argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Migration and Scotland — House of Commons, 2020-02-11
Topic: Immigration
Kirsten Frances Oswald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): After listening to the contributions from Government Members, I have to say that it is a great pity that the UK Government are taking such a careless approach to the Scottish Government’s proposals for a tailored migration system for Scotland. As well as disregarding the need that lies behind the very sensible visa proposals that the Scottish Government have put forward, they are also disregarding the views of the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Trades Union Congress, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, among many others That matters, because the UK Government are messing with the future of our country when they refuse to consider that all those people who are telling them that their system does not work for Scotland might be right. However, they still continue with their inward-looking Brexit Britain, the ever-more hostile environment and their approach of pulling up the drawbridge. That is not the best way for Scotland and it is no wonder that we see a better future as an open, outward-looking, independent country, but they are determined to plough on down that road, wilfully disregarding the thoughtful and sensible visa proposals that the Scottish Government have put forward to help to deliver the sustainable future that we need in Scotland The thing is that we need migration. Scotland is not full. We need people to come and live in Scotland and we want them to come. They are welcome. We need to make sure that we can sustain and grow our population levels, and even if the UK Government do not, we realise how crucial that is to our future In Scotland, all our population growth for the next 25 years is projected to come from migration, so it is really beyond unhelpful that the UK Government are rowing back on commitments such as the ones made by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who said that when it came to immigration, it would be for the people of Scotland to decide. It is a different story now, so it must have been convenient then for him to say that Nicola Sturgeon’s approach was the right one—as it is—but we are now back to the same old, same old, with the UK Government just expecting us to get on with it and hang with the consequences for Scotland.
Migration and Scotland — House of Commons, 2020-02-11
Topic: Immigration
Kirsten Frances Oswald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I do not have much time, so I am sorry—I will not The consequences for Scotland are serious. Our population growth is slowing, our birth rate is falling and we are ageing as a population. It is a mystery to me, though perhaps not a surprise, why the UK Government seem so intent on avoiding any engagement with the Scottish Government on the Scottish visa, despite the serious and constructive nature of the proposals that have been put forward for discussion I live in one of the most diverse places in Scotland, and it is home to people who have come from all over the world. It is a brilliant thing—it makes my community better. The people who have migrated to Scotland recently and over the decades have made Scotland better and richer for their presence. People have come to work in the NHS, in hospitality, in education and in public services—I could go on—but as things stand, the UK Government will be imposing harm on our communities now that will only be greater in the future if they do not take our approach into account We need this power in Scotland for population and economic reasons, but it is about much more than that. We benefit so much from the rich diversity that people coming to Scotland bring with them. In Scotland, the people who want to live, work and raise their families as part of our communities are very welcome, and they have enriched our society. They do that now and they have done that in the past by coming to live in Scotland, and I am thankful for that. Our country is home to people with histories in all kinds of other places and that makes us better now, and it will make us better in the future I will finish by reflecting on the words of our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, in her speech at the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 2016. She said: "Whether we have lived here for generations or are new Scots, from Europe, India, Pakistan, Africa and countries across the globe, we are all of this, and more. We are so much stronger for the diversity that shapes us. We are one Scotland and we are simply home to all those who choose to live here." Migration is good for Scotland. We want migration. Scotland is open and we wish to remain so. We need to be able to make the decisions that allow us to do the right thing for our country.
Migration and Scotland — House of Commons, 2020-02-11
Topic: Immigration
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): No, there is no time The UK Government said they wanted a system that would work for all parts of the UK, but when the Scottish Government came forward with their proposal, they refused it without even reading it The hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) highlighted shortages in other parts of the UK, including the north of England. In October, the Home Secretary said that the Government wanted to add extra points to a points-based system to attract people to the north of England and coastal areas, so why have they refused to consider a very similar system for Scotland? At UK level there is simply no visa that is aimed at settlement—at providing security at an early stage, so that people will come and make their homes and their lives here. A points- based system would be based on migrant characteristics, not just on someone’s having a job. Canada and Australia are often cited, but the provincial nominee programme allows the province to set the criteria and assess the applicants. If an application is successful, it is the central Government who actually issue the visa This is a very modest request. It is supported by civic Scotland, including the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the Federation of Small Businesses. Our proposed system is based on residence, as the Scottish tax code already is. However, this modest proposal simply was not considered. Members say that they have read it, but they read it after it was refused Let me just gently say that it is not possible to keep a relationship or marriage together by force. It must be done through respect, and through recognition and consideration of someone’s needs. Failure to do that simply ends in divorce. Immigration is existential for Scotland, and the failure to recognise that means that people in Scotland, and businesses in Scotland, will see that there is only one way for us to get the policies that we need.
Refugee family reunion — House of Commons, 2020-02-11
Topic: Immigration
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Glasgow University’s Student Action for Refugees recently hosted the Museum Without A Home exhibition, displaying everyday objects in solidarity with migrants and refugees around the world. At the same time, it collected more than 600 signatures for the Families Together petition, calling for refugee children to have the right to be reunited with their parents in their home. A smaller number have signed the petition that I am now presenting in the House of Commons style, which makes the same demand The petition states: The petition of residents of Glasgow North, Declares that under current family reunion rules adult refugees can only sponsor their partners and children under 18 years old to join them in the UK; further that child refugees in the UK have no family reunion rights so they can’t bring their parents to join them; further that the lack of opportunities for refugees to reunite with family members forces people to turn to smugglers and exacerbates the humanitarian crises in Southern Europe; and further that, for refugees already living safely in the UK, the enforced separation from their families and constant anxiety about their wellbeing can be devastating, preventing them from rebuilding their lives and undermining their successful integration into their new communities. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to expand the criteria of who qualifies as a family member for the purposes of refugee family reunion, including by allowing adult refugees in the UK to sponsor their adult children, their siblings that are under the age of 25, and their parents; further to give unaccompanied refugee children in the UK the right to sponsor their parents and siblings that are under the age of 25 to join them under the refugee family reunion rules; and further to reintroduce legal aid for refugee family reunion cases And the petitioners remain, etc [P002555]
“Migration: Helping Scotland Prosper” — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Immigration
Stephen Mark Flynn (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The Australian Immigration Minister stated last November that regional visas "can play an important role in helping to address regional skills gaps and grow local economies." As migration is the only reason Scotland’s population continues to grow, does the Minister agree that Scotland would benefit from this Australian approach to immigration, rather than the one-size-fits-all one of this UK Government?
“Migration: Helping Scotland Prosper” — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Immigration
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): New Zealand, Switzerland and Canada are just some of the other countries that, like Australia, operate a tailored regional immigration system without any need for internal borders, so what possible rationale is there for claiming, as the Prime Minister did last week, that to operate a Scottish visa would require a hard border between Scotland and England?
“Migration: Helping Scotland Prosper” — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Immigration
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I think the only people satisfying a separatist obsession at the moment are those on the Conservative Benches with their hard Brexit. Let us try again on this mythical hard border, shall we? The United Kingdom has an open land border and shares a common travel area with the Republic of Ireland, which operates an entirely distinct and independent system. That does not necessitate a hard border, so why should a modest Scottish visa mean a hard border between England and Scotland? Let us have an answer to the question for a change.
Deportation Flight to Jamaica — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Immigration
Stuart Campbell McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I agree that it is hugely troubling that the lessons learned review has not yet been published. It is totally unacceptable that this charter flight could proceed before all the lessons of Windrush are learned. Windrush should change everything; instead, the Home Office carries on as if nothing has changed Will the Minister admit that the flight will include people who were entitled to British nationality—including one individual who was in the care system—but could not access it because of complicated and expensive nationality procedures? When will access to British citizenship finally be made affordable and simple? Does the Minister accept that many on the flight have a far stronger connection to Britain than to Jamaica? As Stephen Shaw would put it, many are more British than they are Jamaican. Will the Minister confirm that the flight will leave 41 British children separated from their fathers and nine British citizens without partners or husbands? Is it not time to look at the legislation again Finally, written answers confirm that the Home Office has taken absolutely no interest in what happened to the people on its last charter flight to Jamaica. Is that not the height of irresponsibility?
Deportation Flight to Jamaica — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Immigration
Alison Emily Thewliss (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on immigration detention, I am deeply concerned by some of the implications of this flight. The Minister did not answer the question from the Chair of the Select Committee, so can I ask whether he is aware of the outages of phone signal at Harmondsworth and Colnbrook immigration removal centres exposed by Detention Action, and whether all the people on the flight had access to functioning mobile phones so that they might access legal representation?
Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Immigration
Alison Emily Thewliss (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has laid out issues with the scheme as it stands and improvements that could be made. There are still ongoing cases with the Home Office where people such as highly skilled migrants have lost huge sums of money, had to fight in the courts to get their status proven and had decisions overturned in their favour. Does he agree that there needs to be a further look at compensation schemes where the Home Office has clearly got it wrong?
Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Immigration
Stuart Campbell McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a perfectly valid point, and I fully support what she says about those individuals That brings me nicely to the concluding part of my speech. The Secretary of State was right to say that compensation cannot be an end to the matter. As one victim, Judy Griffith, said: "I do think that we deserve compensation. But there is no amount that can truly reflect the fear and anxiety, frustration and ill health we have suffered." Indeed, the way we respond to what has happened must go way beyond the compensation scheme. It is about completely overhauling the institutions and hostile environment policies that led to this situation in the first place. Instead of defending the right to rent scheme in court, the Government should be scrapping it. It is about asking whether the public sector equality duty, at 10 years old, is working properly, particularly when it comes to making immigration policy; I think it is self-evident that it is not It is about listening to concerns that many EU citizens will face an even worse prospect if they miss the settled status scheme deadline; the shadow Home Secretary was right about that. It is about ensuring urgent publication of the Williams lessons learned review and responding. It is about no longer pricing people out of their rights, especially their right to British citizenship. And it is about a full-blown apology—not just for the fact that this all happened, but for the fact that Government caused it to happen.
Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Mixed Topics
Carol Frances Monaghan (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman might not be totally aware of all the issues surrounding the Windrush carry-on, as we might call it, because this had been raised repeatedly with many Ministers on multiple occasions before, finally, they were shamed into taking action. That went on for years. I myself had been raising the issue for three years before 2018, when the Government finally decided to take action. I understand that the hon. Gentleman is new to this place and might not know the history of this, but it is not correct to say the Government acted quickly when they became aware of the issue.
Social Security — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Housing
Christopher Charles Stephens (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Lady—my good friend—is right that Citizens Advice has produced an excellent report on this. My local citizens advice bureau bears the brunt of trying to help people fill out forms and navigate their way through the social security system, and I am sure she knows all about that. I hope that the Government will take cognisance of the Citizens Advice report to which she refers There is an inescapable and undeniable link between the paucity of affordable rented property in the private rented sector, as we have heard from the shadow Minister, and the increased risk of people becoming homeless simply because they cannot afford to meet the cost of living in private rented accommodation. There is a chasm of difference between what people are expected to pay and what they can afford to pay Let us be absolutely clear: this housing crisis—particularly in England—and the rising levels of homelessness and rough sleeping did not happen by accident. There has not been some unforeseen set of circumstances that has led to the number of households living in temporary accommodation in England rising by 60% between 2012 and 2018. No unexpected or unforeseen quirk has led to the number of rough sleepers in England nearly doubling over the past five years. This housing crisis was all too predictable, because just about every stakeholder warned the Government right from the start about the inevitable consequences of pursuing their austerity agenda. When they froze local housing allowance and failed to meet their targets for building social housing, what did they expect to happen other than a rise in homelessness and the number of people sleeping rough on our streets? That is exactly what has happened, so let us call this what it is: a crisis entirely of the Government’s own making It is incontestable that the Government’s austerity agenda has had a hugely negative impact on people’s ability to rent private sector accommodation. Research from the Chartered Institute of Housing shows that many LHA rates now fail to cover even the cheapest third of rents, as they were designed to. A survey carried out by the National Housing Federation and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations found that tenants on universal credit were more than twice as likely as other tenants to be in debt There is much more to be done to ensure that we help our fellow citizens escape poverty. I hope that Ministers have seen the two Bills that I presented today, the first of which aims to ensure that people who give up a zero-hours contract job are not subjected to sanctions under universal credit, and the second of which would ensure that the Government would step in to ensure that no one in rent arrears is evicted from their home.
War Widows’ Pension Scheme — House of Commons, 2020-01-30
Topic: Mixed Topics
Allan Hopkins Dorans (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Raqual is a constituent of mine. At the time of her husband’s tragic death in 2003, they already had one child and she was 12 weeks pregnant with her second child. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that children of fallen servicemen deserve the financial security of a pension, paid into by their father during his time of service, if for no other reason than the memory of the man who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country?
Council Homes — House of Commons, 2020-01-13
Topic: Housing
David Melvyn Linden (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): If the Minister is keen to talk about what is happening elsewhere, she will be interested to know that in the last five years, the SNP Government in Scotland have built 80% more affordable housing per head of population than England and twice as much as Wales. When will the British Government catch on to the fact that the housing crisis will not be solved unless they invest adequately in social rented housing?
Council Homes — House of Commons, 2020-01-13
Topic: Housing
David Melvyn Linden (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): That is all good and well, but there is no point when the Conservative party manifesto commits to promoting and extending the right to buy—one of Margaret Thatcher’s biggest disasters in terms of policy. In Scotland, we ended the right to buy, protecting existing social rented homes and preventing the sale of 15,500 homes over a decade. Why can the Minister not see and understand that it is totally senseless to build new social housing, only to flog it off afterwards?
Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission — House of Commons, 2020-01-14
Topic: Civil Rights
Stuart Campbell McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Members have every right to be concerned about what the Government are up to with the commission, given their previous noises about human rights, judicial appointments, prerogative powers, judicial review and much, much more. Those concerns are shared not just among Members, but across civil society and beyond. Does the Secretary of State agree that in any such commission Scotland’s perspective and experiences must be properly and independently represented, and that any changes proposed to the competences of the Scottish Government and Parliament must have the consent of those institutions?
Human Rights Framework: Reform — House of Commons, 2020-01-14
Topic: Civil Rights
Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I welcome you to your place, Mr Speaker Before the general election, the Conservative manifesto promised to update the Human Rights Act 1998. Since its introduction, the Act has successfully protected countless citizens across the UK from human rights abuses, so can the Secretary of State tell me which specific aspects of the Act need updating?
Human Rights Framework: Reform — House of Commons, 2020-01-14
Topic: Civil Rights
Stuart Campbell McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The Human Rights Act is also part of the constitutional backbone of devolution, so again will the Secretary of State agree that there should be no change to that Act, given all its implications for devolved competences, without the express agreement of the Scottish Parliament and Government? Otherwise, what sort of democracy are we living in if one Parliament can change the competences of another with such ease and little respect?
Education and Local Government — House of Commons, 2020-01-14
Topic: Housing
Alison Emily Thewliss (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is making the point about the cladding in buildings, because this issue affects some properties in my constituency too. We have different building standards in Scotland, but the UK Government’s advice note 14 is still having an impact on people’s ability to get mortgages on their properties. Does he agree that urgent action needs to be taken by the Minister on this?
HMRC Tax Office: Cumbernauld — House of Commons, 2020-01-14
Topic: Mixed Topics
Lisa Cameron (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. A tax office in the centre of East Kilbride is also due to be closed, although it has been a pivotal place for tax collection in Scotland. This whole agenda goes against the Government’s towns initiative. Moving jobs from towns to cities is counter-productive, and counteracts what the Prime Minister set out in his agenda.
HMRC Tax Office: Cumbernauld — House of Commons, 2020-01-14
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Stuart Campbell McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister for giving way so early. He might come on to this point, but Cumbernauld essentially met all the criteria that HMRC was looking for in selecting its hubs. Why can we not persevere with Cumbernauld? What role do the economic implications for Cumbernauld have in the thinking of HMRC and the Government?
HMRC Tax Office: Cumbernauld — House of Commons, 2020-01-14
Topic: Housing
Lisa Cameron (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Does the Minister recognise, however, that HMRC’s plans to move the hubs to city locations are counterproductive and undermine the Government’s own agenda to try to support development in towns? The specialist expertise is already in the towns, so why are we moving the hubs to cities, against even the Prime Minister’s aims of reinvigorating towns?