argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Public Legal Education — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert James Buckland (Conservative, Centre-right): May I add my compliments of the season to those of the hon. Gentleman The training is available now, and is ongoing. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the current structure of the law has been in existence for the best part of 20 years, and in my own professional experience it is used rigorously. It must be used rigorously, so that future complainants and victims of this appalling crime can be confident, first, that inappropriate questions will not be asked, and secondly, that they will not be ambushed in court in an inappropriate way.
Returning British Jihadists — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Jeremy Paul Wright (Conservative, Centre-right): There is no specific offence related to returnees from Syria or Iraq as they can be prosecuted for a range of offences, but I can tell my hon. Friend that 97 people were charged with a terrorism-related offence in the year ending September this year, and as of last month 30 have been prosecuted and found guilty and a further 65 are awaiting prosecution.
Returning British Jihadists — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): British jihadists who go abroad to fight Her Majesty’s armed forces are traitors and should be prosecuted for treason. My understanding is that the reason why they are not is that an official declaration of war has not been made against ISIS. Given that, should we not take away the nationality of these people so that they are not allowed back into the country in the first place, and if they are allowed back in, should not all of them be prosecuted and awarded the maximum sentences?
Serious Fraud Office — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Jeremy Paul Wright (Conservative, Centre-right): The Serious Fraud Office does vital work in tackling some of the most serious instances of fraud, bribery and corruption. The SFO will continue, as an independent organisation, to conduct its own investigations and prosecutions of some of the most serious and complex economic crime, and a recruitment campaign is now under way for its next director.
Serious Fraud Office — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Jeremy Paul Wright (Conservative, Centre-right): We demonstrate here that no one is overlooked at Christmas The hon. Gentleman is right that the Home Secretary’s announcement was that on occasion tasking powers will be used by the NCA to ask the SFO to investigate particular matters. I suspect that they will be used very rarely, and they can be used only with the consent both of the Home Secretary and of me; and I do not expect that this will compromise the SFO’s independence in any way. Indeed, the Solicitor General and I are assiduous in ensuring that, both in choice of cases to investigate and in decisions to prosecute, the independence of the director of the SFO is preserved, and it still will be.
Serious Fraud Office — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Jeremy Paul Wright (Conservative, Centre-right): That should not happen, but I know that my right hon. Friend will recognise that these are, by their nature, complex investigations and that it can take the SFO a large amount of time to get through all the relevant material in order to make a judgment. If he has a specific case in mind, I am sure that he will let me know so that I can look into it.
Serious Fraud Office — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Questions: Serious fraud in this country is well investigated, because we have the right frameworks, investigatory bodies and legal processes to do that, but that does not apply to the mass-based fraud that leaves many of our fellow citizens feeling badly let down by the judicial process. Is it not time we began to look at what can be done to improve the definition of volume crime?
Jeremy Paul Wright (Conservative, Centre-right): I rather agree with the hon. Gentleman, and his experience as police and crime commissioner will underline what he has just said. We need to do more, and we are. There is a joint fraud taskforce, as he may know, which involves not just the criminal justice agencies but the banks and other organisations. In addition, the Home Secretary has announced the creation of the National Economic Crime Centre, which will do a better job of co-ordinating our activities against economic crime of all kinds.
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert James Buckland (Conservative, Centre-right): I am a member of the inter-ministerial group on ending gang violence and exploitation, which meets regularly to discuss the reduction of gang-related crimes such as knife crime. In October, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced that a serious violence strategy would be published in the early new year, and I regularly discuss the Crown Prosecution Service’s contributions to that strategy with ministerial colleagues.
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert James Buckland (Conservative, Centre-right): I would be interested to know more about that, because I am particularly keen to ensure that the reporting and recording of knife crime are improved. We are seeing a rise in the number of reported cases because the police are recording them more accurately, and there is no doubt a problem in certain parts of the country where knife crime is rising, particularly here in London. I would be happy to talk further with the hon. Gentleman to explore a way forward to ensure that we have as much information as possible about this appalling crime.
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert James Buckland (Conservative, Centre-right): I will try to respond with similar brevity. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to talk about prevention, and we are consulting on further restrictions on the online sale of knives to under-18s, and on tightening up the law on the possession of knives in educational institutions other than schools.
Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert James Buckland (Conservative, Centre-right): As I said earlier, a consultation into the tightening up of the criminal law on the sale of knives online has just closed, and the Government will respond as urgently as possible to it because it is quite clear that we need to take as many measures as possible to make it as difficult as possible for young people to carry these lethal weapons.
Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Government Operations
Geoffrey Robert Clifton-Brown (Conservative, Centre-right): I should like to thank the Leader of the House for all her work on the working group, but she will know, because I have made representations to her, that there are glaring omissions in the work so far. For example, the word "violence" was not uttered from her lips this morning. I suggest that the working group is far too narrowly drawn, and that she should seriously consider setting up a special bicameral Select Committee of both Houses of Parliament, to which all Members of this House could apply to be elected. We want to make sure that this is a modern workplace that is an exemplar for the rest of the world.
Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Government Operations
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her leadership and drive on this issue. Of course Parliament is a special and unique place of work, but my constituents would be most reassured if the bespoke scheme that we come up with was a blend of the best examples of independent grievance and complaints procedures from the private sector, from the public sector and from other Parliaments around the world.
Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Government Operations
Andrea Jacqueline Leadsom (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. It is a matter of fact that recall is already set in law, so it is a possibility under certain conditions. The working group has not yet finished its work or its evidence taking on exactly how that can be brought to bear here, but we are clear that there will be ultimate sanctions. Let us also be clear that the issue for Parliament is not one that affects Members only; it affects peers, Members’ staff and other staff around the parliamentary estate, so there is quite a large amount of work. That is why I have been clear that the work on sanctions needs to be considered further to ensure that they are fair both to the person alleged to have committed something bad and to the complainant who deserves justice. There is more work to be done on that.
Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Andrea Jacqueline Leadsom (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman raises a similar point to that of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), which is that it is important that the sanctions are appropriate and fair in respect of the employment contract or contract with members of the public that is held by the person about whom an accusation is being made. Further work is required to ensure that sanctions are appropriate for the alleged perpetrator.
Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Andrea Jacqueline Leadsom (Conservative, Centre-right): That point was discussed a great deal by the working group, and it was recognised that there would have to be certain limitations. We could otherwise theoretically be listening to allegations that were 40 or 50-years-old and the people against whom such allegations are made may no longer be living, for example. The rules need to be carefully thought through, but it is absolutely our intention that people who have current investigations or allegations should be able to seek access to this independent complaints body, even though the body may have particular reasons for not choosing to take up the allegations.
Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Government Operations
Andrea Jacqueline Leadsom (Conservative, Centre-right): The working group has taken evidence on and considered that point, and the overwhelming evidence is that Members of Parliament need to continue to directly employ their staff. It was very clear from staff evidence, however, that support for good employment practices—the provision of independent advice on employment matters—was needed for Members’ staff. It was also clear, as I mentioned in my statement, that training—mandatory and voluntary—should be made available not just to Members but to staff. Many staff, for example, asked for proper inductions so that when they come here they can be taught where the Table Office is and so on without having to ask other people’s advice. We have an opportunity to set right some things ranging from the fairly basic all the way up to people understanding thoroughly what constitutes bullying and harassment, including sexual harassment, what constitutes a proper appraisal, and so on. Many Members across the House already have that experience, but not all of them, and we should make it the case that every Member—every employer in this place—has access to that training.
Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Labor
Andrea Jacqueline Leadsom (Conservative, Centre-right): I pay tribute to working group members Max Freedman, branch chair of Unite, Georgina Kester, chair of the Members’ and Peers’ Staff Association, and Emily Cunningham, a representative of the National Union of Journalists, all three of whom work for Members in this place. They have done a great job. They have also consulted widely with staff. There are some specific technical reasons why it would not be possible to require some sort of across-the-board recognition of trade unions, but nevertheless the working group has taken evidence on how valuable some of the support from trade unions can be.
Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Government Operations
Andrea Jacqueline Leadsom (Conservative, Centre-right): I also thank the hon. Member for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) for her very strong and diligent contribution to the working group. In particular, she brought up the specific issues in constituency offices, especially in the context of Northern Ireland, which the working group found very helpful As I said in my statement, the working group will continue to meet. We will reconvene in the new year, and we will seek to make progress as swiftly as we can.
Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Social Welfare
Marcus Charles Jones (Conservative, Centre-right): As usual, my hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. He is absolutely right that, at a time when people are in crisis in their lives, form filling and bureaucracy are not the first things on their minds. He is also right that most of these people have a significant amount of potential. With our new system, we will take that form filling and bureaucracy out of the way, so that we can support people when and where they need it.
Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Social Welfare
Michael James Tomlinson-Mynors (Conservative, Centre-right): I recently visited supported accommodation in my constituency—Waverley House in Wimborne, a Bournemouth Churches property—and saw the excellent work that was going on there, supporting the most vulnerable young people. Will the Minister commit to continuing to encourage and support this vital sector?
Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Social Welfare
Marcus Charles Jones (Conservative, Centre-right): Earlier this year, we gave councils access to another £9.25 billion for adult social care. I take the point that the hon. Gentleman makes about the organisations in his constituency that run short-term support for homeless people. I commend them for what they are doing. If he wants to bring them to meet me to raise their concerns, he is very welcome to do so.
Russian Interference in UK Politics — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Technology
Julian Carlton Knight (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on leading this debate. Does he agree that part of the reason that most of the hard evidence seems to come only from Twitter is that Facebook does not co-operate as it should in order to get to the root of these problems?
Russian Interference in UK Politics — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Technology
Damian Noel Thomas Collins (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is exactly right. It must be able to understand how to target users with information based on what it thinks they are interested in and where that information is coming from. It could conduct its own preliminary research to look for the characteristics of fake accounts and disinformation accounts linked to Russian agencies that are based on its platform. At the moment, it is refusing to do that.
Russian Interference in UK Politics — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Technology
Damian Noel Thomas Collins (Conservative, Centre-right): I absolutely agree. I noticed on a recent investor call that Mark Zuckerberg warned Facebook investors that dealing with these issues would have a direct impact on the bottom line. I am glad that he said that, but I would like to see him using that money. I do not see any evidence of the company putting resource into trying to tackle this issue At the moment, Facebook’s position in the UK is that it was only responding to questions put to it by the Electoral Commission. That has a much narrower focus because of the Electoral Commission’s exact remit. Facebook is not answering questions put to it by the Select Committee asking for more evidence of Russian-linked activity across the site, including in pages, group accounts and profiles, not just restricted to paid-for advertising. We have a right to receive information from Facebook, and it could conduct such research. It proactively conducted its own research looking at the activity of fake accounts during the French presidential election. That led to the deletion of more than 30,000 accounts, pages and profiles. Facebook did that itself. If it can do it in France, it can do it in the UK too, but currently it will not If Facebook’s position is that it will respond only to official intelligence directing it towards fake activity, then we need to be working to do that too. Our intelligence services need to be on the lookout, if that is the only trigger open to us to get Facebook to act.
Russian Interference in UK Politics — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: International Affairs
Damian Noel Thomas Collins (Conservative, Centre-right): Absolutely. It must be a major priority. We have to realise that Russia is engaged in a multi-layered strategy to cause instability in the west, and that fake news and disinformation is one of the tools it uses It was interesting to hear in the Select Committee this week that during the Catalan referendum, Russian news agencies RT and Sputnik were the fourth largest source of information, all of it supporting the separatist cause.
Russian Interference in UK Politics — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Technology
Damian Noel Thomas Collins (Conservative, Centre-right): Absolutely. People must see it as a real threat It is not enough for the tech companies just to sit back and say, "We won’t do anything unless you come to us with the evidence. We’re not prepared to conduct our own research on our site about how people are using it and why they are using it." I do not believe that individual users of these platforms understand the way in which they can be targeted and the reason they receive the information that they receive. That creates confusing echo chambers, where people are not exposed to a plurality of views but systematically targeted—not just with fake news but with hyper-partisan content. It is being done for propaganda reasons and political reasons by foreign actors. If we do not see that as a threat to the democratic institutions of this country, and a threat to the western way of life, we are deluding ourselves The tech companies need to be doing a lot more. I have focused a lot on Facebook, but the same issues apply to Twitter. Twitter has also analysed accounts and information given to it by the US intelligence services. More academic work has been done on analysing those accounts because Twitter is a more open platform and it is possible to do that; in the case of Facebook, which is closed, it is not. The reason much of the interest has been in activity on Twitter is just that it is a more open platform, not because Twitter is being used in such a way and Facebook is not. The tech companies need to do more, and it has to be a higher priority for the intelligence services too.
Russian Interference in UK Politics — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: International Affairs
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): We are coming up to Christmas, one of the great feasts of the Christian year that marks the birth of Christ and the bringing of hope to all mankind, but we should recall another event, which is much more recent in time but which happened more than a quarter of a century ago: the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991. When I was elected to this House, 270 million people lived under the direct totalitarian rule of the Soviet Union, with no elections of any meaningful value; and a further 137 million lived in the other countries of the eastern bloc in Europe. On 26 December 1991, Gorbachev went on television to announce that the long nightmare was over. As he went to sign into effect the dissolution of the Soviet Union, his communist-manufactured pen did not work, and he had to borrow a working pen from the CNN camera crew who were filming the event We should all believe in the sovereignty of nations and the general principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations. None the less, I think that we should be proud of the part that this country played in the downfall of the USSR and of communism in Europe. Alongside St John Paul II, President Reagan and our own Margaret Thatcher, we were instrumental in resisting totalitarianism and inspiring the captive peoples of Europe to stand up against their communist overlords. At the same time, the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Home Secretary were going on motorbike tours of East Germany. If we might have been accused of interfering in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union then, I think we can be proud of it Let us remember to have a sense of proportion. In those years, there were dozens and dozens of Soviet divisions in East Germany and Poland, posing a direct threat to our freedom and democracy, but today we are talking about alleged Russian interference in UK politics and society. We hear things such as "undermining our democracy", but can we look at the evidence?
Russian Interference in UK Politics — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: International Affairs
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): I am not seeking to defend the Putin regime. There is much in Russia that is not perfect. I was a member of the Council of Europe delegation to the presidential elections, and I know it is not a perfect democracy, but let us keep a sense of proportion. So much progress has been made, and Russia is an infinitely freer and better place than it was under the Soviet Union. It is not perfect, it is not pleasant and it is not our sort of democracy, so I do not defend the Putin regime, but I want to get a sense of proportion in this debate Let us look at the evidence from the Oxford Internet Institute, which is part of Oxford University. It investigated more than 100 Russian-linked Twitter accounts and their activity in the run-up to our EU referendum. The results of the investigation are worth noting. It found that "(1) Russian Twitter accounts shared to the public, contributed relatively little to the overall Brexit conversation, (2) Russian news content was not widely shared among Twitter users, and (3) only a tiny portion of the YouTube content was of a clear Russian origin." The fact is that the majority of the UK population—to a significant extent—is not on Twitter.
Russian Interference in UK Politics — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: Technology
Damian Noel Thomas Collins (Conservative, Centre-right): I am familiar with the study that my hon. Friend is referring to, but I would just say that it is very narrowly focused. There is also evidence of more than 13,000 bot accounts on Twitter that were believed to be linked to Russia and were deleted very shortly after the referendum. There is a lot that we do not know about this matter, and we need the tech companies to co-operate with us fully so that we understand the scale of it.
Russian Interference in UK Politics — House of Commons, 2017-12-21
Topic: International Affairs
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee, and of course we must keep a sense of proportion. I am quoting from a well-established institute and I want to give another point of view in this debate, which I think is fair enough I mentioned that the majority of the UK population is not on Twitter. Of the Twitter users, the majority do not even log in daily. Facebook did an investigation into the notorious Russian "troll factory" called the Internet Research Agency and found that its advertisements reached fewer than 200 people in Britain during the referendum campaign. If that is the best Russia can do to overturn our long-established parliamentary democracy, I think we can probably rest at ease.