argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Affordable Housing — House of Lords, 2018-10-25
Topic: Housing
Rita Donaghy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. One thing that we can be sure about in this debate is that the Minister will not use his reply to say, "I’d rather not talk about that. It’s been covered already, actually". I can understand why the chief executive of Persimmon, Mr Jeff Fairburn, said it as he walked off the set of BBC’s "Look North". If I had had my bonus cut from £131 million to £75 million, I might feel a bit snippy with the media as well, but I think that we can rely on the Minister to give us a good reply. More than half the homes sold by Persimmon benefited from enormous taxpayer subsidies under the Government’s Help to Buy scheme, aimed at people who would have been able to buy their own home anyway. These new homes are out of the reach of 83% of working private-renting families, even with Help to Buy. I doubt whether Mr Fairburn is interested in affordable homes, whatever the definition As my noble friend Lord McKenzie said, we have the lowest levels of social rented housebuilding on record. Social housing is leaching out of our housing stock because of various government policies, permitted development rights, the notorious viability assessments, which took too long to clamp down on, and finally right to buy. I question whether there should be a right to buy council housing, but at the very least councils should be able to keep 100% of receipts, instead of the one-third, for investment in new housing The Local Government Association has estimated that local authorities have lost enough homes to house the population of Oxford in the last five years. Termination of private rented sector tenancy is now the single lead cause of homelessness, ahead of family or relationship breakdown. Other noble Lords mentioned the borrowing cap on local authority housing and mention has been made of the lax rules surrounding permitted development rights, which represent 8% of the new-build sector, with no community obligations. I agree with all that has been said. The LGA has said that we have lost more than 7,500 affordable homes over two years under the current PDR scheme I turn finally to housing associations. We need to bring forward the £2 billion announcement from 2022 to now. It is a relatively small figure but it might help cash-starved housing associations to preserve their stock. In my street in Peckham there are two empty properties owned by different housing associations. One is a four-storey house and the other is a ground-floor flat. Both need major refurbishment to make them habitable. There is a desperate need for social housing in the area. What is going to happen? They are both going to be sold off. The ground-floor flat has been home to successive families in need for more than 35 years, to my knowledge. Now it will no longer be available to those who are poor. If the Government really care about housing associations, they should bring forward the £2 billion grant and stop the sell-off now.
International Relations — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Other
George Foulkes (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I wonder whether I can add something as a fellow rebel. The Order Paper is inaccurate. It is wrong to say that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, resigned. We have just heard that he did not, so the Motion is not correct. I address the Senior Deputy Speaker because he is moving the Motion. As the House heard last week, I have the greatest respect for him, sitting with him as I do on the Liaison Committee, which he chairs impeccably. I have known him for years in both this place and the other place. In all seriousness, I ask him to take this back. It would be a travesty and look very bad if this House passed something that, from what we have heard, is manifestly inaccurate. The Senior Deputy Speaker would do this House a service if he took the matter back to the committee.
International Relations — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Other
John McFall (Labour, Centre-left): No, I hope I have been very clear. I am taking the issue that Members have brought up into the review of committees, not this particular Motion. This has resulted from the usual channels putting this forward to me, and in those circumstances I beg to move.
Civil Liability Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Other
Anthony Gueterbock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. One of the reasons for tabling the amendment was to probe her response. I will read it very carefully but in the meantime I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Civil Liability Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): I thank not the Minister but the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge—I will get him to move things in future. He is so much more effective than I am I was very disappointed by the tone of the response. I stand here as the shadow Consumer Minister, talking about consumers, and we get a sort of suggestion that this is all about keeping trade unions happy. As my noble friend Lord Bassam said, sadly there are only 6 million people in trade unions—I wish it was more. It is exactly the low paid and the people who are most vulnerable to this who are not represented by trade unions—but, even if they were, I do not accept that that makes putting up the limit somehow acceptable I will not take up time. I acknowledge a movement on vulnerable passengers—for which, as a cyclist and a pedestrian, I am grateful—but I am afraid that the Government’s own figures show that, by their changes, one in four of the people compensated today would no longer be compensated. If on that basis the Minister thinks that we will save costs—in other words, it is injured people who will pay—I do not think that that is good enough. It should be done not behind the scenes but in Bill. I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.
Civil Liability Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I shall attempt to provide some sort of explanation. The amendment seeks a review of what is actually happening in the light of the changing circumstances; it does not prescribe a particular solution. It offers precisely the opportunity for the professions to contribute to ensuring that the arrangements for periodical payments suit the client, particularly those who have suffered significant injuries and may be looking for lifetime support. It is very much an open request, and the expertise of the noble Lord—and others, of course—is very welcome in dealing with it Amendment 73A in my name also seeks a different review on the assumptions on which that the discount rate itself is based and how investors have dealt with that over time. As will be seen, the review should, I hope, indicate whether the assumptions on which the discount rate is based need to be changed, and to set out any recommendations This is entering new territory, and it is reasonable to have a report within a reasonable time—three years is probably long enough—to allow a proper examination of the impact of the new arrangements. For that matter, there is a question of course about how often there should be such a review. It would be difficult to prescribe, because interest rates and returns on investments change. We have been living in a fairly good period in terms of returns, but that may not last. So periodic reviews should be very much part of the agenda. On the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, I strongly support the position that he takes and hope that the Minister will feel sympathetic to it and to the other amendments in this group.
Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Immigration
Margot Aline (Labour, Centre-left): That this House regrets that the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018 include a £39 increase in the fee for registering children entitled to British citizenship, given that only £372 of the proposed £1,012 fee is attributable to administrative costs; and calls on Her Majesty’s Government to withdraw the fee increase until they have (1) published a children’s best interests impact assessment of the fee level, and (2) established an independent review of fees for registering children as British citizens, in the light of the report of the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement (HL Paper 118) (SI 2018/330).
Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Immigration
Frank Ashcroft Judd (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, in welcoming strongly what the right reverend Prelate said, does he not agree that, in the breakdown of society, what is repeatedly demonstrated is that children need to belong? There has to be a culture, an overwhelming culture, of being wanted and belonging, and if that is not there, disintegration increases. Does he not also agree that, in the kind of society he is talking about, phrases such as "hostile environment" have absolutely no place, because they generate the wrong kind of context?
Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Immigration
Simon Haskel (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on bringing this regret Motion. I sit on the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and, yes, this regulation did cause us concern: that is why we reported it to the House. For the Minister’s convenience, that was regulation 330. Last week, regulation 680 came before the committee with an almost identical title, dealing with fees for children and immigrants, and this one caused us even more concern: this one dealt with the waiving of fees for the Windrush generation. As my noble friend said, they came here as children. Here again, the Home Office’s uncompromising attitude towards immigrants caused a lot of disruption and difficulty for a lot of people—people legally entitled to be here but whose family settled in the UK prior to 1 January 1973, when the Immigration Act 1971 commenced People were not informed and only recently has Parliament become aware of these problems, and the difficulties and expense to which people have been put. The Government quickly introduced the Windrush scheme to put it right and this enabled the Home Office to waive fees for those eligible for the scheme. Yes, in this case the Home Office has apologised and rushed to put things right. Indeed, it has rushed so much that regulation 618 came into force without the normal period for people to pray against it. Indeed, the Immigration Minister wrote to your Lordships’ committee explaining the need to bring these regulations in immediately instead of waiting the usual 21 days. Your Lordships’ committee asked the Home Office how many people it anticipated would use the scheme, the cost and the end date. The answer was that it did not know This later regulation 618 proves that my noble friend is absolutely right to raise this question, because there was more trouble in the pipeline; trouble which, at least on this occasion, the Government have apologised for and tried to put right. The effect of having a hostile environment in the Home Office towards immigrants—presumably to get numbers down to the tens of thousands—and the damage done to innocent people will not be put right by an apology This policy has done the NHS an enormous amount of harm, as today’s first Oral Question illustrated perfectly, with concern expressed on all sides of the House. Only a change in policy will put it right, so I hope the Minister will carry my noble friend’s message to the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister and that they will accept my noble friend’s proposal.
Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Immigration
Doreen Massey (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Lister on her important regret Motion. I shall be very brief, as noble Lords have spoken eloquently and poignantly about children being sometimes cheated out of their livelihood. I want to do one thing, which is to appeal to this House’s sense of fairness and responsibility towards children. We have always had that responsibility and we have had many Bills over the last few years—longer, indeed—on issues relating to child welfare, child protection, social mobility, poverty measures, child refugees, integration into British society and so on. We have consistently been concerned for vulnerable children and vulnerable families. We have a strong record of supporting and protecting children. Can we really forget all that I regard this profiteering by the Home Office on all children who make nationality and immigration applications as quite extraordinary and unacceptable. We all know that young people need an affordable way of gaining permanent status and stability. They also deserve legal advice, along with legal aid for separated children and young people. As we have stated over and again, young people in our society deserve help to succeed and lead useful lives. How can a young person faced with this extraordinary situation pay this kind of money, as my noble friend and others have said, for their own security as citizens in this country, something to which they are entitled? What price the Government’s policies on social mobility and child protection? Surely this needs urgent attention.
Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Immigration
Jonathan Toby Harris (Labour, Centre-left): Would the Minister explain why it is relevant to the cost of these children getting citizenship, when they have lived their entire lives in this country, to pay for the borders when they have probably never crossed them?
Civil Liability Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, at this late hour I propose only to express agreement with much of what has been said from all round the Chamber in these debates. I am not as concerned as the noble Lord is about the role of the Lord Chief Justice. It does not seem at all inappropriate for the Lord Chief Justice to be consulted, which is all that the amendment suggests, in the course of making these very difficult decisions. The noble Lord need not worry very much about the consequences of that I am happy to support all the amendments that have been discussed and I congratulate noble and learned Lords on the progress that has been made. I assume that the Minister will be inclined to accept, and I certainly hope that that will be the case.
Civil Liability Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am inclined to agree with the noble Earl about Amendments 68 and 71, but I am afraid I remain unconvinced about the five-year period as opposed to the three-year period, and find myself in the rather strange position of agreeing with the Minister. It is not as though all claimants will be five years off a review. Some will be and others will not, necessarily. There will be different timescales for individual claims, and I do not think five years is necessary to protect the integrity of the system. Some people will try to game, whatever the period. Five years is not necessarily more likely to protect against that than otherwise. Rather unusually—I am sure the noble and learned Lord will stick to the three-year period in the Bill—I will have to agree with him. I should like to say at the end of this very long day that the House has done its usual very good job of scrutinising difficult legislation. It is a little late to try to recall everything that we have discussed and agreed, but a good job has been done today and I hope the Bill will be improved. The Minister has offered to consider a number of matters before Third Reading—and, in any case, the Bill will go somewhere else in another week’s time and come back to us eventually for further consideration. There may be changes that we have to consider at that stage On behalf of these Benches—or what is left of us—I thank the Minister for his running of the Bill. He has been more than willing to talk to colleagues, even when some of them, like me, are rather slow on the uptake in this rather technical area. It is not one where, in practice, I had very much to do with cases at this level, as a personal injury lawyer—thank heavens. Around the House, we have heard some very important contributions from Members from all sides, and there is every prospect of further changes being made at Third Reading or in another place on the basis of the level of debate, discussion and argument that we have had. That is a signal tribute to the work of the House.
Ivory Bill — House of Lords, 2018-09-10
Topic: Mixed Topics
Margaret Beryl Jones (Labour, Centre-left): The noble Lord will know that that is not the issue. The issue has always been that the market is flooded with some legitimate pieces and some illegitimate pieces, and the market has not been able to distinguish between the two. This is why we have to restrict the sale of goods more stringently than we have done. That is the issue. If we introduced his date of 1918 rather than 1947, we would be back to square 1 because everyone would suddenly reclassify their ivory as being pre-1918. We would be in the same ball game of trying to distinguish between what was legitimate and what was illegitimate. The problem is of being able to date what comes on to the market effectively. The legislation as it stands has had a problem with that, which is why we are taking these further steps, so we are having a debate at cross purposes. I am trying to do something that protects elephants. The noble Lord is trying to protect inanimate objects. I think that, at the end of the day, the elephants win that argument. They are a higher priority. That was the view of the vast majority of people who responded to the consultation. I will not rehearse all those arguments; we argued them through in the Second Reading. He will know that there was a huge response to the Government’s consultation, and the vast majority of people supported tighter restrictions because they could see that, without those, elephants are being hunted down and massacred to extinction. Nothing that he is saying today is going to stop that.
Ivory Bill — House of Lords, 2018-09-10
Topic: Mixed Topics
Margaret Beryl Jones (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, that is not the issue. The problem is that we simply do not have the resources to go around carbon-dating every single piece of ivory on the market. That is why we have to find some way of restricting it. If not, people will put their own classification on the ivory; sometimes it will be correct and sometimes it will be incorrect. We do not have the wherewithal or the facilities to manage that effectively. That is why the Bill is before us today: it gives us a structure for managing what ivory is coming on to the market and a more authenticated version of whether it is legitimate I take issue also with what the noble Lord said about the consultation. Around the Chamber, there are noble Lords who represent a number of the elephant charities whose members care passionately about the issue, but if we were to ask anybody in the street what they thought the priorities were, I think that the vast majority would say that they cared more about the elephants than the issues that he is raising today. That is the reality; the noble Lord has a very niche view of it, but I think that most people care more about seeing elephants and other animals living at peace in the wild The issue is not whether people own ivory. The noble Lord put great emphasis on sequestration and confiscation, but that is not what this Bill is about; it is about buying and selling of ivory. People can own all the lovely pieces that he was talking about; they can pass it down through the family, but it is only when they want to buy or sell it that it becomes an issue. The Bill does not stop people valuing, loving and caring for family heirlooms. It is only the commercial market that is under question There are very good reasons for our trying to put in the Bill tightly worded exemptions—we shall talk about those shortly. The restrictions have to be extremely tight and the rarest and most precious items have to be recognised and distinguished. Not all items produced prior to 1918 are beautiful or valuable. There would be that cut-off date, but to allow all ivory unrestricted circulation in an unrestricted market would skew the market and undermine the wider intent of the Bill. The very existence of such markets would encourage fraud in a similar way to that which made the 1947 date unworkable. With a free flow of pre-1918 ivory, I think that everybody would start to reclassify ivory and the whole date would become blurred I am summarising—I am sure that Minister will do it better than me. We had a huge debate on this at Second Reading. I did not persuade the noble Lord; he did not persuade me, and I think that we will carry on the debate as the Committee proceeds. At the end of the day, it is about priorities. As far as I am concerned, the priority is the elephants living in the wild. On this issue, the noble Lord has his priorities wrong.
Ivory Bill — House of Lords, 2018-09-10
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Margaret Beryl Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, for those comments. I am grateful for the Minister’s reassurance. The situation that we envisaged is that there would be more than one certificate and more than one item that looked similar in the market. There would then be the problem of identifying which was the original and which was the fake. As we develop our exemption certificate regime, I can imagine that they will have some kudos abroad. They will not just be used for enforcement under our regime but could give some additional value to properties that are traded in other countries as proof of the item being of the highest quality and so forth. I would like to look a little more at the Minister’s comments, but I will not pursue this any further today so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.