having banked on something only to have the rug ripped from under their feet by this awful Government?