argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with that intervention and I am grateful for it. This translation, or attempted translation, of the vote to leave into a vote for no deal is to misrepresent the arguments and what was said at the time of the referendum.
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): There is no such thing as a managed no deal. No deal would be chaotic and highly disruptive—for the economy, as I have already set out, but also in other areas. I was Director of Public Prosecutions for five years. I worked in Europol and Eurojust, and I worked with the security services day in, day out. I know all too well that no deal would cause immense disruption to judicial co-operation and to joint criminal investigations going on at the moment, and throw a wrench into vital arrangements on extradition and shared databases. I know the Secretary of State shares my concern about these issues No deal would make us less safe. I think, ultimately, that is why the current Prime Minister, whom I knew and worked with when she was Home Secretary, came to realise that no deal was never a credible policy. She did at one stage say that no deal should be the default and that it was her deal or no deal, but towards the end she recognised that it was not credible, for a number of reasons, but I think, ultimately, because of the impact, or likely impact, on national security and counter-terrorism provisions. These are not light issues for us to brush aside and to not even have a voice on if we were to go down this route Then there is Ireland. The UK has a solemn vow to protect the Good Friday agreement and avoid a hard border in all circumstances. It is one of the most important treaties this country has ever entered into, and it is one that we cannot break or undermine. We should be clear that a no-deal Brexit risks that. I know how concerned communities on both sides of the border are about that The motion is simple and important. It is also necessary. Over recent weeks, we have witnessed the Conservative leadership contest descend into the disturbing, the ludicrous and the reckless. It has become an arms race to promise the most damaging form of Brexit or to make the most absurd and undeliverable promises. No wonder the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) is the front-runner, against that criteria. But not to be outdone, the right hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), whom I shadowed for a short time when he was Brexit Secretary, has told us that he is so committed to protecting democracy that he is willing to close down Parliament to force through no deal. That is how strong his commitment is to democracy.
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Benjamin Peter James Bradshaw (Labour, Centre-left): What is my right hon. and learned Friend’s assessment of the likely reaction in the palace were an unelected new Prime Minister with no mandate to close down Parliament when Parliament had voted time and again, overwhelmingly, against no deal?
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I apologise for interrupting the flow of debate. I understand that the motion before us is about the business of the House on 25 June, yet we seem to be having a far-ranging debate on the merits, or otherwise, of a no-deal Brexit and the outcome of the Conservative leadership election. Have I missed some additional paperwork on this matter, or is this now a debate on the principles of no deal, which I absolutely would not support?
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): I just want to be clear about what today is about. It is not about the substance. It is about the business of the House so that the House can decide what to do next. The House can move forward only with a majority. If there is a majority against no deal, and I believe there is, that majority needs to be heard now more than ever. That is all that this motion is about. The alternative is simply to say that it is perfectly acceptable for an incoming Prime Minister to push Parliament to one side at the most critical stage of the exercise and say, "It doesn’t matter if Parliament doesn’t want no deal—I’m not going to listen to it. In fact, I’m not going to even let it sit."
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): I am going to make some progress This is a serious point, because the Tory leadership race is now increasingly offering, as the Leader of the Opposition has said, a choice between no deal, no deal and no deal. Candidates are openly threatening to sideline or silence this House on an issue that would affect all our lives and the fabric of this country for a generation. That is reckless and it cannot be allowed to stand We may be using a novel parliamentary mechanism today—I accept that—but it is not the first time that I have had to make this kind of argument from the Dispatch Box. Time and again, I have stood here saying that Parliament must have a meaningful role in the process. When it got to the cross-party talks in April this year, there was a near consensus that they should have happened two years before. This pushing away of Parliament has been a huge part of the problem. The Prime Minister fought against us far too often, but every time this House fought back. Now we must focus on the next fight. We face the very real challenge that the next Prime Minister will force through a no-deal Brexit without the consent of this House or the British people.
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
James McMahon (Labour, Centre-left): I know there is a great deal of fear that the successful Tory candidate may be somebody who wants no deal, but it could also be somebody who wants to try to secure a deal. If that were the case, would it be the Labour party’s position that we would re-enter negotiations, to try to get an agreement that this House can support?
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful for that intervention. As I made clear at the outset, this motion does not prevent a deal being passed by the House. It simply allows Parliament to have a say—a foothold—in the event that an incoming Prime Minister tries to force through no deal or shut Parliament out altogether.
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): I absolutely agree with both interventions. That is why I started by saying that this motion makes a very simple proposition: that Parliament should not be shut out of the decision on no deal or shut out of the process altogether. I cannot think of why any parliamentarian would vote against that proposition—I genuinely cannot.
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): I agree. The difficulty is that if I were to list every ludicrous promise and statement that has been made in the Conservative party leadership contest so far, there would be no time for other speakers in the debate. There is a ludicrous concept that the EU has always been willing to ditch the backstop, and it only takes the likes of some of the leadership contenders to go and ask for it, and it will happen. I do not know a great deal about the details of the current Prime Minister’s negotiating strategy, but I do know that had it been possible to get an alternative to the backstop, she would have sought to secure it. That is what she was trying to do. The idea that a new Prime Minister can go across to Brussels, and the EU will say, "Well, we don’t bother about that any more. That’s fine—if you’re asking for it, the backstop will go" is simply ludicrous. The promises being made are ludicrous, and they are going to fall apart. The EU is not going to change its position, and this Parliament is not going to change its position on no deal. That is why we have to have a vote at this crucial time.
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful for that intervention. The prerogative powers always have to be seen and analysed in their political and historical context, and they always have been. As the House knows, prerogative powers have changed over time, and some of them have almost disappeared completely, because it has been recognised that what was a prerogative power needs to be a power that is vested in this House. We may well be at that point in relation to this prerogative power to push Parliament aside altogether, which needs properly to be tested The very idea of pushing Parliament aside between now and the next deadline for leaving, so that Parliament cannot have a voice, even to take preparatory steps for no deal, only needs to be set out to be shown to be undemocratic. This motion is a safety valve. It is about providing certainty and empowering this House, and I urge all MPs to back it.
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Karin Marguerite Smyth (Labour, Centre-left): The current Prime Minister has got stuck in a triangle composed of the Brexit that the Conservative party wants, the constitutional make-up of the United Kingdom, and the successor to the Good Friday/Belfast agreement and all it contains. She has not been able to sort out that triangle. What will be most important to the new Prime Minister when he goes to Brussels: the Brexit he is promising the Tory party, the constitutional make-up of the United Kingdom, or the legacy of the Good Friday/Belfast agreement?
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: Government Operations
James McMahon (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Secretary of State accept that part of the public’s anger and frustration with Parliament, notwithstanding the back and forth and even individual contributions, is caused by our failure to resolve this matter? The feeling is, "a plague on all your houses". What message does it send if a power grab means that parliamentarians, who are sent here to make decisions, are instead sent home and excluded?
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: Government Operations
Angela Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me that the Secretary of State appeared to be telling us that he agreed it would be wrong to drag the Crown into Parliament by having a Prorogation as political as that suggested by some of the Tory leadership candidates? Does he therefore agree that passing this motion merely puts into our Standing Orders for that particular date an insurance policy to prevent the more unscrupulous of those who are currently standing for the Tory leadership from doing precisely what they are threatening in hustings to do?
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Hilary James Benn (Labour, Centre-left): Is the hon. Gentleman arguing before the House today that it is illegitimate for the House of Commons, if it wishes to pass this motion today, which will happen only if the majority vote for it, and then pass any legislation that is introduced on 25 June, which will get through only if the majority vote for it, to seek to prevent the Government from taking us out of the EU without a deal? It strikes me that if that is the will of the House, it is democratic for the House to seek to do that.
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): No. I am going to carry on because of the time If the answer is to support a deal, I say to members of my own party that we will have been responsible for a no—
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): No, I am not giving way We will be responsible for a no-deal Brexit by default, because of our inability to make a decision. That will not be helped if we allow ourselves today to be drawn down this route, with a two-clause Bill that brings us towards a date in September when something might come forward The fact is that there is a deal. It is not a great deal, but it is what we are presented with. We can make decisions only on things that are presented to us. Until we face up to that, instead of messing around on what we want to do, we will make no progress, and my manufacturing constituents may be at the mercy of no deal. That will be the responsibility of everybody in this House who refuses to decide between the deal and revoking.
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Angela Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): It is a great privilege to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and the speech he has just given. I fear that the trajectory of the entire Brexit debate since the referendum, with everything that has happened, is pushing us to the extremes of that debate, because we had a Prime Minister who simply did not bring the country back together, or seek to do so. She decided that the way through this conundrum was to appease the unappeasable Brextremists in her own party. It is hard to see whether there will be the kind of consensus and bringing back together of our fragmented country for which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) wishes I see us heading towards a final choice between no deal and revocation but, in the absence of that choice being before us today, the modest measure that we are debating gives us a chance as a Parliament to have an insurance policy against careering off into the catastrophe of no deal. A newly elected leader of the Conservative party with no democratic mandate from the country and no majority in Parliament might manipulate the way in which this House works to deny us the chance to express what we have already expressed clearly: there is no majority in this Parliament to take this country out of the European Union without a deal. To me, that is a modest proposal.
Leaving the EU: Business of the House — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: International Affairs
Angela Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with the hon. Lady. She is absolutely right to point out the Irish dimension of the entire debate. That many Conservatives seem willing to cast the Good Friday agreement into the flames has been an astonishing aspect of this debate Members of the Conservative party opposed to this modest insurance policy describe it as a constitutional outrage, that this Parliament should seek to ensure that the country is not driven off the cliff of a catastrophic no-deal Brexit. In seeking to put aside one modest day of debate, to try to pass a Bill—which would need a majority in this House and to get through the House of Lords—to prevent that scenario, they suggest that we are somehow upending years of constitutional propriety I would listen to such self-serving arguments with far more patience had we not had a Government who have spent the past few years disregarding all sorts of constitutional propriety in how they have run this Parliament: gerrymandering the number of people on Select Committees, wilfully ignoring Opposition motions and finally refusing even to participate in votes, and being quite happy to ride roughshod over centuries of constitutional convention for their own aims. They then get themselves in a lather about the very modest motion that we are debating In the interests of the economic prosperity and security of this country, we have to prevent the Government party and any new Prime Minister behaving like a latter-day Charles I, seeking to govern without this Parliament. If we have to do that by using a modest Bill, that is the least we can do. There is no way, for the legitimacy of what we do in the future, that this Parliament must allow a Government without a majority and a new Prime Minister who does not have a direct electoral mandate to cause a no-deal Brexit without referring this back to the people There is only one way, in the end, of solving the constitutional issues facing us, and that is through either a general election or another referendum. In any case, it is the people who must decide how we go forward. We are not going to allow any newly elected head of the Conservative party to take that decision away from the British people. That is why I support the very modest change before us today to put that insurance policy on to the statute book.
Inequality and Social Mobility — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: Social Welfare
Margaret Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): I beg to move, That this House notes the findings of the Institute for Fiscal Studies that the UK is second only to the US in terms of income inequality among the major world economies in Europe and North America, that the share of income going to the wealthiest one per cent of households has nearly tripled in the last four decades and that deaths from suicide and from drug and alcohol overdoses are rising among middle-aged people; further notes that 1.6 million food parcels were handed out by Trussell Trust food banks last year and that child poverty has increased by 500,000 since 2010; recognises that following the resignation of the entire Social Mobility Commission in November 2017 in protest against the Government’s inaction and a near year-long delay in appointing replacements, the new Commission has found that social mobility has stagnated for four years; considers that the Government’s programme of austerity has decimated social security and led to growing inequality of provision across education, health, social care and housing; further considers that the Government’s austerity programme has caused and continues to cause suffering to millions of people; and calls on the Government to end child poverty, to end the need for the use of food banks and to take urgent action to tackle rising inequality throughout the UK and increase investment in public services Levels of inequality in the UK are both shocking an unsustainable. The crisis in homelessness evident on our streets, the stark rise in food bank use and the millions of children growing up in poverty should sound alarm bells for this Government that something is deeply wrong. It should not have taken a debate in the House to get the Government to take note, yet sadly that is where we are today In December 2017, the chair of the Social Mobility Commission and all four board members, including a former Conservative Education Secretary, resigned over the lack of progress in tackling inequality. What an indictment of this Government’s social policy! It is the commission’s job to monitor progress towards improving social mobility in the UK and to promote social mobility in England. The chair, Lord Milburn, said in his resignation letter: "Whole communities and parts of Britain are being left behind economically and hollowed out socially." He added that he saw little evidence of the Prime Minister’s rhetoric being translated into meaningful action. In 2018, the commission’s report confirmed that view, finding that social mobility had been stagnant for the past four years.
Inequality and Social Mobility — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: Social Welfare
David George Hanson (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend, with whom I share a constituency border, for giving way. Does she agree that one thing we do not need at this time to tackle social mobility is a tax cut for those earning between £50,000 and £80,000 a year?
Inequality and Social Mobility — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: Social Welfare
Margaret Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. I wholly agree Of course, it is not just the commission that is seriously concerned. In May, the Institute for Fiscal Studies launched a five-year study on equality, reflecting growing concern about the deep divisions within our society. In the same month, the final report by the UN special rapporteur for extreme poverty and human rights said that "key elements of the post-war ‘Beveridge social contract’ are being overturned" and highlighted that "British compassion has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited and often callous approach" by Government. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has attacked what she called "the extraordinary political nature" of the report and the Chancellor, too, has brushed aside the evidence that Professor Alston presented—as if none of it mattered; as if the devastated communities and the lives of people ground down by poverty are of no concern. What sort of a Government are they who fail to see that the impact of their policies on people’s lives is always political? And what sort of a Government are they who can have such disregard for the suffering of their people? One of Professor Alston’s conclusions was that the "Government has remained determinedly in a state of denial" about the impact of its austerity policies. How right he is The next Labour Government will do things differently. Last Saturday, my colleague, the shadow Education Secretary, announced that Labour will create a new independent social justice commission to replace the current Social Mobility Commission. That is in line with the recommendation of the Education Committee, which called for a new commission to drive forward work across Government to tackle social injustice. We believe that social justice is the right goal to pursue, rather than social mobility. Social mobility focuses on how easy it is for individuals to escape poverty. That is, of course, important, but it does not address the wider issue of tackling the causes of poverty and inequality. Our goal has to be the delivery of a fair and just society The Government’s own figures tell a shocking story. In 2017-18, 14 million people in the UK were living in poverty, 1 million higher than in 2010; 2 million pensioners were in poverty, 400,000 up on 2010; and 4.1 million children were growing up in poverty, an increase of half a million since 2010. Of course the impact of child poverty can continue throughout life. Children in poverty are more likely to die suddenly in infancy, to suffer acute infections, and to experience mental ill-health. The disadvantage they suffer can affect their progress at school or in work. By the age of 11, only 46% of pupils entitled to free school meals reach the standards expected for reading, writing and maths, compared with 68% of all other pupils. Only 16% of pupils on free school meals pass at least two A-levels—less than half as many as all other pupils.
Inequality and Social Mobility — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: Education
Stephanie Louise Peacock (Labour, Centre-left): Only 9% of kids on free school meals in Barnsley go on to university. Does my hon. Friend share my view that that is absolutely outrageous and that we need such things as the education maintenance allowance back under a Labour Government to change that?
Inequality and Social Mobility — House of Commons, 2019-06-12
Topic: Social Welfare
Margaret Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Lady is absolutely right; she raises a shocking example and highlights the importance of this issue. We know that 4.1 million children growing up in poverty is leading to such disadvantage and we have talked about the mental ill health and the effects on children’s educational attainment.