argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Questions:   The independent review of persecuted Christians that was carried out in 2019 by the Bishop of Truro has been mentioned this morning, and it has its formal review this summer. The FCDO has made progress in adopting the report’s recommendations, but will the Secretary of State assure the House of further progress in this area by the summer?;   Across Keighley and Ilkley, there is no shortage of good will to help those who are affected by the conflict in Ukraine—including from Ilkley and Surrounds Support for Ukrainian Evacuees, a volunteer group led by Caroline Hyde that is working to help those seeking refuge within our community. Of course, that is dependent on the Government working with our European counterparts to ensure the safe passage of refugees from Ukraine. What discussions has the Foreign Secretary had with her counterparts to make sure that that happens?;   Will my right hon. Friend update the House on the £40 million support package over 10 years that was announced in 2016 for the Chagos island community?; According to Human Rights Watch’s “World Report 2020”, the Rwandan regime is active in“Arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture in official and unofficial detention facilities”.Despite the Home Secretary’s nonchalant dismissal in the Chamber recently of legitimate concerns about the safety of asylum seekers, what mechanisms will the Foreign Secretary exercise in the oversight of those detention facilities to ensure that the same ill treatment and torture does not befall the already vulnerable human beings whom this Tory Government will be callously shipping off to Rwanda?
Victoria Grace Ford (Conservative, Centre-right): I make it very clear that there is an agreement between the Government of Rwanda and the Government of the UK: they have agreed with the Home Office to make sure that the rights of those who go from the UK to Rwanda are protected. May I point out to the hon. Gentleman that just last month, the UN Refugee Agency sent 119 refugees to Rwanda, and the UN itself described it as a very safe country? In December, the UN said that Rwanda had done an excellent job on integrated refugees. Will he please look at what is being said right now about how Rwanda is caring for these people with kindness?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Questions:   The independent review of persecuted Christians that was carried out in 2019 by the Bishop of Truro has been mentioned this morning, and it has its formal review this summer. The FCDO has made progress in adopting the report’s recommendations, but will the Secretary of State assure the House of further progress in this area by the summer?;   Across Keighley and Ilkley, there is no shortage of good will to help those who are affected by the conflict in Ukraine—including from Ilkley and Surrounds Support for Ukrainian Evacuees, a volunteer group led by Caroline Hyde that is working to help those seeking refuge within our community. Of course, that is dependent on the Government working with our European counterparts to ensure the safe passage of refugees from Ukraine. What discussions has the Foreign Secretary had with her counterparts to make sure that that happens?;   Will my right hon. Friend update the House on the £40 million support package over 10 years that was announced in 2016 for the Chagos island community?; According to Human Rights Watch’s “World Report 2020”, the Rwandan regime is active in“Arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture in official and unofficial detention facilities”.Despite the Home Secretary’s nonchalant dismissal in the Chamber recently of legitimate concerns about the safety of asylum seekers, what mechanisms will the Foreign Secretary exercise in the oversight of those detention facilities to ensure that the same ill treatment and torture does not befall the already vulnerable human beings whom this Tory Government will be callously shipping off to Rwanda?
Simon James Jupp (Conservative, Centre-right): Exmouth has welcomed Afghan refugees and their families while the Government work hard to find them long-term accommodation around the UK, but sadly some of their friends and family members have stayed behind. What reassurances can my right hon. Friend give that UK aid reaches those who need it most in Afghanistan, not the Taliban?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Civil Rights
Questions:   The independent review of persecuted Christians that was carried out in 2019 by the Bishop of Truro has been mentioned this morning, and it has its formal review this summer. The FCDO has made progress in adopting the report’s recommendations, but will the Secretary of State assure the House of further progress in this area by the summer?;   Across Keighley and Ilkley, there is no shortage of good will to help those who are affected by the conflict in Ukraine—including from Ilkley and Surrounds Support for Ukrainian Evacuees, a volunteer group led by Caroline Hyde that is working to help those seeking refuge within our community. Of course, that is dependent on the Government working with our European counterparts to ensure the safe passage of refugees from Ukraine. What discussions has the Foreign Secretary had with her counterparts to make sure that that happens?;   Will my right hon. Friend update the House on the £40 million support package over 10 years that was announced in 2016 for the Chagos island community?; According to Human Rights Watch’s “World Report 2020”, the Rwandan regime is active in“Arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture in official and unofficial detention facilities”.Despite the Home Secretary’s nonchalant dismissal in the Chamber recently of legitimate concerns about the safety of asylum seekers, what mechanisms will the Foreign Secretary exercise in the oversight of those detention facilities to ensure that the same ill treatment and torture does not befall the already vulnerable human beings whom this Tory Government will be callously shipping off to Rwanda?;   The recent fire in Hargeisa market has had a terrible effect on the people of Somaliland and their livelihoods. I understand that the FCDO is supportive and that is great, but what practical help will be given to the people of Hargeisa to help them to rebuild their lives?; Last month a Saudi teenager, Abdullah al-Howaiti, was given a second death sentence for a crime that he was accused of having committed as a 14-year-old child. Sentencing a child to death is a violation of international law, and Reprieve has strongly condemned the move. Will the Secretary of State make representations to her Saudi counterparts, on behalf of the House, to prevent such a grotesque miscarriage of justice and violation of the rights of the child?
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): The Minister will be aware that next Tuesday is World Press Freedom Day, yet free media are under greater pressure than ever before, particularly in Russia where independent journalism has been ruthlessly suppressed. Does she agree that the need for independent news providers such as the BBC World Service is greater than ever, and will she ensure that they continue to receive all the funding they need?
Prime Minister’s Visit to India — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Civil Rights
Victoria Grace Ford (Conservative, Centre-right): The UK is absolutely committed to defending freedom of religion or belief for all, and to promoting respect and tolerance between different religions and indeed between religious and non-religious communities. We condemn any incidences of discrimination because of religion. Our high commissioner in Delhi, and our network of deputy high commissioners across India, regularly meet religious representatives, and have run projects to help support minority rights. The Indian constitution protects all communities, but we will always raise human rights issues with countries across the world where we have concerns.
Prime Minister’s Visit to India — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Mixed Topics
Victoria Grace Ford (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes. As president of COP, the UK is absolutely focused on ensuring that the promises made in Glasgow are delivered. I was really pleased to hear that during the Prime Minister’s visit we launched the hydrogen and science innovation hub to accelerate affordable green hydrogen; we committed new funding for the green grids initiative that we announced in Glasgow; and there was collaboration on the public transport electrification. Globally, we also committed up to £75 million to rolling out adaptable clean tech innovations from India to the wider Indo-Pacific and to Africa. That benefits not only India but the Indo-Pacific, Africa, the UK and, indeed, the planet.
Prime Minister’s Visit to India — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Civil Rights
Victoria Grace Ford (Conservative, Centre-right): We condemn any instance of discrimination because of religion or belief. I will say it again and again: protecting freedom of religion or belief is one of the top human rights priorities for this country. Where we have concerns, we raise them, including at ministerial level.
Prime Minister’s Visit to India — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Civil Rights
Victoria Grace Ford (Conservative, Centre-right): I know that my hon. Friend was born in Omagh, as I was. It is a part of our country where differences in religious views have led to violence. I know that he cares about that as passionately as I do. We engage with India on a wide range of human rights matters, including issues relating to freedom of religion and belief, and we will continue to do so. We are working with non-governmental organisations to build capacity and promote human rights, and where we have concerns, we raise them with the Government of India, including at ministerial level, because friends should be able to have difficult conversations when there are differences of opinion, and should stand up for those whose human rights are threatened.
Judicial Review and Courts Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Other
Robert James Buckland (Conservative, Centre-right): I rise to speak chiefly to part 1 of the Bill. It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin), and I listened with great care to her speech. She and her colleagues often accuse the Prime Minister of wanting to have his cake and eat it. I gently but firmly suggest that she is doing the same on this occasion by relying on the unelected House, which she does not believe should exist because she is a unicameralist. That would mean that her argument about relying on the second Chamber when it is convenient is a somewhat unattractive one.
Judicial Review and Courts Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Other
Robert James Buckland (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Lady; her comments show the value of interventions, because we can have a genuine debate about a very important issue that goes to the heart of Lords amendments. My concern about the Lords amendments to clauses 1 and 2 is that their effect would be to go further—I am sure that it was not intentional—than their lordships’ usual role of providing close scrutiny and careful amendment, where the principle of the Bill is maintained but some of the details are altered. We have seen an example of that on presumption, on which the Government have rightly conceded.
Ukraine — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Other
Thomas Georg John Tugendhat (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that this is one of those domino moments where we can hold the advance and prevent the next one from falling, or we can watch a series of them going down.
Ukraine — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Mixed Topics
Robert William Henry Seely (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is making a good case about when the war started, but there is another good case for suggesting—given the hybrid, integrated approach to warfare that Russia has in its doctrine—that it started in about 2004 or 2005, after the orange revolution, although the violent and paramilitary aspects became more visible after 2014.
Ukraine — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Under the order that the House just passed, I may not adjourn the House until any further message from the Lords relating to the Nationality and Borders Bill has been received. The House must accordingly be suspended. I will suspend it until 9.45 pm at the earliest and arrange for the Division bells to be sounded a few minutes before the sitting is resumed to warn colleagues that we are about to resume. For the convenience of the House, I repeat that the Division bells will not be sounded before 9.45 pm.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Thomas Christopher John Pursglove (Conservative, Centre-right): I hope that this will be the final time in these proceedings around the Nationality and Borders Bill. I will first turn to compliance with the refugee convention. All measures in this Bill are compatible with our obligations under international law. We therefore cannot accept this amendment, which would put our duty to comply with the refugee convention on the face of the Bill.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jacob Young (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the Minister agree that the amendments on the Order Paper are very similar to the amendments that we debated only a few days ago? Will he therefore join me in saying to the other place that this elected House was given a mandate in the 2019 general election, as we were in the 2016 EU referendum, to take back control of our borders, and that it should allow this Bill to pass so that we do not have to continue this ping-pong?
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Thomas Christopher John Pursglove (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The time has now come to get on, to pass this Bill and to make the changes that we so desperately need to shift the dynamic, to end these dangerous channel crossings and to put together an asylum system that is fit for the future and able to cope with the demand.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Thomas Christopher John Pursglove (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary should rightly take a lot of credit for getting this new world-leading partnership over the line. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) has been a passionate advocate for this approach, and I am pleased we are delivering it. I think it will make a genuine difference in acting as a deterrent and ensuring that we have global solutions to a global challenge In that sense, I welcome the steps that have been taken in the last few days. I hope my right hon. Friend will be reassured to know that we are working hard to make sure this is operationalised without delay and that, of course, people are on flights as quickly as possible. What we do not want at any stage—this goes back to why we need fundamental reform of the asylum system—is delay in the system. We want people to have certainty either way.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Thomas Christopher John Pursglove (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not repeat the many, many occasions on which I have set out on the Floor of the House and in Committee during the Bill’s passage the many and varied safe and legal routes that exist. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), the Chair of the Justice Committee, has rightly touched on the need to reform the casework situation, which is precisely what we are doing through the new plan for immigration. I encourage him to be in the right Lobby this evening to help us get on with delivering on that priority, which is one priority among a number as we reform the system It is simply unnecessary, inappropriate and unconstitutional for the courts to have a duty to make declarations of incompatibility in circumstances where questions of compliance have already been determined by Parliament, so we cannot accept Lords amendment 5D On differentiation, Lords amendments 6D to 6F would make it harder to differentiate by placing significant evidential burdens on the Secretary of State. They would also set out our existing legal obligations on the face of the Bill, such as our duties under the refugee convention and the European convention on human rights, especially the article 8 right to family life. All of this is either unnecessary or unacceptable. We therefore do not accept these amendments Finally, the arguments on the right to work have been well rehearsed at several points in the passage of the Bill. In principle, we are concerned about the way in which this would undercut the points-based system, which we believe is the right system for facilitating lawful migration into our country—that skills-based approach, exactly as the British people voted for in the referendum in 2016. I go back to this point: our objective is to speed up caseworking, which then, of itself, ensures that we do not need to go down the route—
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Thomas Christopher John Pursglove (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend probes me on this with good reason. Off the top of my head, I believe that one of them was won by one vote, one was won by eight votes and one was won by 25 votes. So they are not particularly hefty majorities. The time has come to get on and pass this Bill. This Government’s new plan for immigration will tackle illegal migration and reform the asylum system.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Thomas Christopher John Pursglove (Conservative, Centre-right): I refer the hon. Lady to the new plan for immigration and the steps we have consistently set out that we will be taking to improve the situation on caseworking. It is imperative that we do that, for two reasons.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. Come on, let us have a bit of reasonable behaviour. I appreciate that it is late, but it is simply rude to shout to such an extent that we cannot hear the hon. Gentleman. It is not reasonable. There is nothing wrong with a bit of banter, but it should not be at such a level that I cannot hear him.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Peter William Bone (Conservative, Centre-right): I have a lot of time for the shadow Minister, but he is on a really sticky wicket here. Can he just answer these two questions? Is it the Labour party’s policy that we should not take any migrants to Rwanda? Secondly, is he not then scared that by not doing that it will encourage the evil people smugglers in their work?
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Jacob Young (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman explained to me last week that he did not support the Rwanda scheme and he has just reiterated that. I am curious to learn. What is Labour’s plan to deal with illegal immigration in the channel?
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. I want to let the House calm down for a moment. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, who is an experienced and efficient Member of this House, will know that he should not be making a general speech at this stage; this is not Second Reading. This debate is very narrow: we are discussing only the amendments that have just come back from the Lords, not general issues. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will now stick to the narrow matter before us—and so will everybody else.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
John Henry Hayes (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not delay the House unduly; my colleagues would not want me to. I just want to make two points. The first is that the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) is right: these matters should have been addressed earlier, by successive Governments—including Labour Governments, by the way. Our immigration policy has not been planned strategically, as it might have been. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point The hon. Gentleman also said that the system needs to be efficient. I spoke about Edmund Burke on Second Reading; he said that the test of civil society and the policy that relates to it was justice, and that when a policy ceased to be just it was barely a policy at all. For a policy to be just, it has to be ordered, efficient and consistent. Immigration policy has struggled with order, efficiency and consistency for a very long time. On that, the hon. Gentleman was also right However, the hon. Gentleman is fundamentally wrong about the amendments for the following reasons. First, the Lords seem unwilling to grasp a nettle that, as he described, previous Governments have also failed the grasp. That nettle is sorting out and amending a broken system to ensure that we can continue to give safe refuge to people in desperate need, and that the system cannot be routinely and persistently gamed—by people traffickers and, actually, by economic migrants pretending to be asylum seekers. That is the fact, and we have to face it and reform the system so that we can differentiate between the two. The Government are trying to do that. It is not an easy process, but the Lords seem to me to misunderstand the Government’s intention, which is to create a consistent, ordered and effective system In specific terms, the amendment pertaining to the Refugee Council is unnecessary because part 2 of the Bill is already in line with the Refugee Council. I am amazed to hear the hon. Gentleman say that asylum seekers should be allowed to work. What sort of signal does that send out to legitimate migrants who have come to this country seeking to perform a role in our economy to serve this country? What sort of signal does it send out to indigenous Britons—of all types and races, by the way—who are unemployed and seeking a job, when they are told they must compete with people arriving in the country as asylum seekers? That seems to be a nonsense, yet that is what the Lords amendment suggests.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. I stopped the shadow Minister, so I have to give the same advice to the spokesman for the SNP. We are not here to talk about manifestos and general matters this evening; we are here to talk about Government motions to disagree to amendments 5D, 6D, 6E, 6F, 7F and 7G, and only that. This Bill has been properly heard in general terms. We will stick to the exact points in front of us now.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. The hon. Lady is opposed to the Bill, and she was perfectly entitled to say so on Second Reading and on Third Reading, and I think she probably did, but at this point, her opposition to the Bill is of no interest to the House; we are talking about the specific amendments. Will she please stick to the specific amendments?
Health and Social Care: Leadership and Management — House of Commons, 2022-06-14
Topic: Other
Sajid Javid (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, of course I can give the hon. Lady that commitment. I am very sorry to hear about Joanna; I think of her, her loved ones and her two children. I will absolutely look personally into the case. I hope that the hon. Lady agrees that where we see poor outcomes, it is important to make sure that we have the best possible leadership in place.