argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2022-07-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Margaret Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): This is a Government in whom I can have absolutely no confidence. This morning, I attended a meeting with members of the Criminal Bar Association and listened to junior criminal barristers talking about the deplorable state of the criminal justice system. It is an extraordinary state of affairs that under this Government, barristers are on strike over pay and our legal system is crumbling. They do incredibly important work—the majority of it funded by legal aid—yet the median income of junior criminal barristers in their first three years is £12,200, which is below the minimum wage. As a result, we are seeing an exodus from the profession. Between March 2021 and March 2022, more than 1,000 trials were postponed at the last minute because no barristers were available to prosecute or defend the case. That has had serious consequences for victims, witnesses and defendants in what were already very stressful situations The Criminal Bar Association has been clear that without fee increases sufficient to stem flight from the profession and promote recruitment, the systemic failure that the criminal justice system is experiencing will become endemic, rendering the reduction and elimination of the unacceptably high backlog unachievable. I ask the Government to engage with the Criminal Bar Association as a matter of urgency. The Government are due to lay a statutory instrument within days that would increase fees, but it would apply only to new cases, leaving 58,000 cases stuck in the backlog that would not benefit from any increase Now for the Government’s handling of the civil service and their pursuit of the small state. They plan to cut 91,000 jobs from the civil service within three years, which will damage the economy and the delivery of public services. In the north-west, it could mean the loss of more than 11,000 jobs; on Merseyside, more than 3,500 jobs; in Wirral, more than 400 jobs. As the Public and Commercial Services Union has highlighted: "Making cuts will only make things worse, make waiting lists longer for those seeking passports and driving licences, make telephone queues longer for those with tax enquiries." As we experience an unprecedented heatwave that represents a threat to life, the Prime Minister has skipped an emergency Cobra meeting and stayed in the luxury of Chequers for a party, yet again putting parties before his responsibilities—another in the long line of insults from this Prime Minister to the people of the United Kingdom. This Government are allowing crucial institutions to fall into chaos, are planning to slash funding from overstretched Departments and are propping up a discredited Prime Minister who is unfit for public office. I have absolutely no confidence in this Government.
Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2022-07-18
Topic: Government Operations
Janet Jessica Daby (Labour, Centre-left): I have no confidence in the Prime Minister and this Government. My inbox is filled with emails from constituents telling me how the current Prime Minister and his Government are not fit to lead our country. Conservative Members seem to have amnesia; they seem to have forgotten that they recently had a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister. They also recently had an exodus of Ministers resigning from the Prime Minister’s Cabinet. They are now in the middle of a contest to choose the third leader that the Tory Government will have had in the four years that I have been in this place The Prime Minister is a significant risk to our country, as we have seen time and again. It was wrong that he put the former Deputy Chief Whip in such an important position of responsibility and authority when he knew that he had displayed sexually harmful behaviour towards others. Since the PM has been in office, he has gone from one scandal to the next, just like in a soap opera, but Parliament is not a soap opera, nor should it be reduced to one The Prime Minister is a safeguarding risk, but he is also a national security risk. His careless words as Foreign Secretary led to evidence being given against Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe that led to her spending five years incarcerated. Anoosheh Ashoori, my constituent, spent four years in prison in Iran. The Government should have repaid the debt to Iran a lot sooner, which could have brought them home even sooner. Then there was the private meeting that the Prime Minister had with the ex-KGB agent Alexander Lebedev in Italy. What was that about These are a few of the many incidents that have been inappropriate, dangerous, disgraceful and lawbreaking. The Prime Minister unlawfully prorogued Parliament. He did not lock down fast enough at the beginning of the pandemic, which could have saved lives. His former adviser even said that the Prime Minister resisted the autumn lockdown in 2020 because he thought only over-80s die of covid. How ridiculous and insulting is that Millions in taxpayers’ money was lost as Ministers signed off deals for PPE that was not used. The Government’s test and trace system failed to cut infection levels, despite being funded by £37 billion of taxpayers’ money. The then Chancellor wrote off £11.8 billion in public funds. There was the U-turn on keeping overseas aid spending at 0.7%; the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat and the questions about who paid for the £840-a-roll wallpaper; the Tory Ministers being allowed to help a Tory donor to avoid paying a new tax on his housing development; the Owen Paterson scandal, where the Prime Minister tried to change the standards rules to save his friend; and, of course, partygate. It is clear that this Government are not up to the job of governing our country, and the only solution is a general election.
Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2022-07-18
Topic: Government Operations
Mary Kelly Foy (Labour, Centre-left): Today, MPs have the chance to rid ourselves of this zombie Government as they desperately try to survive, stumbling forward with no purpose and no thought for the people they trample over in their pursuit of self-preservation. Every day this Government are in power, they continue to make people suffer. Indeed, this weekend we saw that the Prime Minister was more committed to partying and flying fighter jets than to attending Cobra meetings. Does he know how insulting it is that while my constituents have been worrying about putting food on the table, he has been partying and having joyrides Meanwhile, the Home Secretary will not even show up at the Home Affairs Committee to answer crucial questions. To my constituents who are worried about their passports, and those of them who work in Her Majesty’s Passport Office, this hiding away does not show leadership; it shows a dysfunctional Government on their deathbed. With my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), I had agreed to meet the Schools Minster to discuss new provisions on special educational needs. The next day, the Department had no Ministers at all. The people of this country have been abandoned and forgotten as the Conservative party fights among itself I am guessing that the reason we could not debate the Labour motion of no confidence is that the Prime Minister is scared. He is scared of his record being criticised, he is scared of his party telling people what they actually think of him, and he is scared of being subjected to any real scrutiny. The Conservatives campaigned on a promise to level up the north-east, but we now have the highest rate of child poverty anywhere in the UK. This is levelling down, and it is criminal The Government were shamed into U-turning on backing free school meals outside term time and on dumping sewage in rivers. In another U-turn, they finally brought in Labour’s windfall tax policy to help people with the cost of living. The public are not fools, and they no longer have confidence in this shambolic Government. While the Tories have U-turned so much that their Front Benchers must be dizzy, the country has turned away from this toxic, corrupt Conservative party, and the frightful four who are jostling for power know it, as they have all ruled out an early election I say to Conservative Members, "Do the right thing for Britain, the right thing for your constituents, and the right thing for democracy. Free us from the chains of this zombie Government and this lame duck Prime Minister, and give the people of this country what they truly need—a fresh start and a Labour Government."
Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2022-07-18
Topic: Macroeconomics
Taiwo Owatemi (Labour, Centre-left): I am sure that many in the Chamber will have found last night’s ITV programmes eye-catching. We sat through some of Britain’s most surreal and melodramatic reality TV. I hope it will be noted in Hansard that I am not talking about last night’s episode of "Love Island"; the sniping, the mud-slinging and the bickering from each of the Tory leadership candidates made the contestants in Casa Amor seem positively tame by comparison In all seriousness, last night’s leadership debate only further undermined my confidence in this Conservative Government and their ability to deliver for the country. Front-Bench and Back-Bench Tory MPs alike offered no practical solutions to the biggest problem facing my constituents: the cost of living crisis. My constituents are concerned about their rising energy bills, the extortionate cost of petrol, the sky-high cost of the food shop, and record high inflation A recent survey that I conducted suggested that 95% of my constituents think the Government should do much more to help people to deal with the cost of living crisis. Despite that, absolutely nothing that this Government, or any possible future Prime Minister, are saying has addressed the escalating crisis. The mud-slinging on display within the Conservative party is completely detached from reality. It seems that we are being led by a reality TV Government—a Government who are only interested in petty squabbles, manufactured disagreements and voting off the next contestant, when they should be entirely focused on introducing timely and effective measures that will ease the cost of living crisis, reduce child poverty, address skyrocketing ambulance and accident and emergency waiting times, and reduce crime and antisocial behaviour We desperately need a Government who are rooted in this reality, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, I do not believe we will ever get that from the Conservative party, which is why I have no confidence in this Government. In Parliament and across the country, confidence in the Government is rapidly draining away. After 12 long years of Tory mismanagement, Britain clearly needs a fresh start.
Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2022-07-18
Topic: Macroeconomics
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): Lord Hague was right, David Cameron was right, and in June 2019 Max Hastings said: "I was Boris Johnson’s boss: he is utterly unfit to be prime minister." Now we have a Prime Minister squatting in No. 10 or partying at Chequers. If he needs help with moving, Gary’s Removals or Cleavers in my constituency are available. He is a Prime Minister who 10 days ago scrambled around trying to keep his premiership from sinking, but he rearranged his deckchair Cabinet, desperate to not go down as the worst Prime Minister in history The Government still claim that they got the big calls right, but they are rewriting history. They sought to change the rules over Owen Paterson. They disposed of PPE without replacing it, ahead of what was to be the pandemic, then they blew £37 billion on the test and trace scheme and lost £4 billion to fraud. They bodged the Brexit deal, which has led to a 4% hit to the UK economy. They claimed that they were the lead nation in supporting Ukraine, but when Crimea was invaded in 2014 they refused to provide or sell weapons to that country, preferring instead to normalise relations with Russia. Now, with the economy in crisis, we have one in 15 suffering with covid, we have ambulance services and social care in crisis and we have the worst inflation in the G7 and the worst growth anywhere in the G20 except Russia Now we have the Conservative party leadership contest, which is seemingly a triennial navel-gazing event. The public will not forgive this. We had it in 2016, in 2019 and now in 2022. This is like the three-year itch. I hate to disabuse this Government of their belief that they are irresistible to the public, but after Wakefield, after Chesham and Amersham, after North Shropshire and after Tiverton and Honiton, the public have stated, loud and clear, that they feel misled by this Government, who have lost the public trust. Two weeks ago, a YouGov survey found that, irrespective of the new leader, 57% of the public wanted a general election; 27% said that they were against that and 17% did not know. I fear that Conservative Members are not listening to the public. They are out of touch. They should give way to public opinion and give way to a general election. The public have no confidence in this Government, and I am on the side of the public as usual.
Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2022-07-18
Topic: Macroeconomics
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): Former Conservative Cabinet colleagues are publicly accusing each other of economic incompetence, of negligence in preventing fraud and even of being a Liberal Democrat, yet after defenestrating their party leader because they had no confidence in him, Conservative Members have decided to leave the man in place as Prime Minister of this Government. As a result, the public have no confidence in them. That is clear because the Government refuse to call a general election, as they have no confidence that they would win it The 6.6 million people waiting for treatment in the NHS have no confidence in this Government. The parents of the 350,000 children on that waiting list have no confidence in them. The 50,000 imaginary nurses currently housed in the 40 presumably non-existent hospitals have no confidence in them either. The taxpayers paying the highest level of tax for 70 years and facing the highest inflation in 40 years have no confidence that this Government have the ability to tackle the record £2 trillion of debt, the highest peacetime debt the UK has ever seen The victims of crime who have watched crime rise by 18% while prosecutions fall have no confidence in this Government. The people awaiting their passports because of the chaos in the Home Office have no confidence that they will be able to travel abroad for either business or a family holiday. The refugees who have a well-founded fear of persecution in Syria or Afghanistan have no confidence that they will not be deported to a country where they have no family and no connection. Women and girls have no confidence that this Government, with their inability to properly tackle sexual predation in their own ranks, will deal with the violence against them. Minority communities who experience racial profiling and have been outraged as police shared racist photos among themselves have no confidence that this Government will press for real reform The families and friends of the 72 who died in Grenfell Tower have no confidence that, five years on, this Government have acted to make others safe. The 2 million families depending on food banks to feed their children have no confidence that this Government understand what it means to see their children go to bed hungry. The 5.5 million public sector workers whose real-terms wages have stagnated and declined in the past 12 years have no confidence that they can continue to pay their rent, with 9% inflation eroding their pay still further. A blind eye has been turned to jobs for sexual favours, to ministerial bullying, to crony contracts and to wine time Fridays—although people did ask "WTF?"—yet this Prime Minister wants to stay on as caretaker. Ponder that word. Is there any word in the entire English language that describes this Prime Minister less than "caretaker"? He is a reckless narcissist, and nobody inside or outside this Chamber should have confidence in his Government.
Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government — House of Commons, 2022-07-18
Topic: Macroeconomics
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): The winner of the current leadership contest will be the fourth Conservative Prime Minister since 2016. The Conservatives really have turned government into a game of musical chairs, to the point where the world’s oldest political party is not a credible or coherent organisation at all. It is a coalition of chaos led by a Prime Minister who embodies the vacuum of moral purpose at its heart They say that a fish rots from its head, but let us not forget that every single Conservative Member is complicit. They propped him up and defended the indefensible, so the entire fish is rotten. That is why it makes no difference who wins this leadership contest, and it is why a general election, and a fresh start with a Labour Government is the only viable option for our country We cannot in all good conscience allow this man, a man who put our national security at risk by holding clandestine meetings with a former KGB officer, to carry on squatting in Downing Street over the summer. This zombie Government are set to limp on in parallel with the frankly embarrassing leadership contest, which not even the candidates want to see played out in public. They are dodging scrutiny, and no wonder. They are offering hundreds of billions of pounds in unfunded tax cuts, but nothing for the millions of families who will face a choice between eating and heating this autumn. There is not a word on boosting productivity or driving the modern manufacturing renaissance that our country so desperately needs, and no mention whatsoever of the Conservative party’s backlog Britain, with the Passport Office in meltdown, A&E queues off the scale, courts mired in delays and a broken asylum system costing the taxpayer £4.7 million a day Backlog Britain is not simply the result of the Government’s failure to plan for the end of lockdown. The multiple system failures we now see are the result of 12 years of Tory incompetence and indifference. Growth, investment and productivity have stagnated since 2010, and our public services have been hollowed out, leaving our country profoundly lacking in the resilience we needed to weather the covid storm. The Government’s failure to invest has impacted on our national finances, on workers’ pay packets and on our public services, and it has left our private sector vulnerable to major shocks such as the pandemic, the war and the Prime Minister’s botched Brexit deal We should be in no doubt that authoritarian states such as China and Russia have been waiting in the wings, ready to pounce and to exploit our overexposed and vulnerable assets and supply chains. Labour has a plan to make, buy and sell more in Britain. After 12 years of a stagnating Tory economy, low growth and broken promises, we need a fresh start, not just a change at the top.
Passport Application Processing — House of Commons, 2022-07-06
Topic: Transportation
Questions: What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the time taken to process passport applications for people in Wales.
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour, Centre-left): This Conservative Government are presiding over backlog Britain, with never-ending travel chaos causing misery and havoc for hard-working people’s holiday and travel plans. Many of my Slough constituents have been waiting not weeks but months for their new passports to arrive. I know it is a similar story for the good people of Wales. Can the Secretary of State clarify how many of the promised 1,700 new members of staff the Government have actually recruited to deal with the crisis?
Infrastructure Investment — House of Commons, 2022-07-06
Topic: Transportation
Christina Elizabeth Rees (Labour, Centre-left): The Global Centre for Rail Excellence that is being developed in Onllwyn in Neath will become the first and only rail infrastructure testing facility in the UK. It recently secured a memorandum of understanding with an Association of American Railroads subsidiary, US venture MxV Rail, to work together to advance global rail research and technology. The Welsh Labour Government have provided £50 million. When will the UK Government provide the £30 million they promised so that this world-class rail facility can be completed by 2025?
Infrastructure Investment — House of Commons, 2022-07-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Joanna Meriel Stevens (Labour, Centre-left): Perhaps the Secretary of State ought to tell the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) that he cannot put in his levelling-up bid because the Government portal has broken down. Despite Ministers’ promises on supporting infrastructure investment in Wales, we all know that the reality is very different. He will not challenge his Government’s sleight of hand in denying the consequential of £4.6 billion to Wales from HS2, nor the annual £150 million hit that that will have on the Welsh economy. Because of his Government’s spending review, the Welsh Government’s capital budget will be 11% lower by 2024-25 compared with last year—less money, less infrastructure. Instead of focusing on media appearances defending his indefensible boss, when will he focus on doing his job for the people of Wales?
Cross-border Healthcare — House of Commons, 2022-07-06
Topic: Transportation
Alison McGovern (Labour, Centre-left): It is a bit farcical to be asking questions of Ministers when we have no idea whether they will still be at the Dispatch Box by the end of the day, but I will give it a go. Those in Wrexham need to get easily to Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in my constituency for specialist cancer care, and at the moment it is too hard because of the quality of public service. Will the Minister, before he leaves—maybe he is going to stay—give my constituents and people in north Wales an update on progress on the Wrexham-Bidston railway line?
Cost of Living — House of Commons, 2022-07-06
Topic: Energy
Nia Rhiannon Griffith (Labour, Centre-left): In spite of parliamentary questions, we still have no answers about how people who have their permanent residence in park homes or similar in Wales, who receive their energy bills via a third party, can receive the £400 discount. Will the Minister speak to his ministerial colleagues to sort that out so that those people can receive the money in a timely fashion?
Cost of Living — House of Commons, 2022-07-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Gerald Jones (Labour, Centre-left): The Conservatives’ cost of living crisis is hitting Wales hard. The soaring costs of energy, fuel and food have been compounded by crippling increases in tax and national insurance. The meagre 5p cut to fuel duty has proved wholly inadequate and energy costs are due to rise even further this autumn. It is clear that the Government have run out of not only ideas but Ministers. Will the Minister commit to speaking to whoever holds the post of Chancellor this afternoon about taking immediate further action to tackle the cost of living crisis?
UK Shared Prosperity Fund — House of Commons, 2022-07-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Wayne David (Labour, Centre-left): Given the timescale involved, there is a lot of concern among local authorities in Wales that moneys allocated under the shared prosperity fund will not in fact be spent by them, and the money therefore will be clawed back by central Government. Will the Secretary of State say that that will not happen?