argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
ISIL in Syria — House of Commons, 2015-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I implore Members of the House to show the same respect to us that we have given to them in listening to their interventions. My hon. Friend’s intervention has been heard and I agree with it in its entirety More than half the Syrian population are living in poverty and civilian casualties are on the rise. The recent Russian airstrikes have killed 485 civilians, including 117 children and 47 women. The facts relating to this vicious conflict are alarming and it is difficult to imagine the human stories that lie behind them. That is why I visited the Nizip refugee camp near Gaziantep to see for myself the scale of the humanitarian disaster and to hear at first hand the accounts of refugees who have fled Syria. I listened as people told me how their families had been uprooted by violence. They wanted nothing more than to return home. I heard that their towns and villages had been reduced to rubble by airstrikes—airstrikes ordered by President Assad. I spoke to Nafa al Hasan from Idlib, whose house was flattened by Assad’s forces in an attack that killed her mother, father, brother and husband. I met Basil from Damascus, who had spent two years in prison being tortured by Assad’s security services. He is now unable to walk and is confined to a wheelchair. Mohammed was a pilot in the Syrian air force. He fled the country with his family when he was asked to take part in bombing raids on civilian targets in his own country. Salwa, who is a writer, said to me: "We are not numbers. We are not animals. We want to be human beings, not numbers on a page. I am not a woman after this. I have no dreams. I just want to go home, but Daesh are occupying my home now." Those individuals and families were united in their desire to return home one day to rebuild their lives Those people are human beings with a story, and that story should be heard. It is a story that confirms to us all the complex nature of what is happening in the region and the number of protagonists who are already involved. Crucially, those protagonists have different agendas and different targets Many issues must be addressed if Syria is to be returned to peace, but the proposals before us today will not do that. We need a plan to defeat the terrorist cult Daesh and to replace Assad. We also need a plan to rebuild Syria and to provide a better future for the people I have mentioned and so many more. To join the ongoing bombing campaign in the skies over Syria will only compound the human suffering. A military intervention without credible peace-building plans will only make the situation worse, just as it did in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan A comprehensive strategy to act against Daesh is required. The UK could take the lead in a more co-ordinated effort to identify and squeeze Daesh’s finances and disrupt its illegal trade. We could lead a diplomatic initiative, using our non-combative position to secure a long-term peace plan. That is not in today’s motion. That is why I will support the amendment and vote against the Government motion.
ISIL in Syria — House of Commons, 2015-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
John MacKenzie Nicolson (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Let me begin with where, surely, we all agree. None of us in this House supports Daesh. All of us want to see it defeated. As an atheist, I shiver with horror when I see and read about Christians being beheaded. As a gay man I weep to see homosexuals being thrown from buildings in Syria. So let no one, on either side of the House, impugn the motives of those who speak in this debate. However, let us remember recent debates. It is not unkind to remind those who claimed that bombing would bring order to Iraq 12 years ago, and to Syria two years ago, of how wrong they were In the debate on the Iraq war, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) said: "The idea that this action would become a recruiting sergeant for…those who are anti any nation in the west is, I am afraid, nonsense."—[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 774.] He now sits in the Cabinet and advocates a new bombing campaign against another foe in the middle east, but uses much the same line. This debate puts mostly the same arguments, with the same proponents, as the debate on the Iraq war. I was a journalist at the time, and interviewed all the main political players and the country’s leading experts in chemical warfare, missile accuracy and Sunni-Shi’ite politics. I concluded that, while Saddam was a monster, he was a monster who controlled the monsters. The then Labour Government and Tory Front-Bench team disagreed and removed Saddam, thereby unleashing the forces of medieval hell on Iraq and its neighbours. Eliza Manningham-Buller, director general of MI5 during the invasion, said: "The bombing increased the terrorist threat by convincing more people in the region that Islam was under attack. It provided an arena for jihad." The armchair generals would be chastened, one might think, but two years ago, by then in government, the Conservatives asked the House to bomb the region again. This time, they wanted to bomb another secular despot—President Assad—but wisely, the House refused.
ISIL in Syria — House of Commons, 2015-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I ask the hon. Gentleman to understand some of the problems for those of us who oppose the motion. We all want to see peace and stability. All of us in the House agree on that, but the difficulty we have is that we cannot see that the air campaign in itself will defeat Daesh. We now know that the 70,000 troops do not exist. How are we going to defeat Daesh? It is not clear.
ISIL in Syria — House of Commons, 2015-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
Lisa Cameron (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Does the hon. Lady share my concerns that the allies involved appear to have conflicting goals and outcomes that they wish to achieve in Syria, and that we would simply be adding to the chaos and destruction of Syria?
ISIL in Syria — House of Commons, 2015-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias). We overlapped slightly in Gaza, where we both served. I served there as a surgeon for a year and a half, having started my career in Belfast, where I grew up, so I have seen the human results of violence, whether it is due to terrorism or to bombing. It is not pretty and it is not something that any of us would wish Having grown up in Northern Ireland—obviously, there are Members on these Benches who are based there—I wonder how we would have felt if someone thought we could have solved that problem by airstrikes. We are talking about a situation that is complex. We have heard all the objections to military intervention. I will not go over them again as I have only three minutes, but the chance of chaos is high. Russia wants one thing, Turkey wants another. Has anyone informed the Kurds, to whom we are all paying great tribute, that no one has any plans to give them a homeland at the end of this? A hundred years on, yet again they are being allowed to fight, but we are promising them nothing Going into any military action, it is important to understand the basics. Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? What is the goal? How will we define victory, and what will our exit strategy be? We have had a complex, fairly tragic and incoherent approach to the middle east for decades. When I worked in Gaza, people described to me death falling from the sky all the time—sometimes directly from western powers, sometimes from regimes that we either supported or created, all the way from the Shah of Iran to Saddam Hussein. We have supported militias and rebels when we thought they could be of use, but what have they turned into—the mujaheddin becoming the Taliban; the rebels and chaos in Libya We hear about a patchwork of 70,000 boots on the ground in Syria. What will they become? Are they our next problem? It is not that anyone here supports Daesh, despite intemperate comments. It is the fact that we do not believe airstrikes will work. The two points that were raised were national security and stability in the middle east. We will recruit extremists there; we will radicalise people here We all have sympathy with Paris, but that will not make bombing any more effective, so for those who have been struggling with their consciences and how to vote, I beg them please to think again and vote against the motion.
ISIL in Syria — House of Commons, 2015-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Does the hon. Gentleman not see a danger in Saudi Arabia being given such a huge role? The Saudis do not share our way of life—women are not well treated there—and yet we are giving them a huge role in the region.
ISIL in Syria — House of Commons, 2015-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I congratulate the Foreign Affairs Committee on producing this excellent and thoughtful report. I commend it to any hon. Member who has not had a chance to read it. I hope that the Prime Minister takes cognisance of the fact that the Committee reported last night that it was not convinced that the concerns contained in its report had been met Just three or four weeks ago, the Committee said that the "extraordinary complexity of the situation on the ground" meant that there were "few reliable counterparts", and that "There appeared to be little chance of a legitimate and functioning ally emerging from the chaos" any time soon. Now, miraculously, we are expected to believe that some 70,000 "moderate" troops are ready to fight on our behalf.
ISIL in Syria — House of Commons, 2015-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): One can only conclude that the 70,000 figure is a convenient arithmetical creation that adds together a multitude of people from different cultures and factions and with widely differing ambitions for the future of Syria, and I agree that people should be told exactly who they are. I fear that the 70,000 claim will define this Prime Minister’s drive for military intervention in the middle east, just as the claim that we were only 45 minutes from attack defined a previous Prime Minister’s justification for earlier misadventures in the region.
ISIL in Syria — House of Commons, 2015-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I certainly commend the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report, which is a first-class piece of work. It also said that any UK involvement in airstrikes was unlikely to constitute a war-winning intervention. Sir Simon Mayall told the Committee: "This is not a war-winning air campaign, by any stretch of the imagination." Even the most enthusiastic cheerleader for UK airstrikes in Syria would have to agree that very few planes will actually be involved and that our contribution will be extremely small. At the same time, however, the Prime Minister was telling us that a major military plank of the argument for airstrikes was that we had a "unique contribution" to make. That "unique contribution" was the Brimstone missile. Indeed, he went on the record as saying that those missiles were "unique assets" that the RAF could contribute, and that he had been lobbied by our coalition partners to bring them to the theatre. As I pointed out to him, the Royal Saudi Air Force has been using Brimstone missiles since February this year Let us be honest, Mr Speaker. The UK Government’s desire to take part in the bombing of Syria is less a military contribution than a political statement. Since 2013, the Government have felt that they have been left on the sidelines, and have been itching for a piece of the action. As with so much of the UK’s thinking, this has more to do with how the UK will look to others than with our asking what good we can do. After decades of military intervention in the middle east, we do not have a success to show for it There are more than enough people dropping bombs on Syria. We do not have to add to the chaos, the misery and the inevitable casualties by doing so as well. Yes, Daesh is evil; yes, it must be defeated; and, yes, we have a contribution to make—but dropping bombs from 34,000 feet is not the way to do it. Let us not repeat the mistakes of the past. Let us not embark on another middle eastern misadventure. Let us go in with a credible plan to win the peace and secure the future in Syria.
ISIL in Syria — House of Commons, 2015-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Patrick Gethins (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend raises a valid point, which was picked up in the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report. Before I touch on that, however, I want to say that when we think about how we vote tonight, we think about the lessons we have learned. We all do. I respect everybody in the House, regardless of the Lobby they go through tonight. We learn from the facts of Libya, and that we spent £320 million bombing the country and £25 million on reconstruction. We learn from the catastrophic failure of post-conflict reconstruction in Iraq, which led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, and to a political vacuum in that country that has led to many of the problems we see today It has been a privilege to sit on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and I pay particular credit to its Chairman, the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt). We will go through different Lobbies tonight, but I give him credit for his work. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) and the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), and I am sure that all Members will join me in wishing them a speedy recovery I hope you will not mind my saying, Mr Speaker, that those who have not yet read the Committee’s report have about half an hour. Perhaps they can skim-read it. I would thoroughly recommend it. It sets out a series of recommendation and is based on evidence.
ISIL in Syria — House of Commons, 2015-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
Gavin Andrew Stuart Newlands (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): According to the Prime Minister’s statement last week, the Government’s strategy is predicated on a new Syrian Government, but does my hon. Friend agree that given that the Prime Minister has ruled out regime change or boots on the ground, it is extremely unclear how that new Government will come about?
Listed Sports (BBC) — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Government Operations
Questions: What assessment he has made of the BBC’s financial capability to broadcast listed sports events in preparing for discussions on the BBC’s next charter renewal and future funding.
John MacKenzie Nicolson (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Will the Secretary of State tell the House exactly how he plans to involve the Scottish Government in the charter renewal process? Lord Smith says that the Scottish Government should be involved, but he is a bit vague about the process itself.
Universal Service Obligation (Broadband) — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Technology
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for his answer and urge him to implement a universal service obligation as soon as possible in order to achieve that final 5%. I represent a constituency whose rural areas suffer from a lack of broadband, but the large town of Kilmarnock, with 50,000 people, also has areas that lack broadband access. The UK is rightly proud of the Royal Mail’s universal service obligation, and the 21st century equivalent should be a similar obligation for broadband.
English Votes on English Laws — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: International Affairs
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The Leader of the House has made it clear that, assuming the proposals actually go through, the operation of EVEL will be reviewed after 12 months. As part of that process, will the devolved Administrations and Parliaments be consulted on the impact that decisions taken under EVEL have had, especially with regard to Barnett consequentials?
English Votes on English Laws — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Government Operations
Peter Wishart (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The Prime Minister promised that the Procedure Committee would have a look at all the plans before anything was progressed. That obviously has not happened. Will the Leader of the House now make a commitment to ensure that not just the Procedure Committee but the Scottish Affairs Committee can look at the plans and approve them before there is any progression to English votes on English laws?
House Business Committee — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Technology
Andrew Egan Henderson Hendry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Many people in many parts of the UK are tied into mobile phone contracts, but they receive poor or little service. Will the Leader of the House give us a debate in Government time on that important issue to allow those people—
Waste Recycling — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Environment
Margaret Ferrier (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his answer. As a new Member, I have noted that much more could be done to promote recycling on the estate, particularly of paper waste. I hope that, in addition to pursuing a digital strategy to lessen paper waste, the House will seek to become more adept at how it disposes of the masses of paper discarded each day and also clarify what happens to any leftover food.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Eilidh Whiteford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): When the Chancellor delivered his Budget speech yesterday, he made the oft-repeated claim that the "best route out of poverty is work."—[Official Report, 8 July 2015; Vol. 598, c. 333.] That was probably true once, but it is no longer true—it has not been true for a number of years. The truth today is that, for millions of low-paid workers, poverty persists no matter how many hours or how hard they work. For people who are bringing up children on low or, indeed, average incomes, the costs of housing and of childcare mean that they are running to stand still. I have said before in this House that in-work poverty is the great scandal of our age. Sadly, very little was announced yesterday to tackle the underlying drivers that are stifling the opportunities and aspirations of the working poor Instead, we learned that the axe of the £12 billion-worth of cuts will fall most heavily on low and middle-income families. Last week the Government announced changes to the way in which child poverty is measured. Having heard yesterday’s announcements, it is not hard to understand why they did that, because the lowering of the threshold for tax credits and other changes announced yesterday will take income largely from the pockets of working parents and compound the projected increases in child poverty arising from the last round of cuts.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Eilidh Whiteford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am sure that the hon. Lady is well aware that Scotland’s childcare offer is significantly better than that enjoyed by people in other parts of the UK, and that our housing situation is not exacerbated by real rent imbalances similar to those experienced in London and the south-east of England in particular. I will pick up on that later The hon. Lady will also be aware that the Scottish block grant is calculated on the basis of the contents of the Red Book. The money currently allocated to Scotland is determined by this Chamber, so this Budget is relevant to everybody throughout the UK. It would be very wrong to ignore the fact that the purse strings are still controlled here, and that is one of the reasons why I argue for those powers to be sent up the road to Scotland, where we can use them more wisely I want to return to the issue of child poverty and the paper exercises conducted to measure it. Whatever we do to massage the figures, I do not think any of us can avoid the evidence of our own eyes in our constituencies. We are seeing growth in child poverty on the ground. We see it in the rise of food banks, which have already been alluded to, and in the larger number of people coming through MPs’ doors with income-related problems. That is also being experienced by advice bureaux. We also see it in the evidence of organisations that work directly with vulnerable families and those on low incomes In my constituency, one in five children is growing up in poverty. That might come as a surprise, because we enjoy some of the lowest unemployment in the whole country. A very small percentage of people are not in work, but many thousands of people are in low-paid work, and it is those working poor who are going to be most affected by what was announced yesterday More families than ever are running to stand still, and under this Government more people are being left behind. The UK has a deeply polarised labour market, and the ability of people in low-paid work to get ahead is severely curtailed.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Law and Crime
Eilidh Whiteford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The key point is that a falling birth rate is not good for anybody in whatever decile. Even those of us who do not have children are going to be dependent on the next generation being large enough to support us in our dotage when we need people to come in and look after us. The economics do not stack up. In the context of worryingly low birth-rate projections, we desperately need to encourage and make it easier for people in all deciles to decide whether having children is a possibility for them I have to say that I was appalled at the reference on page 88 of the Red Book to "protections for women who have a third child as the result of rape, or other exceptional circumstances." I know this point was picked up yesterday, but I think the implications need to be addressed more thoroughly. It is perhaps important to acknowledge that rapes do not necessarily result in pregnancy. After all, rape is a crime that affects pre-pubescent children and post-menopausal women, as well as people of child-bearing age. How does the DWP intend to establish that a child has been born as a consequence of rape? Will there seriously be a box to tick on the form? Will a criminal conviction against a perpetrator be required We know that rape is one of the most unreported and poorly prosecuted serious crimes in the UK, with most surveys suggesting that 85% of women who are raped do not report it—for a variety of reasons, not least because most victims know their assailants and know that securing a conviction is a very long shot under our criminal justice system. Many simply do not want to put themselves through another traumatic ordeal I put it to Ministers that the women most likely to become pregnant as a result of rape are those in long-term abusive relationships who are being repeatedly assaulted. They are among those least likely to report rape, and those in the most extreme danger if they do. So I ask again, what will this "protection" mean in practice? How will the DWP arbitrate? Will women be believed? What steps will be taken to preserve their dignity and privacy? I would like to hear some answers to those questions.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-07-09
Topic: Education
Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that these proposals will result in young people from deprived backgrounds being penalised and discouraged from going to university? No student should have a debt around their neck at the very time they want to make progress in life.