argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Energy
William Arthur Roger Mullin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I fully accept that: it is a very good point The Chancellor recognises the importance of the bands in terms of tax. Scotland needs full control of all aspects of income tax, so I hope that the Secretary of State for Scotland will learn from the Chancellor in that regard Of huge concern to Scotland, and to anyone with a concern for the future of our planet, is the continuing attack by the Government on the renewable energy sector. It would appear that the Chancellor has a bad addiction to carbon. He cannot get enough of it. How else can we explain the fact that the Finance Bill will remove the exemption for electricity from renewable sources? Combined with the Government’s insane attack on wind generation, we can see an attack on renewable energy, an attack on Scotland's economy, and an attack on all those working to take better care of our environment.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Environment
William Arthur Roger Mullin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Climate change is largely man-made and carbon is no friend to the environment in that regard. I am sorry to disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I would add, as the owner of a hybrid car, that it seems perverse to add an estimated £1,000 to the cost of buying a greener car—more confirmation of the Chancellor’s addiction to carbon.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
William Arthur Roger Mullin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I gently point out to the hon. Gentleman that the area of the United Kingdom that has made most progress in wind generation is Scotland. The Government’s attack pays no regard to the interests of Scotland or the policies of the Scottish Government. We are keen to develop renewable energy, not see it set aside Allow me to turn now to an area in which I hope the Government will find it easy to demonstrate some good will towards Scotland. Using the cover of technical consideration, Scotland’s police, fire and rescue services, unlike those elsewhere in the UK, are liable for VAT. However, I see from the Finance Bill that it is perfectly within the power of the Government to make special adjustments to taxation requirements. In part 4 of the Finance Bill, the Government have devoted six paragraphs to the London anniversary games, starting this week. In essence, they are deeming non-resident competitors to be free from the burden of having to pay income tax on earnings. It is even being backdated to 8 July. I am not complaining about that, but I would ask the Government to look again at exempting the Scottish police, fire and rescue services from the burden of VAT, with suitable backdating I declare an interest of sorts. My daughter’s partner, Dave, is a retained firefighter in Drumnadrochit in the highlands of Scotland. He often is called out to very difficult and tragic events. It is surely disgraceful that people performing such remarkable services for the community in Scotland should see their service penalised because of a technicality that the Government could easily resolve. If the Government right that wrong, I will be the first to thank and praise them for listening to Scotland. I hope that the Government will indicate a willingness to at least seriously consider an amendment to remove that unnecessary burden on Scotland’s police, fire and rescue services I commend the amendment to the House.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Labor
Alison Emily Thewliss (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Does the hon. Gentleman consider it fair that people under 25 will not see the benefit of that pay rise? The differential between those earning this wage at the 16 and 17-year-old rate and at the 25-year-old rate has now expanded significantly and could have a detrimental effect on their ability to live their lives.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. While we are not political friends, we are at least friendly. He started by saying he was in favour of people keeping more of their tax, but then bemoaned the loss of tax credits. Will the loss of tax credits not enable a lack of redistribution by acting as a cover for the rich to keep more of their money and as further camouflage for inequality, especially with inheritance tax being cut for the very wealthy while the poor are losing out? When we say we want people to keep more of what they earn, we have to be sure what we mean. Quite often it is a cover for growing inequality and an opportunity for the rich to keep even more for themselves.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Transportation
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again; he is underlining our friendliness. To build on the point from the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), I wish to say that the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) is absolutely right about the problem of connectivity with the south-east of England, where the airports are being built. It is not by accident. In the 40 years after world war two, there were bilateral air agreements specifying that planes had to fly into London airports, and we have paid for that. He is right about the Netherlands. The London docks lost out to Rotterdam, and it looks like it will happen again with the air infrastructure. As the chief executive of Schiphol said, it would be a good idea—
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Energy
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): And on my birthday, too. I am sure that the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), the gentleman that he is, will of course give way to the Member from the Green party and to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) The hon. Gentleman might find that one of the reasons why fossil fuel is so cheap is the low price of carbon, as a result of which the theory of "the polluter pays" does not apply to fossil fuels. Carbon is priced neutrally at the moment, and when that changes, the real price of fossil fuels versus renewables will become apparent. He mentions the change in the regime, but planning is a large part of that. Finally—this is my final point, Mr Deputy Speaker—the hon. Gentleman talks about the cost of energy in the UK, and the cost of the UK’s energy is actually about the highest in Europe, minus taxes.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Energy
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Does the hon. Gentleman accept that on a sunny day in East Antrim, one gets a magnificent view of some of our magnificent onshore wind farms on the west coast of Scotland, and will he concede that the contract for difference on wind energy on shore is lower than that for new nuclear energy?
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Lady said that she would like work to pay. Is she saying that the Institute for Fiscal Studies is wrong when it says that the bottom four, five or six deciles of earners will actually be worse off as a result of the Budget? Surely if work is to pay, it should be paying more, not less.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Labor
Carol Frances Monaghan (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Does the hon. Lady not accept that using language such as "national living wage" is sinister mischief-making? It is also hugely disrespectful to the Living Wage Foundation, which has set the living wage at £9.15 in London and £7.85 outside.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Social Welfare
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I represent what is on paper one of the most prosperous constituencies in Scotland, yet more than 3,000 children in Gordon are in working families who will be worse off as a result of the Budget, and I doubt whether there will be fewer children in Lewes similarly affected. What does the hon. Lady say to the children of working families in her constituency who will be worse off as a result of this Budget?
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the hon. and learned Lady; I feel that I am taking advantage of this birthday— I might start claiming that every day is my birthday. Would she like to comment on the behaviour in Iceland, where there have been no cuts in public spending but where debt has fallen by 8% and the deficit has fallen to zero? It has done that not though austerity, but by growing its economy. The key metric is debt to GDP, not cuts.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I have no problem at all with getting to a position where any state lives within its means; it is how we get there that matters. But the hon. and learned Lady surely has misspoken. If a Government are choosing to increase inheritance tax thresholds while taking billions from the poorest with changes to tax credits, then they are indeed taking from the poor to give to the very wealthy.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): On the VED changes being intended to tackle the debt or the deficit, I am sure the hon. Lady will have heard the Chancellor say that the entire set of measures was fiscally neutral and has nothing to do with bringing down the deficit or the debt.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Once the hon. Gentleman’s constituents get past the Blairite spin he is giving us, I am sure they will find that their incomes have actually decreased. Does he think that his constituents will be grateful to him when the changes go through and they find that their incomes have decreased, thanks to this Tory Government?
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Kerevan (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Thank you for your forbearance, Mr Deputy Speaker. I had to slip out of the Chamber to take part in the Treasury Committee’s questioning of the Chancellor, and I bring a few bon mots from him to add to the debate The test of the Finance Bill and Budget is whether it will raise productivity—one might ask why the Chancellor has waited for five years to get round to that necessary development, but that is the test. Does the Bill meet the test? No it does not. Between the March Budget and the summer Budget, the Chancellor has reduced projected capital spending, and we raised that point in questions to him this morning, but in his boyish way he avoided answering it. Nevertheless, we have seen a reduction in the projected capital spend Capital spending is vital. It is the basic thing we need to get the plant, machinery and infrastructure that raise productivity, and Britain’s fundamental weakness in productivity is that we do not spend enough on capital and plant per worker. The Chancellor is cutting his projected capital spending, and he has done that in the five months since the March Budget and now—I wonder why The Chancellor had an interesting explanation for why he is doing that—in the Treasury Committee he could not avoid saying that that is what he was doing—because he said that he had discovered a way of making the outcome of his spending more efficient so that he needs less of it. If he goes on in that way, in another five months and by the time we get to the autumn statement, he will have reduced capital spending projections even more. I am talking about capital spending projections to 2020, so there is no real indication in the Budget that productivity will rise There are other things wrong with the Budget. Consider the investment allowance that the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) alluded to. De facto, the annual investment allowance is being cut from £0.5 million to £200,000. I know that, formally speaking, the available capital allowance was a marginal £20,000, and an emergency £0.5 million level was introduced in a previous Budget. Like some classic huckster trying to sell, the Chancellor pretended that the capital allowance was going to be removed on 1 January 2016, so that he could suddenly appear and say that actually it will be £200,000. We all knew that he was going to do that because in the autumn statement and the March Budget, while talking about his desire to raise productivity, he somehow neglected to tell us that the annual investment allowance was going to be not £20,000 but £200,000 in January.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend might recall that before the general election, if memory serves me right, only one party was praised in the Financial Times for its plans to raise productivity, and that was the SNP. Could that be why we polled 51% of votes in the seats where we stood, but the Conservatives polled only 37% across the seats where they stood?
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Kerevan (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I know that is true from talking to the small businesses in my constituency The Chancellor claims to want a productivity revolution, but that is given the lie by the fact that in the autumn statement in December and the March Budget he did not announce that the £500,000 allowance would stay or that it would in fact be £200,000. Investment requires long-term confidence—telling businesses well in advance what they can do in terms of investment. The fact that the Chancellor did not tell us, but has produced a rabbit out of a hat in the summer Budget, tells me that he is not that serious We have also heard today that the Chancellor intends to cut corporation tax progressively over the spending period to 18%. I do not gainsay that, but I ask the House to look at what happens when cutting corporation tax significantly is combined with a de facto reduction in the annual investment allowance. Surely we want to cut corporation tax to encourage firms to use their surplus capital to invest in plant and machinery. It is therefore necessary to maintain the £500,000 level—or perhaps even raise it further—to encourage firms to put their money into plant and machinery to raise productivity. By de facto cutting the investment allowance from £500,000 to £200,000 at the same time as cutting corporation tax, the Chancellor will encourage firms to keep their surplus capital sitting in the bank, instead of investing in plant and machinery. That is what has been happening in this country, and that is one of the reasons why productivity has fallen since 2008.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Kerevan (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I take my hon. Friend’s point. We need incentives that co-ordinate and integrate, not just a series of random measures that allow the Chancellor to make headlines here and there but do not have an impact on productivity in the longer term The surplus balances held by British companies total something in excess of £0.5 trillion, and some estimates put it at more than £1 trillion. A reasonable estimate is £0.5 trillion or £550 billion. How do we incentivise firms to take that money out of the bank and put it into plant and machinery and create jobs? The Chancellor is doing his best to provide incentives in another direction. Raising the inheritance allowance on property is another way of encouraging shareholders—when shares are bought back by companies—to put their money into existing bricks and mortar rather than invest in companies We have a Budget that claims to be about productivity, but provides none of the efficient incentives required to get plant and machinery that will create jobs. Let us look at what has happened to productivity since 2008. Initially, when the recession started, UK productivity fell. What normally happens in the first few years of a recession, as workers are shed and firms rely on using their existing plant and machinery more intensively, productivity rises. It rose in most of the advanced industrial countries in Europe in the two or three years after the recession, and in America. Thereafter, we would expect firms to start to invest in new innovation and developments, and productivity would rise not simply from the shedding of labour but from expansion, new product lines and new companies. That is what has happened in America, which had a significant increase in investment and innovation, and productivity has risen significantly in a long-range curve, as American companies have grabbed market share. In the UK, we saw a second downward bump in productivity in 2011. That came just as the Chancellor realised the mistake he had made in rushing for austerity between 2010-11. He had made massive cuts, but at that point he changed. We have had several long-term plans. In 2011, his new long-term plan was to turn on the monetary tap and crank up an artificial housing boom. Of course, that created even more incentives for individuals, financial companies and businesses to put money into trading in property, rather than in factories and manufacturing What we saw post-2011 was British productivity getting even worse, while the productivity of other industrial countries—in particular the United States, but also China—started to improve for the very best of reasons: they were investing in new plant machinery. We have not solved our productivity problem because we have not got the incentives right. I see nothing in the Budget to change that.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): It will not have escaped the hon. Gentleman’s notice that the Government seem to have run out of speakers on the Second Reading of the Finance Bill. Might that be because of the reality that thousands of families with children in every single constituency in this country are going to be worse off as a result of the Budget? Is that why the Tory party seems so unenthusiastic about supporting the Budget?
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Social Welfare
Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): IFS figures state that a £1,000 increase in work allowance available to a single parent earning £12,000 would boost their income by £650 a year, whereas in contrast a £1,000 increase in personal allowance would mean a family would benefit by only £70, resulting in further child poverty. Does my hon. Friend agree that this will not help families?
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am pleased that the hon. Lady mentioned Labour’s opposition to the impact of the tax credits, but there is concern on the SNP Benches and elsewhere in the country—this goes to the heart of the matter—that people who will be affected by the Budget and what is happening in this Finance Bill need leadership. It is that failure to give leadership—to oppose, as the Opposition party in this House—and to stand up for people who are affected by these measures on which the Labour Opposition will be judged.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) pointed out, the Labour Opposition have divided the House on the Finance Bill for every Budget since 2010. What is it about this Budget—this extraordinary, regressive Budget—that makes it such that the Labour party does not want to support our opposition to it?
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-21
Topic: Social Welfare
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Let us get to the nub of this. Is it not the case, confirmed by a number of analysts, that in every single constituency in this country, thousands of families with children will be worse off as a result of the Budget? What does he say to those low-paid families who will be substantially worse off as a result of this Budget?
Dairy Farming — House of Commons, 2015-09-10
Topic: Agriculture
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Given that many consumers pay a premium on Fairtrade goods to support farmers across the world, would the Secretary of State support regional and national source labelling on milk, cheese and other farm products, and perhaps a fair trade scheme here to support our farmers?
Dairy Farming — House of Commons, 2015-09-10
Topic: Agriculture
Calum Robert Kerr (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): As the pricing crisis in not only milk but other sectors continues to get worse, will the Government make specific proposals to increase the powers of the Groceries Code Adjudicator so that she can look at the whole supply chain and our farmers can get a fair price for a quality product?
Scottish Government: Discussions — House of Commons, 2015-09-10
Topic: International Affairs
Marion Fellows (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I acknowledge the constructive approach taken by the Scottish and UK Governments, with the help of Kent police, in establishing a fast track at the height of the Calais disruption. Will the Secretary of State continue to work with colleagues in the Government and the devolved Administrations to ensure that future disruption is avoided?
EU Exit (Potential Effects) — House of Commons, 2015-09-10
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: What assessment she has made of the potential effect on her Department of a vote to leave the European Union in the forthcoming referendum.
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The question explicitly asked what assessment had been made of the potential impact of leaving the European Union. We can only assume from the Minister’s lack of answer that the answer to that question is: none whatever. The Minister will be aware that, thanks to our links with Europe, the world-class food and drink industry in Scotland—some of our products are almost as healthy as Walker’s Christmas puddings, I may add—is well on track to reach a seemingly impossible target, set by the Scottish Government, of a £1.65 billion contribution to our economy by 2017. Will the Minister give an assurance that he personally, and his ministerial colleagues, will campaign vigorously for Scotland and the UK to remain in the European Union?
Farm Produce (Fair Pricing) — House of Commons, 2015-09-10
Topic: Agriculture
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am sure the Minister will join me in welcoming new figures showing record turnover for sales of Scottish food and drink surpassing £14 billion for the first time in 2013. Will he work with the Scottish Government to make sure that producers feel the benefit of those sales and take up the call from the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Food and the Environment to introduce a fairer framework for all those involved in the supply chain?
Immigration Detention — House of Commons, 2015-09-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Christopher Charles Stephens (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I agree completely Detention centres are so far out of the way, solicitors can be unable to get to them and have to correspond by letter, which is not always appropriate. We are now finding that detainees, when they are released from detention centres, are being left in a state of destitution. It is up to charities, such as Scottish Detainee Visitors, to help them with their belongings and their transfer. That is very concerning, as is the impact it will have on other social services.