argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
NHS Staff Morale — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Labor
Benedict Gummer (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady asked a number of questions. On the specific issue about this particular member of staff, I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has met her, and I would be happy to discuss this further. The hon. Lady is wrong about the Francis recommendations, which are being implemented in full. She should look at the balanced results from the staff survey, with more staff saying that their motivation at work is going up, with the number recommending their trust as a place of work and as a place to receive treatment going up, and with the number able to contribute to improvements at work also going up. There are issues in the staff survey that we would like to address—it is unfortunate to see reports of bullying and harassment going up—but we are addressing the problem through the staff partnership forum, which I chair. Overall, however, this is a balanced and positive return from the staff survey.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Before I call the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I should inform the House that I have selected amendments (b) and (a), so both can be debated together with the Budget motions today. With the leave of the House, I will call the shadow Chancellor to move amendment (b) after the Chancellor has opened the debate. At the end of the day’s debate, the Question will first be put on amendment (b). As long as time permits before 7 pm, I shall then call the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) to move amendment (a) formally, and the Question on that amendment will be put. The House will then proceed to decide on the Budget resolutions.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Law and Crime
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me start by offering all our condolences to the victims, and their families, of the attacks in Belgium. The full details of this morning’s horrific attacks are still emerging, but we know that at least 13 people died in the attack at Brussels airport and that there are reports of multiple dead at Maelbeek metro station. As details of these horrific events continue to unfold, my thoughts and prayers, and indeed those of right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House, are with those who have lost loved ones or have been injured Earlier this morning, the Prime Minister chaired a meeting of Cobra attended by the Home Secretary, myself and others. The police have confirmed that, on a precautionary basis, they are increasing the policing presence at key locations, including transport hubs, to protect the public and provide reassurance. In London, the Metropolitan police have deployed additional officers to patrol key locations and the transport network, and Border Force efforts have been intensified It is too soon yet to comment on the details of these attacks, which are still emerging, but the Government would reiterate that the UK threat level remains at "severe", meaning that an attack is highly likely. We would urge the British people to remain vigilant, and the Home Secretary will keep the House updated. But let us be clear: terrorists seek to threaten our values and our way of life, and they will never succeed. It is a reminder of what a precious thing our democracy is, and this Budget debate is part of that democratic process This is the first time in 20 years that a Chancellor has spoken on the last day of the Budget debate, and I think it is fair to say that we have had a livelier debate about this Budget than about many. Let us be clear: the key principles behind this Budget are that if we are going to deliver a strong and compassionate society for the next generation, we have to live within our means, we have to back business to create jobs and we have to make sure work pays by putting more money into the pockets of working people. That is what we committed to in our manifesto. That is what the British people elected us to deliver. That is what this Budget does, and that is what we are going to vote on tonight.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): I will give way in a moment, but let me straightaway address the resignation of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). I am sorry that my right hon. Friend chose to leave the Government. Let me here, in this House, recognise his achievements in helping to make work pay, protecting the vulnerable and breaking the decades-old cycle of welfare dependency. Together, we had to confront a huge deficit and uncontrolled welfare spending. Of course, there is always robust discussion between the Treasury and the spending Departments when money needs to be saved. The decisions we make to keep our economy secure are always difficult, and where we do not get them right, I have always been prepared to listen and learn I am very proud that my right hon. Friend and I worked together longer than any two people who have done our jobs before us in any Government, and we have been part of the team that has reduced the number of people on out-of-work benefits to levels not seen for 40 years, reduced inequality, seen poverty fall, seen child poverty fall and seen pensioner poverty fall, and got a record number of people into work—a long-term economic plan and welfare reform delivering a fairer society for all.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Social Welfare
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): I will give way in a moment to my former partner in the coalition Government that undertook many of these welfare reforms. The reform has meant difficult decisions to strengthen the incentives to find work and the sanctions for not doing so; to make sure that every hour extra that people work is rewarded, instead of seeing them trapped in dependency; and to cap benefit payments so that our welfare system is fair both to those who need it and to those who pay for it. It has not been easy, and it has often been opposed, but the truth is that many of the acts of progressive social change that we seek to achieve in government are difficult and they are opposed. In any democracy, you have to fight to make lasting improvements in society, and that is what we have done.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): That was like one of those interminable interventions at ECOFIN. I happen to think that it is better to be in that council than not, but that is a debate for another day. We are talking here about the reforms we are making to welfare and to our economy.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we had stuck with the fuel duty escalator that we inherited from the last Government, it would have cost much more to fill up a car, which would have cost small businesses much more. We took action in this Budget to freeze fuel duty for the sixth year in a row, because we are on the side of working people.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Social Welfare
Simon Hugh McGuigan Burns (Conservative, Centre-right): To put this debate in context, would my right hon. Friend like to share with the House, in both financial and non-financial terms, how much help this Government have given to assist the sick and the disabled since May 2010?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Social Welfare
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): I am coming on to talk about disability benefits, but my right hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the support we give—close to £50 billion—to disabled people. When we look just at the disability benefits, disability living allowance and personal independence payment, we see that that support has gone up from £13 billion when we came into office to £16 billion today, and it will go up to £18 billion in the future. As my excellent right hon. Friend for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), the new Welfare Secretary, made clear yesterday, we continue to give support to disabled people. I will come on to deal with that in detail.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): I am glad that the right hon. Lady intervened, because I have done a little research and, frankly, I wish that when she was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury we had seen a few more revenue raisers in Budgets, such as savings in welfare and savings in public expenditure. During the period in which she was the Chief Secretary, the deficit went from £76 billion a year to £154 billion a year. The measures that my right hon. Friend and I have been taking over the last six years are to clear up the mess that she and her colleagues in government left.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Social Welfare
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): I will tell you what is unfair: to saddle the next generation with debts you have no way of paying off. That is what the right hon. Lady did. [Interruption.] That is what she did. I will come on specifically to disability benefits, but let me tell her about fairness and what we have done over the last six years. We have taken action that means 500,000 fewer children are growing up in workless households than when she was at the Treasury, 1 million fewer people are on out-of-work benefits and over 2 million more people are in work than when we came to office. That is the social justice record we on this side of the House are proud of I am also proud that the work continues, and in this Budget we are taking further steps to build a stronger society. There is money and reform to improve our nation’s schools. There is action to reduce sugar intake and give our children better healthcare. There is support for the savings of low-income families. There is more help and housing for homeless people. There are personal allowance increases that will lift another 1 million of the low-paid out of income tax altogether, and there is an increased minimum wage ahead of the introduction of the first ever national living wage in just two weeks’ time. Those are all in the Budget we will debate today—all the actions of a compassionate, one nation Conservative Government determined to deliver both social justice and economic security.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Social Welfare
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave exactly the Government’s position, which is that, "we have no further plans to make welfare savings beyond the very substantial savings legislated for by Parliament two weeks ago, which we will…now focus on implementing."—[Official Report, 21 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 1268.] I will now address the specific issue of welfare savings and disability, but I should have thought that the hon. Lady, when she got to her feet, might have thanked the Government for delivering the flood defence schemes that she asked for for her city, and which were in the Budget statement a week ago Let me turn to the disability benefits. We are proud that this Government are providing more support to the most disabled people. It was very clear that while the reforms proposed to personal independence payments two weeks ago drew on the work of an independent review, they did not command support. We have listened, and they will not go ahead. Even if they had, this Government are spending more on disabled people than the previous Labour Government ever did People have asked what this means for future support for disabled people, for our welfare cap and for the numbers in the Budget. Let me directly address all three points.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Social Welfare
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me address these points, and then I am happy to take interventions. First, over 3 million disabled people are now in work, which is 300,000 more than just a couple of years ago. We are also providing more support than ever before for the most disabled people. The budget has risen, will continue to rise and is much greater than the one we inherited. We are going to take our time, listen, consult widely and continue to build a system of disability support that works much better with our health and social services. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in his excellent statement yesterday, we will continue to support disabled people, and we will work with him to make sure that we do.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
Paul Christopher Maynard (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the Chancellor agree with me that we can be a compassionate Conservative Government only if we have a strong, stable economy, with a reduced deficit, to enable us to protect the most vulnerable in society?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Social Welfare
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me deal with the measures we are taking to control spending, and then I will take some interventions The welfare cap is the instrument we have introduced to set out, in a transparent way to Parliament, what we aim to spend on welfare. It is independently judged by the Office for Budget Responsibility every autumn, which is when we either have to comply with the cap or explain to Parliament and the country why we have not done so. I find it incredible to hear Labour Members protesting about the welfare cap. It never existed at all under a Labour Government: there was no cap, no control on the largest area of Government spending, no transparency, no independent forecast, and as a result, welfare costs soared by 60% and the country was brought to the brink of bankruptcy.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): I have already said that we are not going ahead with those changes. [Interruption.] I have addressed these issues. The truth is that that family and many more families are getting increased support under this Government. We would not be able to provide any of that support unless we had a strong economy and we controlled public spending, because the people who suffer most when the economy—[Interruption.]
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Social Welfare
Andrew James Griffiths (Conservative, Centre-right): Will the Chancellor confirm to the House that this Government are spending £2 billion more on support for the disabled, that inequality is at its lowest rate for 25 years according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies and that there are 2 million more people in work thanks to this Government? Is that not what we are doing for the vulnerable?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Social Welfare
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me make a little progress, and then I will give way again Not proceeding with the PIP changes means that spending on disabled people will be just over £1 billion a year higher by the end of the decade than was set out in the Budget. This will be an important factor, but only one of many, that will affect the overall forecast for welfare that the OBR will make in the autumn—
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Social Welfare
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): I am going to make some progress At that point, we will assess the level of the cap. What my right hon. Friend the new Work and Pensions Secretary said yesterday, with my full support, is that we do not have further plans to make welfare savings to replace the £1 billion more we will spend on PIP. We made very substantial savings in the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, which has just passed through Parliament. We have now legislated for the £12 billion a year of working-age welfare savings we committed to in our manifesto, and we are now going to focus on implementing that.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): Under this Government, the richest 1% are paying a higher proportion of income tax receipts than in any single year of the last Labour Government whom the hon. Gentleman used to support when he was a Member of Parliament for Croydon—until he was replaced by a much better Member of Parliament for Croydon.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me make progress, and then perhaps I will take more interventions. On the Budget numbers, I find it ironic to receive all these expressions of concern from Labour Members about making the sums add up when they presided over the biggest single fiscal fiasco in the country’s history and have a black hole in their current plans so large that it would break the Hadron collider.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): I will give way in a moment, but let me make this point. The central fiscal judgment of the Budget, and of this Government, is clear: borrowing has been cut from £155 billion when we came to office to £55 billion next year, and there have been falls every year; and higher spending on people with disabilities will be reflected in the autumn statement forecast, and we do not propose to make any further changes ahead of that. We can afford to absorb such changes when we are getting public spending under control, and we can make those changes and still achieve a sensible surplus of 0.5% of GDP by 2019-20. In short, we will go on delivering the economic security that this country elected us to provide.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): I could not have been clearer. I said that we listened, we learned, we made a mistake, and we withdrew the proposals. The hon. Gentleman talks about days of the week, and Thursday would have been the day when Scotland separated from the United Kingdom if the nationalists had had their way. They would have plunged that new country into a fiscal crisis the likes of which few western countries have ever seen. They would have impoverished the Scottish people and driven businesses away. They based all their numbers on oil revenue forecasts that were totally fanciful, and it is time that they got up and apologised for leading the Scottish people into that potential trap. Thankfully, the Scottish people thought better.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): I have given way twice to the right hon. Lady so I will now make progress and explain what we have done to clear up the mess she left. We took more decisions last week in the Budget, but we will also implement these decisions today to ensure that the work of reducing our deficit is done fairly, and that we ask more from the well-off. Look through the measures. They include provisions on dividends, lifetime pension allowances, stamp duty on second properties, banks and hedge funds, and a host of measures to tackle evasion and avoidance. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has been quoted a lot over the past four days in the Budget debates, and its head stated that "the very highest earners have seen significant tax increases" I think that has been a reasonable thing to ask of the most well-off when faced with such a budget deficit, because we are all in this together.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher John Pincher (Conservative, Centre-right): On personal economic security, during the Chancellor’s Budget statement, my constituent Dan Ball, who is aged 19 and from Amington, tweeted to say, "This lifetime ISA—where can I get one?" Does that not demonstrate that young people up and down the country see in this Budget an opportunity for their generation to save?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me make a little progress and then I will take more interventions. It is a classic socialist illusion to think that we can solve all society’s problems with taxes on the very richest, and it is the age-old excuse for not managing public spending or welfare costs. That brings me to a central point that I want to make to the House today: there is not some inherent conflict between delivering social justice and the savings required to deliver sound public finances—they are one and the same thing. Without sound public finances, there is no social justice.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): I will give way in a moment to the Member for the taxi business It is the easiest thing in the world to do this job and say yes to every new demand for Government spending and to please all the people all of the time, but we know where that leads. We know that because before me we had a Chancellor who spent a whole decade going around the country saying yes to even more spending and ever higher welfare bills, and we know what happened then: it brought our country to the brink of collapse. That was not compassion; it was economic cruelty, and the people who paid the price are those who always pay the price when Government spending gets out of control and welfare bills spiral. It was not the politicians at the time who paid the price—no, they are happily sitting on the Opposition Benches; it was the poorest who paid the price and the most vulnerable who suffered. Those people lost their jobs and had their livelihoods snatched from them, and those are the people I am fighting for—real, decent, hard-working people, not numbers on a Treasury spreadsheet: people whose lives would be impoverished, and whose hopes and aspirations would be crushed, if we had gone on spending more and more than the country earns. Getting things right for those people is what I am all about, and that weighs on every decision that I have taken as Chancellor over the past six years. Those are the people whom we in the Conservative party have been elected to serve.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (Conservative, Centre-right): That is exactly the position set out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and agreed by me and the Prime Minister. We understand that if we do not control spending, we will have a fiscal crisis. Because we are controlling spending and have passed difficult welfare legislation in recent months, the deficit is coming down and we are delivering economic security.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
Chris Ian Brian Mynott Philp (Conservative, Centre-right): Given what the Chancellor just said about the importance of fiscal responsibility, will he confirm that, had he listened to the advice of the Labour party over the past five years, our national debt would be £900 billion higher?