argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Legislation: Skeleton Bills and Delegated Powers — House of Lords, 2022-01-06
Topic: Government Operations
John Dawson Eccles (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I think we are approaching some form of consensus but the problem is: what does one do when one has achieved that consensus? Many years ago, I was on the Merits Committee and subsequently on the Delegated Powers Committee. We experienced many of the issues that have been highlighted in these two excellent reports. It was on those committees that I discovered the depth of skill and professionalism of the staff of this House. They were a mine of historical and current information. They told us many of the things that the committees are being told again today However, it has always been the case that Executives want to make their lives easier by limiting the powers of legislatures. As life gets more complicated, there is no chance at all that that is going to go away. After all, everybody would like to have a weekend off every now and again. Although sometimes I think that the stress on Parliament is exaggerated, it is nevertheless true that there is a problem of parliamentary time One can have all the good ideas about what should happen. I well remember coming out of a trustees meeting at Kew, where we had seven members of the Royal Society on the board. They had extremely good ideas and the chief executive of what was then SmithKline Beecham said to me afterwards, "John, we need to remember that although we have a lot of people who have very bright ideas with which we agree, we will be lucky if we can find one or possibly two people who can carry them out." Therefore, the challenge to this House is: what can we do about this complicated and unsatisfactory situation? We have to start from a position where we do not have much leverage, and that is never a comfortable position to be in when one is in negotiation. I agree with my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts that we need to limit our ambitions to something we believe is negotiable and for which we may have the leverage. That would be—although it entails a lot more work—an increase in our ability to scrutinise, and practice of scrutinising, secondary legislation. That is probably the most practical road to go down I should like to share just one memory. I was on the Merits Committee when we threw out the statutory instrument to set up a grand casino in Manchester. So that has been done and there is no reason why the House of Lords should not, given suitable debate on the detail, go down that path again. However, as has been said by several Members, our relationship with the Back Benches of the House of Commons will also be the clue as to whether we can get there and improve this situation.
Legislation: Skeleton Bills and Delegated Powers — House of Lords, 2022-01-06
Topic: Government Operations
Philip Norton (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, on initiating this debate. I too commend and endorse the powerful reports of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committees Governments are under pressure to produce results. The "something must be done, and done quickly" mentality affects Governments of all persuasions. The tendency is to resort to legislation—to passing a Bill. Whether legislation is actually needed is another matter. One indication that it is not is the volume of statute law that has never been brought into effect. One study found over 480 Acts of Parliament passed between 1960 and 2020 with at least one section or schedule not yet commenced. Governments are tempted to give themselves wide powers to cover all sorts of potential problems. Skeleton Bills represent part—but only part—of a wider, growing problem in the Government’s approach to legislation. We need to come up with a solution that addresses the problem holistically I wish to commend a proposal that has been raised before, including in this House by the Leader’s Group on Working Practices, in its report of 2011, and in the Commons by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, in its 2013 report, Ensuring Standards in the Quality of Legislation. Each endorsed the proposal for a legislative standards committee to examine each Bill against a set of objectives embodied in a code of legislative standards. It would be able to identify and report on skeleton Bills prior to their consideration in either House and it would not be constrained in the way our committees dealing purely with secondary legislation are constrained. As the Hansard Society told the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee: "Parliament should at least be a partner in the process of setting the standards of what constitutes a well prepared piece of legislation, rather than permitting the executive to determine this from bill to bill. If Parliament is serious about checking the growth of the statute book and improving the quality of law-making, then it must be both more imaginative and muscular in asserting its role and function vis-à-vis the executive." The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee recommends that both Houses and government agree procedures for determining what our skeleton Bills—and what the consequences of such determination—should be. If government and the other place are not too keen, I think we should be prepared to go it alone with our own legislative standards committee. That would play to our strengths.
Legislation: Skeleton Bills and Delegated Powers — House of Lords, 2022-01-06
Topic: Government Operations
Robin Granville Hodgson (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. He was kind enough to quote me, but he quoted only half of what I said. I said that life is more complicated and therefore we would need more delegated legislation on important issues, but the Government had to give more and better methods of scrutiny. He quoted half of what I said about the concessions by the legislature, but he did not give the concession that the Government must make in response to that.
Status of Workers Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-01-28
Topic: Labor
Richard Balfe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have made this speech on a number of occasions. There are roughly 6 million trade unionists in Britain, and a third of them—2 million—vote for the party on these Benches. I am pleased, on their behalf, to welcome the Bill. It is a good step forward, because we always need to keep in mind the balance between the rights of the workers and those of the employers. This is a good Bill that rights an anomaly, and I hope that it will go further. I know that is difficult, but it is certainly in the right place and it has my personal full support.
Status of Workers Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-01-28
Topic: Labor
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, for moving his technical amendment in order to comply, as he said, with the recommendation of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. While the Government are not convinced that the Bill is the right course of action, we agree with the importance of legislative scrutiny and consistency. The Government therefore welcome the amendment, which would ensure consistency under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and the Employment Rights Act 1996—although, as I said, we cannot support the Bill I congratulate the noble Lord on bringing the Bill to the House and on enabling this debate on an important subject. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions during Second Reading, which allowed for what I thought was an insightful and important debate on this topic. I also thank the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for its expert contribution and the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, for tabling his amendment As I said at the start, the Government are not convinced that the Bill is the right solution to give greater protection to those in insecure work. We will continue to take steps to protect vulnerable workers, delivering on our ambition to make the UK the best place in the world to work and grow a business.
Economic Crime: Planned Government Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Law and Crime
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): Well, the issue is being treated with urgency. The Treasury is undertaking a number of different anti-money laundering pieces of work. We have already commenced the reforms required in Companies House. We will spend £12 million in 2023-24 and 2024-25 on economic crime reforms and £63 million in a spending review for Companies House reform. As the Prime Minister said, we are committed to making progress on this urgent and essential legislation, and we will do so when parliamentary time allows.
Economic Crime: Planned Government Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, will this Bill perhaps offer a remedy to ensure that when political parties have had donations from criminals who are fugitives from justice—such as Mr Michael Brown, who made a substantial donation to the Liberal Party—that money will be returned?
Economic Crime: Planned Government Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Law and Crime
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): The issues are not necessarily related. We are continuing to pursue many of the frauds that the noble Lord referred to. I can give the House some examples. The Insolvency Service has already achieved 86 director disqualifications, 39 bankruptcy restrictions have been imposed, and 13 live companies have been wound up in the public interest. It has also identified 947 further director disqualification and 46 criminal cases for investigation, all of which contain an element of bounce-back loans scheme abuses. That scheme was put in place in response to a global pandemic at a very rapid pace, and I think all noble Lords can agree that it succeeded in saving many businesses and many hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country. However, we will not tolerate any abuses of the scheme, and we will continue to pursue people who are fraudulently benefiting from it.
Economic Crime: Planned Government Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Law and Crime
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): All departments are working together to try to combat this menace, and there are a number of different elements to that. Obviously, BEIS’s responsibilities, in terms of Companies House and the register of beneficial owners, are one aspect—but of course there are also tax elements, which are the responsibility of the Treasury, and there are Home Office enforcement matters as well, in terms of criminal liability. So it is not a question of which department looks after this: an enormous amount of cross-departmental co-operation goes on to try to combat it.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Fiona Hodgson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I support this amendment, so ably moved by my noble friend Lord Blencathra and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Noble Lords have already heard the well-versed and evidenced arguments put forward and, while the amendment does not specifically refer to China, there can be no doubt that the well-documented example of the horrific treatment of the Uighur people in Xinjiang province would fall under its scope We have all heard today about the hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of healthcare goods that have flooded into this country since the start of the pandemic, much of it sourced from China. We would expect our Government to make every effort to disentangle our supply chains from implication in these atrocities, so was any due diligence carried out throughout our procurement process? This amendment would correct that oversight if it was not I do not want to repeat everything that has already been said by others, but I want to highlight the importance of the risk-assessment aspect in proposed new subsection (3). I anticipate that the Minister will highlight the work already being done by government departments to weed out companies with slave labour in their supply chains. Perhaps sometimes they are being asked to perform an impossible task, because I understand that supply chains in the Uighur region of China are almost entirely opaque. It is suggested that the area is rife with systematic forced labour, that audits there are worthless and that workers live in fear and terror of telling the truth. Indeed, as we have already heard, the US Government have just passed legislation presuming that all imports from the region are tainted unless proven otherwise Surely, it is our responsibility, as a signatory to the genocide convention, to do all that we can to prevent genocide when there is a serious risk of it taking place. This amendment builds on the work that we have already done in this regard. We cannot continue business as usual with China or any other state that condones or supports genocide. I ask the Government to act urgently to ensure that our supply chains are not tainted by goods made with Uyghur forced labour. I ask Members on all sides of your Lordships’ House to join us and reassert our commitment to global human rights and to provide the protection against genocide, wherever it is needed, by supporting this amendment.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Elizabeth Sugg (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I rise to speak briefly in support of this amendment and, in doing so, I apologise that I was not here at the Second Reading, although I have followed the progress of the Bill carefully Last Thursday at Oral Questions, in response I think to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, the Minister spoke of the importance of examining the provenance of health equipment that comes to the UK. He said his department was working "to ensure that it is not from regions where there is slave labour, or where the Muslim Uighurs are being persecuted by the Chinese Government."—[Official Report, 27/1/22; col. 439.] We must of course ensure that the products and equipment in our supply chain are ethically sourced. Last week, my noble friend acknowledged that we need to do more here, and this amendment gives us the opportunity to do just that. Noble Lords speaking before me clearly and comprehensively laid out why we should avoid procurement from such areas All UK government departments need to do more to look carefully at their supply chains, but we must start somewhere. The DHSC, with its scale of procurement, and the reports we have seen of the prevalence of Uighur forced labour in PPE and healthcare supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic, seems to be the right place to start. The issue of genocide has been subject to lengthy debate in your Lordships’ House, not least during the Trade Bill last year. While a form of compromise was reached, it is limited to countries with which we will be entering free trade agreements. That is not a solution for procurement for many of the countries with which the DHSC does business. Importantly, this amendment would create a process, a mechanism, through which the UK Government could be required to assess regions for "serious risk of genocide", and indeed publish their assessment. That process is, so far, sadly lacking in this country The UK has a responsibility to do all it can to protect against human rights violations and genocide. We also have a responsibility to our NHS workers and those who use the health service to make sure that we give them ethically sourced products. As my noble friend Lord Blencathra said, UK taxpayers do not want to be part of genocide We need to see deeds, not words. This amendment will significantly reduce the likelihood that the Government will procure goods or services from regions where there is a serious risk of genocide. It will bring the UK a step closer to developing a comprehensive framework in responding to allegations of genocide, and will meaningfully engage its obligations to prohibit, prevent and punish perpetrators of genocide. It does so in a limited, proportionate, reasonable and modest way I hope the Government will properly consider this amendment, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, and I know that he will have heard support for it from all sides of your Lordships’ House.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Stuart Polak (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lady Hodgson, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, for tabling this important amendment. My noble friend Lady Sugg referred to last Thursday. That was 27 January, when the world came together for Holocaust Memorial Day in memory of the millions murdered under Nazi persecution. Members in the other place stood up and pledged "Never forget, never again", while we in your Lordships’ Chamber sadly did not find a way to mark the day. Today, I repeat that promise Since the start of the pandemic, it seems that millions of pounds-worth of healthcare equipment have been procured from Xinjiang, despite the reports of the appalling treatment of the Uighurs. Will the Minister tell us whether our pandemic response benefited from procured equipment exported from Xinjiang?
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Elizabeth Redfern (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I rise briefly to support this amendment, and I apologise for not attending Second Reading This amendment requires the Government to perform a risk assessment on whether there is a "serious risk of genocide" in a region from which it is sourcing—not to make a genocide determination. It is the UK’s obligation under international law, as a signatory to the genocide convention, to perform such a risk assessment. We have heard many harrowing stories, which we find so difficult even to believe. Uighur identity is being erased: future generations are lost through forced birth-prevention measures, and millions have been detained, tortured and violated in concentration camps The incorporation of this amendment would send a clear signal to both the Chinese authorities and the international community that the UK is committed to ridding its supply chains of forced labour, fulfilling its obligations under international law and protecting Uighur people from genocide. The amendment is an opportunity to offer the Uighur community accountability for genocide and crimes against humanity, and I support it.
Sue Gray Report — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Government Operations
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank noble Lords for their comments. May I first wish the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, well, and hope she gets better soon? I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for stepping in at such short notice In response to both noble Lords, I say that the Prime Minister has apologised. He has made it clear that he understands people’s anger, as he should, and that he wants to get on with the job of starting to implement the immediate findings of Sue Gray’s report. He has said he takes full responsibility; he has apologised; he is committed to making changes to address these issues; and he will work tirelessly to regain people’s trust The noble Lord, Lord Collins, asked about the publication of further material once the Met investigation has finished. Of course, it would not be appropriate for me to comment further while the investigation is ongoing, and the Prime Minister has said that at the end of the process he will ask Sue Gray to update her work in the light of what is found. He will publish that update, but he has been clear that we cannot judge an ongoing investigation, and his focus now is on addressing the general findings Both noble Lords referred to some of the findings in the Gray report, which are extremely uncomfortable and disappointing. We have accepted all the findings in full, including, as the noble Lord said: "There were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No. 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times." That is why the Prime Minister has already announced the beginnings of some work to try to address that The noble Lord, Lord Newby, asked about the Ministerial Code. We are carefully considering the reports by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the report by Nigel Boardman and other reports from Parliament and, as laid out in correspondence with the noble Lord, Lord Geidt, from December 2021, the Prime Minister will be discussing further how the independent adviser’s office can be better supported and ensuring that it has access to appropriate information when conducting its work. The Prime Minister has asked the noble Lord, Lord Geidt, to work with officials to provide advice on this issue and we have pledged to conclude this by March As I have said, I cannot comment on an ongoing police investigation and I will not prejudge its findings, but I certainly assure the noble Lord, Lord Collins, that the Prime Minister is leading international action on Ukraine. I set out in a Statement that I repeated last week all the engagement and conversations that he has had and how we are leading in various international forums. It continued to be his primary focus and I am sure that in the next couple of days your Lordships’ House will have the opportunity to discuss the Statement that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary made this afternoon in the House of Commons on this very subject.
Sue Gray Report — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Government Operations
Virginia Bottomley (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I think the House will agree that if the Labour, Liberal or Conservative parties fund anyone’s work, that is a matter for them, but anyone who is funded by the taxpayer should comply with the Nolan principles—the Seven Principles of Public Life—of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. There seems to have been a distinct lack of coherence and those cultural values. Can the Minister comment on whether she feels that the balance has changed too far, with those working in No. 10 being short-term political appointments rather than longer-term civil servants with greater judgment who can exercise that discretion in very difficult circumstances?
Sue Gray Report — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Government Operations
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): The Prime Minister has said that he will act and make changes to the way that No. 10 and the Cabinet Office are run. I do not want to prejudge that, but he has said that in the coming days we will say more on this matter and I will be happy to update the House when that happens.
Sue Gray Report — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Law and Crime
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I certainly hope that the noble Lord does not think that I am trivialising anything; I certainly am not. As I say, in his Statement and repeatedly, the Prime Minister has apologised. He understands people’s anger, quite rightly, and he wants to get on to the job of starting to implement Sue Gray’s findings, which I think is an important step now to move on while we have to wait for the ongoing investigation by the Met.
Sue Gray Report — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Government Operations
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): As I answered in response to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, who asked a similar question, we are carefully considering the reports by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the report by Nigel Boardman and other reports that have been published. I also said that, in correspondence with the noble Lord, Lord Geidt, the Prime Minister will be discussing further how the independent adviser’s office can be better supported and ensuring that it has access to appropriate information. The Prime Minister has asked the noble Lord, Lord Geidt, to work with officials to provide this advice, and the Government have pledged to conclude this by March.