argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
EU Withdrawal Agreement — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: International Affairs
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Member for Chelmsford has directly and, I am sure, inadvertently misrepresented the position of the two SNP Members of the European Parliament, both of whom are personal friends of mine. I can absolutely assure her that they have made their position clear that they are against this deal. Indeed, one of them was my co-litigant in the article 50 case. I ask your assistance for the third time in a week, Madam Deputy Speaker, about how I can go about correcting misrepresentations of the facts about Scottish politics coming from the Government Benches and the Benches behind them.
EU Withdrawal Agreement — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Sheppard (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): This country is facing a grave political crisis the like of which we have not seen for more than a generation. The undeniable truth is that this is something that the Government have created for themselves. From the word go, they have chosen not to reach out across a divided country to try to build a political consensus on the question of our relationship with the European mainland. They have instead looked inward to the party of government, trying to patch over divisions within the Conservative party At least this latest insult by the Executive to the legislature in interrupting our debate on their proposals and denying us a vote on them this year is consistent. The Government have not suspended the process to fundamentally rethink their proposals and to listen to the concerns across this House. Oh, no—they are doing so only with a very narrow agenda, which is to placate the extreme right wing of their own party on its concerns about the Northern Ireland backstop. I have to say that the Northern Ireland backstop is, perhaps, the least offensive of the proposals before the House. Of far greater concern is the fact that, by the Government’s own admission, they will impoverish the people whom we represent and deny people the ability to come and live and work in my country, which threatens its future prosperity In fact, the most offensive feature of the backstop is that it serves to underscore the duplicity of the Westminster Government when it comes to dealing with representations from Scotland. The national Parliament in Scotland has argued precisely for differential arrangements post Brexit and been told consistently for the past two years that they would be impossible because they would compromise the integrity of the United Kingdom, only to find them written down in this withdrawal agreement with regard to Northern Ireland. That is an insult, and it is contempt for the people of Scotland Let me turn to this question of the second referendum. I want to caution some colleagues who are against the notion about the language that they are using in this debate. It is a fantasy and a fiction to try to claim that, somehow, allowing all the people of this country to vote in a referendum is anti-democratic.
EU Withdrawal Agreement — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Sheppard (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am consistent in respecting the results of every referendum. It is true that 17.4 million people voted to leave the European Union, but there are 65 million people in the United Kingdom, and at least 2 million of those 17 million have changed their minds. In a democracy, people have the right to change their mind. For people to oppose a second referendum and try to use an historic mandate, which is increasingly out of date, to suppress the democratic aspiration of the people in the here and now is more akin to authoritarian populism than to a liberal democracy. I urge colleagues not to go down that path in our dialogue.
EU Withdrawal Agreement — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: International Affairs
Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is making some important points. I suggest to him that the fact that Member after Member said that they disagreed with this deal, and that the European Union presidency has made it clear that it will not negotiate on it, means that we need to vote down this deal so that we can all come together to break the impasse. That is the point of this debate.
EU Withdrawal Agreement — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: International Affairs
Stuart Campbell McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Indeed. I sincerely hope that I am wrong, but we can well understand why a unilateral promise from the Prime Minister is not filling the 3 million with the sort of certainty that they would like For their sake, and for the sake of UK citizens in the EU, instead of frittering away these three weeks of further discussion in Brussels seeking assurances that will not make one bit of difference, the Prime Minister should use them to seek to ring-fence and guarantee at least the citizens’ rights part of the deal. If she tries and fails, she will not get criticism from me, but if she does not try at all, she most certainly will, and she will also get criticism from the millions of EU and UK citizens living abroad who demand this peace of mind.
EU Withdrawal Agreement — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: Agriculture
Andrew Egan Henderson Hendry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making a very important contribution. Is it not a fact that the Tories have always seen Scottish fishing as dispensable? In fact, that was actually Government policy when they entered the CFP.
EU Withdrawal Agreement — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: International Affairs
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Absolutely. That is an historical fact. We only had to see the dynamics in the Fisheries Bill Committee last night. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) tabled an amendment which he said was only a probing amendment and he then voted against leaving the CFP on 31 December 2020 All these things are proof that the Prime Minister’s red lines were a con as well, as was the Scottish Secretary’s threat to resign if Northern Ireland was given special status. The Scottish Secretary has refused to even look at the compromises suggested by the Scottish Government. It really is time for the UK Government to acknowledge that for any deal to get through this Parliament, it will have to include the single market and the customs union—something that is more likely to appeal to the EU than further UK demands for concessions After two years of our being told that no deal is better than a bad deal, we are now suddenly told, "No deal would be a disaster—but don’t worry about a disaster, because we are planning for it! We are putting arrangements in place." We have had a Brexit Secretary who did not know how important Dover was, and the Transport Secretary did not visit Dover until October 2018. The Transport Secretary also promised that there would be an aviation deal, and then two years later admitted that discussions had not even begun on the aviation agreement. That is how much of a con this Government’s no-deal preparations are—they are an absolute joke It is not a binary choice between a bad deal and no deal. The European Court of Justice ruling means that MPs can revoke article 50. As other hon. Members have said, we need to seriously consider a people’s vote. In Scotland, as new polls show, independence within the EU is preferable to Scotland being dragged out against its will. It is quite clear that we need our own independence referendum to let the people of Scotland decide our future.
EU Withdrawal Agreement — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: International Affairs
David Melvyn Linden (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Lady is making a powerful point. She is right that people should have the opportunity to look at the issue again. Given that the United Kingdom for which people in Scotland voted in 2014 no longer exists, why is her party opposed to a second referendum on Scottish independence?
EU Withdrawal Agreement — House of Commons, 2018-12-18
Topic: International Affairs
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am very grateful to have caught your eye, and I will be very brief In 2015, the Scottish National party released the speech that Alex Salmond would have given if Scotland has voted yes to independence. If we had won the referendum in 2014, we would have embarked on a programme of nation building, of ambition, of progression and of bringing everyone together, recognising that not everyone would have voted in favour of independence, and recognising and reaching out to the people who voted no How that contrasts with what the Prime Minister did in 2016 and what she has done since. She has pandered to the hardest and most extreme Brexiteers on her own Benches instead of trying to bring the rest of the United Kingdom together. That is the legacy with which we have been left today, that is why we have found ourselves in the current farce and impasse, and that is why the deal that the Prime Minister has proposed is unacceptable to everyone and the no-deal contingency planning has had to be stepped up. It turns out that rather than getting £350 million a week for the NHS, we will have 3,500 troops on the streets. No one in the United Kingdom voted for that to happen as a consequence of Brexit, yet that is exactly what we are seeing However, the real story of the past few days has not been the contemptible failure on the Conservative Benches—we have known about their chaos for a very long time—but the failure on the part of the Labour party and the Leader of the Opposition, who should have taken his constitutional responsibility seriously and tabled a motion of no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government. He is the man who should be the credible alternative in this House, and he has singularly failed to be that. That is because the Labour party is the pro-Brexit Labour party and the leader of the Labour party is the pro-Brexit leader of the Labour party, and that is a betrayal of the people the Labour party is supposed to represent It is true that hard-core Labour voters voted leave in 2016, but the job of the Labour party should not simply be to kowtow and run away in fear; it should remake and remake again the positive case for European membership rather than support a Brexit that is going to put those very people out of work and make them less well off That may be difficult for the Labour voters in the north of England, but the voters in Scotland have an alternative. The voters in Scotland have a way out: if we want to exit from Brexit, we can do that by exiting the United Kingdom.
G20 Summit — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of her statement and join her in congratulating President Macri on Argentina’s presidency of the G20. It is pleasing to hear that President Macri and the Prime Minister had productive talks on trade and investment; perhaps she will share more details of their content with the House Given the current strains on international diplomacy, it is welcome that the G20 was able to come together and deliver a joint statement of endeavour. The communiqué itself is clearly a compromise agreement, but it falls short in a number of areas. In particular, the pledge to look at WTO reform requires further explanation from the Prime Minister on what reform she believes is needed and why. Also, on the refugee crisis and our responsibilities, it seems that the communiqué has the bare minimum commitment rather than real ambition. That is particularly shocking given that this weekend marks the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport—the journey of children who fled the Nazis. We should still have the same generosity of spirit towards refugees in this country today. I do, however, agree with the Prime Minister’s sentiments about the importance of the G20 to international economic co-operation, and I welcome the fact that commitments have been made to work together on economic opportunities and the greatest threat to our generation, climate change However, I note that in her press release the Prime Minister exclaimed that the summit gave her the opportunity to update leaders on her Brexit plans. Did the Prime Minister share with world leaders any concern that her deal is a lame duck? There are many questions for her to answer. Will she explain how she was discussing trade agreements when she will not be able to strike any deals until after the transition? Furthermore, can she explain how any of these discussions can take place when the backstop comes in, as she confirmed in the House last Monday that the UK will not be able to have any independent trade deals Does the Prime Minister see the direct contradiction in her claims of working in collaboration and partnership to deliver economic prosperity when her Brexit deal rips economic stability and opportunity from beneath our feet by taking us out of the European Union? I can see her shaking her head, but that is the reality: young people are going to be denied the opportunities that our generations had At the summit, did the Prime Minister use her time to discuss pressing human rights issues? What discussions did she have, and did she raise the matter of Khashoggi’s death with Mohammed bin Salman Finally, will the Prime Minister share with us an update on her Government’s actions over the past two years to tackle climate change, or has she been too distracted to get on with the job of government?
G20 Summit — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Alison Emily Thewliss (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The Yemen data project has reported that 42 airstrikes happened over the course of 10 days, of which 62% hit civilian targets. Did the Prime Minister discuss with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman how the bombs she sold him will be used in the coming months?
G20 Summit — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: Foreign Trade
Carol Frances Monaghan (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am pleased that the Prime Minister recognises the importance of an equal playing field with respect to trade. Will this also apply to the contract for the fleet solid support ships, and can the Prime Minister assure our UK shipbuilders that foreign Government-sponsored bids will be ruled out?
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The binding motion passed by this House on 13 November ordered the production of any legal advice in full, including that provided by the Attorney General, and with a particular focus on the Northern Ireland backstop—not a commentary, but the legal advice in full. The House did not divide. The Government effectively conceded that these were exceptional circumstances and that the normal, very important convention would not apply, so that ship has sailed The Attorney General and I are both senior lawyers in our own jurisdictions, so I am sure that he will not want to insult my intelligence or that of the House by pretending that this Command Paper reflects in any way the nuanced advice that he will have given to the Cabinet, focused on particular questions such as those that we saw leaked over the weekend. For example, he just said that it is not his belief that we will be trapped in the backstop permanently, but this House, which has to take the final decision—not the Cabinet—is not interested in his belief; it is interested in his legal opinion. Can he confirm, as a matter of law, that there is nothing to prevent the backstop from becoming the permanent UK-EU relationship in the event that the two sides cannot agree a future economic relationship? That is a matter of law Will the Attorney General acknowledge something else? He is a democrat, the Government are democrats; they have gone on incessantly about the will of the people for the last two years and profess to believe in parliamentary sovereignty. We sitting in this House are the representatives of the people, and we voted to see his advice in full, not his commentary, so will he undertake to produce that advice—the sort of nuggets that were leaked over the weekend, but in full—before the rise of the House today, and before tomorrow’s debate, or is he prepared to run the risk of being found in contempt of Parliament merely to protect the Conservative and Unionist party against further internal strife?
Scotland’s Foreign Policy Footprint — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Patrick Gethins (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I know it is very unusual for the hon. Gentleman to intervene in Adjournment debates, but I thank him for taking the time to do so this evening. I appreciate it. He makes a valid point, but sometimes we have a different foreign policy approach and others will take their own views. I wish to give some specific examples of how Scotland has perhaps taken a slightly different approach, but one that has enriched foreign policy overall and should be taken on board. Further into my speech, I shall discuss the fact that non-governmental organisations and a non-state approach to some international work also have a place. I say that with particular reference to work in conflicts. In the 21st century, the role of civil society and sub-state actors has been transformational.
Scotland’s Foreign Policy Footprint — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I think he will go on to speak about this in more detail, but Scotland’s relationship with Malawi—I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party group on Malawi—is a fantastic example of partnership working between countries. He emphasises the role of NGOs, which is at the core of such work, because the nature of the devolved settlement and how the Scottish Government fund overseas work means that the process relies on civil society organisations in the two countries speaking to each other. I am sure my hon. Friend agrees that that is definitely a lesson that the UK Government could learn.
Scotland’s Foreign Policy Footprint — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Patrick Gethins (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He has done some significant and worthwhile work to build and maintain the special relationship that exists between Scotland and Malawi. That is seen in the work not only of NGOs but of the Scottish Government in developing that relationship, going right back to the days of Livingstone and trying to use our history and common heritage to develop the relationship.
Scotland’s Foreign Policy Footprint — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for making such a powerful case about Scotland and our tradition in the world. Does he agree that there is probably no greater example of how Scotland helps the world than Mary’s Meals, from my Argyll and Bute constituency? It was started as Scottish International Relief in 1992 in Dalmally, in Argyll and Bute, by two brothers, Fergus and Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, primarily to assist those who were suffering through the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict. Today, it has grown to be such a worldwide organisation that every day 1.3 million children benefit from receiving a hot meal through Mary’s Meals. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a prime example of how Scotland benefits the rest of the world?
Scotland’s Foreign Policy Footprint — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Patrick Gethins (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He is right to point to his constituency and the work that is done by Mary’s Meals. I would encourage anybody to read "Eastern Approaches" by Fitzroy Maclean, who was of course an MP who sat on the Conservative Benches. It is an excellent book, and he is also part of the links between Argyll and Bute and the former Yugoslavia. I fondly remember visits to Vis.
Scotland’s Foreign Policy Footprint — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Patrick Gethins (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. His point is helpful, because it takes me on nicely to an area on which we share a great deal of common history with the people of Northern Ireland and across these islands, which is the diaspora. I hope the hon. Gentleman will not mind my referring to the Scots Irish diaspora and the impact that it has had on the United States.
Scotland’s Foreign Policy Footprint — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Patrick Gethins (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. I know how excited the people of Milwaukee will be about his visit and how much they will be looking forward to it. That event, too, is about building links between our parts of the world There are tens of millions of Scots around the world. I use the terms Scots in a generous way, which is the right thing to do. I recently read online that one of our new Scots said, "The nice thing about being Scottish is that you just turn up." That is a nice way to be. [Interruption.] The Minister could turn up on these Benches; he would be very welcome. When talking about the deep links that Scotland has, which are a resource for the Foreign Office, I recommend that anyone reads the work and follows the broadcasts of my constituent Billy Kay, who looks at the Scots’ impact globally, including in Poland, Sweden, the United States and the Commonwealth. His excellent recent broadcast series on the Scots in Russia is particularly interesting and timely listening, because of course SNP Members, like others, think it is right that our foreign policy takes a hard line with the Government of Russia, but we all recognise the deep affinity with Russia and the links not just between Scotland and Russia but between the people across these islands and the people of Russia. It is more important than ever before that we remember the common history and heritage and the links that bind us to the great people of Russia, to whom European civilisation and culture owes so much.
Scotland’s Foreign Policy Footprint — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Patrick Gethins (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a very good point about Catalonia—we are indeed everywhere. It reminds me of my time working in Namibia. A number of Namibian politicians had been in exile in the UK and formed their first democratic newspaper at the University of Glasgow. That was a powerful tool. Decision makers across the world celebrate Scottish heritage, including those in Washington DC, where the Scottish Government office does a good job but is co-located with the embassy. That also happens in Ottawa, Canberra and many other capitals.
Scotland’s Foreign Policy Footprint — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Patrick Gethins (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Well, it is all very well being co-located with the UK embassy, but what is really interesting—I was going to avoid this point, but the hon. Gentleman offers me no choice—is that of the dozens of countries that have become independent from the UK and that no longer wish to be co-located with the United Kingdom when carrying out their foreign policy, not one of them has changed its mind about independence. They have all grasped the benefits of independence, including the many benefits for foreign policy. Although I try to talk about how we can take our relationship forward, my belief—like the belief in those dozens and dozens of successful independent countries—is still that the only way we can truly harness our potential is through the normal powers of independence.