argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
Luke Patrick Graham (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to speak in this debate We should speak about some of the positives of our great country, these great nations with so much in common. As I have said before, it came from a man with vision. James VI of Scotland and I of England saw the opportunity in Great Britain. He commissioned the Union flag and regularly pushed for full Union in the United Kingdom. The pushes for the Union were not just with him: they were in 1606, 1667 and 1689—I am sorry the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) is not in his place; we could go history notes on history notes—before finally in 1707 we had the Parliament of Great Britain. Historian Simon Schama was right when he said it was a "full partnership" that became "the most powerful going concern in the world...it was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history." That partnership shows that Scotland is not a victim; it is a leader in the United Kingdom What have we achieved? We hear a lot in this House about all the negatives of Westminster: how bad it is, what a disgrace it is, how much it has let people down. That is right, Madam Deputy Speaker, it did let people down: through the industrial revolution, the political enlightenment, the abolition of slavery, the establishment of the NHS, the creation of the welfare state and being a key player in the creation of the United Nations and a whole structure of local governance that has kept peace and security in our world for the past 60 years.
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander John Gervase Chalk (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech about the positive benefits from this Union. Does he agree that one of the key aspects of that great litany of achievements is that Scots have been at the front, leading those achievements throughout history? That is something to which, as an English MP, I pay proper tribute.
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
Luke Patrick Graham (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend, and I could not agree more. My office has been involved in helping out a constituent who is championing the cause of a former constituent of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) who was involved in the foundation of Singapore. Often overlooked in favour of Raffles, my constituent is making sure that this noble man from Perth receives the recognition he so rightly deserves Our Union enabled us to have victories not only on the battlefield but in sports stadiums, with Scottish athletes bringing 19 gold, 27 silver and five bronze medals in summer Olympics since 1997—trained, funded and championed by Team GB. In science and technology, it is not about competition between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom but working together. One fine example is that of the Boulton and Watt steam engine. The first one in Scotland was in my constituency in Clackmannanshire, used by the Kennetpans distillery. Clackmannanshire led the way in technology then. I hope that, through the geothermal project that I hope the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will support in this House, Clackmannanshire will once again lead the way in technology and renewable energy It does not stop there. We also had Dolly the sheep, funded by PPL Therapeutics and the then Ministry of Agriculture. The Forth Road bridge, which was an engineering achievement of its time, was 78% funded by Westminster. More recently and most excitingly for the "Star Trek" fans in this House—I know there are many on the SNP Benches—a collaboration between a Scottish university, the University of Dundee, and an English university, the University of Southampton, funded by UK Research and Innovation, created a tractor beam. How forward-looking could we be What is the Union about? It has to be about more than money. With almost the equivalent of one fifth of Scotland’s population living in England, it is about the shared values that we hold of democracy, justice and international humanitarian aid, as demonstrated by the nurse, Pauline Cafferkey, who was saving lives abroad in Sierra Leone under the British flag, before falling victim to Ebola. When she returned home to the United Kingdom, she received life-saving treatment in London before returning home to Glasgow. That is what true Union is about In the United Kingdom, we are proud not just of the nations, but of our proud regions and counties. That is why in supermarkets people champion Devonshire custard as much as they do Perthshire strawberries. Rather than there being just a homogenous bloc of Scotland versus England, people want to know the county, town and village—all around the country—from which the products are sourced.
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
Luke Patrick Graham (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my neighbour for his intervention. I am glad that we have so much common ground between us. The simple answer is that it gives our constituents the opportunity to leverage not only the combined power of around 5 million, but the full power of over 65 million together to resource their sports, help to fund their armed forces and push forward science and technology in a way that other countries can only dream of. That is why we have this House: individual Members are equal in it. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire is equal to the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire—certainly in their place here—or the Members for Oxford West and Abingdon and for Dundee East, and for any other seat in the United Kingdom There have been three centuries of family and social ties in the United Kingdom. We have competitive spirit in sport, but for every Scotland versus England rugby match that brings up old rivalries, there is always an episode of "Doctor Who" to bring us back together again. No one should be bullied into choosing between being Scottish or British. People can be Scottish, English, Welsh, Northern Irish and British, and be proud of both A lot is said in this House about the differences between parts of the United Kingdom, but when it comes to social attitudes surveys, there are very many times that Scotland and England come out exactly the same in what respondents say. In fact, the only difference is about immigration, on which there is usually a one to two percentage point difference between England and Scotland. When we consider how few immigrants Scotland has had compared with England, we can probably see why there is that result Our past battles have been shared, but so are our future challenges, such as climate change, the rate of technological advancement and globalisation. On not one of those challenges will we be better facing it alone. It is by working together that we can combine our resources and look forward, so that we can do things such as improve education, invest in infrastructure, champion initiatives and, for example, launch things that bring together citizenship and science and technology and be the country that brings about the first tractor beam At Prime Minister’s questions last week, I mentioned the spaceport in Sutherland as an example of what we can do to provide for the future and our constituents together. We used to be a country that ruled the waves. I hope that in the 21st century, we can be a country that reaches for the stars.
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
Douglas Gordon Ross (Conservative, Centre-right): I think it is important, before I get into the main context of my speech, to pick up some of the highlights we have had so far. I use the word "highlights" with some caution, but we have heard one major admission in the Chamber today. Following a point I made—I wrote it down: "So Welsh Labour believes in the Union, Scottish Labour does not"—at the Dispatch Box, Scottish Labour’s most senior politician in this Parliament, the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Lesley Laird), said, "Yes. Where have you been all these years?" The shadow Scottish Secretary confirmed, from the Dispatch Box, that Welsh Labour believes in the Union and Scottish Labour does not. I think that that will be a very important message for people in Scotland to hear because Labour was once a proud Unionist party in Scotland. At the last election and since the referendum, we have seen that it is no longer a strong supporter of the Union, and I am very concerned to hear those words from the hon. Lady.
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
Douglas Gordon Ross (Conservative, Centre-right): That is a very important clarification because I have checked the official record and I said, in this Chamber, "Does Welsh Labour support the Union and does Scottish Labour not support it?", and the hon. Lady is on record as saying, "Yes. Where have you been all these years?"
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
William Grant (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend sense, as I do, that the SNP’s objective is to get independence for Scotland at any price? The SNP will pay any price and the people of Scotland will be the victims of its desire to break up the United Kingdom.
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
Douglas Gordon Ross (Conservative, Centre-right): Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes a very serious point. The outcome of independence does not matter to the SNP; it simply matters to the SNP that it gets independence and separates from the rest of the UK. And it does not matter that it affects my constituents in Moray, with cuts to NHS Grampian, one of the poorest funded health boards anywhere in Scotland. That is why I have been joining protestors across Moray against the downgrading of our maternity services; that is the outcome we have from an SNP Administration in Holyrood after 11 years of them in government I wanted to make many other points. I wanted to briefly highlight power grabs, something that, again, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire mentioned. I think there is a power grab going on, and it is by the SNP, because it wants to grab these powers from Europe, and it does not want them in Holyrood or in Westminster; it wants them back in Europe. That is a power grab—the SNP grabbing these powers to give them back to Europe. The fishermen in my Moray constituency do not want that. Many of the one third, we are told, of SNP supporters who voted to leave the EU must now be wondering what their party is promising them because the policy is for the hated common fisheries policy to go straight back to the EU. So many other policies that are currently ruled by Europe would go straight back to the EU if the SNP ever got its way. [Interruption.] I have seen the wink in your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I know my remarks must now come to a conclusion. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] Again, SNP Members cheer because someone had an opposite view from them and they are about to finish their speech. They can give it out but they cannot take it This Conservative Government are strengthening—[Interruption.] SNP Members keep shouting. This Conservative Government are strengthening the Union. More powers have been devolved to Holyrood by this UK Conservative Government since 2010 than any others, making it one of the strongest devolved Assemblies anywhere in the world. As a result of Brexit, with so many more powers going to the Scottish Parliament and to Holyrood, it will just get stronger. That is how we are strengthening the Union.
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew Campbell Bowie (Conservative, Centre-right): I am delighted to rise to speak in this debate this evening. In fact, there is nowhere else I would rather be on a beautiful July evening than here, and no issue that I would rather discuss than the Union yet again. It is an issue that is close to my heart, and close to the hearts of my constituents, 60.4% of whom voted to remain in the UK in 2014, and 67.6% of whom voted for Unionist parties in last year’s general election. Despite what SNP Members say, what I hear regularly from my constituents, and expect to hear many times again this summer as I traverse my beautiful constituency of West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine—details are on my website—is that they have little appetite left for referendums, whether on Scotland’s place in the Union or on Britain’s place in Europe. A recent poll by the Daily Record has found that fewer than half of Scots agree with Nicola Sturgeon when she says that "independence is back on the table" after Brexit. What the overwhelming majority of my constituents—and, I believe, the public at large—want from us is to get on with the job of governing in the national interest for all of Britain’s people, and that is what we in the Conservative and Unionist party are doing As I was looking for inspiration for this speech today, I stumbled on these words: "This morning we have renewed our joint commitment under the Edinburgh agreement to work constructively and positively to implement the will of the people. That work starts immediately." Those are the words that Alex Salmond did not say on the morning of 19 September. They are taken from the speech that he had prepared to use if Scotland had voted yes in 2014. It is a pity that he was not so keen to renew that commitment to implement the will of the people following the actual result. Unlike the SNP, the Conservative party kept to the spirit of the agreement, respected the result and delivered everything it had promised through the Smith commission to build a strong Scotland with a powerful voice inside a United Kingdom of which every Member in this House should be proud.
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew Campbell Bowie (Conservative, Centre-right): I think the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but of course she did no such thing. The people of Scotland went into the referendum in September 2014 in the full knowledge that a referendum on our membership of the European Union was coming down the tracks. It had been promised in January 2013, a full year and nine months before the September 2014 referendum It seems hard to believe it now, but when the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly were created in the 1990s, the goal was to strengthen the Union. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen might not have got it exactly right when he declared in 1997 that devolution would "kill nationalism stone dead". I will admit that the temptation on our side, and probably elsewhere, to say "we told you so" is sometimes rather strong, as the only thing that it seems to have killed is the Scottish Labour party and the Scottish Liberal Democrats We are the party that respects the 2014 referendum result and the 2016 referendum result, so we are the only party that respects the original aim of the devolution process: to bring politics and decision making closer to Scottish communities and to make our politics more representative and responsive. Unfortunately, between the incompetence of the two Labour-Lib Dem Administrations and the deliberate actions of the now three SNP Administrations, Scotland has suffered only centralisation, power hoarding in Edinburgh and central belt bias in decision making, with Aberdeenshire and the north-east—forever Scotland’s cash cow—taxed more than any other part of the country and forever being short-changed Reading The Press and Journal this morning, I noticed that Aberdeenshire Council was being forced to double the cost of renting town hall premises in Stonehaven and Banchory due to a cut in grant funding from the Scottish Government. We should never forget that it was the SNP Government’s obsession with centralisation that led, disastrously, and despite many warnings, to the deeply flawed reorganisation of police services in Scotland, for which they found themselves liable for £35 million a year in VAT—a situation that was resolved only by the election to this House of 12 additional Scottish Conservatives.
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew Campbell Bowie (Conservative, Centre-right): I would have to look into that in more detail to find the exact reason why we abstained on that vote. I personally, of course, would have voted against it We know that the SNP Government created that situation with VAT in the full knowledge of what they were doing. They attempted to turn it into a grievance with Westminster, and then tried to use it to force a wedge between the nations of our United Kingdom. The Scottish National party is committed to the break-up of the UK. Every action it takes, every speech its members make and every policy from Bute House is weaponised and sent into battle for the express purpose of weakening the bonds between our nations and breaking apart the most successful economic and political union in the world. It puts ideological and constitutional obsessions over the good of the Scottish people, and it always will I personally am proud to be British. I am proud of what this country has done in the past, and sure of what this united, global Britain will do in the future. I hope beyond hope that in 2021 the Scottish people will get the Government they deserve: a transformative Conservative Administration in Holyrood, delivering real, fair devolution to the people of Scotland and working alongside a Conservative Government in Westminster governing and legislating for the whole UK—working together in the national interest and strengthening our Union. Only then, as the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) likes to say, will we truly be in the early days of a better nation.
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
David Thomas Morris (Conservative, Centre-right): I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am speaking collegiately Looking at where we are going to go with this, we must think of the opportunities that will be afforded to us if we all stay together. We are talking about investment of £2.5 million in an area that is crying out for it, and an estimated injection of £4 billion over the next five years. That cannot be bad When I was in the Northern Ireland Office with my hon. Friend the Minister, we had to set a budget. I hope that we will soon be back to having a full, devolved, operating Government there again—I would love to see that—but £410 million has been put into Northern Ireland, with £80 million for health and education, £30 million to support mental health, and £100 million for ongoing health matters We have to look after all parts of the UK, which is why it is imperative that the Union survives—from the top end in Scotland, to Northern Ireland, Wales and England. We are all one people and we should reflect that in our politics I do not agree with the SNP, but I do respect its policies, which are about leaving the rest of the UK. I do not want that to happen; I respect and understand that position, but I do not agree with it. As has been said, there is an anomaly in that the SNP wants Scotland to have its own sovereignty while remaining in the EU. There is a paradox there, because it is not possible to have sovereignty and give it away to Europe at the same time On that note, I will just say that we are all better and stronger together. I hope that toned things down a little—I am sure it did—but please just think about that.
Strengthening the Union — House of Commons, 2018-07-23
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Charles Kerr (Conservative, Centre-right): I rise to defend and advance the cause of the Union: the most successful political and economic union between nations in the history of the world; a union that, as a force for good, built the modern world that we live in; the Union between Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland; our precious United Kingdom. I remind the House that Adam Smith described the Union from the perspective of Scotland as "a measure from which infinite good has been derived to this country." Amen to that The Union defines who I am, with a Scots father and an English mother. Three of my four children have married spouses from Northern Ireland and England. More generally, our Union is also a matter of family. We are a family of nations. For me, the Union has always been a much deeper issue than economics or other additions of numbers. It is, in fact, a matter of the heart. The Union between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom has together defeated fascism, seen out communism and helped to shape today’s modern world. It is a bulwark of democracy and freedom that uses its wealth for good to help some of the poorest people around the world As I said, the Union is a family. The English, Welsh and those from Northern Ireland are our cousins, nieces, nephews, wives and husbands. In my case, they are my mother, my son-in-law, my daughters-in-law and my grandchildren. We should not cast aside this social union for the sake of some backward-looking nationalist instinct. We must always call out nationalism for what it is. Wherever it is in the world, it has created havoc and destruction by creating divisions between people. It is a deeply unpleasant and unattractive ideology The nationalists try to portray themselves as civic and joyous, inclusive and accepting, but it is all wearing rather thin now. The "All Under One Banner" march took place in my constituency a few weeks ago. At the heart of the march was a huge banner that read, "Tory scum out." The march was a display of political intolerance. I urge all those who say that they were on with the march but did not agree with the "Tory scum out" banner or the "F the Tories" mugs that were on sale to note the name of the rally, which was "All Under One Banner". That banner is barely disguised political bigotry. That is what my constituents in Stirling saw and that is how they judged it.