argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christina Elizabeth Rees (Labour, Centre-left): There is no starker contrast of how flawed the UK Government’s economic model has been than when compared with the approach of the Welsh Labour Government. More than a decade of Tory austerity has left the UK completely unprepared to deal with the global pandemic. Despite UK Government cuts and austerity across Wales, our wonderful NHS staff, council workers, emergency services and many more work tirelessly to keep us safe and keep Wales running The Welsh Labour Government have provided extra support for local authorities: £500 million to deliver key services such as social care and test, trace, protect; and to make sure that businesses receive vital support grants. In Wales, nine out of 10 people who test positive for coronavirus provide details of their close contacts, and almost 90% are successfully contacted and advised. The Welsh system is working because it is a public service run locally. The Welsh Labour Government have made a special £500 payment to more than 67,000 social care staff working in people’s houses and in care homes, including for domestic and personal assistance. They continued their commitment to free school meals when Wales became the first UK nation to guarantee provision throughout school holidays, and they have now extended this to Easter 2022, feeding over 105,000 children in Wales. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Welsh Labour Government helped homeless people into accommodation, and more than 3,200 people are now in temporary accommodation Businesses in Wales have had access to the most generous support package in the UK. The £2 billion economic resilience fund alone has secured 141,000 jobs. At the 2016 Senedd elections, the Welsh Labour manifesto set out six key pledges, and it has delivered on every pledge: an additional £100 million for schools; 100,000 all-age apprenticeships; a cut to business rates for local businesses; a new £80 million treatment fund; doubling the capital limit for older people going into residential care; and 30 hours’ free childcare for 48 weeks for parents of three and four-year-olds. Today, the Welsh Labour Government have announced their strategy to rebuild the post-pandemic Welsh economy, taking the opportunity to look to the future, with a long-term focus on wellbeing, dignity and fairness for people, and supporting workers, businesses and communities to succeed and prosper.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Social Welfare
Antonia Louise Antoniazzi (Labour, Centre-left): I would say that it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies), but I am not sure he has fully grasped the reality facing my constituents in Gower and undoubtedly many of his constituents as well. My office has been inundated with queries from people who are so worried about making ends meet, about the security of their homes and about losing their businesses— people who have worked hard for their families, who have worked hard during this crisis and who have worked hard to keep people safe Eleven years of ideologically driven Tory austerity has financially crippled so many people. It has driven them further and further into debt and has fuelled a rise in precarious employment. That is where we are. To truly build back better, we need to tackle the huge inequalities facing the country As this crisis has shown, it is always those just getting by who are most affected. Women, black, Asian and ethnic minority communities and single parents have been squeezed, many to breaking point. A new research report, "The Single Parent Debt Trap", published by Gingerbread and StepChange, the UK’s leading debt charity, reveals that single parents are more likely to be living with problem debt, and shows that the covid-19 pandemic has acted as an accelerant for problem debt, exposing more single parents to poverty. They disproportionately experienced debt problems even prior to the covid-19 outbreak. Clearly, the £20 uplift has been vital, but single parents are facing particular difficulty with aspects of universal credit, such as payment of childcare in arrears and unaffordable benefit reductions There were more than 50 recommendations in a recent report from the all-party parliamentary group on universal credit, which was produced for Parliament. Have the Government actually considered the report? Do they have any intention of reforming universal credit, so that it is fit for purpose in a post-pandemic Britain? The report draws out how single parents are having to turn to credit, often high-cost credit, for example at the start of the school year, or at other high-cost times, such as Christmas—as a single mother, I remember it well What are the Government doing to strengthen the financial resilience of families and to give single parents better credit options, such as affordable credit, no-interest loans and a fairer credit scoring system, so that they can go to work and not turn to loan sharks and high-interest payday loans? There are a lot of fears about what happens to single parents and other groups. What are the Government doing to make sure that the unwinding of protections does not turn out badly, not just for single parents stuck in debt, but for the wider economy?
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Paula Barker (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The story of the Conservative party approach to economic management over the last 10 years has been a tale of two rather unequal halves. For the many it has been a story of a brutal squeeze on living standards and the rise in precarious living, at home and in the workplace, and for this vast majority it has been about the desecration of our public services and a dramatic decline in the municipal offer to our citizens. For the few, the last decade represented business as usual, the distant memory of the global financial crash a momentary blip for the capital as it ploughed on, unfazed by the destruction it wreaked upon us all The machine that was assembled to discredit all that was good about the last Labour Government’s domestic agenda was slick and well oiled, and the opposition to this machine, on the contrary, tired and beleaguered. There existed a space for the great lie that was to come: that public spending was the problem and it was public spending that had to be brought back under control, not those in the City who had gambled with our futures. As soon as Fred Goodwin had become public enemy No. 1, this machine had moved on to Gordon Brown, because that was required to sell to the population austerity as a political necessity rather than the political choice it represented What do we have to show for this lost decade of political choices? For starters, there is the spectre of underemployment, low wages, low productivity and an economy imbalanced industrially and geographically on a scale never seen before. The indignity faced not just by those on welfare but by those in work at the hands of unscrupulous bosses and immoral methods of employment has been testament to this. Yes, the Government have always boasted low unemployment figures, but those who work in the real economy, not the City, know their stories are not told by the figures. I say "lost decade" because it has been the human cost of austerity that has come to define it. I fear that, when the taps at the Treasury are turned off, and they will be, the worst for our people, beyond the current public health emergency, is still yet to come. Austerity has by every measure left our economy and workers grossly exposed to the economic chaos caused by the pandemic and our public services less resilient to respond to a crisis of such gravity The demands of our people are simple: to live well, to be happy, to be secure. These are not luxuries, but fundamental rights and so should be afforded to all people in all their diversity across every region and nation. That is what we should build our economic strategy around. If the last decade is anything to go by, our people could be waiting some time.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Feryal Demirci Clark (Labour, Centre-left): Covid has invaded every aspect of our lives. It has taken loved ones before their time, separated communities from one another and placed our NHS under unimaginable stresses. On 5 March, we will reach the one-year anniversary of the first Briton to die from the virus. It is only human for us to reflect on this sombre milestone and to ask, "What could we have done better, and how can we stop these failures happening again?" This is the landscape in which we find this debate. The UK has suffered much and needs a compassionate, competent Government to act as its lodestar to a more secure future, but we find instead a Government who have presided over 10 years of economic mismanagement, which is typified by the approach to local government funding. Despite the Chancellor having served as local government Minister, he seems to have a complete blind spot when it comes to local government. Local authorities will play a vital role in supporting social and economic recovery as we emerge from the pandemic, yet they continue to face ongoing funding pressures under this Government Enfield, my local council, has done its utmost to protect frontline services and its communities during the pandemic, but it has had to do that with one hand tied behind its back. The Government have imposed cuts of over £170 million on Enfield over the past 10 years, making a tough job of protecting our communities even harder. Local authorities are the bedrock of our public services and they will be essential in supporting a green recovery, helping local people to regain skills, getting them into jobs and supporting our hardest-hit families. That is why the Government’s council tax bombshell will blow apart families’ finances and undermine the long-term sustainability of the services that we will all rely on. This is a regressive tax increase, as it will hurt most those with the least. It will see areas with the lowest tax bases struggle to recoup lost Government central funding. Once again, we do not see a levelling-up agenda, but a "decay down" programme. In Enfield, many will see a tax hike of £100 thanks to this Government—that is £100 that can no longer be spent in local businesses to protect our local employees through this horrific time. It is short-termism writ large. The Budget in the coming weeks needs to be forward-looking, but I fear we will see yet more of the same old story of Tories abandoning communities in their greatest need.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Social Welfare
Deborah Angela Elspeth Marie Abrahams (Labour, Centre-left): I am afraid I am worried that the Minister showed in his opening remarks that he is living in some parallel universe with no understanding of what millions of people are going through. However, in the run-up to next week’s Budget, I put on record not just the moral imperative to protect our citizens from poverty and destitution through our security system, but the health and economic imperatives, too Yesterday, the all-party parliamentary group on health in all policies published our report investigating the health effects of the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016. Even before covid, there was a poverty crisis driven by savage social security cuts spanning nearly a decade. Our children—the very children the Government are now saying we need to protect—have been disproportionately affected, as have our disabled people The overwhelming evidence shows that the immediate consequence of this epidemic is epidemic levels of mental ill health. For our children, we know that for every 1% increase in child poverty, an extra six babies out of 100,000 will not see their first birthdays. For those children who survive this poverty, their educational attainment and even their behaviour and future longevity will have been affected. Longer term, as Professor Sir Michael Marmot spelt out last year, we will see the UK’s already flatlining life expectancy, which is declining in our poorest areas, decline even further—one of the worst in any advanced economies As Professor Marmot also said, the UK’s high and unequal covid death toll can be related to the poverty and inequality across the UK driven by 10 years of severe austerity, including cuts to social security. Since 2010, £34 billion has been taken out of social security support for working-age people. Even with the £20 a week universal credit uplift, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that the UK has the least generous out-of-work support in the OECD. The welfare budget may have made savings, but that has resulted in our NHS, schools and local councils having to pick up the pieces as a result of the devastating health impacts and human costs I reiterate that the health impacts of this social security-mediated poverty were covid-driven. This week’s National Institute of Economic and Social Research report shows the doubling of households living in destitution to nearly half a million and emphasises the inadequacy of social security support. It adds to the call that many of us have been making: we need a new social contract with the British people fit for the 21st century—a new Beveridge.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to take part in this debate on the Government’s management of the economy and Conservative economic failure over the past decade. Ten years on from the rose garden press conference, I took another look at the coalition agreement—the ultimate Faustian pact—and I noticed this in the small print: "The deficit reduction programme takes precedence over any of the other measures in this agreement" It is there in black and white—the Conservative Government had one goal and one goal only: to cut public spending The Chancellor told us at the time that it was to reduce the deficit, but we see now that it was to reduce the size of the state for ideological reasons. We have seen cuts to police numbers, roads, libraries, youth clubs, courts, housing, schools and council budgets, including in Slough. And who suffered most under austerity? The poorest and the most vulnerable—those most in need of a helping hand. If you seek a monument to those 10 years of Tory economics, visit a food bank. In Slough alone, 6,500 food packages were given to those in crisis—a 37% increase on the year before Then came the coronavirus. The pandemic has revealed something brilliant about our character. We volunteered, donated and looked out for our neighbours. We did not need David Cameron’s big society to be telling us what to do; it already existed. It is in our neighbourhoods, our community groups, our churches, mosques, gurdwaras, mandirs, synagogues and temples, in our trade unions and in our families. But the pandemic has also revealed something rotten within our system. It has revealed the fragility of our public services after years of neglect. It has revealed stark inequalities. It has shown Britain to be a country divided by class, race and wealth. Many millions are confined to small flats or overcrowded houses, seeing their incomes disappear, running up debts, defaulting on rents, and turning to food banks with no Government help The greatest lesson from the pandemic is that we need a fresh start—the kind of fresh start outlined by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition just last week. When we beat the virus we must win the recovery, not simply return to the same old policies that weakened our economy in the first place. The past 10 years were a disaster for millions of people, and people cannot afford for the next 10 years to be even worse. Yes, we must build back better, but we must build back fairer too.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Grahame Mark Morris (Labour, Centre-left): I wonder who is really living in a surreal world when I hear some of the contributions from the Government Benches. Perhaps Conservative Members should have a look at the levels of national debt and some of the dreadfully incompetent decisions that are making matters worse, and walk a mile—or a short distance—in the steps of ordinary people and have a dose of reality Covid-19 has highlighted the fundamental weaknesses in the UK economy. Clearly, we have suffered some of the worst death rates in the world, coupled with a fall in economic activity suffered by no other major developed economy. Those weaknesses in our economy have been created over the last decade. Compounding the problem is the fact that the governing party has systematically undermined our vital public services I am well aware, because I served on the Bill Committee, that the NHS went through a costly and unnecessary reorganisation that has squandered billions of pounds and opened up our health service to privatisation. The problems are so acute that now, after only eight years, the Government have published a White Paper for a new health and social care Bill. I find it difficult to understand when I see the Prime Minister and his Ministers applauding our key workers—surely it is reasonable to ask where they have been during the last decade of public sector pay freezes. On the eve of the pandemic, falling real-terms wages in the NHS contributed to a workforce crisis. Year on year, taking account of inflation, wages have fallen for 10 years Nowhere has been more hard-pressed in the last decade than local government. We now have the Government’s council tax bombshell, which is only weeks away. Instead of helping hard-pressed families in areas like mine, a succession of Governments led by the Conservatives have passed on the financial burden for maintaining local services to local taxpayers through higher council tax. At a time when local authorities such as Durham have had £260 million cut from their budgets, we should applaud them and congratulate them on their work with their public health teams to reduce covid transmission We should look at the realities of universal credit and what happens, year on year, when Ministers quietly cut the strings of our social security safety net. Sadly and unnecessarily, the Prime Minister maligned my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) yesterday during the statement for his trade union affiliations. Like my hon. Friend, I am proud of my trade union affiliations and the role trade unions have played in defending the living standards of working people.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Nadia Edith Whittome (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and many apologies for the tech troubles earlier This pandemic has revealed the impact of a decade of cuts and deepening inequality. It is not just Government failures this year that have left us with the worst death toll and worst economic recession in Europe. The last 10 years of Tory austerity have paved the way to disaster. It was because of austerity that we went into the pandemic with insufficient hospital beds; it was because of austerity that care workers across the country—I sounded the alarm on this last year—were left without adequate personal protective equipment; and it was because of austerity that the social security net that had been built over many years was destroyed. After covid, we cannot go back to life before. We cannot go back to an exploited workforce, to families hardly surviving on universal credit or to tenants being evicted at the whim of their landlords. From the rubble of war, the 1945 Labour Government built a new settlement; we built the NHS and the welfare state Just as the national health service was built from ruins, our society today is crying out for a national care service. We need the green new deal to bring hundreds of thousands of well-paid green jobs to every city, region and town in our country; tenants need a long-term ban on evictions; and the key workers whom Ministers applauded last year deserve nothing less than a pay rise If this is not the time to demand courage and ambition, when is? People who lived through the war and rebuilt this country afterwards deserve better than to die alone. My generation deserves better than to be robbed of secure housing, secure jobs and proper mental health support. Austerity was never necessary. People who did nothing to bring about the financial crash were made to pay for it. Our Prime Minister promised no return to austerity and we have to hold him to it.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Angela Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): Since 2010, successive Tory Governments have run a failed experiment with market fundamentalist economic dogma in the UK. They cynically blamed the global financial crisis in 2008 on the last Labour Government’s spending on health and education, and used it as an excuse to shrink the size and capacity of the state. They made an absurd fetish of the deficit, which they elevated above all other considerations as the only imbalance that had to be eliminated Oddly, since the Conservatives borrowed an eye-watering £400 billion last year to finance the response to covid-19, they seem to have stopped worrying about the deficit. All of a sudden, they now argue that the country can carry such debt burdens, when to do so was apparently utterly ruinous only 12 years ago. Their decision to introduce huge cuts in spending since 2010 is now exposed for what it really was: a cynical, ideological choice, not an economic necessity The Conservative party took office with a programme of cuts that hit the poorest and most vulnerable hardest, at the same time as it introduced huge tax cuts for top earners. We can now see that cutting the size and effectiveness of the state was folly, causing poverty and destitution to soar. It was a social catastrophe; it weakened this country and left us woefully ill-prepared for the challenges that we are now facing; and it made us far more vulnerable than we need have been As this country grapples with a global health pandemic and the effects of Brexit combined, the extent of the damage that the Conservatives’ ideological obsessions have caused is plain to see. They have delivered a terrible double whammy: the worst economic crisis in any developed economy and one of the highest per capita death rates in the world Local authority funding has been halved in the past decade, with a higher percentage of resource taken from poorer areas. That has hampered our response to the pandemic, not least because of the huge cuts that the Government made to public health budgets. They weakened the NHS by ruinous reorganisation, fragmentation and enforced competition. Staff shortages and cuts to intensive care unit beds made our death rate worse. Public services have been hollowed out to make way for expensive outsourcing to cronies and Tory donors. The lack of adequate sick pay is setting back the fight against the virus and causing more avoidable transmission and deaths Lives have been needlessly lost, life chances are being squandered and people are suffering, so we must make a different choice. We must choose not the smallest state but an active and empowering state; we must renew our public services, not starve them of resources; and as we seek to recover from this crisis, the state must work in partnership with business to lay the foundations of our future success and prosperity.