argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Leaving the EU: NHS and Careworkers — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Immigration
Questions: What steps he is taking to facilitate the recruitment of people from (a) EU and (b) non-EU countries to meet demand for NHS and careworkers after the UK leaves the EU.
Caroline Fiona Ellen Nokes (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for that question. It is important to note that just last week I held a roundtable with representatives from the Scottish and Welsh Governments, and civil servants from Northern Ireland. It is important that we make sure we have a future immigration system that works for the whole of the UK, and we are determined to do so.
Fire Risk: Commercial and Residential Buildings — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. I hope the whole House will want to join me in congratulating the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) on her wedding on Saturday. We wish her and her new husband a long, happy and healthy life together.
Counter-terrorism: Resources — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: What steps he is taking to provide security and law enforcement organisations with adequate resources to counter terrorism.And thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): I add my good wishes to my hon. Friend and wish her all the best for the future Our security and intelligence agencies are currently conducting more than 700 live investigations, so it is crucial that they have the resources needed to keep our citizens safe. In 2015, the Government increased counter-terrorism funding by 30%, from £11.7 billion to more than £15 billion, for the spending review period.
Counter-terrorism: Resources — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: What steps he is taking to provide security and law enforcement organisations with adequate resources to counter terrorism.And thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): I read with interest the article and the letters sent by the former Chief of the Defence Staff and Secret Intelligence Service—in fact, I served with the former Chief of the Defence Staff. I regret to say to my hon. Friend that I think they are completely wrong. Nothing in the withdrawal agreement or the political declaration cuts across NATO, our defence and intelligence relationships with the EU or the US, or the Five Eyes alliance. The withdrawal agreement guarantees that it is the United Kingdom’s sovereign choice to co-operate with the EU on foreign policy and intelligence matters, while protecting the UK’s national security safeguards.
Counter-terrorism: Resources — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
Questions: What steps he is taking to provide security and law enforcement organisations with adequate resources to counter terrorism.And thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): It would be a very odd and almost irregular parliamentary day if the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) did not leap to his feet to pose an inquiry to the Executive branch, and I am delighted that he has done so. In particular, I am pleased that he has not been unduly dispirited by Huddersfield’s relegation.
Local Authorities: Children of EU Nationals — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Immigration
Caroline Fiona Ellen Nokes (Conservative, Centre-right): The Home Office’s comprehensive vulnerability strategy ensures that the EU settlement scheme is accessible for all, including children in care. The Home Office is engaged with the Department for Education, the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services to assess the needs of this group and ensure that they are met. I have welcomed their ongoing contribution to the development of the scheme.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): The Secretary of State will be aware of the case of the Iranian Christian whose asylum application was turned down by the Home Office because—I quote a Home Office official—"violent passages" in the Bible contradicted his claim that Christianity is a "peaceful" religion. Will my right hon. Friend acknowledge that some of his officials may be so worried about being accused of Islamophobia or antisemitism that they overcompensate by becoming Christian-critical and do not understand that Christianity is the cornerstone of all our freedoms?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Immigration
Questions: The Home Secretary talked about the epidemic in knife crime, which has tragically affected my own constituency with young people being killed and injured. We heard from senior police officers in the Home Affairs Committee last week about the £100 million that has been provided; they said that it simply was not enough to tackle the scourge. By comparison, 10 times that amount has been provided for Brexit. There have also been huge cuts in youth services across the country. What will he do to provide the resources that our police and all our services need to keep our young people safe?; I am concerned that the Labour police and crime commissioner in the west midlands is maintaining large reserves to be spent in advance of the PCC elections next year. Is there anything the Government can do to stop this?; Can the Secretary of State guarantee effective steps to encourage EU nationals to come to, and stay in, the UK to meet demand for NHS and care sector workers post Brexit? Does he accept that those sectors are facing a recruitment and retention crisis, with about 104,000 current health and social care workers who now feel unwelcome and undervalued?
Caroline Fiona Ellen Nokes (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady will have heard me say earlier that we are working very hard with the social care sector and listening to organisations such as the Local Government Association. A couple of weeks ago, I met not just the LGA but the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to talk about the importance of the social care sector and to make sure that our future immigration system is able to recruit people with the skills and the talents that we need to come to the whole of the United Kingdom.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Immigration
Questions: The Home Secretary talked about the epidemic in knife crime, which has tragically affected my own constituency with young people being killed and injured. We heard from senior police officers in the Home Affairs Committee last week about the £100 million that has been provided; they said that it simply was not enough to tackle the scourge. By comparison, 10 times that amount has been provided for Brexit. There have also been huge cuts in youth services across the country. What will he do to provide the resources that our police and all our services need to keep our young people safe?; I am concerned that the Labour police and crime commissioner in the west midlands is maintaining large reserves to be spent in advance of the PCC elections next year. Is there anything the Government can do to stop this?; Can the Secretary of State guarantee effective steps to encourage EU nationals to come to, and stay in, the UK to meet demand for NHS and care sector workers post Brexit? Does he accept that those sectors are facing a recruitment and retention crisis, with about 104,000 current health and social care workers who now feel unwelcome and undervalued?; With more arrivals by small boats across the English channel, will the Minister update the House on progress with aerial surveillance and gaining the agreement of France for migrants to be returned, to most effectively deter the people traffickers behind the migrant crisis?; Local authorities are formally responsible for applying to the EU settlement scheme on behalf of looked-after children, but it is not clear what support is available for vulnerable adults such as elderly people with dementia. With potentially just 11 days left until we leave the EU, will the Minister now confirm what support will be made available to help vulnerable adults secure their status before the UK leaves?; Does my right hon. Friend agree that while stop-and-search is a vital tool in the fight to tackle serious violence, to be truly effective, police need to be empowered to use it in an intelligence-led way?; What does the Minister say to the victims and survivors of historical sexual abuse in my constituency who were horrified by the recent comments of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) on spending by her Department on investigating such crimes?; I very much welcome the introduction of the pilot scheme for seasonal agricultural workers, but it is vital that it works for all parts of our agricultural sector. Will the Minister therefore look carefully at the scheme to ensure that it works for daffodil growers, whose picking season is different from that for other crops?
Caroline Fiona Ellen Nokes (Conservative, Centre-right): The minimum income threshold was set after consideration of advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee. The Supreme Court has endorsed the lawfulness of that approach and agrees that the minimum income requirement strikes a fair balance between the interests of UK citizens wishing to sponsor a non-EEA spouse and of the community in general.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. I do not need any advice from the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp). I have the highest regard for the hon. Gentleman, who is a very keen, committed and assiduous new Member, but I hope he will accept it when I say, on the strength of nearly 22 years in the House and nine and three quarter years as the occupant of the Chair, that I do not feel in immediate need of assistance from someone who entered the House in May 2015. The hon. Gentleman is entitled to his views, but it might be prudent if he had the good courtesy to keep them to himself on this occasion I thank the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) for his point of order. I did not know what its content was to be, and I had not seen the text. The hon. Gentleman speaks for himself. I know him well enough to know that he speaks not merely from the head, but from the heart. He is a person of integrity and a man of principle. I respect what he said, and I think it stands for others to judge, but I appreciate his saying so candidly what he wanted to say.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order. I know that she was courteous enough to give me notice that she wished to raise the matter. I trust that she has also notified the Minister of her intention to do so.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): It is clearly important, colleagues, that Members receive timely responses from Ministers on important constituency matters. This is an observation I have had many times to make from the Chair. It should not be necessary to do so again, but, sadly, it has been. The hon. Lady has made her concern clear. It will have been noted by those on the Treasury Bench, including the Leader of the House, who I am sure, in common with her predecessors, takes very seriously the responsibility to chase Ministers to serve the House efficiently and in a timely fashion. We will leave it there for now Are there no further points of order? The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) was thirsting a moment ago, but he appears to have lost his appetite.
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
Gregory William Hands (Conservative, Centre-right): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Could you perhaps clarify why you have selected for debate motion (C), in the name of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), when exactly the same motion with exactly the same words was debated and rejected by this House only three sitting days ago? For the benefit of those watching, could you perhaps explain why this can be brought back three days later, but the 585-page withdrawal agreement cannot?
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
Brett Charles Anthony Elphicke (Conservative, Centre-right): Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I have always found you very patient in hearing the concerns of any colleague in the House, and always passionate about the rulings that you make If I may remind you, the other day you made a ruling on meaningful vote 3, and you said that you wanted to make it clear that you expected the test of change to be met and that the Government "should not seek to circumvent my ruling by means of tabling either a ‘notwithstanding’ motion or a paving motion. The Table Office has been instructed that no such motions will be accepted."—[Official Report, 27 March 2019; Vol. 657, c. 370.] What, then, is motion (C), which seems to be exactly that?
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Forgive me if I was not sufficiently clear. I thought I had been. My apologies to the hon. Gentleman if my reply was too opaque. I thought I had indicated in an earlier reply that the House, in the motion that it had supported, had endorsed the approach to indicative votes that we are now taking. It is a discrete process separate from and different to the processes that have been adopted thus far All sorts of arguments and explanations have been given as to why we are in this process, with the House taking control of the process, and I do not need to revisit those, but I have answered that point already. I do not wish to be unkind to the hon. Gentleman, whom I like and respect very much as he knows, but I fear I have to say to him that it is not that I have not answered his point. I have answered his point already in response to an earlier point of order, but the simple fact is that the hon. Gentleman does not like my answer, and I am afraid I cannot do anything about that.
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
Anne Margaret Main (Conservative, Centre-right): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Tonight, we will be debating motion (E) on a confirmatory public vote, but this House voted on a confirmatory public vote, and I believe it gathered only 85 votes at the time. I am just wondering, Mr Speaker, why that motion, which was so roundly rejected by this House—it was not even supported by those on the Labour Benches—is worthy of another debate. Perhaps it should be kicked out.
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me. I may have misheard her, but I thought she said something about 85 votes. From memory—I do not have it in front of me, although I can easily find it; it would not be very difficult—I think I am right in saying that the vote for the confirmatory public vote, for a confirmatory referendum, received 268 votes and was defeated—
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry. I did not realise that was what the hon. Lady was saying. Okay, but my point about the discrete process we are undertaking and the level of support for that particular motion stands. What I have tried to do—I say this not least so that our proceedings are intelligible to those who are not Members of the House but are watching—is identify those propositions that appear to command substantial support, preferably of a cross-party nature. That is what I have done. It does seem to me, if I may say so, that although it cannot please everybody it is quite a reasonable approach, as opposed to, for example, identifying a series of propositions that have minimal support and thinking that it would be a frightfully good sport instead to submit them to a verdict of the House again. That would not seem to me a particularly constructive way in which to proceed. I am for a constructive approach and I hope most of the House will agree with me that that is how we should operate Can we now move to the main debate? I call the Father of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), he who owns motion (C) on the customs union, to address the House.
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): I might do so when I have got going, but the filibustering on the business motion means that we have very little time for debate, so I am going to make an effort to keep my speech short. With respect to my hon. Friend, who is an old friend, I will not give way What happened last week was understandable. People plumped for what they wanted, and we spread so widely over eight motions that nothing actually got a majority. Today, I trust that people will vote for more than one motion if they can live with more than one, because if we just keep plumping for our one and only solution, we will find that we are broken up. That is what my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) had in mind when he introduced this process I voted for, I think, five of the motions last week, and, as I shall argue, I do not think that they are incompatible with each other. Some are larger than others, and they swallow one within the other. Some are on separate subsets of the problem. What we are all asking ourselves, in this deadlock, is, what compromise would each and every Member be prepared to accept in the national interest?
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): No, I am not going to give way. It would be unfair to other Members who have had this whole debate crammed into three hours. In 1972, we used to have all-night sittings on much smaller issues than this. I do not recommend going back to that, but I object to listening to my colleagues having to speak on three-minute time limits because chaps want to get to dinner and will not sit after 7 o’clock in the evening in the middle of the week, which is where this rather pathetic Parliament has got itself recently. That is my last digression from my theme. [Interruption.]
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): I will vote for the single market, if it is presented in a proper way, and I would have voted for the motion in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Fysh) last week, had he not at the end added a gratuitous sentence ruling out a customs union. If we can get a majority for the single market, I will vote for it again I accept that if we pass a motion for the single market, or the motion for common market 2.0, which no doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) will move later, my motion will be subsumed, but I am not confident we will pass a motion for the single market, because although the Scot nats are attracted by freedom of movement, many of my right hon. and hon. Friends are provoked into voting against it for that very reason. Similarly, common market 2.0, which I would settle for, is probably too ambitious. Mine, then, is the fall-back position I hope that my hon. Friend votes for my motion, but I cannot understand the Scottish nationalists. Voting for my motion is no threat to their position; indeed, it is an insurance policy—this goes back to how I started—to make sure that we move forward and that the House of Commons gives the Government a mandate that we can then ensure they have to follow in mapping out this nation’s future. In the long negotiations over the next two or three years, questions of regulatory alignment and freedom of movement will start coming into the negotiations again; that we have committed ourselves to a permanent customs union will not compromise any of those discussions I have not the faintest idea why Members of the Democratic Unionist party are not supporting motion (C). If we pass motion (C), it will mean we have no tariffs or certificates of origin and that the Irish border question is pretty well solved—we will be 90-odd% of the way to maintaining the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. It would be of huge benefit to the Irish economy and Irish security and mean that the DUP’s objection to the Irish backstop—that Northern Ireland is being treated differently from the rest of the UK—vanished Pass motion (C) and it applies to the entire United Kingdom.
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree that to have an open border—unless we invent these magic X-ray cameras whose discovery some of my hon. Friends think is imminent—we will need to be in a customs union and have some degree of regulatory alignment. In the case of the Irish border—and, I think, of Dover—a customs union gets us 90% of the way. As I say, it is not the customs union that is inconsistent with the right hon. Gentleman’s aim and mine, which is a totally free-moving, frictionless—to use the Prime Minister’s phrase—border at the channel in England and in Ireland, with the same arrangements applying to both. He cites the fact that unfortunately the withdrawal agreement has the Irish backstop in it. Motion (C) makes the Irish backstop irrelevant and superfluous. It will never feature if we pass my motion (C).
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. I am keen to accommodate all those whose motions have been selected before calling others. I am not imposing a formal time limit at this stage, but there is a premium on parliamentary time and therefore on brevity.
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Huw William Merriman (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for the constructive manner in which he has worked with those on the other side of the divide—albeit those who have come to the same conclusion as him. We can either keep going on and on, with Parliament being seen as an absolute failure that delivers nothing, or put the matter back to the people and get legal certainty. His is the only option that would give that certainty.
EU: Withdrawal and Future Relationship (Motions) — House of Commons, 2019-04-01
Topic: Immigration
Nicholas Edward Coleridge Boles (Conservative, Centre-right): I am replying to another intervention, if the right hon. Lady would just give me one moment. My right hon. Friend is right; common market 2.0 has attracted the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), and no remainer is he. He has been one the most long-standing and principled Brexiteers, but he nevertheless sees the merits in a proposal that offers something to the 48% who voted remain as well as to the 52% who voted leave. My right hon. Friend is also right to say that, although free movement would apply in normal times, by joining the common market 2.0, we would secure a new legal right in exceptional circumstances—I stress the exceptional—to pull an emergency brake on free movement if there were major societal or economic impacts being felt by this country. That is significant. We do not have it as a member of the EU; it is a significant measure of additional control that we do not currently have.