argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
UK Infrastructure Bank Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-04
Topic: Energy
Robin Teverson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I also welcome the Minister’s and the Government’s change of mind, if you like, on including energy efficiency specifically in the Bill. We all know that the International Energy Agency cried out about developed nations not doing anything about energy efficiency. We also know that it is the cheapest and most effective option: this programme would avoid huge amounts of further capital expenditure. We have not been good at making sure that we pursue that for our housing or building stock Having said that, energy efficiency, as measured by output against energy per year, has gradually increased over the years in this economy. This is the silent way of reducing the energy bills that so many of us receive in our inboxes these days—I was going to say through our letterboxes—and I really welcome that. But it is not enough I put down an amendment, similar to the noble Baroness’s, on including "biodiversity" and the recovery of nature as an objective. I do not understand why the Government do not find it straightforward to include this, because it accepts that there is a biodiversity emergency. The Treasury in particular produced the fantastic Dasgupta report, which went through the whole area of natural capital, partly covering how we can solve this issue but also clearly painting the challenges. I congratulate the Treasury on having initiated that report but perhaps not quite so much on the follow-up to date. But here is an opportunity to put this into the Bill However, if we cannot have this as an objective in the Bill, I very much support Amendment 6A tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, which references "the circular economy, and nature-based solutions" This could be a major step for government policy on the circular economy, which was very well described by the noble Baroness. But I get the impression that, out there in the real world, people are enthusiastic about local repair shops and being able to mend the stuff they buy so that they do not have to buy it again, saving money and resources and helping on climate change. So, the circular economy element is equally important Of course, nature-based solutions are a natural way—literally—not just for a number of climate change and biodiversity recipes but to help the natural environment in all sorts of ways. They do this more cheaply and, compared to just pouring concrete, have wider effects, as we know, on areas of adaptation like water quality and flooding, which have been so neglected, as the noble Baroness said I favour Amendment 9, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. If we saw any UK Infrastructure Bank investment in roads, we would be concerned about its climate change objectives. I also strongly support, and have put my name to, Amendment 11 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. I am sure that she will explain this herself, and I will not remark on it at this stage.
UK Infrastructure Bank Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-04
Topic: Environment
Susan Kramer (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I will be very brief. I thank the Minister, particularly, for establishing that the review will be carried out by an independent body. That is absolutely crucial; we really could not have had the Treasury marking its own homework. That is now going to be established on the face of the Bill In terms of the review period, I am totally with the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, on this one. I add one reason to the many powerful arguments that he made. The two issues that this bank is set to address, climate change and levelling up, have a great deal of urgency behind them. Therefore, the decisions that the bank makes in its early days, even if they have a long tail to them, will be crucial. If that direction needs to be changed, the bank needs to know that that is Parliament’s view before we get to seven years out, at which point, particularly around climate change, it will be far too late to change a direction that is not meeting the needs of our climate change agenda. So, particularly for this bank, because it is tied to very specific objectives, a much earlier review phase is crucial I join the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, in being interested in how the Minister will lay out these other reviews that are meant to fill that gap. Why should we be having partial reviews that partially fill parts of the gap, rather than the comprehensive reviews on impact that could be managed under various amendments before the House today?
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-29
Topic: Technology
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I want to again apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, for causing him not to be here—and I will of course pick up the cost of his cup of tea He brought up the changed landscape of altnets, and we need to remind ourselves as we talk through the amendments that the old picture, as we looked at the telecoms market as it was—the copper world of a huge company and nothing much else—has passed. The fibre sector is a different sort of market. The fixed and full-fibre network infrastructure supplied by the independents, the altnets, reaches about 11.5 million premises with, at the end of 2022, an estimated 1.5 million live connections. That is separate to Openreach and Virgin, so there really is a big change in that market supply, to which I think the noble Lord was alluding. Had the noble Lord finished, by the way, or did he give way to me?
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-29
Topic: Technology
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I remind the noble Earl that Amendment 44 deals explicitly with the safety issues. He might want to reconfigure those points when we get there Taking the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, that we are focusing on Amendment 18, I will not seek to embellish the comprehensive and excellent speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, but we should remind ourselves that the Bill allows for the sharing of historic wayleaves to share BT infrastructure under private land. It does not currently explicitly allow operators to use telegraph pole infrastructure on private land above ground. For places such as Herefordshire, where I come from, pole access is absolutely central to the rollout of fibre and a huge proportion of those poles sit on private land, so this matters quite a lot. I think 50% of premises in Scotland are connected by poles on private land. As we have heard, the Bill as drafted would allow operators to use existing ducts to reach the base of such a pole, while existing provisions in the code allow for the flying of lines between poles, but no explicit right exists to access the pole itself or place apparatus such as small boxes—in practice, smaller than what is already there—on it. This amendment seeks to remove any ambiguity and make sure that what we believe to be the Government’s objective is fully written into the Bill, and that is why I am a co-signatory.
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-29
Topic: Technology
Timothy Francis Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I want to mainly talk about Amendment 19 put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. Before doing so, I say that I have some considerable sympathy for the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Earl, Lord Devon, because one of the themes we are very much going to come to with the coming amendments is this steady shift in the bargaining power away from site providers towards the operators over a period of years, which started in 2017 and culminates in the current Bill. We had a number of debates on unresponsive occupiers when we last debated this on the then Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill. As the noble Earl said, it is ironic that the cornerstone case has decided what it has, yet here we are changing the legislation away from that decision. I hope the Minister will be able to answer some of the questions that have been put to him On these Benches, we support Amendment 19. As the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said, it would mandate operators with agreements under the code that are not subsisting agreements—namely, agreements that came into force before the code was agreed—to give advanced notice to sites that provide and deliver emergency services, such as hospitals, fire stations and ambulance stations. It is clearly important for providers of emergency services to be given advance notice of when work is going to be undertaken, so that they can take appropriate action to ensure that they are not affected The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, mentioned the Minister’s response in the Commons; she prayed in aid the rights under paragraph 17 of the ECC, "which authorise only activity that will have no more than a minimal adverse impact on the appearance of the apparatus" However, this takes no account of the fact that, while the works may involve minimal adverse impact, it may actually involve disconnection at the time of installation. The Minister said that she was, "not aware of any instances in which an operator has relied on its paragraph 17 rights to carry out upgrading and sharing activities that have gone beyond the scope of what that paragraph allows".—[Official Report, Commons, Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill Committee, 22/3/22; col. 120.] However, that is not the right question. The right question is: what kind of resilience and risk planning do the emergency services have in those circumstances? If they do not know that there is a risk of disconnection, how can they plan for it? This seems an extremely sensible amendment which will allow the emergency services to have notice and to be able to plan for circumstances when they may be disconnected.
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-29
Topic: Agriculture
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I shall not enter the zero-sum game debate we appear to be having. However, the really salient point I ask your Lordships, particularly the Minister, to focus on is the one made by the noble Earl, Lord Devon: if there is no financial incentive to landowners to take masts, there will not be masts and we need those masts. Whatever happens, the formula has to deliver an incentive to the landowners. The evidence is clear; that incentive is vanishing to the point where it ceases to be viable. That is the point your Lordships should focus on in this debate, and the one I hope the Minister brings to bear in his response.
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
Timothy Francis Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am sorry to intervene again, but of course I will not be responding at the end of the group. The Minister is saying that the whole idea is to get these hearings as quick as possible, so that the site provider is prejudiced as quickly as possible, but it all depends on the availability of lawyers by the sound of it, which is a somewhat tenuous argument.
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-29
Topic: Technology
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Without labouring the point tonight, the Minister can perhaps pander to my curiosity and come back with the specific statutory instruments that are expected to implement this. As I understand it, statutory instruments were laid and then withdrawn, and I do not think that they included digital infrastructure in the initial wording. I have a specific concern that there is a slight falling between the cracks. Perhaps the Minister can reassure me with some specifics in a letter.
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-29
Topic: Transportation
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Incredibly briefly, I will speak to Amendment 46, which I have signed. The Government’s aim, Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition’s aim, and our aim is to speed up the rollout of infrastructure. This amendment as crafted by the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, which I was pleased to sign, is a very simple measure to help in that objective. If the Government have not already thought of it, they should embrace it. Whether it requires primary legislation or otherwise, an undertaking from the Dispatch Box that this will be done would be a very good way of speeding up infrastructure implementation.
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-29
Topic: Technology
Timothy Francis Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I shall speak to Amendments 47, 49 and 50, and I support the amendments in this group to which the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, has just spoken: Amendments 45 and 48 As regards Amendment 47, as I said at Second Reading, we all seem to be trapped in a time loop on telecoms, with continual consultations and changes to the ECC and continual retreat by the Government on their 1 gigabit per second broadband rollout pledge. In the Explanatory Notes, we were at 85% by 2025; this now seems to have shifted to 2026. There has been much government bravado in this area, but it is clear that the much-trumpeted £5 billion announced last year for project gigabit, to bring gigabit coverage to the hardest-to-reach areas, has not yet been fully allocated and that barely a penny has been spent Then, we have all the access and evaluation amendments to the Electronic Communications Code and the Digital Economy Act 2017. Changes to the ECC were meant to do the trick; then, the Electronic Communications and Wireless Telegraphy (Amendment) (European Electronic Communications Code and EU Exit) Regulations were heralded as enabling a stronger emphasis on incentivising investment in very high capacity networks, promoting the efficient use of spectrum, ensuring effective consumer protection and engagement and supporting the Government’s digital ambitions and plans to deliver nationwide gigabit-capable connectivity.
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-29
Topic: Technology
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, if there is an abiding theme in this group, it is transparent reporting and then using the data within those reports to make sensible decisions. Notwithstanding the Minister’s special day tomorrow, I am guessing that he is quite a lot younger than me, so he might be able to remember his childhood. I can remember a game that we used to play, of running down hills with our eyes closed. This was tremendous fun, until it stopped—and it usually stopped when you fell over or hit something. The argument advanced by the Government is, "We mustn’t do a review. We can’t have data because it’ll upset the market"—in other words, we cannot open our eyes because it will stop us running down the hill fast enough. That is the nature of what we are doing. In order to make sure that we do not fall over and that we are running in the right direction, we need to have our eyes open. In their different ways, these amendments seek to open our eyes to the effect that the Bill and all of this public and private investment will have on the objective that we all share: putting fibre in every home in this country. Without information, and without transparency in that information, we will not know how fast we are going and in which direction I care little about whether the Government accept the words in these amendments, but I do care about a Government who have enough sense to get the information, publish it and then act on it.
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-29
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): By extension, is the Minister expecting a slowdown again as the market gets used to these changes? Clearly, the Government expected a slowdown when they made the last set of changes; are they anticipating a similar slowdown this time?
Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the Minister for giving way. I appreciate the spirited defence of the measures that the Minister has just made. I am assuming that the Prime Minister was fully aware of what the Government are planning in terms of support when he spoke on Friday. On Friday, the Prime Minister unequivocally said that we are not doing enough, and we need to do more. Would the noble Baroness therefore agree with her own Prime Minister that the Government are not doing enough and need to do more?
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-27
Topic: Education
John Warren Shipley (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I will make a brief intervention. I agree with what the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Davies, said about the ombudsman. A process is being proposed; if you extend the ombudsman’s remit, you have the advantage of a process that is understandable to those who might wish to make a complaint. I very much hope that the Minister might be willing to look at how an amendment could be phrased, perhaps by the Government or by all-party agreement, on Report. That might bring us to a solution on how those who want to make a complaint can be assisted because, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, just said, it would be better if this were done by someone who is perceived to be independent than by the Minister The other half of the group relates to partnership boards. Noble Lords explained why there are two amendments, Amendments 171H and 171U. When I read the amendments, I much preferred the one from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, partly because it is quicker: it would force the Government to do something practical very quickly, which is to produce the guidance. The truth is that the two amendments could be brought together. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, said, we should have a culture of partnership rather than competition and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, we need a one-stop shop to fill the gap between the groups of schools. All that seems eminently logical and would therefore have my support Previously in Committee, I talked about partnerships between schools and FE. Of course, there is the potential for greater partnership working with the independent sector as well. How all that is brought together seems to be of fundamental importance. The whole concept of working education partnership boards is very important to a local area. Again, I hope that the Minister will be agreeable to finding ways in which this could all be brought together through all-party agreement to ensure that there is this local focus created by education partnership boards.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-27
Topic: Education
Dominic Hubbard (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I will say a few brief words on these amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, undersold the point he is making slightly, because for many people the disparity between verbal skills and written skills is actually a sign of special educational needs. Dyslexia is the classic example of this, and often dyspraxia as well. It is also the coping mechanism—the primary coping mechanism—by which people handle this. I put my hand up as an example of that. If people can explain their case verbally, they stand a chance of getting some form of accommodation on a casual basis. If you have the ability to come forward and explain yourself to a new teacher in a classroom—this was drummed into me from an early age—the teacher then has the chance of making some response that is appropriate. If you are terrified of doing this, or not told how to do so, then you have another problem. The ability to talk coherently is incredibly important, as it underpins just about everything else that goes through I know this is not exactly what the noble Lord was driving at, given the tone of all the discussion so far, but I hope that when the Minister responds she will have some idea of how disparities between expected verbal communication are going to figure in the Government’s thinking when it comes to things such as the new version of special educational needs. The Government must have a little guidance on this already. I know they are having a review; there must be some undertaking of what is going to happen. The interventions we have spoken about, with a speech and language facility and support, are incredibly important, because the whole thing is underpinned by the ability to talk. Very few people master good written language if they cannot at least talk coherently. Can the Minister give us some idea of how they are planning to bring these two together? If they do not, they are missing a trick, and also the identification of a need that is very important for dealing with many problems in our education system.