argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: International Affairs
Daniel Joseph Carden (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State is failing to take labour rights seriously. He is a career investment banker by trade, and he has—[Interruption.] I think it is relevant that he has gone from corporate wealth management to managing the UK’s aid budget. Feronia, a Canadian palm oil company based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has received tens of millions of pounds of UK aid via the CDC Group; it has been plagued by scandal for years; and, in July, Joël Imbangola Lunea, a community activist involved in a land dispute with Feronia, was allegedly murdered by a security guard employed by the company. Joël was father to eight children—
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Energy
Questions: Many of my constituents are concerned about plastic pollution, and I recently attended the launch of plastic-free Congleton. What are the UK Government doing to reduce, and indeed stop, plastic pollution in developing countries?; This month, we are celebrating 25 years of Fairtrade in the UK. At his first appearance at the Dispatch Box, will the Secretary of State reaffirm this Government’s commitment to Fairtrade? Will he join me in celebrating, with the Fairtrade Foundation, such a milestone achievement?; The Minister is aware of the devastating 2005 earthquake in Azad Kashmir, with massive loss of life and damage to housing and infrastructure—and of the gratifying international response, with assistance. Although the recent earthquakes were not on the same scale, they are causing major hardship; so what assistance is the Department providing to the authorities there, both for emergency relief and for long-term reconstruction, to help the long-suffering people of Azad Kashmir?; Further to the question by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar), will the Government press for the United Nations group on India and Pakistan to make a fact-finding visit to Kashmir to assess the humanitarian and human rights situation there?
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour, Centre-left): Currently, approximately 97% of the UK’s export financial support for energy in developing countries goes to fossil fuels and only 1% to renewable energy. That is a ridiculous and untenable position given the Government’s avowed aims. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that his work in supporting developing countries to tackle climate change is not undermined by his colleagues in the Department for International Trade?
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Government Operations
Daniel Stephen Zeichner (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you; it is unrelated Following his statement to the House last week, the Prime Minister, in response to a question that I asked about an instruction that had apparently been given by his adviser, Dominic Cummings, that parts of Government data that are of significance and concern to many people should be brought together, told me that I had "mentioned something about which I am afraid I was hitherto unaware".—[Official Report, 25 September 2019; Vol. 664, c. 817-8.] That was a very polite response, but it seems to many of us somewhat surprising in view of the publicity given to the issue and the fact that other Members have raised complaints with the Information Commissioner. I wonder whether you could give me guidance, Mr Speaker, on how the Prime Minister could perhaps be persuaded to return to the House to clarify the matter.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Peter John Kyle (Labour, Centre-left): Another aspect highlighted by the Secretary of State’s incredibly moving story is just how long the survivors of domestic abuse have been waiting for this kind of legislation. They have been waiting for 25 years, and indeed for much longer, but for the past three years, the Government have been promising to outlaw cross-examination by perpetrators of domestic violence. People have waited for so long, so will he now give a commitment that this Bill will be seen through before the House is prorogued once more? If it was not, that would be the final straw for many very vulnerable people.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): I urge the Secretary of State to reconsider this point. We have a Bill before us and the opportunity to address the issue of stalking. There is considerable overlap: many cases that may begin as domestic abuse become terrible cases of stalking when the relationship splits up. There are serial perpetrators of violence and abuse who in some cases are involved in domestic abuse and in others in stalking.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I hope the Secretary of State has seen the work that has been done in Drake Hall women’s prison, which has shown that about two thirds of women prisoners—those who have been screened— have had a major traumatic brain injury or a history of it. Two thirds of those injuries happened prior to their first offending behaviour and were as a result of domestic violence. So would it not make sense, first, if we screened every woman prisoner before she arrived in prison to make sure that she had the right support, and, secondly, if we made sure that every woman who had potentially suffered from domestic violence was given the neuro-rehabilitation that she needs to make sure that she gets over the physical trauma?
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): I, too, served on the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee. One of our recommendations was that the post of Domestic Abuse Commissioner should not be part-time—it needs to be full-time. All the evidence we heard was that there was plenty of work to do. Will the Minister reassure us that it will now be a full-time post?
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Melanie Onn (Labour, Centre-left): I take the opportunity to welcome the tone that is being struck this afternoon. That is incredibly important On the point that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is making about DAPOs, we already have a system whereby if a person is convicted of a domestic abuse crime, there is a possibility that there will be a light sentence; they could end up with a suspended sentence. That is what happened in the case of a constituent of mine—the perpetrator got a suspended sentence. Processes were put in place to ensure that the perpetrator did not repeatedly harass or contact the victim, but nevertheless that continued, and there was no action, despite those breaches of conditions, to re-arrest the perpetrator. So what confidence can victims have that the new process will be any better than the present one?
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: International Affairs
Naseem Akhtar Shah (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for giving way and welcome his speech. He talks about extraterritorial powers. My constituent Samia Shahid was lured to her rape and murder in Pakistan, but we were unable to pursue that as an investigation. Will this measure include provision to cover that?
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Carolyn Harris (Labour, Centre-left): Let me take this opportunity to thank the Lord Chancellor and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), for the productive way in which we have managed to work together on this Bill to date. May I also say that, as a proud Welsh woman, I am delighted that most of the Front-Bench speeches today will be delivered by a Member with a Welsh accent Like many colleagues across the House, organisations throughout the sector and—most importantly—victims and survivors of domestic abuse, I am delighted that I am stood here today for the Second Reading of this long-awaited and desperately needed Bill. None of us can deny the utter chaos that has prevailed in this place in recent weeks. The Prime Minister’s political game playing very nearly cost us this Bill. Less than a week before Parliament was suspended, the Prime Minister said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) that he would ensure that the Domestic Abuse Bill received "proper consideration" and was "rolled over". Despite that, and while domestic violence-related homicides in the UK hit a five-year high last year, the Prime Minister went back on his word and blatantly allowed the Bill to drop, alongside a dozen other important pieces of legislation. But thankfully Lady Hale ruled last week that the Prorogation of Parliament was unlawful, and we rightly found ourselves back here with the Domestic Abuse Bill firmly back on the agenda. It was very much a case that Hale saved the day and the Bill We cannot afford any more hold-ups. Time is not a luxury that victims of domestic abuse have. Every delay in getting this legislation through is critical. I was encouraged by last month’s announcement that Nicole Jacobs had been appointed as the first Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, but I do have grave concerns—also mentioned by hon. Friends—that the role is only part-time. I sincerely hope that the introduction of new legislation through this Bill will change that. If the commissioner is going to successfully deliver a whole-society response and radically improve the UK’s approach to domestic violence, a part-time position is just not viable.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Madeleine Moon (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for the amazing work that she has been doing in this field; she is one of our champions for victims of domestic abuse One of the things that has always been missing is the relationships education so that young people understand that abusive relationships often do not start with the first slap or the first thump. They can start with criticism, undermining and isolation—with perpetrators moving people away from their support network, and causing them to lack belief in themselves and believe that they have created the violence that is inflicted on them. Do we not need to tackle that problem, as well as addressing the issue when it gets to the point at which people report the crime?
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Carolyn Harris (Labour, Centre-left): I could not agree more. This is something that we all see every day when we talk to people who have experienced or witnessed domestic violence. In many cases, it is learned behaviour and we really need to look at that As it stands, although there are some welcome and vital changes in the Bill, it is too narrow. There are many areas that are crying out for wider scope. I hope that this can and will be addressed and incorporated through amendments in Committee.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Carolyn Harris (Labour, Centre-left): I just want to make a little progress We have volumes of data relating to victims of domestic abuse, but at present this only accounts for those aged 74 and under, even though we know that domestic abuse has no age limit. Older people must have their rights protected too, and the Bill needs to recognise that. Statistics consistently demonstrate that the vast majority of domestic abuse victims are women and the vast majority of perpetrators are men, but we know that there are no barriers. Anyone—regardless of sex, sexual orientation, age or race—can be a victim or a perpetrator, so we must ensure that service and funding provision is appropriately proportioned.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Mark Richard Tami (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend will be aware of the vital work that the Domestic Abuse Safety Unit in Shotton has been doing for many years. I have been there and have heard harrowing stories. To echo her point, so many people say that they have put up with this sort of behaviour for five, 10 or 20 years when asked, "How long had this gone on before you reached this stage?" We need to ensure that these centres are getting the finance they need to carry on with this vital work.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Alexander Gordon Martin (Labour, Centre-left): Women’s Aid organisations, such as Lighthouse Women’s Aid in my constituency, are doing good work but have to survive hand to mouth, relying on money from lottery funding. Does my hon. Friend agree that this makes it extremely difficult for them to employ and retain the staff they need, with the experience and training to give proper counselling to women?
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Education
Seema Malhotra-Saluja (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making an important and powerful speech. Does she believe that the Bill will do enough to support the role of schools in the lives of families? I know the amount of work that goes on in many schools in my constituency to support parents and children when there is domestic abuse at home. One primary school has told me that it suspects about five children in one class are subject to domestic violence.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Carolyn Harris (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right and later I will talk about a scheme that helps in that situation The protection and provision of support for children who experience domestic abuse—I am repeating myself. I have already read that bit, so we will scrap that, thank you very much. [Laughter.] That is the Welsh in me; never ashamed to say when we are wrong As well as ensuring access to support services, the Bill needs to legislate for those children and ensure protected places in all NHS waiting lists, as well as priority access to school places when they are forced to move to a new area to escape domestic abuse. There is already good practice in our communities that has been established to cater for the needs of children experiencing domestic abuse.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Carolyn Harris (Labour, Centre-left): I am going to make progress Operation Encompass, which is an excellent example of what we are doing in communities, was set up to enable police forces and schools to confidentially and quickly share information about vulnerable children who need support and safeguarding.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Gerald Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for the passionate case that she is outlining. One of my local forces, Gwent police, have played a considerable role in pioneering Operation Encompass. Will she join me in congratulating and thanking not only Gwent police but forces across the country for the important work that they have done in rolling out that initiative?
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Carolyn Harris (Labour, Centre-left): I am delighted to congratulate Gwent police. On Monday, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) and I visited the Liberty stadium in my constituency, where South Wales police launched their Operation Encompass. I pay particular tribute to Russell Dwyer, the head of St Thomas Primary School, who was a pioneer in ensuring that it came to Swansea.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Carolyn Harris (Labour, Centre-left): I am going to make progress We need to secure better outcomes for child victims of domestic abuse. The only way that we will do that is by ensuring that such initiatives are available throughout the country. The Bill also needs to legislate to improve the experiences of survivors and their children in the family courts. Contact arrangements must be based on the child’s best interests, and parental contact should not be automatic, especially where there is evidence that the child could be at risk.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Carolyn Harris (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend. We have worked closely on many cases where children have been put at risk by being allowed access to potentially, if not very, dangerous parents. That is something that I feel passionately about. I believe we need a complete overhaul to ensure that the courts are prioritising the victims, not the perpetrators.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Jessica Elizabeth Morden (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend very much for giving way. She mentioned the family courts. A prominent campaigner against the injustice that domestic abuse victims face in the family courts is Rachel Williams, who recently organised the Stand up to Domestic Abuse conference in Newport, which my hon. Friend and I both attended. Will she join me in paying tribute to campaigners and survivors such as Rachel whose courage in speaking out make a real difference to legislation such as this?
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Carolyn Harris (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about housing. We have grave concerns about the housing of victims, which is another issue that we will pursue in Committee Reforms are also needed in the benefits system to ensure that survivors do not suffer further financially when escaping domestic abuse. The introduction of separate universal credit payments by default and the abolition of the five-week payment delay for all survivors will prevent abusers from using the welfare system as a means of continued economic abuse.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Madeleine Moon (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the right hon. Lady—I am awfully sorry, but I am still tempted to refer to her as the Prime Minister When I worked in child protection, I worked with a young mother in a second marriage. She said to me: "We all expect to be hit by our husbands, don’t we? It’s just this one is so violent." That was absolutely shocking, but not half as shocking as when we were later in court, where we were taking wardship proceedings to protect the children. The husband informed the court that I was lying—there was nothing wrong with their family or their relationship, and I was just prejudiced. The judge asked him: "Are you saying that you have never struck your wife?" After a pause, he said: "Obviously I’ve given her the odd backhander to keep her in line, but no, I’ve never been violent." That is what we have to combat and deal with, and that is part of what this debate and the Bill must tackle.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): The right hon. Lady mentions something that a lot of people will be interested in: often, because the authorities do not necessarily believe them, the victim is sent back into the situation they are trying to get out of and subjected to further abuse. The other point I would make is that we should also be tackling psychological abuse.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Harriet Ruth Harman (Labour, Centre-left): Absolutely. I completely agree. Men are using the narrative of women’s sexual enjoyment of being injured to escape murder charges and face only manslaughter charges. Instead of being imprisoned for life, they are out in just a few years. The woman’s grieving family, though, are never free from their loss or the stain on her reputation. What an irony it is that the narrative of women’s sexual empowerment is being used by men who inflict fatal injuries. It is what I describe as the "Fifty Shades of Grey" defence The killing of Natalie Connolly is the worst case that I have come across, but it is far from the only case. In that case, not only were the relatives absolutely distraught, but the jurors were dismayed that the man had not faced a murder charge. They approached the relatives on the steps of the court and said, "What on earth happened?" They even approached me, which was unprecedented: jurors had never come to me before. We can change the law in the Bill. There is case law on this. In 1993, in R v. Brown, the House of Lords, which preceded the Supreme Court, ruled that if injuries are serious a defendant cannot claim as a defence that the victim consented. We need that in statute, so that it is right there under the noses of the Crown Prosecution Service and the judges For years, men got away with murder, claiming, "She asked for it." Now we have to shut down this modern version of the defence. I want to say to the relatives of Natalie Connolly that we can see that she was a wonderful young woman. We can see that she was a precious daughter, a devoted mother, a twin sister, a beloved granddaughter. We recognise who she was, and that is what we want them to remember. We will get justice for her in a change in the law.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is right. Refuge, for example, has faced funding cuts of some 80% of its services over recent years—that was the evidence given to the Joint Committee. We also heard that 60% of referrals to refuges were unsuccessful because of a lack of bed spaces. I hope that in Committee we can look more closely at the recommendation from the Home Affairs Committee to have a statutory duty on local authorities to provide refuge places with sustainable funding supported by Government I want to raise the point about what happens to serial perpetrators, including serial stalkers. We recommended in our report that the Government should introduce a national register of serial stalkers and domestic violence perpetrators. We know from the ONS evidence that around a third of victims of domestic abuse suffer from more than one type of abuse, with partner abuse and stalking being the most common combination. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust told us that 55% of callers to the national stalking helpline were being stalked by an ex-partner. We need more co-ordination between police and social services to address that In a case in my constituency, a man has just been sentenced to 11 years for violent assault. He tied a noose around his partner’s neck and lifted her off the ground. It was part of a series of sustained attacks. At the time, he was on bail for other attacks, including punching his previous partner in the face, trying to suffocate her and wrapping a phone cord around her neck. He also threatened to tie a rope round her child’s neck and drag him behind his van. Laura Richards of Paladin, the anti-stalking charity, warned that this particular man had abused at least four women before, including some years ago grabbing a 17-year-old by the hair and kneeing her in the face, and the following year grabbing another woman by the throat and headbutting her in the mouth. Yet this man was able to go on and commit the abuse for which he has now been sentenced. There are so many other cases that involve serial abuse, yet the onus is still on potential victims of domestic abuse or stalking to raise their concerns with the police, rather than agencies having a responsibility to manage the risk, identify those who are committing serial violence and make sure that action is taken before it is too late Let me briefly raise the other concerns we had. As well as seeing the commissioner be more independent, I hope the Government will also take further account of the gendered nature of abuse. Of course men and women can both be victims of domestic abuse, but the Minister will know that women are more likely to be the victims of abuse and of the most serious abuse. That is part of a wider context of violence against women and girls. We owe it to those who experience terrible coercive control, and to their children, who can bear the greatest scars, to ensure we use this Bill to make the maximum possible change in people’s lives.