argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Childcare Business Grants Scheme — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: What estimate she has made of the potential benefit to working families of the extension of the childcare business grants scheme announced in the autumn statement 2014.
Nicky Morgan (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right that childminders are a crucial part of the child care sector. We want to see more of them, which is why we have enabled the establishment of childminder agencies. To date, the childcare business grant scheme has benefited more than 4,000 childminders, including almost 30 in my hon. Friend’s constituency. The scheme has also benefited seven nurseries in Harrow, East—MiniSteps, for example.
Disabled People (Access to Work) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Labor
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): Over 3 million working-age disabled people are now in employment. There are 141,000 more disabled people in work than a year ago, and the employment rate has risen, demonstrating that disabled people are benefiting from the Government’s long-term economic plan.
Disabled People (Access to Work) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Labor
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I can confirm to the hon. Gentleman that I published statistics just ahead of my appearance at the Work and Pensions Select Committee. Last year, when I got this job, the average wait for a claimant was unacceptably high, at around 30 weeks. After sustained effort from my Department and our assessment providers, we had more than halved that by the end of the year. I am very pleased, and we will continue that focus.
Disabled People (Access to Work) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Labor
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not need to justify those figures. If the hon. Lady had used more up-to-date figures, she would know that performance has significantly improved and that more people are being helped into work through the Work programme, work choice and access to work. Yes, more disabled people are being helped than before. As I said in response to an earlier question, 141,000 more disabled people are in work now than last year. I think that is a record to be proud of. There is more to do, but good progress is being made.
Jimmy Savile (NHS Investigations) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Sarah James (Wollaston) (Conservative, Centre-right): The Secretary of State has set out in the starkest terms the extent of the vile abuse perpetrated by Savile. It is also chilling to note in Kate Lampard’s excellent report that between 60% and 90% of child abuse is still going unreported. Those who perpetrate it are adept at adapting their mechanisms, and recommendation 9 in the report mentions the extent to which abusers use social media to abuse children on hospital sites. Can the Secretary of State tell the House whether he is going to implement recommendation 9, and if so, how that will happen?
Jimmy Savile (NHS Investigations) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I have great sympathy for his constituent. The information was not collated centrally. There were a number of reports about which we might have been sceptical if we had read them in isolation, but when we read them together with other reports, we see a pattern and we can conclude, as the investigation has done, that those incidents did indeed take place. That is one of the big learning points: we have to collate information that different victims provide at different times, to ensure that proper judgments can be made and that action can be taken.
Jimmy Savile (NHS Investigations) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Cheryl Elise Kendall Gillan (Conservative, Centre-right): It has been truly sickening to read in the report that over two decades, money, influence, celebrity and people being star-struck could allow Savile the licence serially to abuse so many people, particularly in our local Buckinghamshire hospital at Stoke Mandeville. I really welcome the apologies from the Secretary of State and from our local chief executive officer, Anne Eden, who has given a heartfelt apology and praised the courage of those who have come forward. May I press the Secretary of State further on mandatory reporting? It is exceedingly important that we start that consultation as rapidly as possible. It was obvious that the proposed clause in the Serious Crime Bill was flawed in many ways. When will he start the consultation, and when will the terms of reference be available? Will he now undertake to legislate as soon as the consultation has produced results?
Jimmy Savile (NHS Investigations) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I can certainly give that undertaking: we will start the consultation as soon as possible and if the conclusion is for legislation, we will legislate as soon as possible. I hope that my right hon. Friend understands that there is a great deal of complexity involved in getting this right. It is very important to talk to victims and to people who are looking at the evidence on mandatory reporting, which happens in other parts of the world, with very mixed results. Most importantly, we want to avoid the unintended consequence of a decision being taken against the interests of a child or vulnerable person because people are following a legalistic process which undermines the proper professional judgment made on the ground.
Jimmy Savile (NHS Investigations) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Education
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I do think it is very important to have good sex education in schools and that we make sure that all children understand when a boundary has been crossed and when they need to speak out. That is an important lesson from this report.
Jimmy Savile (NHS Investigations) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): The reason, I think, is that the security services would not have known about this. What the report makes clear is that where people did speak out about concerns, nothing was done. That is what is so unacceptable and what we have to change. Savile was a national celebrity, who was treated as such by the establishment at the time, the establishment not having any idea of this evil abuse that was happening.
Jimmy Savile (NHS Investigations) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Timothy Paul Loughton (Conservative, Centre-right): The Savile revelations never cease to amaze and shock, but are they in some respects a distraction from the bigger issues? The vast majority of abusers are not celebrities. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the bigger issues are the mindset that said, when concerns were raised, "Oh, it’s just Jimmy", the fact that police were told to turn a blind eye, and suggestions that other doctors and clinicians were also active paedophiles and were complicit in the abuse in some way? Is not the bigger issue the institutional conspiracy to abuse? How will this report feed into the essential inquiry now under way with Justice Lowell Goddard?
Jimmy Savile (NHS Investigations) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Government Operations
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): Of course it is important that we learn the governance lessons, but the report is careful. It does not use the word "improper" in relation to the behaviour of Ministers or civil servants. It says that they acted reasonably. It raises some important questions, and I hope that the tone of my statement will reassure my hon. Friend that I do not seek to duck the fact that there are clearly questions about whether Ministers and civil servants behaved in the appropriate way. It is important that we learn the lessons from what went wrong.
Jimmy Savile (NHS Investigations) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): With Stoke Mandeville serving my constituents, I was reassured to hear that in the present culture these appalling circumstances are not likely to be repeated. Can my right hon. Friend reassure me that it is now far more likely that we will see prosecutions within the lifetime of perpetrators rather than this horrific clean-up exercise after a perpetrator’s death?
Jimmy Savile (NHS Investigations) — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): A lot of things, and that is what this morning is all about. Mandatory reporting so that the reporting of incidents becomes the norm and not the exception is clearly an area where culture has to change. We have to find the right way to do that. Also, if we get this culture right, we should be able—this must be the ultimate objective of all this work—to stop such incidents happening in the first place. If people had acted earlier on their suspicions about Savile, a lot of victims would have been spared the torment that they subsequently had to endure. The biggest tragedy of all this is that it happened over decades and nothing was done. That is what we need to make sure never happens again.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
Damian Howard Green (Conservative, Centre-right): As chair of the all- party BBC group, I congratulate my hon. Friend and his Committee, particularly on their ideas for preserving a universal funding mechanism at a time when the licence fee is becoming technologically more difficult to justify, because it is that universal funding mechanism that has provided the basis for all the good things about the BBC that he and his Committee rightly praised. If universal funding is preserved, as I hope it will be, has he considered the importance of the BBC working more in partnership in future, especially with local newspaper groups, in order to preserve other aspects of the media culture such as local news, which are more fragile than they used to be?
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): I very much agree with my right hon. Friend. We made it clear that we see a greater role for partnership arrangements between the BBC and private sector organisations, and I welcome the fact that the director-general has already indicated that that is a direction in which he wants to move. As I suggested earlier, I also agree with my right hon. Friend about the need to find ways of supporting local media, which are under tremendous pressure, and the BBC has a very important role to play in that.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): The household levy, which would be a short-term measure to deal with the problem of evasion, is just a small change to the way of collecting the licence fee. The licence fee is essentially a household levy, but there is quite a high evasion rate which could increase following decriminalisation. The one area where the hon. Gentleman is correct is that there are some people who say that they never watch the BBC, never listen to BBC radio and never go online to access BBC services, so they do not pay the licence fee. Since 96% of the population have BBC television and a lot more have BBC radio, the number we are talking about is very, very small. There is arguably a case for saying that the public service content that the BBC provides is good for society and for the nation and it is right that everybody should contribute towards that.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
Angela Bray (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend on his chairmanship of our Committee and the publication of the report. I am delighted to see that it recognises the inexorable move towards subscription television. I believe that people should pay for what they want to watch, rather than for what they do not watch, but may I express my reservations about some kind of household levy? I am uneasy about creating new taxes, which are easier to create than to abolish. Does my hon. Friend concede that there is some danger that that in itself could endanger the independence of the BBC and make it more dependent on politicians?
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not want to overstate the household levy because it is essentially the licence fee by a different name. The reason that it is attached to a household is in order to make it easier to collect than the existing rather draconian process, which suffers from an evasion rate that could increase with decriminalisation. On the setting of the level, the report makes it clear that we see a role for the new public service broadcasting commission in assessing the amount needed to provide the services that the BBC is there to produce, and I do not think there is a greater danger of political interference or Government involvement than there is already under the process of setting the licence fee.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): I share the hon. Gentleman’s sadness that he was unable to support us. It was interesting that three of my colleagues felt unable to support the final conclusions in our report, but I think it fair to say that each of them did so for entirely different reasons—it was not necessarily a meeting of minds. On the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, there is going to be a lot of argument about the different models, and we saw considerable attraction in the original proposals made by Lord Burns. Most—I suspect all—of us thought it a pity that the previous Government did not adopt the Burns model, rather than create the rather unsatisfactory BBC Trust. The BBC Trust has failed and we do not want to create a body that is basically another BBC Trust. His idea of the ex ante regulator is in danger of falling into that trap; personally I think there needs to be a very clear responsibility for the oversight and running of the BBC, and a single unitary board is the best way of achieving that.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I commend my hon. Friend as an outstanding Chairman of a Select Committee and a perfect illustration of why the two-term rule for Select Committee Chairmen should be scrapped immediately. He will be aware that I was in a minority of one in calling for the licence fee to be replaced by subscription. Given the number of channels that are now available, those of us who believe in freedom of choice must surely believe that people who want to watch the BBC should be able to do so and pay for it, and those who do not want to watch the BBC should not have to pay for it and should be able to exercise that choice too. Has not the time come for that? If the licence fee represents such wonderful value for money, as the BBC tells us, surely it has nothing to fear from moving to a subscription model, because presumably everyone will be queuing round the corner to buy their subscription.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has always acted as my Thatcherite conscience on the Committee, and I have a lot of sympathy with what he has just said. However, I will make two observations. First, we are not yet able to move to a subscription model because that would require big changes, such as the installation of conditional access in every household. Secondly, I think that there will always be some content that should be provided and publicly financed, because there are certain things that might not be viable on a subscription basis but are nevertheless important for the public good. I therefore think that there will always be an element of public finance, but I can certainly see the attraction of moving in the direction of having a growing proportion of content paid for by subscription.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): We took evidence from many people, and certainly a number of our witnesses were not in favour of a subscription model. I think that their argument can best be summed up in the phrase "paying more and getting less". That is the BBC’s argument, but I am not convinced. I agree that the BBC produces outstanding programmes that are extremely popular. Indeed, I tend to sympathise with the argument made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that the vast majority of people would choose to go on paying in order to receive them. I do not think there would be a massive drop, but it is an important principle that, where possible, people should be able to choose whether to pay.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Law and Crime
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): As my hon. Friend knows, the Committee has concerns about the consequences of decriminalisation, which is why we said that other measures would be needed to try to prevent an increase in evasion. The matter is now subject to consultation. It should certainly be part of the charter renewal process, and I think it probably will be. It will probably be for the next Government to decide whether to wait until the end of 2016 before decriminalising.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is correct; it was a very long time ago and I had rather hoped that people had forgotten that particular headline. I did not mention this in my statement, but of course we recognise the BBC’s important role not only in providing BBC Wales and Welsh programming, but in supporting S4C, which was a creation of the Conservative Government. That is very important. The BBC’s reputation for accurate news reporting is absolutely essential, and no member of the Committee would ever want to see that put in jeopardy.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert James MacGillivray Neill (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend recognise that one advantage of decriminalisation is that it would be welcomed by many magistrates and their staff, because it would stop their work loads being clogged up with cases that are often uncontested and result in non-appearances, which wastes time and money? On the other hand, in relation to the household levy, does he recognise the concern among local authorities about one idea that was posited, which is that it might be collected using their resources, perhaps along with the council tax bill? Does he agree that it would be unfair to force hard-working local authorities that have kept council tax down to become the vehicle for passing on a levy over which they have no control?
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Law and Crime
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for both points. The collection mechanism currently costs about £100 million. If we moved to a different system, perhaps by attaching it to council tax, we could probably provide an incentive to councils to take on that responsibility and still save money. His point about magistrates courts is entirely right, as there are about 150,000 convictions every year for failure to have a licence, and that clogs up the courts. It is one of the many reasons why there is a strong case for decriminalisation.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has just illustrated that—I think this is true of all Select Committees—although there might be strong disagreements within the Committee, they are conducted on a very friendly basis. I entirely agree that we were impressed by the model that has been adopted by Germany. Rather to Germany’s surprise, it has led to an increase in revenue, because the previous system had an even higher level of evasion than it had realised.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
Matthew James Offord (Conservative, Centre-right): I worked at the BBC for nine years. In 2007 I moved from news production to the strategy side and tasked myself with asking whether the licence fee was sustainable in the digital age. I think the report gives me the answer—it is not. I found that the biggest roadblock to any kind of reform is the BBC itself, because there is a culture of dependency and entitlement to the licence fee that simply will not go away.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): I have some sympathy with those comments. We found it slightly odd that the BBC officials who appeared before the Committee said that they had an open mind about the governance structure and the scope and scale, but that one thing they were absolutely certain about was that the licence fee had to stay. There is resistance, and perhaps that is reflected in the comments we have already heard from the BBC. My hon. Friend draws on his experience of working at the BBC, so I thank him for his support for what we have said.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because he allows me to talk about another very important point made in the report. At the moment, complaints about accuracy and impartiality are dealt with by the BBC Trust, and I think that there is dissatisfaction with the fact that the BBC is judging itself. We have made it clear that we think that should change and that, with the abolition of the trust, responsibility for all content regulation, including complaints about accuracy and impartiality, should go to Ofcom. It already carried out that function for Channel 4, and we see no reason why it could not also do so for the BBC.
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
Sarah James (Wollaston) (Conservative, Centre-right): Following the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) about a diversity of views, does my hon. Friend the Chair of the Committee agree that too much of our news coverage has an entirely metropolitan focus? Will he elaborate further on what the report said about how we can encourage more resourcing for, and better coverage of, views from rural parts of Britain?
Culture, Media and Sport committee — House of Commons, 2015-02-26
Topic: Technology
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): We did look at the slightly London-centric nature of the BBC, and we welcomed the move to MediaCityUK in Salford and the provision of resources. We also expressed the hope that more would be done particularly in relation to the other nations. Northern Ireland made a quite strong case to us that it was poorly treated by the BBC. The question of covering rural issues—like my hon. Friend, I represent a rural constituency—is more challenging. I shall certainly continue to put it to the BBC, because sometimes—my hon. Friend is absolutely correct—these areas do not get the prominence they deserve.