argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: The International Development Secretary recently said that he wants to double the UK’s current £1.1 billion commitment to the UN green climate fund. As the UK is yet to do so, will the Minister who has temporary responsibility for our engagement with the UN climate talks assure us today that it is the Government’s intention to commit additional money to the fund?; The Office for Product Safety and Standards undertook a thorough review of the modification of Whirlpool tumble dryers. However, there still remain great concerns about not only the straightness of Whirlpool, but whether people have unsafe products in their homes. Can the Minister update us on what is happening in relation to Whirlpool?; I have two universities in my constituency that work very closely with businesses to develop technology. Can the Minister assure me that the Augar review will not lead to funding cuts at these universities, as they get funding from different sources?; With town centres such as that of Lowestoft facing serious challenges, will the Minister confirm that she is working with the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to put in place a fairer system of business taxation?; British steel companies pay twice as much as their French competitors for energy and 50% more than German companies. What action will the Government take to enable the British steel industry to compete without having one hand tied behind its back?; York Instruments, based in my constituency, is doing ground-breaking work developing advanced medical devices, attracting £10 million of private investment from the US to sustain 41 high-skilled jobs. Can the Government assure me that they are doing everything possible to facilitate this kind of investment, which can be very difficult for some small businesses to navigate?
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State is no doubt waiting for the new Prime Minister to authorise him to announce the UK ceramic sector deal. While that is being worked out, what conversations is he having with the Department for International Trade about supporting the anti-dumping measures that are currently being considered in Europe?
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Social Welfare
Tom Watson (Labour, Centre-left): We found out yesterday just how little a Tory manifesto promise is worth. I have read these words in the Chamber before, but I will read them again: "We will maintain all…pensioner benefits, including free bus passes, eye tests, prescriptions and TV licences, for the duration of this parliament." No ifs, no buts, no wavering—a promise made in 2017 to voters by the Conservative party Today, 3.7 million over-75s find that promise in tatters. They have been betrayed, and it is shameful. The Government have the breathtaking gall to blame the BBC for this mess, but passing the buck will not work. The BBC is not the Department for Work and Pensions. Public broadcasters should never be responsible for social policy. My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) warned in 2015 that this was a "smash and grab raid" by the Government on the BBC. He was right, and now older people are paying the price. There are 1.8 million over-75s who live completely alone, and they will lose their TV licence because of the announcement. How can the Secretary of State justify that? We cannot means-test for loneliness or social inclusion What about the very poorest in our nation who are eligible for pension credit but do not claim it? How will the Secretary of State protect them? Two of the Tory leadership candidates—the former Leader of the House and the Home Secretary—have committed to overturning the decision. Perhaps they know how it will look to the rest of the world when we start jailing pensioners who cannot or will not pay the licence fee I would like to share some figures with the House: 4,240 older people in Uxbridge will lose their TV licence; 5,970 people in West Suffolk will be affected; and 6,730—the number in South West Surrey. The right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) wants to give a tax cut to the very richest, but he will not lift a finger to defend pensioners. The Health Secretary says he cares about social care, but he will not defend pensioners either. The Foreign Secretary tells us that he cares about the chronically lonely, but he will not defend even the loneliest pensioners. Is it therefore any surprise that the country’s pensioners are asking whether the leadership candidates will honour their word and keep their promise, or break it This is a test not just of leadership, but of honour, integrity and truthfulness. Does the Secretary of State agree that someone who cannot keep a promise is not fit to be Prime Minister? It is as simple as that.
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Social Welfare
Janet Jessica Daby (Labour, Centre-left): In Lewisham East, 3,410 pensioners will lose access to free TV licences, which will perpetuate feelings of loneliness and isolation. The Government are clearly refusing to accept responsibility —indeed, they are dodging responsibility—for breaking a promise made in their 2017 manifesto. Does that mean the Tory Government cannot be trusted?
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Technology
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): More than 4,000 of my constituents will lose their free TV licences. Will the Secretary of State explain to them simply and clearly how he expected to keep the promise made to them in the 2017 manifesto about their free TV licences? What mechanism did he intend to use?
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Technology
Matthew Toby Perkins (Labour, Centre-left): It is clear from the Secretary of State’s answer to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) that the Government made a promise in their manifesto, but knew at the time that it was not theirs to make. The Secretary of State has said that he is disappointed with the BBC. Will he clarify whether, during those discussions with the BBC, it ever promised the Government that for the foregoing period of that settlement it would retain free TV licences for all pensioners?
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): I can tell the Secretary of State that Gary Lineker is a lot more popular than the Tories We have been here before. The Government hiked up council tax to offset Tory cuts in council services. They introduced a care tax to offset Tory cuts in social care. They introduced a policing tax to offset cuts in policing. Now every single pensioner in the country will know that the Tories made a promise in their manifesto which they could not keep and never intended to keep. When it comes to the next election, those pensioners will remember that, and will remember that they are paying more under the Tories, because of the Tories, for worse services cut by the Tories.
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Stella Judith Creasy (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State may not accept the moral case for keeping the pledge in his manifesto, but there is a good, cold, hard economic case for resolving this too. He said earlier that pensioners would not go to prison, but we know that people go prison for not being able to pay the fine for not holding a licence. Does he accept that the cost to the public purse of the prosecutions and the potential incarceration of pensioners, and indeed the consequences of pensioner poverty, far outweigh any benefit from this? Just like the bedroom tax, this is a false economy. Rather than avoiding responsibility for it, the Secretary of State should act on behalf of public taxpayers and get it sorted.
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Technology
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): I have listened carefully to what the Secretary of State has said, and I am getting a bit sick and tired of the weasel words that he is using. It was quite clear to the 9,000 over-75s in Hull who are to lose their free TV licences that it was a manifesto promise made by the Conservatives in 2017 that they would not lose those licences. As the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) has just said, surely a manifesto promise is the responsibility of the Government, and the Government should ensure that it is implemented.
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Technology
Judith Mary Cummins (Labour, Centre-left): Nearly 3,500 households in my constituency are now set to lose their free TV licences next year despite a Conservative manifesto promise that they would be kept. This is an outrage. So will the Government apologise, do the right thing, and commit today to funding these TV licences at the very least until the end of the next Parliament?
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Social Welfare
Paul John Sweeney (Labour, Centre-left): The 1,440 of my constituents who are affected are not going to be impressed by the Government’s shamefaced turnaround on this issue after having committing to upholding the free licence fee. The Secretary of State might say that the Government are not responsible for this, but they are responsible for the increase in pensioner poverty, loneliness and isolation that will ensue, so what are the Government going to do to mitigate those inevitable impacts and guarantee that those detriments are reversed?
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Social Welfare
Mohammad Yasin (Labour, Centre-left): Most of those set to lose the TV licence will not qualify for pension credit but still struggle to make ends meet, including 4,470 from Bedford and Kempston. Does the Secretary of State agree that his party has broken another manifesto pledge and cut a lifeline to the outside world for many older people, who suffer most from loneliness and social isolation?
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Technology
Gerald Jones (Labour, Centre-left): Some 3,220 people in my constituency currently benefit from this policy. No matter which way the Secretary of State tries to dress it up, to transfer the responsibility to the BBC without the corresponding budget and then have Tory MPs line up, as they have done over the last few days, and criticise the BBC is just plain wrong, not to mention shameful. So will the Secretary of State review this situation, yes or no?
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Social Welfare
Melanie Onn (Labour, Centre-left): Nearly 4,000 of my constituents are going to be affected by this decision. I find it absolutely shocking that the Secretary of State, who stood on a 2017 manifesto that promised over-75s that they would keep this benefit—hard-working over-75s who have lived by the rules all their lives and contributed in every way to get this tiny benefit—now says they cannot do so. Does he not think he owes those people more of an explanation than he is giving this House today?
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Social Welfare
Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Centre-left): About 4,400 pensioners in the Scunthorpe area will lose their free TV licences based on this announcement today. Is the Secretary of State saying that the Government are happy to break the election promise that those people voted on in 2017?
Free TV Licences: Over-75s — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Social Welfare
Hugh Lawrence Gaffney (Labour, Centre-left): Three thousand households in my constituency will lose their TV licence, yet the Tory leadership candidates are focused on cutting taxes for the wealthy and have nothing to say about this vital support being taken away from the elderly. Is this not another broken promise from a Tory Government who always choose to protect the few at the expense of the many? Will the Minister tell me which Tory leadership candidate he would support to find the money?
Consumer Protection — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Education
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister probably knows what I am going to say about school notice boards. She and her colleagues have been very helpful. Could she confirm that the order will make it quicker and easier to look at such products, which at least need investigation?
Family Law — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Social Welfare
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a point about childcare. I do not know whether he has seen the reports today about the Government paying something like £5 an hour for childcare although the costs are a lot higher than that. That means, in effect, that a lot of families are being excluded from childcare. Does he agree that the Government should do something about that?
Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Twigg (Labour, Centre-left): I welcome the opportunity of today’s debate, and I congratulate the Secretary of State on his appointment. Is he able to confirm that, when the UK makes its submission to the UN, we will make reference to every single one of the goals, targets and indicators for both domestic and international implementation?
Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Social Welfare
Kerry Gillian McCarthy (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State will know that the UN special rapporteur described the levels of poverty in the UK recently as "systemic" and "tragic"—I think those were the words—and that seems to have been rather glibly dismissed by some of his colleagues. Of the five goals on which the UK is focusing when it comes to the voluntary national review, why is goal 2—ending hunger—not in there when we know that the extent of food poverty, particularly childhood food poverty, in this country is so extreme?
Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: International Affairs
Kerry Gillian McCarthy (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State is giving a characteristically thoughtful speech. I do not want to cast any doubt on what he is saying—I agree about the need to cross party boundaries when we try to find solutions to these issues—but I wonder whether it is really possible for him to do it from the Department for International Development, as opposed to, say, the Cabinet Office, leading on the domestic delivery of the sustainable development goals. Will he say a bit about how he can persuade his perhaps less thoughtful colleagues to come to the table?
Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: International Affairs
Daniel Joseph Carden (Labour, Centre-left): I pay tribute to the Secretary of State, who I think has an important engagement in around two hours’ time—perhaps talking about saving the world is a pretty good warm-up act for talking about how to save the Tory party in his meeting later today The sustainable development goals set out an ambitious vision for the world: a world that is free from hunger and poverty, where men and women have equality, where everyone, regardless of income, can realise their right to health, education, water, energy an decent work and where peace, justice and climate action are top of the agenda. It is a vision that no one could disagree with. The crucial thing about the SDGs is that they are universal. Unlike their predecessors, the millennium development goals, the SDGs have to be realised by all countries, including our own Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to raise one concern. In last Thursday’s business statement, the Leader of the House announced a "general debate on the UK voluntary national review on the sustainable development goals."—[Official Report, 6 June 2019; Vol. 661, c. 271.] Today’s debate was meant to focus on the UK’s own voluntary national review process. I accept that the Secretary of State did his best to talk about the UK’s report, but let us bear in mind that the report is meant to go to the UN in less than three days A further question to be answered is why responsibility for the UK’s voluntary national review should sit with DFID: an entirely outward, international-facing Department. It is clear, and has been stated on the record, that the domestic delivery of the SDGs is a function for the whole Government. The Cabinet Office should be co-ordinating the process.
Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: Social Welfare
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): Following on from my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), some months ago a United Nations report was critical of poverty in this country. I would like to hear more about how the Government will address that. Does my hon. Friend not agree that that should also be a top priority?
Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: International Affairs
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend share my concern that one of the reasons for the conflation is that there are still Conservative Members who would love to remove the 0.7% contribution of our national income towards foreign aid? It has already been diluted. Does he worry that that is in play according to some of the leadership candidates?
Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: International Affairs
Daniel Joseph Carden (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is right. The previous International Development Secretary looked at ways to water down the 0.7% commitment, although this Secretary of State committed to it at International Development questions last week. I asked whether he would call on his opponents in the Tory leadership race to make the same commitment, but I do not think we have heard much from them. It is certainly a worry throughout the sector As I have said, the Cabinet Office should be co-ordinating the process. We heard the Secretary of State try to talk about some of the domestic issues, but they go far further than those he could elaborate on. In particular, following numerous complaints from UK charities that the Government are not taking the SDGs or the voluntary national review seriously, it is remarkable that there does not seem to be even a basic understanding of who is responsible for what. I was therefore somewhat surprised to see on the Order Paper yesterday that the focus of this debate had changed, shifting unannounced away from the UK’s own performance to the much broader topic of the SDGs in general. The scope of the debate now covers the whole world—quite an extension There could not be a bigger agenda out there than changing the world by 2030, yet there is little or no leadership in the UK. There appears to be poor co-ordination and zero vision. The Secretary of State may be very good at talking to people in the streets and on Twitter at the moment, but the truth is his Government and Departments have given up talking to one another.
Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: International Affairs
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): The UN Secretary-General has said that the process in a voluntary national review should be for the Government to consult Parliament and the Opposition, as well as members of the Government and civil society. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government have been pretty lacking in real, detailed consultation during this process, particularly in Parliament? We have had one or two informal sessions and an inquiry by the International Development Committee, but there has been no proactive, issue-by-issue engagement on the Government’s part.
Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: International Affairs
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend find it appalling, as I do, that British fighter jets using British ammunition and flown by people trained in Britain on routes that are set out in Saudi control centres where British personnel are based end up bombing British-paid-for aid in Yemen? That country is suffering one of the worst humanitarian disasters we have seen in 100 years, and something being done in the voluntary national review to change our policy on Saudi Arabia and Yemen would be one instance in which we could actually see progress. Does he agree that if that is not done, it will show the Government’s commitment to peace and international justice for the sham that it is?
Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: International Affairs
Daniel Joseph Carden (Labour, Centre-left): I am pleased to agree 100% with my hon. Friend, and I congratulate him on his tireless efforts to highlight these utterly disgraceful practices I should like to raise a final point relating to the SDG agenda. If we are to bring about the kind of world envisaged under the SDGs, we need to start talking about the structural causes of poverty. Debates about the sustainable development goals have become dominated by discussions on how to mobilise trillions in additional finance and, in particular, how we can mobilise private finance and philanthropic funds. This is not good enough; charity alone will not solve the world’s problems, especially if we are ignoring the reasons that these problems exist in the first place I have said before, and it really cannot be said enough, that poverty is not a technical problem. Poverty is man-made, and to solve it we need to change the unfair global economic order that is rigged in favour of the few at the expense of the many. I support efforts to increase funding, and I am a passionate believer in the continuation of our 0.7% aid spending, but we need to go further. We do not talk enough about the unfair structures and the imbalanced voting power within global financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. We need to do more to tackle the tax avoidance that means developing countries losing out on trillions of pounds of revenue each year. The SDGs do not go far enough in preventing unjust debt burdens. Does the Secretary of State agree that poverty is not simply about a lack of funds and that the answer to global poverty does not lie in taking a begging bowl to the world’s billionaires? Will he instead use the UK’s moment at the high-level political forum in July to raise the questions on the structural causes of poverty that are missing from the current agenda To conclude, the UK’s voluntary national review, which is due to be with the United Nations this week, has been mishandled and botched by this Government. It has lacked leadership; it has not been taken seriously from the start; and today the Government have backtracked on their own decision to have a full parliamentary debate on it within days of announcing it. It is a total and utter embarrassment. If this process had been taken seriously, it would have allowed the Government to face up to their record in office over nine years and own up to the utter failure of austerity. I hope that this Secretary of State will therefore use this as a moment to take stock of his Government’s failure on poverty and inequality here at home in the UK.
Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: International Affairs
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman celebrates the fact that this debate is happening today, but should it not have happened a year ago and been followed up with 17 sectoral debates in which we could have discussed in depth how Britain is faring? This should have been a debate to wrap up and to prepare for how to present Britain to the UN with a united face. The problem is that this process has been a farce and has not been given the full weight that it deserved.