argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Universal Credit — House of Lords, 2018-10-16
Topic: Immigration
Peta Buscombe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord’s questions. Let me say straightaway that we have not been recalibrating anything. He will be aware that there have been a number of PQs in the past few months. There was a Written Ministerial Statement in June this year, wherein we set out very clearly that from the beginning of next year, we want to move to managed migration in a very slow and careful way. We want to be sure that we get it right, that the right systems are in place. As we also made clear to the Social Security Advisory Committee, we will not begin to introduce managed migration, which is those who are on existing benefits—the legacy system, as we call it—rather than those who are new to the benefit system who are going on to universal credit, until July next year. That has long been the case We are now waiting for the end of the rollout of the system into every jobcentre by the end of December this year. We are also now in receipt of some important recommendations made by the Social Security Advisory Committee as a result of our proposals to it with regard to managed migration regulations, which we hope to lay before the House in the near future. We are now considering those recommendations very seriously and I will report to this House in the very near future The most important answer that I must give straightaway is that a key point for the managed migration regulations, which we will bring forward, is to protect the most vulnerable. We are not halting any rollout. Our concern is to protect the most vulnerable— those who cannot work, those with severe disabilities—through the severe disability premium and careful full transitional protection through migration on to universal credit.
Brexit: Arrangements for EU Citizens — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Immigration
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given by my right honourable friend Caroline Nokes to an Urgent Question in another place. The Statement is as follows: "Mr Speaker, while we are confident in agreeing a good deal for both sides, as a responsible Government we will continue to prepare for all scenarios, including the unlikely outcome that we leave the EU without any deal in March 2019. We have reached an agreement with the EU on citizens’ rights that will protect those EU citizens and their family members who are resident in the UK until the end of the planned implementation period on 31 December 2020 We are introducing the EU settlement scheme under UK immigration law for resident EU citizens and their family members covered by the draft withdrawal agreement. This will enable those who are resident in the UK before the end of the planned implementation period on 31 December 2020 to confirm their status under the EU settlement scheme. Anyone who already has five years’ continuous residence in the UK when they apply under the scheme will be eligible to apply for settled status. Those who have not yet reached five years’ continuous residence will be eligible to be granted pre-settled status and will be able to apply for settled status once they reach the five-year point In the unlikely event of a no deal, the Prime Minister has already confirmed that all EU citizens resident here by 29 March 2019 will be welcome to stay. They are part of our community, and part of our country, and we welcome the contribution that they make. Last week, the Prime Minister extended that commitment to citizens of Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, and we are close to reaching an agreement with Switzerland. We will set out further details shortly so that those affected can have the clarity and certainty they need".
Brexit: Arrangements for EU Citizens — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Immigration
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord for that question. Regarding employer checks, he will know that employers already need to carry out right-to-work checks on EU citizens, and that will not change. It is clear that employers will carry out right-to-work checks on EU citizens as they already do, and they will not be expected to differentiate between a resident EU citizen and those arriving after March 2019. However, in addition, I understand that employers have been given toolkits to enable them to carry out their duties in the right way.
Brexit: Arrangements for EU Citizens — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Immigration
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Baroness will know, because my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has already said it, that there will not be a hostile environment. There will continue to be a compliant environment now and when we leave the European Union. On the Prime Minister’s statement that EU citizens can stay, I do not think that she has been contradicted by a junior Minister. I add that my right honourable friend Caroline Nokes—if that is who the noble Baroness was referring to—is not a junior minister; she is in fact a member of the Cabinet. Is that who the noble Baroness was referring to?
Brexit: Arrangements for EU Citizens — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Immigration
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): She has not contradicted the Prime Minister, as far as I am aware. Employers will carry out those right-to-work checks, as they have to date. The beta testing scheme over the past couple of months has already started the ball rolling for citizens regularising their status to be able to stay in this country. That will be rolled out more fully in the new year.
Brexit: Arrangements for EU Citizens — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Immigration
Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I understood from the Minister in the other place that the Government are minded to bring forward an immigration Bill shortly that will set out the criteria for skilled workers post Brexit. Will my noble friend give the House an assurance that those currently filling positions in care places and hospitals who are not deemed to be skilled workers will still be admitted after Brexit to continue to fill those roles if they are not filled otherwise?
Brexit: Arrangements for EU Citizens — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Immigration
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend is absolutely right that an immigration Bill will be arriving in the Commons shortly. If those people currently filling places are EU citizens—I am guessing she was referring to EU citizens—have been here for five years, they can automatically get their settled status. If they have not been here for five years, they can get temporary status, which will become full status when they have been here for five years.
Brexit: Arrangements for EU Citizens — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Immigration
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord raises a very valid point about victims of modern slavery, who will be supported and helped when they come here no matter what country they are from. Depending on their situation, they will be helped either to move on within this country or to move back to the country of their origin.
Brexit: Arrangements for EU Citizens — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Immigration
John Attlee (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, is it not the case that post-Brexit, we will be able to allow anyone whom we want to have in the UK to live and work here? Is it not also the case that we will not need to put visa controls on EU citizens if we do not want to and we want to have them here?
Brexit: Arrangements for EU Citizens — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Immigration
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend is right and the Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear. That is why we are making those arrangements for EU citizens to have their settled status here, either pre-settled if they have been here less than five years or settled if they have been here for five years or more. We want them to stay here and continue to work here. The Prime Minister has made that crystal clear; it would be good if the EU could also do that.
Brexit: Arrangements for EU Citizens — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Immigration
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord is absolutely right to point out that some people might come here and then leave and then come back again. Five years’ continuous residence in this country will entitle people to settled status, but they can apply for pre-settled status if they have been here for less than five years. On the point about getting settled status, leaving and then coming back again, I will have to get back to him because I do not know the answer.
Brexit: Arrangements for EU Citizens — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Immigration
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it is very important to outline that anybody who is vulnerable in any way—including victims of modern slavery, sex-trafficking or whatever it might be—will get the support that they need from the appropriate authorities when they arrive here. I cannot stand at the Dispatch Box and say that fees will be waived because, as far as I know, they will not be. However, I can say that people who need our support will get it when they arrive here in very vulnerable situations.
Universal Credit — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Mixed Topics
Peta Buscombe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, in all that we are doing with universal credit we constantly question and consider issues of substantive policy, because we want to make sure that the system works for the long term. The Government want to support people to be self-employed but it is right for them to be financially self-sufficient. Key to this is continuing to support people in, or considering, self-employment to progress to a level of sustained financial self-sufficiency. We recognise that it takes time for new businesses to grow and that even established businesses can experience difficulties. We will therefore provide all gainfully self-employed claimants with an equal chance and support from specially trained work coaches to grow their earnings, and to prepare and adjust for the application of the minimum income floor. We were going to move the minimum income floor to six months after migration, but have decided to introduce a grace period of 12 months.
Universal Credit — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Immigration
Peta Buscombe (Conservative, Centre-right): It is important to explain a little more about the test and learn process, which is one of the reasons why we are taking longer than we might to introduce the first tranche of managed migration. We are not doing this by ourselves. It is very much a co-design with a number of charities, the third sector and researchers to help us work out our monitoring. We will closely monitor the quality of communications which we will issue, and whether they are understood by recipients, before we increase the pace of migration. We are also making sure to put out letters that are easier to understand, and constantly working out what we can do. However, if we hear nothing from a claimant, we will offer home visits. That has to be an opportunity for those who are genuinely afraid of change. That is one reason why we on this side feel passionately. The less scaremongering around this system, the better. I put some of the blame on the media, which has not fully understood it We are trying to lift people out of the system that trapped them in poverty—on legacy benefits with cliff edges, where they could not work more than 16 or 24 hours a week without losing benefits. The brilliant thing about this simplification—merging six benefits into one—is that you do not lose your benefits. Your benefits may now increase by £1,000 before they begin to taper, and the taper rate has just been reduced from 40% to 30% of your standard allowance. I also remind the party opposite that when it left government and this party came into power—the noble Baroness may shake her head—this Government had to fund debt amounting to 10% of our GDP. That was the issue facing us.
Armistice Day: Centenary — House of Lords, 2018-11-05
Topic: Public Lands
Robin Bridgeman (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am most grateful to your Lordships for permitting me to speak in the gap. The Minister made a most impressive introductory speech to this debate. He referred to the participation of the two Irish divisions at the battle of Messines in 1917. I can add another significant fact: alongside those two Irish divisions were an Australian division and a New Zealand one. The noble Lord, Lord Birt, referred to the famous 36th (Ulster) Division, but the 16th Division, from the south of Ireland, was staffed entirely from the south into the five regiments from southern Ireland, which were disbanded in 1922 I was interested to hear about the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, with his Irish forebears; but returning Irish servicemen from the British Army had to be totally concealed within their family. They were treated like black sheep and could never be referred to. There is distressing evidence that has come to light that there were several murders of men who had been identified as having served in the British Army. That lasted right through the Second World War, but then came the remarkable transformation of the British-Irish relationship. There were the significant contributions by the two presidents to the peace process; then the Belfast agreement; the visit of Her Majesty the Queen to Dublin; and the visit by President Higgins to London, where he found time to inspect the laid-up colours of the five regiments in St George’s Chapel I am a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Four years ago, it was the UK’s turn to host the meeting. We met in Ashford in Kent and took coaches through to the Ypres battlefields. There are a remarkable number of Irish memorials, even in that smaller bit of the Western Front, in addition of course to the cemeteries. Our Irish colleagues were really impressed by all these, because the graves had not been visited for a century in the vast majority of cases, either by their compatriots or, indeed, by their families. In the Tyne Cot Cemetery, which I think is the largest cemetery of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission—that remarkable organisation—I came across the grave of an Irish soldier of the Great War, known only to God. One can speculate that it might well have been a crucifix which was the only identifying object—but that may be. My Irish friend was in tears. That is the legacy which we now enjoy within British-Irish relations, and we can pay proper tribute to 30,000 deaths, more or less distributed between those two Irish divisions, and acknowledge the contribution that Ireland made to the Great War.
Overseas Development Aid — House of Lords, 2018-10-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Baroness will not be surprised to hear that I do not agree, and neither do I agree with the suggestion that the Secretary of State is being disingenuous. Far from it—I think she was very clear, although how those remarks have been interpreted is clearly another matter. So this is a good opportunity for us to make it absolutely clear that we are committed to the SDGs and to 0.7%. The DAC element counts only public sector investment, so it cannot count private sector investment towards the 0.7% target to which we are committed. But, as the noble Baroness and the noble Lord said, we are at one in recognising that you will not provide the 18 million jobs that Africa needs every year between now and 2050 without the private sector engaging with this. You will not bridge the $2.5 trillion gap in meeting the SDGs without getting the private sector involved. That is why the Secretary of State was absolutely right to say that we need to do more to leverage and catalyse that investment which the UK has an expertise in.
Overseas Development Aid — House of Lords, 2018-10-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): An example is impact funds, many of which already exist within the City of London; many civil society groups and organisations such as the UN Global Compact scrutinise how that is accounted for in accounts. With the CDC it is a different process. We were quite specific when we discussed the raising of the threshold—the capitalisation of the CDC—as the legislation went through this House, that no investments could be made under that without a business case being prepared, which then has to be signed off and reviewed at the end of it to ensure that the outputs it was envisaged would be delivered were achieved, and if not, why not? These are therefore all important elements in the exploration of these issues. More can be done, but again, it needs to be done transparently.
Brexit: Negotiations — House of Lords, 2018-10-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): I apologise; you should have been given a copy of that Regarding the immigration system, the Home Secretary will be setting out our proposals for a future immigration system shortly There are no plans of which I am aware to build a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland; maybe other parts of the Government are working on it, but if they are, nobody has told me I am not quite sure of the noble Lord’s point on Liechtenstein. I have never heard anybody else talking about a Liechtenstein model, apart from himself. He will of course be aware that Liechtenstein is a member of the EEA, which was rejected a number of times as an option in House of Commons votes. The population of Liechtenstein is about 39,000—about 1/10th of the population of Bradford. I hope he is not seriously suggesting this could be a model we would wish to follow Regarding the Trade Bill, our position is that Parliament is likely to be asked to take decisions on amendments relating to the UK’s future relationship. We think it is in Parliament’s best interest to know the terms of the UK’s future relationship with the EU when being asked to take decisions on the Trade Bill, so there will be a pause before we resume progress on this Bill, to ensure we can operate our independent trade policy in all scenarios.
Brexit: Negotiations — House of Lords, 2018-10-09
Topic: Other
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): This is the subject of legal proceedings, as the noble Lord is well aware. I am not going to answer his question because I am not sure we have made a decision about how we are going to proceed on that yet, but as soon as I know more I will come back to him on it.
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill — House of Lords, 2018-10-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
Norman Beresford Tebbit (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord referred to the murder of our parliamentary colleague Jo Cox by a far-right terrorist. He was not a far-right terrorist. He was an unbalanced man who was obsessed with the Nazis, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—a left-wing party.
Gambling: Fixed-Odds Betting Terminals — House of Lords, 2018-11-01
Topic: Domestic Commerce
James Stopford (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House I will repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State in the other place: "The Government do not have a new approach to fixed-odds betting terminals. The reduction in stakes for FOBTs is an important change and the right thing to do, but there are several factors to consider in determining the date from when it should take effect. The most important of course is to do this as soon as possible to prevent further harm. The Government were urged in an Early Day Motion in June of this year by the FOBT APPG not to wait until April 2020 to do so, but it was also right to consider planning to reduce the effect of job losses for those working in betting shops on the high street, and to allow time for that planning to take effect It also has to be recognised that, right though this change is, money for public services coming from use of FOBTs, has to be replaced or public services will have less funding. The Chancellor has decided to do that with an increase in remote gaming duty, and it is right that this increase happens at the same time as the FOBT stake change There also needs to be a proper period of notice, after setting the new rate, before that change to remote gaming duty takes effect. The Government have therefore concluded that October 2019 is the best date to make both changes. However, the Government have always made it clear that the issue of problem gambling is complex and cannot be addressed through these measures alone. So work has been continuing to strengthen protections around gaming machines, online gambling, gambling advertising and treatment for problem gamblers. The Gambling Commission launched a consultation on protections around online gambling last month, and this examines stronger age-verification rules and proposals to require operators to set limits on consumers’ spending until affordability checks can be conducted There will be tough new guidance from the Committee on Advertising Practice on protecting vulnerable people, with further guidance on protecting children and young people introduced before the end of the year. Public Health England will carry out a review of the evidence on the public health impacts of gambling-related harm. As part of the next licence competition, the age limit for playing National Lottery games will be reviewed, to take into account developments in the market and the risk of harm to young people While we want a healthy gambling industry that contributes to the economy, we also need one that does all it can to protect players. This is a significant change that will help stop extreme losses by those who can least afford it, and we are taking decisive action to ensure we have a responsible gambling industry that protects the most vulnerable in our society".
Gambling: Fixed-Odds Betting Terminals — House of Lords, 2018-11-01
Topic: Domestic Commerce
James Stopford (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for his questions. He talked about a number of things involving problem gambling, a broader approach and other games. I will start where he ended. In so far as other games are concerned, one must remember that it is clear that gambling-related problems are related not just to one product. This was taken into account when, in May, the response to the Consultation on Proposals for Changes to Gaming Machines and Social Responsibility Measures set out a comprehensive package of measures covering changes to the stake on B2 gaming machines, online gambling, advertising and research, and education and treatment. I will write to him with more detail on that issue As far as the timing of regulations is concerned, we have said that we intend to lay the draft regulations for the usual process of approval as soon as possible. We would expect operators to look to bring in the changes as soon as possible as well. In the meantime, we would expect them to look at their businesses and prepare them for the introduction of the stake reduction, to mitigate any impact. As the noble Lord is aware, I have stood at this Dispatch Box on a number of occasions on this issue and I am perfectly aware of the feelings around the House.