argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
Alfred Dubs (Labour, Centre-left): This is a very happy occasion when we are all in such agreement. I am most grateful to the Minister for what she said and for the commitment she entered into, which I think is pretty good. Everybody I have spoken to says it is pretty good and that we can move forward with it. I cannot guarantee that the Minister will be a headline in the Evening Standard, but she jolly well ought to be. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-20
Topic: Housing
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I support Amendment 116B, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord True, my noble friend Lord Kennedy and the noble Lords, Lord Kerslake and Lord Tope. They made a powerful case for dealing with what is potentially a damaging development in many town and city centres and some of the suburban areas as well. I am not so keen on Amendment 116A but I think that the Minister should go back to Amendment 116B. I would urge her to give serious consideration to the suggestion it contains. To adapt an old phrase, I would advise her, "to her own True, be helpful". It would be wise not to ignore the experience of significant change—and change not for the better—particularly as identified by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, as a result of allowing this kind of development to take place and, indeed, under the legislation, actually facilitating it. So I hope there will be some second thoughts on this.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-20
Topic: Housing
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): On Amendment 116A, we see these developments all around here in Westminster, with offices now being converted into very expensive homes. Why would it not be right for a planning authority to get somewhere near its full costs on this?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-20
Topic: Housing
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): On Amendment 116A(a), we can see all around here many developments where offices have been converted into very expensive properties. Why would it not be reasonable for a local authority—in this case, Westminster—to cover a larger proportion of its costs in fees, considering what these properties are now selling for very close to this Palace?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-20
Topic: Housing
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this amendment covers the issues previously discussed under Amendment 108. It enables local authorities to recover up to the full costs and no more in determining planning applications. Noble Lords who were not persuaded by Amendment 108 could give this amendment some further consideration, as it proposes not to go beyond full cost recovery My amendment would allow a more realistic fee level to be recovered from large-scale developments and differentiates between that and someone who wants to build an extension to their home, for example. I grew up in Southwark and in the north of the borough we have seen a boom in large-scale developments in recent years. A more realistic fee level would have made no difference to those developments. I now live in Lewisham and, again, we are seeing a large number of residential developments in Lewisham, Deptford, Catford and elsewhere in the borough. Again, I do not believe that a more realistic fee level would have made any difference whatever to the viability of those developments In responding to this short debate, I ask the Minister to address the point made during the debate on Amendment 108. I know we will come to this issue when we discuss further amendments on Monday, but I am worried that we could get a two-tier system whereby other providers are able to provide planning advice. I do not want a private provider to be able to charge a much larger fee, and a local authority to be limited as to what it can charge to do the same work. That would be totally wrong, and it would be very helpful if the noble Baroness assured us that that is not the case. It would be a very unfair situation for local authorities and completely wrong. With that, I beg to move.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-20
Topic: Housing
Elizabeth Andrews (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we had a very good and thorough discussion on the recovery of full-cost fees on a previous amendment. I want to draw attention to a few statistics to reinforce the case that my noble friend made and to point out that the flaw in the present system is that you cannot get speedy, authoritative and consistent decision-making at local planning level if the expert workforce is being run down and starved of resources. I have just a few statistics that pick that up The audit committee reported in 2014 that planning departments were taking the brunt of funding cuts—a reduction, in real terms, of 46% across the planning and development budget between 2010 and 2014. These are horrendous figures in the context of cuts of 37% in local authorities as a whole. How much deeper have these cuts been since 2014? In expert areas such as archaeology and conservation officers, there has been a drop of a third in local authority staff. In Lancashire the entire archaeological team has disappeared. How the Government expect local authorities to deliver a speedy, efficient and good planning service with this level of cuts is absolutely beyond me. Therefore, the only answer to building the capacity of local authorities to do what the Government so desperately want them to do, and to deliver a speedier, more efficient planning system, is to build the capacity of local authorities themselves, because development control is the fundamental business of planning authorities. There is an urgent need to reinvest in local authority planning services. Full-cost fee recovery can contribute to that I have one question for the Minister. In the previous exchange, I was not quite sure whether she believed the figure published by the Local Government Association—that there is a shortfall of £450 million to local authorities because of the difference between the cost they have to pay and the fees they receive. She talked at great length about the vitality needed to enable local authorities to do their job, but she did not address the question of the reality of what is happening on the ground. There is an absolute, logical and fair case for recovering full-cost fees, and I hope she will respond positively to it.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-20
Topic: Other
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): Before the noble Lord sits down, I did put "may" in for the main part and then "must" for the consultation. I thought I was getting somewhere with the noble Lord. I think we should talk outside the Chamber—he may well be the right person to write this.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-20
Topic: Housing
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for speaking in this short debate. My noble friend Lady Andrews highlighted the cuts that have fallen on local authority planning departments in recent years. I was pleased that the Minister was able to give us some reassurance on the issues. I am sure we will be discussing again on Monday the fees that can be charged by a local planning authority and those that can be charged by a private provider. That will be very welcome news for local government I thought I had written my amendment in such a way that it would not allow people to charge more than the costs involved, so clearly I am no better than the noble Lord, Lord Porter, at writing these amendments. Maybe we need to get together and we will get one right at some point. I certainly do not see my amendment as doing what the Minister says it does, so I am a bit disappointed in her response. I know it is late but I am going to test the opinion of the House.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-20
Topic: Housing
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I wholeheartedly endorse the critiques of the proposal by the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Shipley. Several real problems have already been identified, but it is worth reminding ourselves that this is yet another incursion on the rights and roles of local authorities, imposing an external component on to the resolution of what ought to be determined locally between the local authority and the applicant. Moreover, the whole thing is another bureaucratic nightmare. There are five pages of the schedule. The Explanatory Notes make it clear that there are also to be regulations—surprise, surprise, once again made by the Secretary of State. They say: "The Secretary of State can also make regulations setting out … who, other than the local planning authority and applicant, could make a request for the appointment of a person" So it need not even be the planning authority or the applicant who makes that application. Who else might make it is presumably at large—anybody could. The regulations can also deal with, "the timing and form of requests", and, "that a person can be appointed if outstanding issues have not been resolved within set timeframes", as well as, "further detail about appointments … what qualifications or experience the appointed person must have", and "fees payable". Those will all be determined by regulations The Explanatory Notes say: "The appointed person must take into account any template or model terms published by the Secretary of State. Regulations can also set out other details … Regulations can also set out restrictions on the local planning authority’s ability to ask for additional obligations", as well as, "periods for determining planning applications after a report is issued; circumstances or cases where the consequences in this Schedule don’t apply; and any further steps required to be taken by the appointed person" Once again, we are going to have myriad regulations, the sight of which is withheld from us, presumably because they have not yet been drafted. They will be produced at a later date, again without any prior consideration by Parliament at the time when the Bill has gone through. There is also the possible perverse effect that, given that applicants may have, as they perceive it, difficulties with the local authority, why should they not seek the involvement of the appointed person—not so much by way of an appeal but in the initial part of the process? They could delay things even more. If they thought that they were not going to get entirely what they wanted from their application, why not go through this process? That unintended effect seems to me a ridiculous proposition, and I very much hope that the noble Lord will test the opinion of the House—and, if he does not, I will.
The Economy — House of Lords, 2016-04-28
Topic: Immigration
Frank Ashcroft Judd (Labour, Centre-left): The noble Lord is making a formidable case, which I think would find a great deal of support on this side of the House. But does he not agree that if all this is to be successful, in pleading with the Government to put vastly more resources into what he advocates, it is essential that they put investment on the same scale into social infrastructure to make sure that the communities in which most of the new immigrants will be living have the right kind of health services, schooling, housing and the rest? Otherwise, there will be—unfortunately and inevitably—crises and tensions.
The Economy — House of Lords, 2016-04-28
Topic: Civil Rights
Denis Tunnicliffe (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister has made claims about the impact of inequality before, and he referenced various international studies. Will he write a letter and put it in the Library referencing where I can see the arguments and the figures behind them?
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Lords, 2016-07-13
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jeffrey Rooker (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, listening to the debate as a non-lawyer, I get the impression it is being argued that the legal contribution is supposed to be equal to the ministerial contribution. I reject that utterly. It is the Minister’s job to take the decision. That is where the accountability is at the end of the day—back to Parliament. They are not equal partners in this. The introduction of a judicial role to provide oversight or to ask, "Did you really mean that?" or, "Are you sure you’ve got this quite right?" is not the same as giving equal partnership in the making of decisions; that is not what is intended. Yet the whole thrust of what I have been listening to today is about making them equal. I hope the Government will firmly reject that.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Lords, 2016-07-13
Topic: Civil Rights
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, a range of subjects appears to be covered both by the amendments and by today’s debate. I think we are all looking forward to the noble and learned Lord’s response to the issues of principle, which it is clear are very much in your Lordships’ minds. I draw particular attention to the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which went so far as to say that, "we do not see the need for a power to target lawyer-client communications", and that the amendment it sought would remove that provision from the Bill because it was deemed unnecessary in view of the iniquity exception. It would be interesting to hear the Minister’s reaction to that, but much of what we have heard today has been about the detailed workings of the Bill One of the main substantive issues is the position of the judicial commissioner in whatever processes ultimately result—that seems to me the critical aspect on which we would welcome some guidance from the Minister on the Government’s intentions. If it is still deemed necessary in some form or other to deal with the problem, as the Government see it, of legal privilege, there must surely be at least the safeguard that the decision should be made by a judicial commissioner rather than by a civil servant or Minister of the Crown. That measure of independence and of judicial experience seems fundamental to any acceptable proposal to move along the lines that the Government seek to pursue. Again, it would be helpful if the Minister were in a position today to clarify whether, whatever other details might be subject to debate, that important principle is one that the Government accept.
House of Lords: Domestic Committees — House of Lords, 2016-05-09
Topic: Other
Dale Norman Campbell-Savours (Labour, Centre-left): Is the noble Baroness not referring to the issue of equipment for Members generally? There was a lot of concern in the House about this. There will be less opportunity within this new structure for the widest possible consideration of all the concerns that exist on this and other issues. I do not really think that the structure that the noble Baroness is referring to will deal with these concerns.
House Committee — House of Lords, 2016-07-21
Topic: Other
Dale Norman Campbell-Savours (Labour, Centre-left): In light of what the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, has just said, would it not be wise perhaps for the chairmen of the previous committees to speak to the new Services Committee when it finally meets? That might help us to take forward the agendas that are to be inherited.
House Committee — House of Lords, 2016-07-21
Topic: Other
Angela Smith (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader for her introduction and the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for their comments, which are perhaps helpful in taking forward the kind of things that the House should consider Looking at the Order Paper and the Motions before us, I think that they are quite weighty issues for our last sitting day before the Summer Recess. The main part of the report is the governance business, but I also welcome, and have supported, the two proposals from the Procedure Committee. The first is to make the balloting of questions during recess permanent, which is certainly an aid to those Members not based in London who wish to take a full part in our proceedings. There is also the extremely radical proposal that the House of Lords Clocks will now show seconds, as well as minutes. That will be helpful to colleagues speaking in time-limited debates, but I am sure that the Whips’ Offices and the usual channels will find it extremely helpful.
House Committee — House of Lords, 2016-07-21
Topic: Other
Angela Smith (Labour, Centre-left): It is rare that I get a cheer from the Whips Although this is a fairly brief debate, the work undertaken to get to this point has been considerable. The noble Baroness the Leader is quite right: there has been a very consensual approach from the start. I am sure that she will take on board the points made about picking up the work undertaken by previous committees of the House. Not everybody will agree with every detail, but at no point has any view on the structure been ignored or dismissed without proper consideration.
European Union Migration: National Insurance — House of Lords, 2016-05-12
Topic: Immigration
Maeve Christina Mary Sherlock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating that Answer. The number of national insurance numbers has never been a good guide to the number of British people resident in the UK, never mind anybody else. The report from the ONS suggests that there have long been differences between, for example, the number of EU8 migrants and the total number of short and long-term migrants, which has consistently been above the number of NINos. Has the Minister’s department had the opportunity to compare the NINo data set out today with, for example, the RTI data that his department holds, self-assessment, or the DWP L2 and tax credit benefit data? That would enable him to make a judgment and perhaps make it quite clear that many of these people are coming in as short-term visitors and not long-term workers.
European Union Migration: National Insurance — House of Lords, 2016-05-12
Topic: Immigration
John Tomlinson (Labour, Centre-left): In his Statement, the Minister referred to "long-term sustainable levels" as being the level of migration this Government are looking for. Will he confirm to the House that the Government are still committed to reducing long-term net migration to "tens of thousands", which was the ambition of the Prime Minister now several years ago—in each year since when, the figures have increased?
European Union Migration: National Insurance — House of Lords, 2016-05-12
Topic: Mixed Topics
Dale Norman Campbell-Savours (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, would not this confusion be reduced if we returned to discussing a biometric-based national identity card, whereby people would be swiped in when they entered the United Kingdom and swiped out when they left?
BBC — House of Lords, 2016-05-12
Topic: Other
Michael Cashman (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. Sadly, I am not reassured. I have deep concerns, which have already been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, and my noble friend Lord Alli. The Statement states that programmes should be made in the public interest. Who defines public interest?
Child Refugees: Age Checks — House of Lords, 2016-10-21
Topic: Immigration
Richard Rosser (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer to the Urgent Question in the other place. We welcome the reference in the Answer to the statements made by the British Dental Association, the Royal College of Paediatricians and Doctors of the World UK in the light of the pressures from some political figures to use dental X-rays and medical tests as age checks, rather than to concentrate our energies on welcoming and supporting unaccompanied children coming to this country under the Dublin regulations and the Dubs amendment We also welcome that, after some months of little obvious action, there now appears to be much greater urgency on the part of the Government to physically move eligible unaccompanied children to this country. By when will all children eligible to come to this country under the Dublin regulations have arrived here, particularly in the light of the imminent demolition of the camp at Calais? How many such children have arrived so far, how many are still to come and what information is there on the breakdown of the originating countries from which they have come? Likewise, what are the latest comparable figures, and information on the breakdown of originating countries, for unaccompanied vulnerable children who have come here, and are still expected to come, under the Dubs amendment Finally, to get the figures in perspective, will the Government give their own estimate, and the estimate presumably given to them by the road haulage industry, of the number of those entering the country illegally each day—adults as well as children—across the English Channel in heavy goods vehicles?
Government and Parliament — House of Lords, 2016-06-09
Topic: Other
Ivor Seward Richard (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the noble Lord for giving way. He will remember from the position he then held and I remember from the position I then held that during the whole of the period of the Labour Government from 1997 onwards, not only did we never have a majority in this House, but for most of that time we were not even the largest single party here; his party was. The voting records of those Parliaments show that the average number of defeats of Labour Governments was somewhere between 40% and 50%, which is not very different from what he is complaining about now. I did not hear him complaining about the position then.
Government and Parliament — House of Lords, 2016-06-09
Topic: Other
John Anderson Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the noble Lord and do not want to take up too much of his time, but since he mentioned the Lib Dems and the Cross-Benchers, they were represented on the Joint Committee on Conventions and voted unanimously for its conclusions. They supported its conclusions on the Floor of this House, so they are committed to the convention.
European Union Referendum (Voter Registration) Regulations 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-06-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Alston Maxton (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I will be brief, although I am tempted to go into a long diatribe about compulsory registration, which I think ought to be the case, as people would automatically be registered and would have to take themselves off the register rather than the other way round. That would be the best way of doing it What I am concerned about now, however, is registration for the postal vote. We ought to be extending it in the same way, to the end of tomorrow, because the original deadline to ask for a postal vote was 24 hours after closure of the registration process. Now there will be at least a full 24 hours—that is, today—when no one will be able to apply for a postal vote. I think that that is wrong and I hope that the Government will look at it again and consider whether we might have postal voting for those who apply for registration today.
Community Pharmacy in 2016-17 and Beyond — House of Lords, 2016-10-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Rita Donaghy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this is beginning to sound like the fate of the post offices. In my local urban chemist—as we still call it; I have not quite got used to calling them pharmacies—I do not think I have ever seen anybody pay for their prescription, because the area is poor and has a high proportion of elderly and long-term disabled people. It already performs a very good public service in an integrated way as far as it possibly can. It seems to me that it is being asked to do even more. My concern is that none of the questions asked by my noble friend on the Front Bench was answered by the noble Baroness. She also did not give any assurance that she would answer his questions in writing. I am particularly concerned about the comments that he made on the impact assessment—it seems that it is not just the data that are very woolly, but the government thinking.