argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
World Autism Awareness Week — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: Social Welfare
Patricia Gibson (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s important point. We have heard today that in some schools, there is a deficit of understanding and a deficit of support, but there are also excellent examples of teachers who have had thorough training in autism, who can support children in a specialised way and help them to access the curriculum in a meaningful way that would not otherwise be possible. We must recognise that and share such good practice, wherever it exists, around the UK When we raise understanding of autism, we will help to remove the shadow of loneliness and isolation that, far too often, those living with autism and their families experience. Loneliness and isolation have a negative impact on the general health and wellbeing of those affected by them, and loneliness is considered to be as damaging to health as smoking. That brings into sharp focus the importance of such work Before I finish, I want to pay tribute to the work that is being done in in my constituency. During the Easter recess, I attended an event in Ardrossan library—I attended a similar event last year—where people with autism and their families come together to share stories about the challenges that they face and the coping strategies that they use. I pay tribute to Suzanne Fernando, who organises those events and does so much to promote understanding of autism. I am quite proud of the work that is going on in Scotland. The Scottish Government have launched the Scottish strategy for autism, through which they have put the issue on the agenda, raised awareness of it and put resources into it. When children, young people and adults with autism lose out, they are a loss to our society, and we need to be more inclusive and mindful of that.
World Autism Awareness Week — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: Social Welfare
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The debate has covered a lot of the structural and supportive things that need to be done, but does it not also throw down the gauntlet to us about the need to change our view? We think of people with autism as finding it difficult to see the world as we see it. We actually need to see the world as they see it.
HMRC: Building our Future Plan — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Charles Stephens (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I beg to move, That this House has considered HM Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC) plan Building our Future which will close most of its offices and make substantial staffing reductions; is concerned that this could seriously compromise the ability of HMRC to collect tax, enforce compliance and close the tax gap; believes the plan should have been subjected to parliamentary scrutiny; and calls on the Government to ensure that Building our Future is suspended until a comprehensive consultation and review has been undertaken I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and to my position as chair of the PCS—Public and Commercial Services Union—parliamentary group and as an active trade unionist. I thank fellow Members from all parties represented in this House for their support in securing this debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it Before I move on to the substance of the debate, I hope I may be allowed to wish Calvin Thomas well on his last day of work in this place. Calvin arrived in the House in 1989, becoming a Doorkeeper in 2000, with nine years in the Members Lobby and seven years in the Special Lobby. I know that many of my colleagues are grateful for all the help that he has given us and our family members and guests over the years, and we wish him well as he returns to his beloved island of St Helena. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] On 12 November 2015 Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs published departmental plans for the future structure of HMRC, entitled "Building our Future". It is important to note that the plans were issued by the Department, rather than via a ministerial statement. That is unsatisfactory, given their impact, which includes the closure of 90% of the office network and thousands of staffing reductions In 2005, HMRC employed approximately 105,000 staff; in 2016, the figure stands at approximately 58,000—an almost 50% reduction. The Building our Future plan seeks to close almost all the 160-plus HMRC offices and to move to 13 regional hubs and four specialist sites. It seeks to make further job cuts to bring the headcount down by 8,000, to 50,000, although some information suggests the intention is to reduce staffing levels to 41,000 The timeline for the proposals is in two phases: in the first phase, HMRC proposes that 21 offices are to be vacated up to March 2017; in the second phase, 27 office closures are to take place between June 2017 and March 2018. HMRC will in future be based at 13 large offices and four specialist sites, where 95% of the staff who remain after the cuts will work On 16 February, HMRC issued compulsory redundancy notices to 152 members of staff, 70% of whom are members of the Public and Commercial Services Union. That is the biggest number of compulsory notices issued in a single instance by any UK civil service department.
HMRC: Building our Future Plan — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: Labor
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend will be aware that 11 of the compulsory redundancy notices have been imposed on constituents of mine who work at the Glenrothes HMRC office, which is scheduled to close in June. When the closure was announced, staff got the same assurances that are being given to current members of staff, but the PCS told me that, in practice, their members—many of whom had given 30 or 40 years of dedicated service to the public—were made to feel they just did not matter. Part-time workers were asked to accept relocations that would have meant they spent longer commuting than at work. Employees with care commitments were expected to work more than two hours away from their home, where they might be called to an emergency. It was even claimed that the distance they were told they would have to travel between Glenrothes and Edinburgh was based on a straight line, but it was impossible for them to take that route unless they swam across the firth of Forth. Has my hon. Friend any reason to believe that employees who are currently being threatened with redeployment or redundancy will be treated any better than my constituents have been?
HMRC: Building our Future Plan — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: Labor
Christopher Charles Stephens (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention—[Interruption.] Well, we will call it an intervention. He is right to be concerned about some of the practices we are hearing about from trade union members and staff members based in HMRC. People are being called into one-to-one meetings where they are denied trade union representation. If an employee is having a meeting with a manager to discuss their job prospects, I would expect the trade unions to have access to that meeting, but they do not. Perhaps the Minister can deal with that. I will come later to the issue of travel times.
HMRC: Building our Future Plan — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: Labor
Christopher Charles Stephens (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): That is an interesting point, given that we had a debate yesterday about e-balloting and trade unions’ right to access email for a ballot. It seems it is okay to issue a compulsory redundancy notice by electronic means. Perhaps the Government will take that into account when they discuss the Trade Union Bill We believe that HMRC and the Government want to send a signal using the 152 staff facing compulsory redundancy to demonstrate exactly how they will go about the mass office closure arising from the Building our Future plan. We find this to be unacceptable and not acting in good faith.
HMRC: Building our Future Plan — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: International Affairs
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I congratulate my hon. Friend and others on securing this debate. Does he share my concern that a number of the arguments we were given in 2014 for Scotland remaining in the Union are beginning to unravel? We were told that separation shuts shipyards; that our heavy industry, such as the steel industry, would be at risk; and that a major benefit of the Union was having the civil service employees in the United Kingdom and Scotland. Now it seems that the case is unravelling on all those points.
HMRC: Building our Future Plan — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Murray Alexander Law (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I completely agree with my hon. Friend. At a time when this is still in consultation, the forced redundancies coming through are an absolute shame and embarrassment for all of us in this House Relocating HMRC to regional centres in Glasgow and Edinburgh will mean not only job losses in Dundee, but a loss of boots on the ground, and will diminish the capacity for public contact anywhere north. For example, Aberdeen has paid more than £300 billion from its oil resources into this Government, yet there is not going to be an HMRC office there, and the largest growing city in Europe, Inverness, will not have any representation —not to mention the rural areas in between. It is essential for HMRC to offer its clients access to skilled, trained staff based in the local area. Speaking from previous business experience, I know what a struggle it can be getting through to HMRC on the phone; what sort of business will we come to expect? I have to share a story I have heard just in the past 10 minutes: one of my colleagues has tried eight times to pay a bill that is due and still cannot get through No one in their right mind would argue that it would make sense to have just two huge hospitals in Scotland, one in Edinburgh and one in Glasgow. If the NHS can maintain internationally recognised standards of service in thousands of clinics and hospitals around the country, surely it is possible for HMRC to do the same in a network of fewer than 200 local offices To return to my earlier point, the Panama papers have dramatically drawn attention to a fact that has been emphasised over and over again in this House, by colleagues from all parties, namely that sufficient resources need to be dedicated to HMRC so that it can scrutinise sources of income to ensure that the tax due is paid. It is clear that to do this we need HMRC offices all over the UK, staffed by experienced tax officers with local knowledge. No one would ridicule the Government for making a U-turn on HMRC’s Building our Future plan HMRC has the potential to become a paradigm of self-sufficiency, a public service that pays for itself. That idea is certainly less far-fetched and counter-intuitive than the measures currently set to be put in place, which are designed to boost, yet again, the income of companies based in offshore tax havens.
HMRC: Building our Future Plan — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Does the hon. Gentleman agree it is extremely ironic that at the same time as the Government want to maintain an arm’s-length relationship between the client and HMRC, the relationship between HMRC and big businesses—including big, tax-dodging advisory businesses—is at a very short arm’s length?
HMRC: Building our Future Plan — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: Transportation
Hannah Mary Bardell (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. On the specific issue of centralisation, virtually no work has been done in my constituency of Livingston to assess the impact of the proposals in relation to transport and travel. The distance between Livingston and Edinburgh is relatively short, but what about the people in Dundee who will be expected to travel? Is it not clear that this is an ill-conceived and ill-thought-out proposal?
HMRC: Building our Future Plan — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: Government Operations
Stuart Campbell McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Absolutely We want to see the sums and the justifications for the proposals. Will each of these local decisions be revisited if the sums do not add up? Has the effect on local communities been factored into HMRC’s considerations? Does it feature at all? I have had a similar experience to that of my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), in that when I asked the Minister about this, his written answer stated simply that HMRC "will undertake all necessary consultations and impact assessment work to inform" its plans. No one is suggesting that any town or city where a public sector office is based can assume that the office will be there forever, but it is far from unreasonable to say that the local economic impact of office closures will be a significant factor in decision making, so what weight has been attached to that Most important to me and many MPs here are the questions of our constituents—the dedicated, skilled staff in the tax offices. They want to know whether jobs are moving with them or whether they are moving to new roles in a new location. HMRC claims that people will be better able to develop careers up to senior level, but my constituents fear that their good-quality roles will be replaced with poorer-quality work. How did HMRC calculate that 90% of employees will be within reasonable daily travel? Not only does it not know where offices will be, but reasonableness of travel does not just depend on distance but transport links, parking spaces, and accessibility. Will those issues be assessed on an individual basis For other staff, including a good number in my constituency, challenges arise through disabilities and care commitments. Why has HMRC not undertaken a proper equality impact assessment of its proposals? Why did HMRC change its HR policy in February 2016, particularly when redundancies were on the horizon, so that union members, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West mentioned, were no longer entitled to take a trade union rep to one-to-one discussions Most concerning are the questions around the 152 compulsory redundancy notices that have been served. How can they be genuine redundancies given that the work that the employees are doing is continuing, that there are no immediate plans to close the offices, and that the Department has recruited over 1,000 new staff in other locations at the same grades? What is the explanation for that? Why will HMRC’s chief executive not meet the Public and Commercial Services Union about alternatives to compulsory redundancy? How can all that be happening while HMRC is apparently spending £1 million a month on overtime to mask staffing shortfalls?
HMRC: Building our Future Plan — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Stuart Campbell McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I agree. That emphasises that the sums do not appear to add up and the plan is not any sort of plan, but a desperate attempt to get out of the hole that HMRC got itself in back in 2001 The debate has been helpful and provided another opportunity to raise questions, but it also highlighted that much more scrutiny and consultation are required if we are to understand properly what the plan means for HMRC, for taxpayers, for towns and cities where offices are situated and for hard-working employees. The case for cuts and closures has not been made. We no longer need glossy brochures and buzzwords, but hard facts, detailed scrutiny and genuine consultation.
HMRC: Building our Future Plan — House of Commons, 2016-04-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Charles Stephens (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank all those who contributed to the debate. They represented all the nations of the United Kingdom, because this issue affects all the nations of the United Kingdom. We heard some excellent points, particularly on HMRC offices being the largest employer in an area in many instances Let me say to the Minister that it is cavalier to suggest that employees dragged into one-to-one meetings are denied trade union representation, and he really should look at that. I would also say to him that the lack of parliamentary scrutiny on this issue has been shocking, and many of us in the House will continue to hold the Government to account on it Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered HM Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC) plan Building our Future which will close most of its offices and make substantial staffing reductions; is concerned that this could seriously compromise the ability of HMRC to collect tax, enforce compliance and close the tax gap; believes the plan should have been subjected to parliamentary scrutiny; and calls on the Government to ensure that Building our Future is suspended until a comprehensive consultation and review has been undertaken.
EU Referendum: Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-07-19
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: What assessment he has made of the (a) extent of and (b) economic effect of assets and capital being moved out of the UK as a result of the outcome of the EU referendum.; What assessment he has made of the near-term effect of the outcome of the EU referendum on economic confidence and growth in the UK.
Philip John Boswell (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Given colleagues’ anecdotal evidence of capital flight, the recent vote to leave the EU has plunged the economy into volatility and uncertainty. The Conservative Government have been slow to act and have yet to provide an economic strategy, so will the Chancellor tell the people of the UK when they will get an insight into the scale of capital flight following the Brexit vote?
EU Referendum: Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-07-19
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: What assessment he has made of the (a) extent of and (b) economic effect of assets and capital being moved out of the UK as a result of the outcome of the EU referendum.; What assessment he has made of the near-term effect of the outcome of the EU referendum on economic confidence and growth in the UK.
Owen George Thompson (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The Conservative Government’s so-called long-term economic plan has resulted in their failing on key economic indicators and missing the targets that they set for themselves. Will the Chancellor tell the Chamber whether we will witness an end to this disastrous era of austerity?
EU Referendum: Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-07-19
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: What assessment he has made of the (a) extent of and (b) economic effect of assets and capital being moved out of the UK as a result of the outcome of the EU referendum.; What assessment he has made of the near-term effect of the outcome of the EU referendum on economic confidence and growth in the UK.
Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I welcome the new Chancellor to his place and wish him all good luck—for all our sakes, he is going to need it. A Deloitte survey of 132 FTSE 350 chief financial officers found that nearly two thirds of them expect revenues to fall. As the Financial Times puts it, business confidence is now lower than at the time of the collapse of Lehman, with 82% of companies expected to reduce capital spending. This crisis has been caused by Brexit. What tangible steps will the Chancellor take to restore confidence? Don’t just give us waffle—give us real plans.
Support for Businesses — House of Commons, 2016-07-19
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: May I congratulate the Chancellor and his team on their appointment? On supporting businesses, PricewaterhouseCoopers yesterday said that growth in Northern Ireland is likely to remain at zero, the worst in the United Kingdom. Will the Chancellor put in place some mechanisms—he has already discussed enterprise zones such as Belfast international airport—to help us?
Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): May I congratulate the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury on their new roles? The problem we have seen over many years is that fiscal policy occasionally works against the interests of business. Innovation funding has been converted from grants to loans, and there has been a cut during this Parliament to the UK Trade & Investment budget. I ask the Chancellor, who is new and fresh to the job, to look again at those policies, in particular, to make sure that innovation and export support funding is aligned with innovating and exporting businesses.
Support for Businesses — House of Commons, 2016-07-19
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: May I congratulate the Chancellor and his team on their appointment? On supporting businesses, PricewaterhouseCoopers yesterday said that growth in Northern Ireland is likely to remain at zero, the worst in the United Kingdom. Will the Chancellor put in place some mechanisms—he has already discussed enterprise zones such as Belfast international airport—to help us?
Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I welcome that, and I ask the Chancellor to look again at one other thing. One of the problems that business and the economy face is a lack of demand. May I ask the Chancellor to look again not just at headline corporation tax cuts, but at an intelligent use of allowances—for example, the reintroduction of industrial buildings allowance—to build demand for construction now and long-term supply side capacity to boost what we do, particularly in terms of exporting, in the future?
Turkey — House of Commons, 2016-07-19
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his place, and the spectacular late flowering of his ministerial career. We suspect that he may well be at the Dispatch Box on many occasions, substituting for the absent Foreign Secretary. We also remember the Foreign Secretary’s film, "The Dream of Rome", in which he advocated Turkey’s immediate succession to the European Union—an argument he later used to justify Brexit and the UK’s removal from the European Union. Can we be assured that there will be no such ambiguity in the messages that now go to Turkey, and that while no responsible Government can support a military coup against a democratic Government, no responsible democratic Government engages in the suppression of civil liberties, the persecution of minority communities such as the Kurds, the imprisonment of thousands of people, the suspension of parliamentary rights, and the reintroduction of the death penalty? Will the Minister make it clear unambiguously to President Erdogan that it is not only membership of the European Union that is at risk from such actions, but also NATO membership?
Turkey — House of Commons, 2016-07-19
Topic: International Affairs
Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I congratulate the Minister on his appointment. President Erdogan has repeatedly refused to rule out the return of the death penalty in response to this event. What discussions have the Minister or the Foreign Secretary had—or what discussions do they intend to have—with the Turkish Government to make it clear that such a change of heart would be regressive and wrong?
Turkey — House of Commons, 2016-07-19
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I know that the Minister will impress on President Erdogan how important it is that people get a fair trial, regardless of how serious the offence someone is accused of committing—indeed, the more serious the alleged offence, possibly the more important it is that they get a fair trial. It is difficult to see how that can happen when so many judges have been arrested. What practical help will the Minister be offering to the Turkish Government to make sure that anyone who has been arrested and is going to be put on trial gets a fair trial, in accordance with the proper rule of law?