argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
David Anderson (Labour, Centre-left): It has been a bad week for the Chancellor. It was his eighth Budget and sixteenth economic statement, so he ought to know better. The Budget unravelled in 24 hours and then it got worse: outrage at PIP cuts as it became clear that the disabled were being sacrificed for the rich; education in chaos as he forced academisation on every school, using our kids in his war against local government; stealth cuts on the NHS and local government, with changes to employer pension contributions; and, to cap it all, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions giving in after six years This latest mess only builds on the Chancellor’s catalogue of failure. He is still nowhere near eliminating the deficit, despite his plans to have done so two years ago. In February, we had the lowest manufacturing output for four years. National debt is up 50% under this Chancellor—up to an eye-watering £1.6 trillion—and he has lurched from one missed target to another. He has blamed everybody and everything except himself. He blamed the Greeks. He blamed the Queen for having a jubilee holiday. He even blamed the snow. He did not find any money down the back of the settee this week, unlike the £27 billion he found miraculously before Christmas Who pays for the Chancellor’s folly? Who else but the poor, the vulnerable and the sick—those least able to fight back. The Resolution Foundation has him bang to rights. It showed that what the Budget really means is that on average the richest will get a £225 rise, while the poorest might get a measly rise of £10 a year. In fact, it shows that, with other changes and the cuts announced since last year, the richest in our nation can expect to be £235 a year better off, while the poorest will be £375 a year worse off by the end of this Parliament. He is the Robin Hood-in-reverse Chancellor. He has made a career out of making the poorest in our country even poorer It is worse than that, however, because in an amazing show of puffed-up pride, the Chancellor stated in his speech that the northern powerhouse is "the most radical devolution of power in modern British history."—[Official Report, 16 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 960.] Has he not heard what is happening in Scotland and in Northern Ireland, where they are running their own affairs, getting extra money and having proper devolution?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Government Operations
Mary Theresa Glindon (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that devolution for the north-east is no deal at all? It is a raw deal, because we cannot even agree between councils what we want. We are just not getting the real democracy we need.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Social Welfare
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): Let me begin like this "My husband was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and has not been able to work since. We are now reliant on the ESA he receives. There is nothing more that either of us want than for life to somehow return to normal and for him to be able to return to the job he loves. We did not choose these dreadful circumstances—the benefits system is intended to protect those in society as much as possible when things go badly wrong. Forcing people in very difficult circumstances into poverty seems an outrageous way for any government to behave." That is a letter from one of my constituents, and she is absolutely correct. More than 9,000 Brent residents rely on ESA to live independently and with dignity. Their income has been cut by £30 per week, and the cut in the PIP would have caused 640,000 disabled people to lose up to a further £3,500 a year by 2020. It is therefore with great relief that many of them will have watched the Government’s U-turn on the proposed £4.4 billion cut. However, disabled people in my constituency have already suffered real hardship under this Government as a result of the bedroom tax, the benefit cap, the benefits uprating policy, the scrapping of disability living allowance, and the 12-month time limit on contributory ESA Yesterday the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said in his statement that the Government would not be making further cuts in to the welfare budget, but that gives the Chancellor a serious problem. He has a fiscal charter which enshrines in law that he must achieve a budgetary surplus by 2020. Last Wednesday, he believed that in order to meet that fiscal charter, he had to make £4.4 billion of cuts affecting the most vulnerable people in our society, because he wanted to cut corporation tax and capital gains tax and to raise the higher-rate income tax threshold to benefit the very richest. If he is genuinely not seeking to identify other cuts in services to offset that £4.4 billion, it is essential that we are told how he does propose to balance the books. The choice is simple: he must make further cuts in services, increase taxes, or fail to meet his own fiscal charter The inescapable facts of the Chancellor’s record will come back to haunt him. In 2010, he promised to balance the books by 2015. He did not. This year, he has a deficit of £72 billion. He has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 83.7%, and productivity failure means that manufacturing still lags behind its 2008 level. This is the failing Budget of a failing Chancellor who lacked the courage to come to this House and explain its collapse yesterday. That failure branded him a coward. Today he came to the House, but his failure to apologise to the most vulnerable in our society has branded him a nasty coward.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
Stephen James McCabe (Labour, Centre-left): Most Budgets lose a bit of their lustre as the days wear on, but this one started to disintegrate before it was delivered, during its delivery and, spectacularly, afterwards. First there was the great pension reform that never materialised. Then the pound suffered a rocky period as Mr Memory—not!—tried to forget the deficit and the borrowing, and the fact that growth and exports should by now be seeing the sunny uplands as he had predicted. He then managed to knock down the share value of A.G. Barr, Britvic and Tate & Lyle with his clumsily scrabbled together announcement of the sugar tax. What we have learned over eight Budgets is that this guy has run out of excuses and is rapidly running out of friends. He is now correcting previous Budget errors—his errors. We see a cut in capital gains tax, which he increased in 2010, an increase in insurance premiums to pay for his cuts to flood defences, cuts in North sea taxes from the man who ignored advice and increased them in 2011, and a promised cut in business rates for small business, except that local authorities were promised such rates only four months ago, which is another £1.7 billion unaccounted for. The Government say that local authorities will be compensated, but will they be only blue authorities as usual What are we left with? We have the abolition of class 2 national insurance contributions, which on the surface will help the self-employed, although we need an assurance that it is not a cunning ploy to make them ineligible for employment and support allowance and another hidden welfare cut. Personal allowances will be raised, which is good for the top half of earners. There are also some new capital projects. The Chancellor is cutting corporation tax, which helps the service sector, but there is no sign of the rebalancing of the economy that he promised. There is nothing for manufacturing on capital allowances, and, of course, 9% of the catapult innovation resources is going to the Midlands and 46% to London. There is not a hint of support for the WASPI campaign. We have seen a legacy of 14% council tax increases, meaning an average of £162 for Birmingham households, to pay for his cuts to the police and social care. That is his plan for Birmingham In the fall-out of the Budget, we have been told that there are no new plans to attack the disabled. However, in a little-noted item, the Department for Work and Pensions is to receive £22 million to hire more staff to defeat disabled people’s claims at PIP tribunals. Maybe there will be more cuts for the disabled after all. The Chancellor has failed. He has broken every promise. He is finished.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
Tristram Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): I think we can all agree that this has been a pretty disastrous Budget, and that was the case even before the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) revealed the Government’s extraordinary mendacity in their pursuit of policies for political purposes rather than for the national economic interest. What is worse, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) said, they are hammering the working-age poor because they do not vote Conservative Even on the Chancellor’s own terms, it is a shocking state of affairs. He has breached two of his three fiscal rules. Indeed, this Budget might end the period of fiscal rules that we have enjoyed for the past two decades. He has failed to meet his commitments to get debt falling as a share of GDP each year and he has failed to cap welfare spending. He tried to sweeten that with a spoonful of sucrose replacement, but we all saw through it The Chancellor is on track to meet only his third target, because he is deploying all sorts of fiscal shenanigans. He is rescheduling capital investment and shifting a one-off boost to corporation tax receipts. We also have to find £3.5 billion in unprotected spending. The Chancellor is now set to borrow £38 billion more over the course of this Parliament than he planned just four months ago. Worst of all, this Parliament of productivity has stalled at the first outing. The OBR is clear on the collapse of productivity, even over the past six months Where I do agree with the Government is on the risk posed to our economy by fears of Brexit. The latest evidence from the CBI spells out the immediate costs to the British economy. Why, at a time of such fragile economic growth, would we knowingly want to turn our back on one of the most successful single markets in the world The key issue that we look at today is the morality of this Budget. To balance the books, the Prime Minister has chosen to focus on the weakest and most vulnerable in society. As the IFS has reported, the Government’s tax and benefit changes have "resulted in significant losses for those of working age in the bottom half of the income distribution." Then came the hit on the disabled, with the assault on PIP, now thankfully reversed. But who gained from all that? Well, it was those paying capital gains tax. Half went to 35,000 individuals with incomes of £100,000 a year or more. It is a totally shocking result. According to the Resolution Foundation, the poorest 30% of households are set to lose around £565 by 2020, while the richest 30% of households are set to gain around £280. That is the morality of the Conservative party, and that is why we will be voting against the Budget tonight.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
Angela Rayner (Labour, Centre-left): Last week, the Chancellor told us that he would put stability first, choose the long term and deliver real opportunity and social mobility. I am afraid that this Government have not appeared very stable since that statement and, far from being long term, the Budget that was delivered only last week appears to have been abandoned before we have even come to vote on it I suppose there was some opportunity and social mobility, even if it was limited to the Department for Work and Pensions. The former Secretary of State revealed the simple truth in his resignation letter: this is a Chancellor who puts his career before the country. Even by his own fiscal rules, he has failed, and blaming Labour will just not wash. This was a Budget not for the long-term interests of the country, but for the short-term interests of his ambition to lead the country—an ambition that seems to have unravelled almost as fast as his Budget As remarkable as it is to watch what has unfolded on the Government Benches, my concern is what is happening for my constituents in Ashton-under-Lyne. My constituent Marie has worked all her life, but then, unfortunately, developed hymphoedema as a secondary of breast cancer. She should be entitled to a dignified life while managing her condition, and this Budget has sought to deny her that One borough that sits in my constituency is Oldham, and under this Government, Oldham is now the most deprived town in England, according to the latest figures of the Office for National Statistics. Since 2010, more than half of the council’s income has been taken away. Real jobs are lost, real services are withdrawn and the most vulnerable suffer the worst. Our local economy and businesses suffer. Meanwhile, councils such as Surrey, given minimal cuts to local government finance in the first place, now receive a sweetener of nearly £12 million on top. Guess what the two local authorities serving my constituency, Oldham and Tameside, received: a big fat zero. Of course, the Chancellor has revealed exactly why that is the case; people in my constituency do not vote for the Conservatives Cuts to ESA to fund tax cuts, proposed cuts for the working poor through tax credits and universal credit—if the cruelty was not bad enough, the incompetence is now becoming obvious as well. In the last Parliament, we saw plans to tax everything from caravans to pasties proposed and abandoned, and this year the Chancellor becomes the first Chancellor in history to have to accept not one but two amendments to his own Budget resolution just days after he tabled it. Mr Speaker, I do not need three minutes to tell you about this Chancellor. I have three words, and they are "Not good enough".
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
Geraint Richard Davies (Labour, Centre-left): What a shambles from the Wizard of Osborne, with the revelation that the tin man, the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has a heart. I do not really believe it myself—I believe that he is thinking of jobs after Brexit with the Mayor of London, but other people will have other views. Of course, we now have a new Secretary of State, the former Welsh Secretary, who has just done a U-turn on the Wales Bill and has now done a U-turn on disability payments. I never thought that crabs did anything other than move sideways, but there we are. He was cheering away at the Budget a few days ago, but apparently now he does not agree with it As usual, the Wizard of Osborne has blamed Labour, but let us not forget that in the 10 years to 2008 the economy grew under Labour by 40%, some 4% a year, whereas that figure is now about 2%. We left debt as a share of GDP at 55% and it is now 83%. Why is that? Because of economic failure and slow productivity growth. Why is that? Because we have low investment in research and development and in infrastructure compared with the rest of the developed world. In particular, that is focused on London and the south-east and not in the north, in Wales or elsewhere I welcome the sugar tax, which I have been fighting for and which is a good idea—taxing something bad to invest in something good while costing the health service less. Similarly, I would have liked the Chancellor to take bold steps on air pollution, as 40,000 people a year are dying from diesel pollution, costing £20 billion a year, but of course he did not have the guts to re-tilt the fiscal structure for taxes and incentives to promote a sustainable green transport system. Instead, we have this epidemic of pregnant women having their babies’ mental health affected, children losing their lung capacity and so on. It is time that the Chancellor took that seriously I welcome the reduction in the Severn bridge toll, but that could have been reduced to a quarter of the price to cover operational costs as opposed to half the price, as the Government will continue to make a large margin of profit by basically putting a tax on trade with Wales. I welcome the news that there might be a new city deal for Swansea and the fact that the Chancellor is still trying to support the EU. The reality is that if we do have Brexit, as IDS and others want, we will be turning our backs on a large market. The argument that we are essentially net importers does not follow because, in essence, that applies only to Germany and Spain Finally, I should mention the other stealth tax from employers’ contributions on pensions, which is a back-door cut for the Welsh Government that I resist. In a nutshell, this is a sheriff of Nottingham Budget that I resist.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
Rachael Helen Maskell (Labour, Centre-left): This was a Budget about words, not wisdom. I want to focus on that because we have now had six years of the Chancellor presiding over a very worrying economic picture while using a narrative to disguise the fragile place into which he has put our economy. It is also a Budget that exposed the worst aspects of the cruel, callous and uncaring Conservatives, crushing disabled people and some of the most vulnerable and economically disadvantaged groups in our society. Those actions over the past six years have worried me as the weaknesses in the structure of the economy have not been addressed and the economy has been used to deliver a political agenda, not productivity and not fiscal security This is leading to a risk shift, increasingly away from Government to local communities and individuals—those who cannot weather the storm. Politicians can use any words they want, but what lingers behind those words is what matters. Apprenticeships are not apprenticeships any more, the living wage is not a living wage, and affordable housing is unaffordable. Remember the phrase "long-term economic plan"? I will let hon. Members work that one out for themselves I know the impact of all this in my local community and on my local economy. York has a low-wage, insecure and high cost of living economy where housing is now inaccessible. We heard about the next generation being better off. With the debts that young people now carry and the difficulty in accessing housing, I was interested in the lifetime ISA, which will mean that the people who are least worse off will get £1,000, while those struggling with tax credit cuts and increased in-work poverty will feel the pinch I hang my head in shame at the way that disabled people are treated in the Budget. No compassion there. That takes me back to the economic picture which I worry so much about. The Chancellor has borrowed more than all Labour Chancellors put together throughout history, and wants to borrow even more now. The question is what he will do with that money. We know from our economic experts how to invest that money to lead not to a growing debt, but to growing productivity. When the Chancellor has had to cut his own growth targets twice in the past six months, from 2.4% to 2.2% and now to 2%, he is admitting that his economic plan is not working. He did not clear the deficit in the previous Parliament, and it seems that with this omnishambles Budget he will not do so in this Parliament either I am worried, and I am most worried about the people I represent. In six years of low productivity, their insecurity and risks are rising, the local economy in York is totally inequitable—a two-speed economy, as it is known, speeding up for those who are well off—
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Education
Kate Ofunne Osamor (Labour, Centre-left): I would like to focus my speech on the announcements in the Budget that all schools will be forced to become academies by 2020. This will lead to a fundamental shift in the way education is managed in this country, turning education into a business. I am concerned that, like most businesses, it will benefit the richer, and leave behind those who most need educational reform. This is a concern echoed by the public. More than 100,000 people have signed a petition to hold a public inquiry and a referendum on turning all schools into academies I have a history of campaigning against forced academisation. Before becoming an MP, I campaigned against forced academisation in Haringey. The experience taught me how much community support there is for the state sector in Britain, and how much people care about their schools having the right priorities for their children. Forced academisation is a costly exercise. The timing of this move appears highly questionable. At a time when councils, especially Labour-run councils, are having their budgets cut by 79%, and when they are having to make severe cuts to valuable front-line services, money spent on forced academisation seems like a political exercise, rather than money well spent Roy Perry, chairman of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board, stated: "With mixed evidence about academisation improving standards and when public spending is facing significant cuts imposing academisation on schools regardless of local opinion cannot be an appropriate use of public money." This policy was not in the Conservative manifesto. There needs to be proper debate and scrutiny, looking into the cost and how the policy will affect local communities Academies do not solve the big problems facing our schools—problems of a shortage of teachers, a shortage of head teachers, and increasing class sizes. Until we look at all those aspects, we should not proceed with academisation.