argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Pupil Premium — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Education
Matthew Thomas Pennycook (Labour, Centre-left): The House of Commons Library has confirmed to me that there has been a £220 million real-terms decrease in the total amount of spending on the pupil premium since 2015. Schools in my constituency have together lost about £1 million, with the worst-affected losing almost £40,000 a year. In its recent manifesto, the Conservative party did not repeat its previous commitment to protect the pupil premium. So can the Minister tell the House today what the Government’s policy actually is? Will they retain the pupil premium and restore it, or will it simply be left to waste away?
Free School Meals — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Education
Sharon Hodgson (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for stating the Government’s policy on free school meals and getting that on the record. Given how beneficial free school meals are for reducing inequalities and improving children’s health and attainment, will she mirror Labour policy and extend free school meals to all primary school children?
Children Entering the Care System — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Social Welfare
Steven Mark Ward Reed (Labour, Centre-left): Too many children in the care system are being placed in unregulated hostels, as we have heard, without the support that they need to keep safe. Lance Scott Walker was killed aged 18 when we was placed with a young person with schizophrenia who chased him out of a window and stabbed him to death. In another hostel, a young person on bail for murder was placed with a victim of child trafficking, who he got involved in drug dealing. We know that children are at risk right now. We do not need to wait for a review to find that out, so when will the Government properly regulate all housing where vulnerable children and young people are placed?
Free Schools and Academies: Planning Policy — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on ensuring that the development of free schools and academies is not restricted by planning policy.
Lucy Maria Powell (Labour, Centre-left): In those conversations with local authorities, will the Minister also talk to them about current children’s social services practice to make sure that the deep lessons of the Greater Manchester review are learned and that practice is changed so that vulnerable children never again have wrong assumptions made about them?
Further Education — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Education
Bethan Winter (Labour, Centre-left): It has been estimated that there is a pay gap of more £7,000 between teachers in schools and teachers in FE colleges. Does the Secretary of State agree that the current Office for National Statistics classification of FE colleges as non-profit institutions serving households—NPISH status—is hindering the ability to address this growing pay gap?
Further Education — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Education
Emma Ann Hardy (Labour, Centre-left): More than three quarters of sixth-form colleges do not believe they have the funding they need to support disadvantaged students. The FE sector, the Education Committee and the Labour party speak with one voice in supporting the Raise the Rate campaign to increase per-pupil funding to £4,760. Despite warm words from the Secretary of State, the funding needed has not appeared. He talks about it being a crucial sector, so when will he make good on his promise to work hand in glove with the FE sector by both restoring the position of FE and Skills Minister and raising the rate to £4,760?
T-levels — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Education
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): Is the Secretary of State aware that, in the dark old days when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, we believed in evidence-based policy, from early years right through to FE and HE? What research has he done into the efficacy of T-levels? Are they working? Does he still have a research facility in his Department?
Student Finance: Students from Low-income Backgrounds — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Education
Zarah Sultana (Labour, Centre-left): In 2010, like thousands of other young people, I argued against the tripling of tuition fees, but the Government ignored us, and I currently have around £50,000 of student debt. I have here my latest student loan statement, which says that the interest added in the past year alone was £2,022.65. Can the Secretary of State look me in the eye and tell me that it is fair that working-class kids who want an education are being forced to take on colossal debt while his Government is led by a man who went from the playing fields of Eton to a free education at Oxford—
School Funding — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Education
Bridget Maeve Phillipson (Labour, Centre-left): Every secondary school in my constituency has been judged by Ofsted to require improvement. We have seen various Government initiatives come and go, but when will the Secretary of State get to grips with the scale of the challenge at secondary level right across the north and bring forward a far more ambitious and properly funded plan to tackle it?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Education
Virendra Kumar Sharma (Labour, Centre-left): The Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan), responded half-heartedly to the question on free school meals, so I give the Secretary of State another opportunity to clear up the point. About 400,000 schoolchildren in London alone are at risk of food insecurity. When will the Government adopt universal free school meals to end this injustice and ensure that every child can reach their potential?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Education
Questions: I have been working with a group of parents in my constituency to set up an Islamic faith school as a free school. Sadly, Harrow Council has been obstructing them. Will my right hon. Friend set out what the Government are doing to encourage and enable parents to have faith-based schools on a free school basis if they so wish?
Tulip Rizwana Siddiq (Labour, Centre-left): The National Day Nurseries Association published research last week showing that three quarters of local education authorities underspent their early years budget in 2018-19, with Surrey County Council having an underspend of £5 million. I am curious to know where this money is going and whether councils are using the money to plug the gap in overstretched SEN budgets. Does the Minister agree that this demonstrates there is a problem in how the dedicated schools grant is being implemented? Does he also agree that, if money has been set aside to give children the best start in life, it should not be used to plug the gap in other parts of the budget?
Building Safety — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Government Operations
Grahame Mark Morris (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister referred in his statement to long-standing problems and, quite rightly, to a loss of public confidence. Does he think it will help to improve public confidence if, as newspaper reports state, the investigation panel into what went wrong with the Grenfell cladding is set to include an engineer, Benita Mehra, whose previous organisation was in receipt of thousands of pounds from Arconic, the company that manufactured the Grenfell cladding?
Economy and Jobs — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add: ‘but respectfully regrets that the Gracious Speech fails to put an end to a decade of austerity, to invest in the UK’s underfunded public services, or to scrap universal credit; notes the damaging impact that the four-year freeze in working-age benefits has had on families on low income; and calls on the Government to bring forward a plan to reverse the damaging impact austerity has had on communities in the UK, tackle the climate and environmental emergency, and reshape the economy to work for everyone by clamping down on tax avoidance, tackling insecurity in work by extending full employment rights to all workers, ending in-work poverty, and introducing a real living wage.’ I appreciate that many new Members will want to speak today, so I will seek to be as brief as possible. [Interruption.] I thought that would be appreciated on both sides. We aim to please You, Mr Speaker, have been in the House as long as I have, so you will know that the classic approach to a good Queen’s Speech and its subsequent debate combines an assessment of the position of the country—a state of the nation address—with at least some attempt to address the issues facing our people. On both counts, the latest Queen’s Speech and this process is by any stretch of the imagination crushingly disappointing—I believe that the overriding view that will come to be associated with this Government may well be one of disappointment. They appear to have no appreciation of the lives so many of our fellow citizens live or of the often heartrending problems they face The Government’s programme in the Queen’s Speech fails to reverse the decade of austerity. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said, austerity is baked into the Government’s economic policies, which fail to tackle insecure work, to end in-work poverty and to introduce a real living wage. Worst of all, the Queen’s Speech fails to address the brutal hardship caused by universal credit, introduced by this Government. We face twin emergencies: first, a climate emergency, an existential threat to our planet that, as we have seen only too well in Australia and Indonesia, is rapidly spiralling beyond control; and, secondly, in this country, a social emergency resulting from a decade of harsh austerity and decline. Last year, the House resolved that we faced a climate emergency. We should also resolve that we face a social emergency.
Economy and Jobs — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Labor
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): That is just income tax. It is interesting that the lowest earners pay 40% of their income in tax while the highest earners pay 34%. We know who is paying more in comparison with what they earn There is nothing in this Queen’s Speech that will address the grotesque levels of inequality. Actually, the reverse is true because the Government are now launching another assault on trade union rights and, in particular, the human right of the ability to withdraw one’s labour. The Chancellor has also rejected future dynamic alignment with EU employment rights and standards, and there is a real fear—let us express it now—that this prefaces the fulfilment of ambitions of Conservative Members to undermine workers’ rights and conditions. Maybe that is what some of their campaigning for Brexit was all about. Wage levels are low, in part because this Government have produced a productivity crisis. Over the past decade, productivity grew at its slowest level in 60 years. A German or French worker produces in four days what a British worker produces in five, not because the UK worker is any less industrious; far from it. It is because investment in the UK has been broadly weaker than in the rest of the G7 countries, especially since 2016, and investment is currently stagnating This has been exacerbated by the lack of investment not just in capital but in human capital—in training and skills. In his interview at the weekend in the Financial Times, the Chancellor highlighted the role of further education colleges, and I agree with him. He talked about the role they could play in raising productivity by promoting lifelong learning and skills training. As someone who benefited from further education while I was on the shop floor, I fully agree, but the reality is that this Government have brought FE to its knees, with the IFS suggesting that at least £1.16 billion is needed just to reverse the cuts that the Government have imposed on further education. We have seen a decade of a Government denying opportunities to the very people whose skills have been desperately needed, not just to fire up our economy but also to lift their families of poverty Alongside skills, a vibrant economy needs to invest in the future if we are to compete in the fourth industrial revolution, but on investment in research and development, the UK is now 11th in the EU. We await the Government’s detailed proposals on investment in R and D, and if they are of a scale we will support them, but it will take a lot to make up for the lost decade in this field. A lack of investment in infrastructure and R&D has resulted in productivity going backwards in many regions of the UK. The 2017 Kerslake report identified a £40 billion productivity gap in the three northern regions compared with the south, which has produced some of the worst regional inequality in all of Europe.
Economy and Jobs — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): Quite simply. It is a good question, because we wanted to scrap the tax credits and put direct investment into R&D. Some of the very advisers the Government have called upon, such as Mariana Mazzucato, have been ripping apart some of those tax credits for inefficiency and ineffectiveness. We shared the objective, but we found a different and more effective route We have referred in the past to the differentiation between types of investment, and the example that we have used in previous debates is stark. Planned transport investment in London is 2.6 times higher per capita than in the north, so it is no wonder that rail infrastructure in the north has been falling apart. After a decade of decline, the Government at last seem to have at least acknowledged their mistake in refusing to invest in the regions—something we have been crying out for—but we will see what scale of investment is produced after the fine words However, this is not just about capital investment in infrastructure. There is also a desperate need for revenue investment in the social infrastructure of our regions and nations. It is interesting that many cities and towns in the north have borne the brunt of austerity. Seven out of the 10 cities with the largest cuts in the country are in the north-east, the north-west and Yorkshire. That came about not by some miracle, but as the result of deliberate Government policy Imitation, they say, is the highest form of flattery, so I suppose Labour should be flattered that the Government are now looking to rewrite the Treasury Green Book to reorient investment decisions towards the regions outside London and the south-east—an exercise that Labour undertook two years ago. I suppose we should also be flattered by the Government now following Labour in adopting a fiscal rule that enables them to take advantage of low interest rates to borrow, which we advocated at least four years ago.
Economy and Jobs — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): Following the Chancellor’s interview in the Financial Times, the response from the likes of the CBI, the Engineering Employers Federation, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, and the Food and Drink Federation is extremely alarming. They have said in unison just how concerned they are about the Government’s ambivalence, as my right hon. Friend says, about the real cost both to jobs and to industry.
Economy and Jobs — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): The Chancellor’s statement was reckless. I wish him well, as always, but I caution him that the Prime Minister may well be preserving him in his job to take the hit for any trade deal outcomes that go pear-shaped if frictionless trade is not achieved I am aware that many new Members wish to make their maiden speeches. It is important that the Front Benchers do not take too long, so I will come to a conclusion. There is so much more to be said about the operation of our economy: about the failure of the Government to effectively address tax avoidance and evasion and money laundering, which infects our financial system; and about the failure, despite the scandals within the City, and within our accountancy and audit systems, to address our failing regulatory structures.
Economy and Jobs — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): The whole process of cuts in HMRC over the years has been a self-defeating one, by which we remove the expertise we need to ensure a fair taxation system and to tackle tax evasion and avoidance There is a desperate need to harness our economy effectively, as we will discuss at a later date, and to end our dependence on fossil fuel and to do so much sooner than the inadequate target date of 2050. We will still have some opportunity to address these issues in the run-up to the Budget, but for now let me conclude by cautioning the Government that this Queen’s Speech fails dramatically to demonstrate the sense of urgency and scale of action needed to provide the decade of renewal they promise. Our people have endured a decade of decline. On the basis of what is laid out in this Queen’s Speech and the policy direction laid out so far by the Chancellor, they face not a decade of renewal but a decade of disappointment. We already have had a foretaste of the dangerous politics that disappointment and disillusion creates. We must avoid it, and I ask Members to support our amendment.
Economy and Jobs — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Labor
Ruth Lorraine Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I commend the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) on her maiden speech and thank her for the measured and thought-provoking way she delivered it. I also thank her for explaining to us the familial links between Members for her constituency—that was very helpful I am delighted to be able to speak in this important debate on jobs and the economy. It is my privilege to represent Newport West, my home and birthplace. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve all the people who live there, and I will work hard in the many days, months and years ahead to ensure that their voices are heard in the House Over my life to date, the nature of employment has changed fundamentally, as has the type, scope and size of industry in my constituency. The closure of the coal mines and steel works saw a massive and destructive loss of jobs in south Wales, but Newport West is now home to groundbreaking companies such as Airbus, the Rutherford Cancer Centre and the Catapult compound semiconductor cluster, which is the only one of its kind in the UK. As such, I welcome the Government’s commitment to making the UK a global science superpower and investing in research and development. I encourage any relevant Minister to come to Newport West: I will take them to visit those businesses so that Members can see the industry-leading work taking place in my constituency. Importantly, it will give Ministers the chance to learn about these success stories and inspire them to replicate Newport West’s success throughout the UK. Furthermore, I welcome the Government’s move to ensure that investment in industries such as computing are prioritised. Additionally, if investment in hubs in world-leading universities is promised, I recommend that the Minister visit the University of South Wales campus in my constituency to see the fantastic work being done in the field of cyber-security. It is a hub where businesses and university students learn from each other, providing cyber-security services to companies worldwide The Government propose in the Queen’s Speech to bring forward an employment Bill, and claim that they will protect and enhance workers’ rights.
Economy and Jobs — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: International Affairs
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making an outstanding speech about the importance of so many things. Over the weekend, the Chancellor made some controversial comments about the possible lack of alignment between Britain and the rest of the EU after Brexit. Does my hon. Friend—like me, the Confederation of British Industry and many major British trade unions—have deep concerns about the Chancellor’s rather rash statement?
Economy and Jobs — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Labor
Marsha Chantol De Cordova (Labour, Centre-left): Yes, that is the truth. Under the Tories, the disability employment gap has stayed stagnant and the pay gap continues to widen. The Government have a real opportunity to rethink and reform employment support for disabled people. They have the Disability Confident scheme, but in its current format it lacks any credibility or accountability because it is possible to be a Disability Confident employer and not employ a single disabled person.
Economy and Jobs — House of Commons, 2020-01-20
Topic: Social Welfare
Marsha Chantol De Cordova (Labour, Centre-left): No, she won’t When will the Government recognise that the Disability Confident scheme lacks any accountability? Will they follow Labour’s lead and place a requirement on all organisations with more than 250 employees to report annually on the number of disabled people they employ The Access to Work scheme is an essential form of employment support, but it remains one of the best-kept secrets, as only 43% of employers are aware of it. It is a good scheme from which I and many others have benefited, but the Government should try to promote it a bit more so that all employers are familiar with the scheme and can access it and benefit from it. The Access to Work scheme should be expanded to include disabled people who want to engage in work experience or volunteering opportunities. The Government could also follow Labour’s lead and introduce what is called a reasonable adjustment passport scheme, which would make it easier for disabled people to move from one job to another. It would be almost like portable support and would save money in the long run. Let me move on to the assessment frameworks. The Government’s commitment to end the cruel reassessment for personal independence payments falls short of the systematic changes that are needed to social security assessments, which are failing too many disabled people. Indeed, 72% of PIP decisions that go to appeal are overturned in favour of the claimant. Disabled people are being forced to wait up to nine months before their case goes to an appeal tribunal. It is the same for employment and support allowance claimants, too. It is shameful The consequences of the failing system are devastating. Just last year, the Government released figures showing that 5,690 people had died within six months of being found fit for work under the work capability assessment. That is why Labour and many others were proud to support the Justice for Jodey Whiting petition that called for an investigation into social security-related deaths. The petition was signed by more than 50,000 people. Will the Government, as part of their national strategy for disabled people, finally agree to carry out an urgent inquiry into social security-related deaths In conclusion, the Government have an opportunity to address the misery they have caused over the past decade. On jobs, housing, the climate and disabled people’s rights, the Queen’s Speech has fallen short, which is why I will vote for the amendment tabled by the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). I urge the Government to think about what I have spoken about. This country and the people of my constituency of Battersea cannot afford any more missed targets or broken promises.