argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-10
Topic: International Affairs
Madeleine Moon (Labour, Centre-left): I am particularly pleased to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard). I am speaking today because of concerns brought to me by constituents, and only concerns brought to me by constituents. No NGOs have lobbied me. Constituents contacted me before Second Reading to express concern that, if the Bill were passed, we would run the real risk of aid money being spent inappropriately, and of our commitment to aid, of which we can all be proud, being undermined. I return to that concern, which I raised on Second Reading, and to what for me and my constituents are the core issues: directing the money to where it is needed most; scrutiny; and transparency On Second Reading, I quoted the recent NAO report on CDC. I know that has already been quoted today, but it bears listening to again. The report concluded: "It remains a significant challenge for CDC to demonstrate its ultimate objective of creating jobs and making a lasting difference to people’s lives in some of the world’s poorest places. Given the Department’s plans to invest further in CDC, a clearer picture of actual development impact would help to demonstrate…value for money" We are not getting the actual development impact promised. We cannot see what the development proposals are for the future; we are being asked to trust. Perhaps the Lords will see that, but we cannot.
Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-10
Topic: International Affairs
Ivan Lewis (Labour, Centre-left): If the Bill is passed and its consequences are added to the fact that more than 25% of DFID’s spending currently goes through other Government Departments, the result will be that more than 50% of our aid will no longer be spent through DFID. Does it not raise serious questions about the Government’s intentions for DFID to remain as a stand-alone Department with a place at the Cabinet table if more than 50% of its spending will be spent by CDC and other Departments? No other Government Department would come to the House and ask for more than 50% of its resources to be spent via other means.
Policing and Crime Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-10
Topic: Law and Crime
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): What are the Government going to do about strengthening protection for victims, particularly when they have to give evidence in court? Very often elderly people are frightened to go and confront the person they have accused.
Policing and Crime Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Lyn Carol Brown (Labour, Centre-left): Happy new year to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to the Minister We support Lords amendments 24, 96 and 136 to 142, along with consequential amendments 159, 302 and 307, and we will vote to retain them in the Bill. We also supported the original amendment 134, with consequential amendment 305. We are glad to see that the Government have changed their position, so we will not oppose their amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 134 I thank those in the other place who have worked to bring these issues to our attention, particularly Baroness O’Neill and Baroness Brinton. I congratulate my noble Friends Lord Rosser and Baroness Royall, whose determination and outstanding advocacy for the most vulnerable in our society has led to the Government accepting our amendments to the stalking code. Each of the substantive issues before us is deserving of a full debate in its own right, but we have only a short amount of time. I will deal with each in turn Lords amendment 24—Lords amendment 159 is consequential to it—is a new clause that requires the Government to commission an independent inquiry into the way in which the police handle complaints relating to allegations of corruption between the police and newspaper organisations. It is commonly known as the Leveson 2 amendment, because it is similar in scope to the proposed second part of the Leveson inquiry. As was announced by Judge Leveson on 14 September 2011, this is a proposed examination into "whether the police received corrupt payments or were otherwise complicit in misconduct" and into any failure of the police and others properly to investigate allegations relating to News International and other news organisations. In 2012, the then Prime Minister, the right hon. David Cameron, said: "When I set up this inquiry, I also said that there would be a second part to investigate wrongdoing in the press and the police, including the conduct of the first police investigation.—[Official Report, 29 November 2012; Vol. 554, c. 446.] Yet the Government’s consultation, which ends today, as we have heard, could be seen as a weakening of that commitment. That underlines the need for the clarity that this amendment would provide.
Policing and Crime Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Lyn Carol Brown (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point We also support Lords amendments 136 to 142, which were tabled by Baroness Brinton, along with consequential amendment 307. Those amendments are designed to improve the way in which the criminal justice system interacts with victims of crime, and they are based on the work of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). I presume that the amendments will be acceptable to the Government because, as we have heard, they would enact the 2015 Conservative manifesto commitment to introduce a victims’ bill of rights. Let me remind the Minister of what that manifesto says: "we will strengthen victims’ rights further, with a new Victims’ Law that will enshrine key rights for victims". I understand that the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), already committed to a Green Paper on this issue in a private meeting with the campaign group Voice 4 Victims in February last year, but we are yet to have sight of that. This Bill is the ideal opportunity to take the matter forward, so I encourage the Government, even at this late stage, to think again and not oppose the amendments The House will know that victims’ rights are protected in the victims code, which was introduced in 2005 by a Labour Government. We still support that code, but the rights included in it are not legally binding, and in the past few years it has become clear that a firmer legal basis is required to give distressed and vulnerable victims the protection that they need.
Policing and Crime Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Lyn Carol Brown (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Lady is absolutely right, but I think that talking about Europe might be too much of a red flag in this Chamber If the amendments are agreed to, they will create a statutory duty on elected police leadership to produce an area victims plan depending on local needs, and they will require the commissioner for victims and witnesses to assess the adequacy of such plans. Finally, the amendments will empower the Secretary of State to order a homicide review—basically, a cold case review—when nobody has been charged with a crime. Taken together, the measures would allow the victims code to be better enforced and ensure that our criminal justice system works better for the victims of crime. The Government will, I hope, offer their wholehearted support to these amendments Finally, I turn to Lords amendment 134, with consequential amendment 305, which was proposed by my noble Friend Baroness Royall. The amendment would increase the maximum penalty for those found guilty of stalking from five to 10 years. In cases where the offence is racially or religiously aggravated, the maximum penalty would be increased from seven to 14 years. We are delighted that the Government have chosen to accept our case, and I congratulate my noble Friend and all who have pursued the campaign Home Office data suggest that as many as one in five women and one in 10 men will be stalked at some point in their lives. Just because stalking is common, it does not mean that it is not a serious matter. Stalking destroys lives. It violates an individual’s right to privacy, and therefore destroys their personal freedoms. It causes fear, and rightly so, since too often it is a precursor to violent confrontation I know that sentencing guidelines and specific sentences are the responsibility of the Sentencing Council and judges respectively. However, extending the maximum penalty will allow for greater flexibility in the most serious cases and make it clear that stalking is a serious offence. The Labour party has provided the Government with the opportunity to give judges the necessary flexibility to hand out appropriate sentences to serious criminals. I am delighted that the Government have seen the need for that and responded appropriately.
Policing and Crime Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-10
Topic: Law and Crime
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, but may I enlighten him? He was not in the House when the stalking legislation was introduced by the Labour Government as a result of a private Member’s Bill, against a lot of opposition from his party at the time.
Policing and Crime Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I do not think that it is going to be a very unified note by the end of the day, and I think there was an element of irony in the contribution by the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker). I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for their campaign on stalking. The legislation has changed over the years, particularly since 1997, and it is good that this issue is now recognised for the terrible harm that is done to many victims I want to talk primarily—this is a bit of a smorgasbord debate—about the Leveson issues and amendment 24, which I wish was not necessary. However, it is necessary, and it has been put on the amendment paper only because their lordships and a large number of us in this House are distrustful of the Government’s intention in relation to what happened over Leveson I believe that it is necessary to have the full Leveson—that is not two Leveson inquiries, but one Leveson inquiry, some of which could be done before the criminal investigations were completed, and some of which could not be done until the criminal investigations were completed. That was always the promise. It was never, "We will think about having Leveson 2 once we have come to the end of the criminal investigations; it was always said from the very beginning that there would be one inquiry with two parts and that the second part would happen. In fact, the Prime Minister, in the quote given by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), said those words the day after Leveson 1 had been produced. So Ministers have absolutely no excuse for turning round now and saying, "Oh no, no, we never really intended to proceed with Leveson 2." Why does that matter? Why is it important? The truth is that we are talking about corruption in one of the organisations of the state that matters most to our constituents and to the rule of law in this country: the police. I am sure the vast majority of us agree, given the little bits and pieces that we have managed to glean from Leveson 1, that there was a time when the Metropolitan police, to all intents and purposes, were a partially owned subsidiary of News International. Metropolitan police staff went to work for News International. When they had finished working for News International, they went back to work for the Metropolitan police. There was a revolving door. On the very day that the police decided not to continue with the investigation into what had happened at the News of the World, the leading investigator was having dinner with Rebekah Brooks.
Policing and Crime Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): It is worth bearing in mind that when it came to suing the Metropolitan police to try to ensure that it gave the media information about what had happened to me, my costs were £380,000. My costs for suing Rupert Murdoch were £480,000. In both cases, because it was an no-win, no-fee arrangement, I did not have to pay anything. However, those no-win, no-fee arrangements are no longer available in these cases.
Policing and Crime Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Jessica Rose Phillips (Labour, Centre-left): The whole point of these amendments is that all the actors in the criminal justice system—the courts, the CPS, the defence, or the police—have a responsibility. These provisions would make the monitoring of how well they are doing more robust. It does not matter who is to blame; what we want is the victim to be given the information.
Southeastern Rail — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Matthew Thomas Pennycook (Labour, Centre-left): Not only are my constituents of all political persuasions disgusted by the manner in which the Secretary of State has politicised this issue, but they have absolutely no confidence in his proposed solution for the Southeastern franchise. A previous attempt to merely involve Transport for London in the design of Southern’s 2009 to 2015 franchise failed because that did not involve its proven concession model for suburban rail services, so can the Secretary of State tell us why on earth he thinks that repeating this failed approach will deliver much-needed improvements for Southeastern passengers?
Southeastern Rail — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Andrew Joseph McDonald (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State’s leaked letter reveals that he reneged on the suburban rail agreement because of his obsession with keeping services "out of the clutches" of a potential Labour Mayor—those are his words. He has put party politics ahead of passengers and clearly prefers to see trains running late than running on time under Labour. Will he now agree to an independent assessment of the proposal by a respected figure outwith his Department, given yesterday’s revelations of conflicting commercial interests, to restore credibility to the process and ensure proper consideration of the needs of long-suffering passengers?
Cross-border Transport — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Ian Colin Lucas (Labour, Centre-left): The investment by the Welsh Government of £43 million in the Wrexham to Chester line, mainly in England, will lead to a partial dualling of that line by April this year. What more will it take to persuade the UK Conservative Government to match the Welsh Government’s investment by investing in more transport infrastructure in that region, for which an unanswerable case has been made?
Cross-border Transport — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
John Derek Twigg (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister mentioned the Halton curve; he will know that it is an important part of the cross-border links between my constituency and Wales. Will he confirm that the project is on time, and tell us the date on which it will be completed?
Cross-border Transport — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): The Government could do something about the cross-border position between the Rhondda valley and the upper Afan valley because they still own the tunnel that was used by the train from Treherbert down to Swansea. Will the Government please make sure that I can have the meeting with the Secretary of State for which I have been asking for several weeks to come up with innovative ideas so that this can become a major new cycle track?
Cross-border Transport — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Christian John Patrick Matheson (Labour, Centre-left): Six lines radiate out from Chester, two of which are cross-border lines, hence the "360" in Growth Track 360. Chester is recognised as a pinch point within that railway development, so may I invite the Minister to have his next meeting on cross-border transport with Ken Skates in Chester so that he can see what preliminary work might be done before he presses ahead with the main work?
High Speed 2: Costs — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): I am sure the Secretary of State is aware that, with regard to the option to have a station in the centre of Sheffield, there is currently no money to get trains out of the station and north to Leeds, and there is no money to increase the station’s capacity at the southern end to get better connectivity to trans-Pennine trains. There is even no money to electrify the line between Sheffield station and the main HS2 route. Does this not increasingly look like a cut-price option? Will he agree to meet local MPs and councillors, and other interested parties, to discuss these matters?
High Speed 2: Costs — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Robert Charles Douglas Flello (Labour, Centre-left): Given what will be the eye-wateringly huge final costs of HS2, surely it makes sense to maximise the use of this asset, so will the Secretary of State tell us whether the line will be used 24 hours a day, seven days a week? If not, will the otherwise wasted capacity be used for freight—and if not, why not?
High Speed 2: Costs — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): Mr Speaker, you and the Minister will remember that when I said that the cost of HS2 would soar past £60 billion I was mocked, but it is now past £60 billion and rising. The chief executive has quit and the people in my constituency would like this folly to be stopped now, with the money—£60 billion and rising—put into saving the health service and into our local government, which is going bankrupt.
Wales and Borders: Rail Franchise — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher Philip James Elmore (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State will be aware that he decided last October to devolve the cross-border franchise to the Welsh Government, but current legislation does not allow a public sector organisation to bid for the new franchise. Will he think again and allow public sector organisations the ability to bid for the franchise, to allow the public the best possible service when it begins?
Rail Franchising: Public Sector — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): We now know that the Secretary of State is putting politics before the interests of passengers, and he is taking a dogmatic approach by ignoring what could improve our railway system. He has refused to allow the Mayor of London to take over suburban services, in spite of the fact that his predecessor thought that that was a good idea. The public are in favour of public ownership: 58% of people polled by Transport for London are in favour of the Mayor having greater control over suburban services and only 14% support his position. Is it not time that public ownership of our railways was considered by the Government, and are not the public in favour of it?
Rail Franchising: Public Sector — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Andrew Joseph McDonald (Labour, Centre-left): The Government’s franchising policy lies in tatters, with desperate attempts to retrofit contracts to protect operators’ profits and, as revealed yesterday, National Express taking the money and running, selling the c2c franchise to the Italian state. The Secretary of State’s director of passenger services awarded the disastrous Southern franchise, while owning shares in the company and advising the winner bidder. The country has had enough of these sleazy deals. Is it not way past time for franchising to be scrapped and the UK rail industry to be revitalised through public ownership?
Ultra-low Emission Vehicles — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Environment
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister says that he wants to see emissions reduced in all types of vehicles, so will he explain to the House why just 160,000 of the polluting cheat devices in Volkswagen cars have been remediated out of the 1.2 million cheat devices that are currently on the roads in the UK? At this rate of reparation, it will take three years to clean up Volkswagen’s dirty diesel cheat devices.
Ultra-low Emission Vehicles — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Pat Glass (Labour, Centre-left): The VW emissions defeat device cynically deceived 1.2 million vehicle owners in the UK, and I declare that I am one of them. I am delighted that the Minister is going to have VW in next week, because drivers in the UK are being tret unfairly compared with VW drivers in the US. In the absence of any action by the Government so far, UK motorists are having to pursue private group litigation against VW. I want the Minister to understand how badly let down UK VW drivers feel because it appears that the Government are letting VW off the hook, although I hope that that is not the case. Will he, even at this late stage, offer support to the motorists in the UK pursuing their own action?
Road Infrastructure and Capacity: North-West — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Conor Patrick McGinn (Labour, Centre-left): In 2014, the roads investment strategy proposed nine new projects in the north-west, but, to date, the plans for just one of them have been announced, while the Government spend six times more on transport infrastructure in London than in the north. How does the Minister think the whole northern powerhouse thing is going, because, when it comes to transport, like much of the traffic in St Helens, it seems to be going nowhere and not very fast?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Daniel Stephen Zeichner (Labour, Centre-left): An icy chill is about to descend on parts of the country. That is not an impending DFT ministerial visit, I hasten to add—it is of course the impending weather front. Will the Secretary of State tell us about the state of preparations for gritting our roads in the coming days? What discussions has he had with his colleagues and those in local government to ensure that at least our roads run more smoothly than our railways?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2017-01-12
Topic: Transportation
Daniel Stephen Zeichner (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Secretary of State; let us hope that we are well prepared. Taking him back to the time just before Christmas, given that soon after his visit to Cambridge he told the Evening Standard that cycle lanes cause problems for road users, will he clarify exactly who he thinks road users are? While he is thinking about cyclists—a helpful clue—could he explain why it is taking such an extraordinarily long time to produce a cycling and walking investment strategy?