argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-09-15
Topic: Environment
Olivia Bloomfield (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I know the hour is late, but this is a very important subject, just because of the quantity that goes into landfill. I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate and my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for a very informative meeting yesterday. I know that she is passionate about this issue and is keen to see progress, but it is also important to ensure that our policy-making is evidence-based. That is why the department has commissioned an independent environmental assessment of the relative impact of washable and disposable nappies, the most recent study having been done some time ago. This research is being carried out by Giraffe Innovation Ltd and will cover the waste and energy impacts of washable and disposable products, disposal to landfill and incineration, and recycling options. We expect to publish the final report later this year, following peer review, and I am very happy to write to my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe and the Nappy Alliance about our plans once we have the results of the research We will use an evidence-based process to consider what, if any, action is appropriate. This could include backing voluntary initiatives or introducing measures such as standards and consumer information and labelling. I also confirm that existing powers in the Bill, in the schedules on resource efficiency and information, will allow us to, among other things, set standards for nappies and introduce labelling requirements We are delighted that some local authorities currently operate reusable nappy schemes as part of a local decision on how to prioritise funding, which may be available from a number of sources. However, we do not need primary legislation to develop a strategy or support a scheme on reusable nappies. In relation to the landfill tax specifically, reducing the number of nappies sent to landfill through reusable nappy schemes should save local authorities money over time by reducing their landfill tax bill. The amount of money saved can be spent according to local priorities. I know that certain charitable funds are available from landfill taxes. I cannot comment specifically on those, but, as we discussed yesterday, that is an avenue well worth exploring by local authorities Once we have the results of the independent assessment, expected later this year, we will be well placed to prioritise and develop a plan if appropriate, so I beg that this amendment be withdrawn.
Conduct — House of Lords, 2021-07-20
Topic: Government Operations
Patrick Cormack (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have put down this amendment for one simple reason. By voting for it—and I intend to test the opinion of the House—we will give ourselves time to reflect on the wisdom of Standing Order 68 and to decide whether it is in accordance with natural justice to impose penalties on those who have done no personal wrong or injury to anyone within or outside the House but who are being punished because they have not followed, within a prescribed time and in a difficult year, an instruction to follow a training course on how to behave. Standing Order 68’s constraints, within which I am having to speak, do not permit of others to speak in this debate. However, I know that many in your Lordships’ House share my concern The Standing Order prevents discussion. I know that a number of colleagues share my feeling that in the high court of Parliament we should not be forbidden from exercising our judgment on the recommendations of a small group of colleagues and outsiders who are deciding sanctions on a small group of other colleagues. We may debate at length the recommendation of every other Select Committee but, to those reports from the Conduct Committee, we can only say "content" or "not content" This final week of term is a very full one, and our brief September sitting is very crowded, with four long days devoted to the vast and important Environment Bill. In October there should be a chance to look at how we regulate and organise ourselves, perhaps reflecting on Harold Macmillan’s famous reminder that: "Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles any knot." I submit that we have tied ourselves in a very restraining knot. I urge that we begin to untangle it today. Do we really want to treat former captains of industry and others as recalcitrant schoolboys and say: "Because you didn’t do your prep, you can’t go to the tuck shop or the library," especially as the Library has a number of books on good behaviour I urge those of us who share my concerns to vote for this amendment, which does not pass any judgment on the report that the noble Lord, Lord Mance, has moved, but which gives us an opportunity, during the forthcoming recess, after a very tiring and difficult year, to reflect, "Have we got this right? Is this the way to treat colleagues?" I beg to move.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-20
Topic: Government Operations
Stephen Greenhalgh (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I will have to write to the noble Lord on exactly what occurred. I know that this issue raised its head only very late last week. I am happy to outline that and put a copy in the Library in response to those questions We want to ensure that this legislation works for both England and Wales. This group of amendments achieves this by giving certain powers to Welsh Ministers that would otherwise be exercised by the Secretary of State. We have worked closely with the Welsh Government on this issue and I hope that these amendments will have your Lordships’ support.
Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past — House of Lords, 2021-07-20
Topic: International Affairs
Jonathan Caine (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, I have spent many, many hours in meetings with victims and survivors of the Troubles and was also heavily involved in the Stormont House negotiations in 2014. My noble friend will be aware that all previous attempts by successive Governments to deal with legacy have foundered because of lack of consensus in Northern Ireland. None the less, is it not the case that for any proposals to succeed, they will require significant support from across the community? Can he therefore assure the House that legitimate points and concerns raised during this short and intensive consultation will be fully and properly considered Secondly, does my noble friend agree with me that without the contribution and sacrifice of the Royal Ulster Constabulary George Cross and the Armed Forces, there would have been no peace process in Northern Ireland and no 1998 agreement? Will he, therefore, picking up on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, assure me and the House that this Conservative and Unionist Government will never accept any equivalence between those who upheld the rule of law in Northern Ireland and those terrorists who sought to destroy it?
Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past — House of Lords, 2021-07-20
Topic: Law and Crime
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): I, in return, very much respect the huge amount of experience and knowledge that the noble Lord has from his continuing time in Northern Ireland. The UK Government understand, fully appreciate and are very sympathetic to the immense difficulty for some families of accepting any prospect of a shift from criminal justice outcomes. However, this approach offers the best chance of giving more families some sense of justice through acknowledgement, accountability and restorative means, rather than a focus on retributive justice, by looking at reconciliation and how we can deliver for victims in order to end the cycle of investigations.
Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past — House of Lords, 2021-07-20
Topic: Law and Crime
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): Indeed, and again, I appreciate the knowledge and huge experience that the noble Lord has from his time in Northern Ireland and when he was in government throughout all those years. I reassure him that we indeed wish to set up a fully independent body to look at this. It is very important that it is fully independent, and the issues relating to that independence will be laid out, as we will see over the coming weeks. Again, we are consulting and we would like to hear from all parties on this. However, the noble Lord will also know—I appreciate his helpful remarks—that Northern Ireland has already seen difficult but necessary measures put in place that have in the past put aside normal criminal justice processes for the cause of peace and reconciliation. He will know that this includes the early release of prisoners, restricting prison sentences to just two years, even for the most heinous Troubles offences, and concluding the process of secretly decommissioning paramilitary weapons. Therefore I believe he is right that we are in a position where we need once again to explore alternative proposals.
Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past — House of Lords, 2021-07-20
Topic: Law and Crime
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): I would like to correct the noble Baroness: this is not an amnesty, and we never said that it was or would be an amnesty; it is a statute of limitation. There is a difference, which is that there will be no pardons. However, we must be clear that, with the passage of time, the number of convictions flowing from any investigative process is likely to be extremely low, as I said earlier. If our focus is criminal justice, we will fail almost every family.
Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past — House of Lords, 2021-07-20
Topic: International Affairs
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): I note the comments made by the noble Baroness about the Stormont House agreement. As I think I said earlier, we continue to adhere to the principles of the agreement. I think we should be positive rather than negative in looking at these proposals and at the details within the Command Paper. I am sure that the noble Baroness, with her experience of Northern Ireland, has already gone through it with a fine-tooth comb, but I encourage her and all others involved in this process to look carefully at what we are proposing, to engage with our process intensively and to help us find an alternative way forward in this very difficult matter.
Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past — House of Lords, 2021-07-20
Topic: International Affairs
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Baroness brings to light the problems that we have all been facing over decades in Northern Ireland; and here we are, with the Government looking at, and working extremely hard to find, a way forward. I took note of the Secretary of State’s comments at the end of the Statement. We are at a point where we must find a way forward, having the victims in mind. We must also look at a process of reconciliation and not look to find routes that are simply not going to lead to any prosecutions.
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): As I said in my opening remarks, we are committed to spending an additional £5.4 billion across the next three years. This will end the risk of unpredictable care costs and include at least £500 million to support the social care workforce.
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): This has been an intractable issue. If all parties had managed to deal with it better, people in the situation the noble Lord mentioned—for whom we have a lot of sympathy—would have been helped. Unfortunately, that is not the case. We have announced a package that will begin with the new cap in October 2023.
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not believe so, no. As we have said, the levy will be shared between individuals and business. The largest 1% of firms will pay around 70% of the total business contributions, with the smallest 40% paying nothing extra.
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord will be well aware that historically there has been very low demand for social care insurance products and insurers have actually withdrawn products from the market. We believe that there will now be certainty about costs faced by individuals. We hope that more financial products will come on to the market to enable individuals to plan for their future care needs. We intend to work with the financial services industry to innovate and help people insure themselves against expenditure up to the limits.
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I can certainly say to the noble Lord, as I again said in my opening remarks, that we are committed to ensuring that local authorities have access to sustainable funding for core budgets and we will do so in the spending review.
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): Obviously the noble Lord will know that the vast majority of the workforce is employed privately. Local authorities, as part of the fair rate for social care, will be working with that sector to help improve conditions and pay rates as part of the overall involvement further in the system.
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): As I mentioned to a noble Lord earlier, the vast majority of care workers are employed by private sector providers, which ultimately set their pay, but local authorities are going to work with them to determine a fair rate of pay based on local market conditions. This investment of £500 million across three years will deliver new qualifications, progression pathways, and new well-being and mental health support. We are going to provide support to professionalise and develop the workforce by providing hundreds of thousands of training places and certifications for care workers, so we are putting in a lot of investment. We understand the importance of the social care workforce and the fantastic job it has done, particularly in the incredibly difficult times of the pandemic.
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Rosalind Altmann (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am sorry to say that I cannot see how this solves the social care crisis. Can my noble friend explain how this extra money will actually address the discrimination that there is against those who have dementia, relative to those who have cancer, how it will improve staffing levels or the level of pay, and how the Government have decided that nothing needs to be contributed out of pensions income or buy-to-let income to something that is clearly a social insurance need across the economy?
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Social Welfare
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): What will help the people my noble friend has talked about is the fact that, under these plans, we will now cover all care costs for anyone with assets under £20,000, which is up from the current level of £14,000. Importantly, she will know that, currently, anyone with assets over £23,350 faces paying their care costs in full. The new £100,000 limit is four times higher than that, which means that many thousands of people will now be eligible for further state support under our plans.
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sure the noble Lord will make his own judgment on that. I repeat that the Prime Minister was perfectly honest about it in his Statement. He said that "no Conservative government ever want to raise taxes",—[Official Report, Commons, 7/9/21; col. 155.] which is absolutely true, but he wanted to be honest and accept that this will break a manifesto commitment. I am sure that even the noble Lord would agree that, having provided more than £400 billion of support for jobs and livelihoods, businesses and public services at the start of the pandemic, we have particular challenges around our public finances. And that was not in our manifesto.
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Labor
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sure the noble Lord will understand that, given the statistical anomaly that has led to average wage growth being 8%, it is just not fair to raise pensions by this figure. For one year only we are moving to a double lock and increasing pensions by the higher of inflation or 2.5%. We will then return to the triple lock. Since the triple lock was put in place in 2011, the state pension has increased by 3% a year; it is now at its highest level relative to earnings for 34 years. The number of pensioners in absolute poverty has fallen by more than 200,000 in the last decade. I do not dispute that this will impact some people, but I think that, for one year, in the light of everything the country has gone through, it is fair and people will agree with it.
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I said at the outset that only a broad-based tax such as VAT, income tax or NICs could raise the sums needed for this kind of investment, and we believe that NICs is the fairest way to do that.
Health and Social Care — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): As I have said, the reason we went to NICs is that we believe that is the fairest, as the higher your earnings, the more you contribute; I gave some figures to show that. As I said, the highest-earning 14% of people will pay around half of revenues, and 6.2 million of the lowest earners will be kept out of the levy.
Anti-Semitic Attacks — House of Lords, 2021-05-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Stephen Greenhalgh (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend, with his experience as a leader of Bradford, is absolutely right. We need to combine that strict policing, where we do more than engage and the police act to ensure that we take the hate off our streets and online wherever it occurs, with an equally strong and robust approach to social cohesion. In fact, Bradford pioneered the Near Neighbours programme, which brings different communities, such as the Muslim and Jewish communities, closer together. We can learn from that.
Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2021-05-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Sandip Verma (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Fullbrook on her wonderful maiden speech today, and my Front-Bench colleagues on the way they have introduced this debate I will focus on—and make a plea to my Front Bench that in bringing these Bills forward they look at—knife crime. I had a failed attempt to bring a Private Member’s Bill to look at knife crime monitoring; it did not get into the ballot. I hope that I can use these Bills to ask the Government to consider making sure that those who have gone to prison and have been released and those who have been cautioned for carrying a knife are monitored for at least six months after they have been released or cautioned—I think we will get cross-party support. I say this on behalf of all those families whose children have been murdered because of knife crime I bring this to the House after speaking to a mother who lost her 16 year-old son because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A person who had been released from prison and was carrying a knife—he had been in prison for knife crime—decided to stab this 16 year-old in the heart, and he died. That mother and her bravery in trying to find support for not just herself but other families has moved me to plead with my Front Bench to have a look at this I do not know how it would work; I am sure that the clever people that work with Ministers will be able to find a route. I hope it will not be a huge cost on resource. However, we owe it to the victims and their families to be able to assure them that people who have committed a crime are at least watched to ensure that they get the support that they sometimes need, or that the public are protected from another incident like the one that this lady in Leicester experienced. I am from Leicester, and Leicester has a high rate of knife crime. So I plead on behalf of all the families undergoing this kind of experience. This lady herself has reached out to other parents to see how she could support them. We should not, however, let people undertake this support among themselves without providing support ourselves. That is my plea I was not going to touch on this, but having listened to a few other speeches I will finish with a few comments on migrants. Most migrants do not make the dangerous journey because they want to. Nobody would want to leave their families behind and come across dangerous waters. The Home Secretary is absolutely right to say that we need to deal with this issue. However, I firmly believe that we keep looking at this the wrong way round. Let us help the countries build their own infrastructures so that people feel safe to live in their homes in their own countries. That applies to economic migrants. Where there is war and risk to life, the argument is very different. I hope, however, that in the 21st century we look at the levelling-up agenda not just in the context of the UK. Covid has taught all of us that we are only as safe as everyone else is, so we have to help level up not just in our own country but globally.
Status of Workers Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-09-10
Topic: Labor
David John Maclean (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I rise to support this Bill and applaud the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, for his excellent introduction. I must confess that I have paid attention to this Bill only because the noble Lord serves on the Delegated Powers Committee, of which I am chairman, and I have learned to respect his excellent contributions. I hope I do not do an injustice to his Bill today I take the view that there are only three types of employment: employer, employee and self-employed. I do not want to see any funny middle category created such as "independent worker". We can all recognise genuine self-employed people—plumbers, joiners, electricians, window washers, et cetera—but we must ensure that businesses are not compelling individuals to set up these bogus personal service companies just to get round employment rights I go further than the noble Lord; I want my noble friend the Minister to consign the Matthew Taylor review to the dustbin. It is utterly irrelevant since breakfast—I mean Brexit—