argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
AUKUS — House of Commons, 2021-09-16
Topic: Defense
John Francis Spellar (Labour, Centre-left): I warmly welcome the deepening of our defence and security relationships with our long-standing friends and allies, Australia and the United States, and the bipartisan support for that, not only here but in Australia. At its base, must not this agreement ultimately also be part of the defence not only of our interests but of the rules-based international order, democracy and human rights, and an alliance of democracies? Does the Prime Minister accept that foreign aid soft power is an important component of that too?
AUKUS — House of Commons, 2021-09-16
Topic: Defense
Chinyelu Susan Onwurah (Labour, Centre-left): I am pleased that the Government recognise the importance of protecting and growing sovereign and allied strategic capability, especially given their recent attempt to hand over domestic nuclear power capability to the Chinese. During the passage of the National Security and Investment Bill and the Telecoms (Security) Bill, Labour called for just such partnerships with countries that share our values to develop key technologies such as 6G. Can the Prime Minister set out how he plans to develop further partnerships, and whether European countries might be included?
Criminal Justice System: Families Bereaved by Public Disasters — House of Commons, 2021-09-16
Topic: Health
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way on that important point. The debate is obviously centred on Hillsborough, but the lessons apply to other public disasters such as the contaminated blood scandal. The people who have been infected and affected by that scandal stand in solidarity with what she proposes: to ensure that no other family ever has to go through what the Hillsborough families have gone through.
Aid Budget Reduction: Humanitarian Impact — House of Commons, 2021-06-15
Topic: Health
Preet Kaur Gill (Labour, Centre-left): COVAX aimed to deliver 2 billion doses of vaccine to countries around the world in 2021. Six months in, less than 5% of that total has been shipped. To rapidly vaccinate health workers and older people in low-income countries, we must address global shortages with a global plan to increase production of vaccines and equitable access. Instead, what we got this weekend from a Prime Minister who has been in perennial retreat from the world stage was a commitment to 5 million doses by the end of September, and a vague commitment to more at some point over the next 12 months. Does the Secretary of State agree that cutting the aid budget while most of his counterparts were increasing theirs made it harder for the Prime Minister to play a leadership role at the G7, and that the cuts are a key reason for the Prime Minister’s abject failure to deliver a comprehensive strategy that accelerates global vaccine access so that we can achieve at least 70% coverage in all countries and end the pandemic as quickly as possible?
Iran — House of Commons, 2021-06-15
Topic: Defense
Fabian Hamilton (Labour, Centre-left): I join the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) in sending our thoughts and best wishes to the victims of the terrible attack on the HALO Trust staff in Afghanistan. Ten people were murdered and many more injured, and I am sure the whole House would want to send best wishes and sympathies The proposed plan to increase the UK’s stockpile of nuclear warheads has made it abundantly clear that the Government have ditched multilateralism and embraced unilateralism. Such a reckless move is out of step with all our allies and will have a big impact on our ability to participate in nuclear non-proliferation agreements such as the JCPOA with Iran. What impact does the Foreign Secretary think the proposed increase in warheads will have on our international standing, given that we appear to have abandoned our obligations under article 6 of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty? Will he recommit to those obligations today?
Aid Budget Reduction: Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2021-06-15
Topic: Health
Alexander Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): That is simply not good enough. With the failure of the Prime Minister to deliver a credible plan at the G7 for vaccinating the world compounding his savage cuts of 80% to clean water and sanitation programmes, which we all know are the best way of slowing the spread of covid-19, does the Minister agree that the scale and impact of these cuts on the lives and life chances of the poorest people in the world are devastating and that the pandemic will kill more people and actually last longer as a result?
Catch-up Premium — House of Commons, 2021-06-15
Topic: Health
Neil Coyle (Labour, Centre-left): It is unfair of the hon. Member to reveal that I am nicer outside the Chamber The hon. Member is actually using a different figure. He is using a per capita model, not the raw death toll. We have the highest death toll in Europe by number of population overall.
Covid-Secure Borders — House of Commons, 2021-06-15
Topic: Health
Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds (Labour, Centre-left): Because nobody can provide 100% protection against anything—[Hon. Members: "Oh!"] Conservative Members jeer, but it is about time they took a bit of responsibility for the failure of their Government. They argue with me about comprehensive hotel quarantine, but not one of them had the courage to vote against it in the Lobby in February. They have completely failed to put in place every possible measure that they should have implemented. That is a comprehensive failure Between 6 January, when the third national lockdown in England began, and the end of April, 1.59 million people flew into the UK. Only a tiny percentage underwent hotel quarantine. Most damaging of all was the abject failure to add India to the red list in time. Even if the Government had refused to introduce hotel quarantine, which they should have done, it was clear that more countries needed to be added to the red list. Pakistan and Bangladesh were added on 9 April, yet the Prime Minister waited 14 more days before adding India. Civil Aviation Authority figures suggest that at least 20,000 passengers who might have been infected with the delta variant arrived from India between 2 and 23 April—a staggering number. It is unbelievably reckless that on his list of priorities, the Prime Minister put having his photograph taken with Prime Minister Modi ahead of protecting jobs and the safety of this country. Nobody is blaming people who travelled when they were permitted to do so. The blame lies with the UK Government for their unjustifiable delay Last night at the Dispatch Box, the Health Secretary claimed that he took a decision based on the evidence available to him at the time. On 1 April—the day before he says he took the decision—India recorded the highest one-day spike in 2021. It was hardly a secret; it was on newspaper front pages. Cases were surging, and there it was—publicly available—but it seems it did not prompt him to act. It has also been reported that on the same day, Ministers knew about the delta variant being discovered in the UK, but that did not prompt him to act either. The Government must now publish the risk assessments that were done on India by the Joint Biosecurity Centre, so that we may have maximum transparency on exactly how that disastrous decision to delay was made Last night, I heard the Health Secretary claim that we on the Labour Benches called for India to be added to the red list with the benefit of hindsight. What nonsense! If the Conservatives had listened to us on the Labour Benches and voted with us, protections would have been in place from February. I have the Hansard, and the Health Secretary can check the facts in Hansard, if he wants to. Let us hear no more about hindsight. We want Ministers to show some judgment and foresight.
G7 and NATO Summits — House of Commons, 2021-06-16
Topic: Health
Hilary James Benn (Labour, Centre-left): The G7 announcement of 1 billion additional vaccine doses for developing countries was, of course, welcome, but the Prime Minister knows that the head of the World Health Organisation says that we need 11 billion doses in total if we are to vaccinate 70% of the world population. Where does the right hon. Gentleman think that the rest of those doses will come from, so that everyone can be safe because everyone is vaccinated?
G7 and NATO Summits — House of Commons, 2021-06-16
Topic: Health
Liam Dominic Byrne (Labour, Centre-left): The original Atlantic charter made a commitment to banish from the world "fear and want"—curiously missing from the redraft—but the Prime Minister’s ambition to vaccinate the world by the end of 2022 is the right one. The IMF’s assessment of the deal done on Monday, however, is that two thirds of the grant financing needed to vaccinate the world is still missing—that is $23 billion. The question for the Prime Minister is: where is that money going to come from and when?
G7 and NATO Summits — House of Commons, 2021-06-16
Topic: Defense
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): The Prime Minister talks proudly about our commitment to NATO. That, of course, depends on having a strong military in the United Kingdom. Does he regret his decision to break his election promise and cut the armed forces by 10,000?
Coronavirus — House of Commons, 2021-06-16
Topic: Health
Graham Eric Stringer (Labour, Centre-left): I will not be joining the Secretary of State in the Lobby later on, partly for civil liberties reasons, but I do agree with what he is saying about vaccination. About four years ago, the Science and Technology Committee looked at the level of flu vaccination in care homes, which at that time was about 20%. Flu, like covid, is a killer of elderly people. Will he be looking to make not only covid vaccination, but flu vaccination a condition of employment?
Coronavirus — House of Commons, 2021-06-16
Topic: Health
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): On someone proving that they are double vaccinated, there is still an issue between England and Wales and other parts of the UK. I wonder when that will be solved, because obviously everybody does not live in a hermetically sealed unit.
Coronavirus — House of Commons, 2021-06-16
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I begin by paying tribute to our much-missed friend and colleague Jo Cox. Jo was an internationalist, and I know that, if she were with us today, she would be rallying support not just across this country but through her international contacts for a campaign to vaccinate the world. She would remind us that we will defeat this virus only through our common endeavour. I think that all of us miss Jo and want to send our best wishes to her family today We will support the extension of restrictions in the Lobbies tonight, but we of course do so with a heavy heart. We are guided by data not dates, and we have to recognise the facts before us. The delta variant is 60% more transmissible than the alpha, and even with the current restrictions in place the daily total of positive cases has been rising, with a seven-day rolling average of more than 7,000 per day compared with around 2,000 per day in early May. That is beginning to translate into hospitalisations. With cases doubling every nine days, at the moment it looks like hospitalisations are also doubling. On 4 June, 96 people with covid were admitted; nine days later, 187 people were admitted—almost double. If that continues to double, within four sets of doublings we will be close to the April 2020 peak Given that we know that there is always a lag in the figures, we are no doubt likely to see around 250 admissions a day in 10 days’ time. We are seeing a third wave in the NHS. We need to do all that we can to stop hospitalisations rising, because this is a time of huge pressure on the national health service. We have lost a number of beds over the past 10 years, and because of the need for infection control measures we have fewer general and acute beds open today in the NHS as well. We are facing a monumental backlog in care, with 5 million people on the waiting list, more than 385,000 waiting over 12 months for treatment, and nearly 3,000 now waiting over two years for treatment Throughout the crisis, we have said that the NHS was not overwhelmed, but it was not overwhelmed only because of some of the terrible choices that had to be made. To be frank, I do not want to see the NHS forced to make choices between providing covid care and cancer care. That is why we should listen to those NHS leaders who have warned us about the increasing pressures on the NHS. Chris Hopson of NHS Providers said: "The NHS is running hot at the moment dealing with backlog recovery and emergency care pressures." The NHS Confederation said: "Health leaders are very aware of the damaging effects that prolonged social restrictions could have on the nation’s physical health and mental wellbeing…Yet, according to our survey the majority of NHS leaders are concerned about the risks that lifting prematurely could have on the NHS’s ability to cope".
Coronavirus — House of Commons, 2021-06-16
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a good point. Of course I want to see terminus day. I want to see freedom; I want to get back to doing the things that I enjoy—although I am quite happy to sit in a group of six in a pub; I am not sure that I have more than six friends, Mr Deputy Speaker, so it has suited me in many ways. But more generally—[Interruption.] I see you have one less friend today, Secretary of State I am keen to see terminus day. But interestingly, although the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Secretary of State have tried to hint that restrictions are coming to an end by using the new phrase, "We have to learn to live with the virus like we live with flu," the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister have not outlined to us what that means. They are trying to suggest to us that it is all going to go back to normal, but actually we put in place mitigations to deal with flu year by year. The hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) was a Public Health Minister. He was very much involved in the flu vaccination campaign. We vaccinate children to deal with flu. We put infection control measures into care homes when there is a flu outbreak. There will have to be mitigations in place when we go back to living with this virus, but the Secretary of State must explain to us what those mitigations are. Will we continue wearing masks?
Armed Forces Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-11
Topic: Defense
Roger Norman Freeman (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I add my congratulations to the three maiden speakers today. They were exemplary. I have some past experience; in the other place one of my tasks for the Conservative Government was to brief those who were making maiden speeches—to a slightly larger House, perhaps, and perhaps suffering greater nerves than those who made the three very professional speeches today. I address my two Conservative colleagues, who are most welcome, and I congratulate them on their most excellent speeches I want to make two brief observations and then ask a question of the Minister. My first observation is that the way in which your Lordships consider the legitimacy of Armed Forces operations is rather rigid, in the sense that we are now looking at provisions that were effectively put in place in 2006. After five years there was a review, but it was relatively perfunctory, and we are now looking forward to 2021. That seems to be slightly inflexible. There may be opportunities: for example, Orders in Council could be in due course tabled in your Lordships’ House as a Motion, so there could be some discussion. Compared with the operations in the private sector and the business sector—issues affecting business are debated regularly in your Lordships’ House—it seems to be a rather inflexible procedure. That is simply an observation My second observation concerns the liability of reserve forces for prosecution by Armed Forces authorities. I speak as the past president of the Reserve Forces Association. I thank the Minister for his briefing on the subject. A number of your Lordships met the Minister for a briefing on this Bill. The answers that the Minister very kindly gave at that briefing were, to my mind, very satisfactory, but there is some doubt, and I shall continue to monitor it. When Reserve Forces are off duty—they may be travelling to their depot, for example—there may be a period of time when they are not actually serving as Reserve Forces and their liability under military law is sometimes in doubt. But I thank the Minister for the briefing and do not intend to press him My question refers to the protection of our Armed Forces abroad, under the judicial proceedings that might occur in the country in which they have been operating. There has been some progress, and the Minister kindly brought your Lordships up to date on the subject. But I wonder whether he could bring us finally up to date as to the legitimate protection afforded to British forces who find themselves persecuted or possibly charged by overseas legal authorities for actions committed in the course of conflict. I am clear that the proceedings should be under UK or British auspices and back in this country.
Armed Forces Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-11
Topic: Defense
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, as I said, and I hope the noble Lord will agree, it is very important that we get this right. I was reassured by the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, who said he did not feel personally that this was the right Bill in which to enact any changes. I am as eager as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, to see this matter sorted out and I have no doubt that we can return to it in Committee—in fact, I think it would be useful to do so—but I am not yet persuaded that we are in the right place to legislate in the time available to us for the Bill The vast majority of UK service personnel have conducted themselves highly professionally and have acted in accordance with policy and legal obligations. However, in the context of the work done by the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, or IHAT, which has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords, the law requires that allegations that crimes have been committed by members of the UK forces should be investigated. In our view, the IHAT is necessary, given the unprecedented number of allegations. Having this independent investigative body has enabled us to defeat the claimants’ attempt to persuade the court to order a single public inquiry, which would have taken many years and costed an estimated £200 million. The IHAT investigations can be completed more quickly and cheaply, ending sooner the uncertainty faced by service personnel It is true that the IHAT’s investigations have not yet resulted in any prosecutions. However, it has completed a number of investigations. The lack of prosecutions is because in some cases the evidence showed that no criminal offence was committed, while in others the evidence did not meet the domestic test for bringing a prosecution. It has taken a long time because it is far more difficult to carry out investigations into events in Iraq then events in England. Witnesses are often difficult to locate and to interview. The solicitors representing those claimants have also been extremely unco-operative, even though they called the investigations in the first place. I can assure the House that the IHAT is getting on with its job as promptly and professionally as it can. I urge the House not to interpret the absence of any measures on this in this Bill as an indication of our intent to do something. Work is in hand and we will set out proposals as soon as we are able.
Coronavirus — House of Commons, 2021-06-16
Topic: Health
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): May I start by associating myself with the many Members who have paid tribute to Jo Cox? As we have heard from the tributes, she transcended intake and party in bringing people together, and my thoughts are with her family at this time There have been many excellent speeches from both sides of the Chamber. People who will be voting different ways often made many similar points. I believe that shows the disappointment that we all feel that we are here once again, grappling with many overlapping and multiple considerations There were some particularly thought-provoking Opposition speeches, by my hon. Friends the Members for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), for Luton North (Sarah Owen), for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) and for Stockport (Navendu Mishra). I particularly enjoyed the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North and her repeated use of the word hopeless—a word that I am sure is on many people’s lips at the moment. She was right that we have been here before—at Christmas, with the Prime Minister dangling the carrot of freedom before pulling it away at the last minute. It is the hallmark of a Prime Minister who struggles to deliver bad news to the public My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East made the similar point that there is a pattern here of the Government making the same mistakes over and over again. He also rightly highlighted the continuing failure to provide adequate financial support for those who self-isolate—a point that was also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport and is particularly apposite today, when a Government report has reached the news which states that the current self-isolation policy has "low to medium" effectiveness and that there are "barriers" to self-isolation. That is a point that we have been making since the start of the pandemic, so it is about time the Government listened to us and to their own advisers and fixed it It would be remiss of me not to highlight the fantastic contribution from my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester, who drew attention to how the announcement came out, once again, via the media. He also raised an important point about the enhanced measures that a number of areas, including our own county of Cheshire, have been put into this week. Unfortunately, we have seen a surge in cases, but there is apparently no prospect of our getting a rise in vaccines.
Coronavirus — House of Commons, 2021-06-16
Topic: Health
Taiwo Owatemi (Labour, Centre-left): When I spoke to my fellow healthcare professionals in my local hospital vaccination centre weeks ago, many expressed their concerns about the delta variant and its possible impact on the local NHS and on delaying lockdown. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to do more to prevent workplace burnout by providing more workplace support to our fellow healthcare professionals, who have spent the past 18 months supporting the Government through their incompetency?
Ajax Armoured Vehicle Procurement — House of Commons, 2021-09-09
Topic: Defense
Emma Louise Lewell-Buck (Labour, Centre-left): Time and time again, when it comes to defence procurement, programmes are beset by delays, costs spiralling out of control and poor oversight—in short, the abysmal contract management of public money. Ajax has been no different. The Minister will recall dodging any responsibility in July’s Defence Committee sitting for the failings of this programme. A lessons learned review was then promised over the summer. Where is it?