argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Eleanor Claire Reeves (Labour, Centre-left): A primary school in my constituency recently told me that the three and four-year-olds who are likely to be vulnerable to gangs can be identified in the nursery, often because they have grown up in households afflicted by domestic violence or drug and alcohol abuse, or where other family members are in gangs. Yet our school budgets and Sure Start centres have been cut, making early intervention far more difficult. Has the Home Secretary had any conversations with the Treasury about proper funding for very early intervention, and if not, why not?
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Education
Lucy Maria Powell (Labour, Centre-left): While I appreciate the Home Secretary’s tone, I am unsure whether the reality totally matches up with what he is talking about. On school exclusions, he talks about an evidence base and following the evidence, but the overwhelming evidence is that those who are excluded from school end up getting involved in drugs, youth violence and gang activity. The Timpson review is long overdue, and we are not expecting it to be all that powerful. Given that we have been raising such issues for a long time, will the Government now look at the powers that local authorities need to ensure that children in their communities are getting an education? This atomised, fragmented school system means that too many are falling through the net.
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Jessica Rose Phillips (Labour, Centre-left): I grew up under the cloud of gang violence in Birmingham. When I was a teenager, it was really quite bad. It was dangerous for us when we lived there, and in the years since, I have found myself working tirelessly to try to improve the situation, which we had managed to do. Now I receive letters from my children’s inner-city comprehensive school about how to spot whether my children are in a gang. We have gone straight back to day one. Nothing the Home Secretary has said allays my fears as a parent of a teenage boy in Birmingham. There used to be a police officer based at almost every inner-city school in Birmingham. None of them is there now. Why is that the case?
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
George Edward Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): I am sure the Home Secretary will agree that behind every fatal stabbing and shooting is a young person’s future cancelled, and a family left grieving and wondering for the rest of their life, "How could this have been prevented?" He has demonstrated that he knows what needs to be done—it is about interrupting the drugs industry, early intervention and having more police on the street—so why on earth we need yet another consultation is beyond me. What we do need is for him to come back to this House, within the next week, with a definite plan about how to deal with this and proper resources behind the plan. I ask him to do that, because he already knows what needs to be done.
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Stella Judith Creasy (Labour, Centre-left): Jodie Chesney, Charlotte Huggins, Tudor Simionov, Nedim Bilgin, Lejean Richards, Dennis Anderson, Aliny Mendes, Simbiso Aretha Moula, Sarah Ashraf, Asma Begum, Kamil Malysz, Bright Akinleye, Glendon Spence, Che Morrison, David Lopez-Fernandez, Kamali Gabbidon-Lynck, Brian Wieland and Jaden Moodie—I am not sure that that is a complete list of everyone who has been killed by a knife in London this year alone, but I can tell the Home Secretary that the taskforce, the consultations and the more reports are not working. What on earth will it take for him to recognise that this is an emergency that requires an emergency response?
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Sarah Ann Jones (Labour, Centre-left): Lord Hogan-Howe said today that the Government do not have a grip on this national crisis. Given the fact that there have been more than 100 knife offences every day over the past year, he is of course right. The Home Secretary said that he needs every Government Department to take part, but there is a silence from the very heart of Government: the Prime Minister has made no speeches, she has held no crisis meetings, she has not called Cobra meetings and she has not led any kind of serious cross-party campaign. In the past, Prime Ministers have activated Cobra because of crime levels and led cross-Government programmes that have successfully changed big societal issues of the kind we face today, and we know the evidence for what works, so does the Home Secretary not think it is now time for the Prime Minister herself to step up and lead?
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
David George Hanson (Labour, Centre-left): Has the Home Secretary tasked any individual to drive through the co-ordination, the prioritisation and the expenditure and to report back to Ministers? I simply say this because, when we faced this challenge in Government 10 years ago, we appointed the chief constable of Warwickshire to drive forward, across Government, a knife crime reduction plan, which reduced knife crime incidents through co-ordination and reporting to Ministers. He should look at what was done then and replicate it.
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Richard Haines Burden (Labour, Centre-left): The call from my hon. Friend the shadow Minister and others for Cobra to be convened is not just about recognising this as a national emergency, which it is; it is also about ensuring that the cross-Government approach, which the Home Secretary says he recognises, is actually delivered on the ground, right across the country, with the resources needed to back it up, whether through early intervention work to identify the young people most at risk of getting involved in gangs and knife crime, or by reducing the level of school exclusions, which in all too many cases is a route into knife crime. I put it to him that what he said about resources rings pretty hollow in the west midlands, given that we have lost 2,000 police officers over the past nine years and are facing nearly 300 incidents of knife crime this year already. Will he now respond to the call from the West Midlands police and crime commissioner for an emergency funding package so that we can address this problem in a consistent and effective way?
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
William Roffen Esterson (Labour, Centre-left): My constituent Sam Cook was stabbed to death a year ago in Liverpool city centre, on the night he was celebrating his 21st birthday. His mum, Gill Radcliffe, asked me to tell the Home Secretary to remember that this is not just a London issue, but a national problem. When he meets the police chief constables in a couple of days’ time, the chief constable of Merseyside police will remind him that the consequence of the scale of cuts in Government funding for Merseyside is that there are now 1,200 fewer police officers keeping our streets safe. He will also know of a 30% cut in probation services. Sam Cook’s killer was on licence, having committed another knife offence, when he killed Sam. The probation service had not given the monitoring of Sam’s killer sufficient attention, which allowed him to kill Sam. Will the Home Secretary please take this seriously across Government and address the concerns that have been caused by the scale of the cuts in multiple Departments since 2010?
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Rushanara Ali (Labour, Centre-left): Last week, a knife attack led to the death of one of my constituents, and before Christmas three people were attacked outside a GP surgery. People are living in absolute terror. Although this is affecting young people in particular, it is affecting all communities up and down the country. Since 2010, 21,000 police officers have been taken out of our system. If the Home Secretary wants our support, he absolutely has it in lobbying the Prime Minister and the Chancellor so that we can have those police officers reinstated. The one thing he can do is to shore up our police services, because they are at breaking point and desperately need support to bring an end to knife crime. I cannot, and I know other colleagues cannot, bear the thought of having to return to this House in weeks and months to come having witnessed stories of further fatalities and deaths. That is why the Home Secretary needs to take action. Labour Members will support him to lobby for more funding, but he needs to put pressure on his Prime Minister and his Chancellor to fund our police service urgently and reinstate 21,000 officers in our system.
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): I want to express my thanks to the emergency services for their rapid response to a stabbing in my constituency last week. There is a huge amount of fear and concern in the community, and people understand that this is not a problem with one solution. Does the Home Secretary understand, as my constituents do, that whether it is the legs taken out of community policing by police cuts, slower referrals because of cuts to children’s services, the conditions that children are living in in temporary and overcrowded accommodation or the fact that youth services have been gutted, there are many facets to tackling knife crime, and they all have one thing in common: the policies of this Government for the last nine years have made it harder, not easier, to tackle this crisis?
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Khalid Mahmood (Labour, Centre-left): I agree in principle with multi-agency working. I know that it works, because when I got elected in 2001, it worked. When the police were properly funded, when Sure Start centres were properly funded, when youth services were properly funded and when schools were properly funded, it worked, because we eliminated gang crime, knife crime and gun crime by the middle of that decade. We worked together with the community and the police, who attended community meetings, to do that. We do not have the staff at the moment to come to those meetings, let alone attend some of the crimes. If the Home Secretary wants to do something about this, let us not talk about piecemeal funding. Let us look at the real figures about the police and community support officers we have lost and talk about how he is going to get them back, to save our future generations.
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
John Eugene Joseph Dromey (Labour, Centre-left): Young men and women are dying on the streets—three in recent days in Birmingham alone, mourned by their families—and I meet teenagers in Erdington who are now afraid to go out at night. Of course a public health approach is vital, and we urge the Home Secretary to back the bid for a violence reduction unit to bring together all agencies to combat growing knife crime effectively However, that is not enough; we need more police officers. Forgive me if I say this, Mr Speaker, but the Home Secretary spoke about record resources. The previous Government put 17,000 extra police officers and 16,000 police community support officers on the beat. This Government have cut 21,000 police officers, including 2,100 in Birmingham alone. Does the Home Secretary not accept that there is an inevitable link between falling police numbers and rising crime, and in particular rising knife crime?
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Neil Coyle (Labour, Centre-left): Sadly, Southwark is one of the communities worst affected by knife crime, with the two most recent stabbings in my constituency on 24 February. The Prime Minister has apparently said today that more must be done to tackle this problem, after nine long years in the Home Office and Downing Street. Will this Home Secretary please meet me, representatives and organisations from across Southwark that are working to tackle this problem, especially those representing the families directly affected?
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Alexander Gordon Martin (Labour, Centre-left): Since the tragic murder of 17-year-old Tavis Spencer-Aitkens in my constituency, I have been meeting local community groups to see what we can do to try to prevent young people from getting involved in gangs, gang violence and drug dealing. There is a move to glamorise this lifestyle through social media, so I hope the Secretary of State can imagine my horror at discovering, just over a week ago, that films are still available on social media—showing violence, drug taking, making money out of selling drugs and, indeed, abusing young women—starring members of the gangs who are themselves currently on trial for murder. What can the Secretary of State do? Does he agree with me that he needs to work with other members of the Cabinet right across Government, and that convening Cobra will enable that to happen? We cannot afford to have this sort of glamorisation of a gang lifestyle still available on social media.
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. You have been very tolerant. May I tell the Home Secretary that it was useful to meet the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service about a fortnight ago? I want to reinforce the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) made. We need more community police on the streets—there is no doubt about that—and they could do something about youth services, but 20,000-odd police officers have been cut over the past seven years, which is a very low base on which to build.
Privatised Probation System — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Richard Burgon (Labour, Centre-left): The National Audit Office report on probation privatisation is another damning indictment of the current Transport Secretary. Once again the Conservatives’ part-privatisation of probation has been exposed as a dangerous experiment that left the public less safe and out of pocket. The NAO highlights a 22% increase in reoffending. Will the Minister now admit that this privatisation has put public safety at risk in a reckless pursuit of running justice for private profit The NAO says the Ministry of Justice will pay at least £467 million more to failing private probation companies than was originally required. Does the Minister believe that rewarding failure in that way is the best use of much-reduced Ministry of Justice resources? Despite such failings, the Conservatives are recklessly planning to sign new private probation contracts. Will the Minister halt the current tendering plans to allow an independent review into whether probation should be returned to the public sector, or are they just ideologically driven Last month, Working Links, one of the largest probation providers, collapsed. Will the Minister explain the tendering process by which it was quietly handed to another private company? Will he guarantee that there will be no further staff losses under this new arrangement? Another private provider, Interserve, is in deep financial difficulties. Does the Minister have an emergency probation plan ready for if or when Interserve goes under Finally, private shareholders should be left in no doubt: Labour will return probation to the public sector. Will the Minister guarantee today that new probation contracts will include break clauses, so that a future Labour Government can put an end to this disastrous privatisation if his Government will not?
Privatised Probation System — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I know that the Minister has done a lot of work on brain injury in prisons. Is it not vital, where prisoners with a brain injury have started some form of rehabilitation in prison and have been receiving advice and support, that that is carried through into their experience in the outside world? Otherwise, there is a strong likelihood that they will simply go back inside.
Privatised Probation System — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Katherine Anne Green (Labour, Centre-left): The problems with Transforming Rehabilitation were entirely predicted in 2014, so the NAO report should come as no surprise to Ministers I want to ask the Minister about women. There is a great deal of evidence that many CRCs are not offering good-quality tailored provision to women. As he and his ministerial colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), know, women’s centres do a much better job. Will he now consider removing women wholly from the remit of the CRCs and making full use of the provision in women’s centres to address the causes of their offending behaviour?
Privatised Probation System — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Centre-left): The reckless fragmentation of the probation service back in 2014 has predictably led to this sorry end. I appreciate what the Minister is saying—it did not happen on his watch, and he has been put there to put it right—but I want to reinforce what was said by the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill): what we need is a coherent system with no gaps through which people can fall. Will he achieve that?
Privatised Probation System — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Lilian Rachel Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): The National Audit Office says there is limited time to procure the new contracts, that persisting with the split between the National Probation Service and the community rehabilitation companies still poses risks and that the transition to new contracts threatens service quality. Having wasted millions of pounds and failed miserably to reduce reoffending, why is the Minister intent on pursuing this two-tier system?
Privatised Probation System — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
David George Hanson (Labour, Centre-left): Volumes for offences were 48% lower than expected; community rehabilitation companies had losses of £294 million when they were expected to have profits of £269 million; and the figures relating to the reoffending of individuals were 22% up: who signed off these projections and who is accountable for this delivery failure?
Privatised Probation System — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Joanna Meriel Stevens (Labour, Centre-left): I genuinely have sympathy for the Minister: he is the man with the shovel and brush following a horse that has been ridden by his colleague the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). We have seen an award-winning public probation service turned into an unmitigated privatised disaster. The Minister did not answer the earlier question about new contracts having break clauses, which was the same question we asked in 2014, so will he confirm that any new contracts issued will have break clauses?
Privatised Probation System — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Roberta Carol Blackman-Woods (Labour, Centre-left): I have three prisons in my constituency, and it is really tragic to see what has happened to the probation service in recent years. It is now fragmented and under-resourced, and, critically, it is not reducing reoffending. Given the indictment of the service by the National Audit Office report, is it not now time to call a halt to this privatisation experiment, return the service to the public sector and resource it properly so that it can really bring about the genuine rehabilitation of prisoners and others?
Privatised Probation System — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Khalid Mahmood (Labour, Centre-left): After the failure of Working Links and in the light of the National Audit Office’s damning report into the implementation of Transforming Rehabilitation the first time round by the former Secretary of State—who was then promoted to the Department for Transport, proving that Conservative rehabilitation does not work—as well as continual criticism by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons proving that the mixed system is not beneficial to the taxpayer, why is the Minister continuing with the TR2 programme?
Privatised Probation System — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Government Operations
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): Following the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), is not the real lesson from all this that the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) should not be allowed anywhere near any large-scale, transformative Government projects or, indeed, near any projects, as the House will hear during the next urgent question?
Privatised Probation System — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
William Roffen Esterson (Labour, Centre-left): My constituent Sam Cook was stabbed to death last year. His killer was on licence having been released after being convicted of a similar knife offence, but the probation officer did not know how to use the IT system, so the monitoring of the killer was not appropriate to the concerns of the probation service. I have no idea how that could possibly happen, and I am sure that the Minister is the same. Will he therefore tell us what processes are in place to ensure that processes are properly carried out, that every member of staff is trained to use the system and that we never again see another young man like Sam Cook killed due to inadequate supervision?
Eurotunnel: Payment — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Transportation
Andrew Joseph McDonald (Labour, Centre-left): Once again, the Transport Secretary is not in his place to answer a question directed to him. His disregard for taxpayers and this House is clear. On Friday he reached a £33 million out-of-court settlement with Eurotunnel to provide services in the event of a no-deal Brexit because the Government were going to lose the case The Transport Secretary’s decision to bypass procurement processes in awarding a contract to Seaborne Freight, a ferry company without any ships, breached public procurement rules, and Eurotunnel had the Government over a barrel. Will the Minister now detail the total cost to taxpayers of this decision, including legal costs? How much money will be paid up front? Eurotunnel will seemingly make Brexit-related improvements at Folkestone. Can the Minister say exactly what sort of agreement the Government have with Eurotunnel? What makes him think that this contract with Eurotunnel will not be challenged on anti-competition grounds? A former Department for Transport adviser said: "there is a risk it could be construed as another piece of public procurement without open and transparent competition." That would risk further legal action and yet more public money being squandered Even in this golden age of ministerial incompetence, the Transport Secretary stands out from the crowd. He leaves a trail of destruction in his wake, causing chaos and wasting billions of pounds, yet he shows no contrition, no acknowledgment of his mistakes and no resolve to learn and improve. He is now ridiculed in The New York Times. The mayor of Calais has banned him from his town. The Transport Secretary has become an international embarrassment. The Prime Minister is the only person in the country who retains confidence in this failing Transport Secretary, and she does so only because of her own political weakness. The public deserve to know: how many more calamities is the Prime Minister prepared to tolerate? How many more billions of pounds will she allow him to waste before saying, "Enough is enough"? This country cannot afford this Transport Secretary. He should be sacked without delay.