argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Engagements — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: Rugby is the fastest-growing town in the west midlands, and work is under way to provide 6,200 much-needed new homes at the Rugby Radio site. My constituents are keen to ensure that public services keep pace with those developments and to see more services at their local hospital, St Cross. Does the Prime Minister agree with the NHS chief executive, Simon Stevens, that district hospitals such as St Cross play an excellent role in the NHS?; Not everybody is as satisfied as the Chancellor with what for Google is loose change to cover its tax liabilities. On Monday, the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) called on the Government to make companies publish their tax returns. In that way, we can all see how they make the journey from their cash profits to their tax bills. Does the Prime Minister agree?; As cancer survival rates continue to improve and given that this is cancer talk week, will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming a new state-of-the-art cancer information centre due to open at Royal Bolton hospital, and will he praise the collaboration of Macmillan Cancer Support, Bolton People Affected by Cancer, Bolton hospice and the Bolton clinical commissioning group, which are all making this happen?; In the summer of 2014 when I was the leader of Highland Council, I wrote to the Prime Minister asking him to join the Scottish Government and Highland Council in taking forward a city deal for Inverness. Highland Council has submitted a detailed plan on the theme of “a region for young people”. Will the Prime Minister now commit to giving this the green light in the coming weeks?
John Philip Glen (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the Prime Minister for meeting the deposed Maldivian President Nasheed and his legal team in No. 10 on Saturday. Will my right hon. Friend commit to work towards an international consensus on targeted sanctions, so that the Maldivian regime might reconsider its appalling human rights record and its record on democracy?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: Rugby is the fastest-growing town in the west midlands, and work is under way to provide 6,200 much-needed new homes at the Rugby Radio site. My constituents are keen to ensure that public services keep pace with those developments and to see more services at their local hospital, St Cross. Does the Prime Minister agree with the NHS chief executive, Simon Stevens, that district hospitals such as St Cross play an excellent role in the NHS?; Not everybody is as satisfied as the Chancellor with what for Google is loose change to cover its tax liabilities. On Monday, the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) called on the Government to make companies publish their tax returns. In that way, we can all see how they make the journey from their cash profits to their tax bills. Does the Prime Minister agree?; As cancer survival rates continue to improve and given that this is cancer talk week, will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming a new state-of-the-art cancer information centre due to open at Royal Bolton hospital, and will he praise the collaboration of Macmillan Cancer Support, Bolton People Affected by Cancer, Bolton hospice and the Bolton clinical commissioning group, which are all making this happen?; In the summer of 2014 when I was the leader of Highland Council, I wrote to the Prime Minister asking him to join the Scottish Government and Highland Council in taking forward a city deal for Inverness. Highland Council has submitted a detailed plan on the theme of “a region for young people”. Will the Prime Minister now commit to giving this the green light in the coming weeks?
David William Donald Cameron (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue. It was an honour to meet former President Nasheed, who I think did an excellent job for his country in cutting out corruption and turning that important country round. He suffered terribly from being in prison, and it is good that he is able to get out to seek medical treatment, but we want to see a change in behaviour from the Maldivian Government to make sure that political prisoners are set free. Yes, we are prepared to consider targeted action against individuals if further progress is not made. Let us hope that the diplomatic efforts, including by the Commonwealth action group, will lead to the changes we want to see. Britain and its allies, including Sri Lanka and India, are watching the situation very closely.
Engagements — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Transportation
Questions: Rugby is the fastest-growing town in the west midlands, and work is under way to provide 6,200 much-needed new homes at the Rugby Radio site. My constituents are keen to ensure that public services keep pace with those developments and to see more services at their local hospital, St Cross. Does the Prime Minister agree with the NHS chief executive, Simon Stevens, that district hospitals such as St Cross play an excellent role in the NHS?; Not everybody is as satisfied as the Chancellor with what for Google is loose change to cover its tax liabilities. On Monday, the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) called on the Government to make companies publish their tax returns. In that way, we can all see how they make the journey from their cash profits to their tax bills. Does the Prime Minister agree?; As cancer survival rates continue to improve and given that this is cancer talk week, will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming a new state-of-the-art cancer information centre due to open at Royal Bolton hospital, and will he praise the collaboration of Macmillan Cancer Support, Bolton People Affected by Cancer, Bolton hospice and the Bolton clinical commissioning group, which are all making this happen?; In the summer of 2014 when I was the leader of Highland Council, I wrote to the Prime Minister asking him to join the Scottish Government and Highland Council in taking forward a city deal for Inverness. Highland Council has submitted a detailed plan on the theme of “a region for young people”. Will the Prime Minister now commit to giving this the green light in the coming weeks?; Forty-six per cent. of five-year-old children in Bradford suffer from dental decay, compared with just 28% across England. Fewer than half of the children living in the Bradford district have seen a dentist in the last two years. Given that the cost of treating tooth decay far exceeds the cost of prevention, will the Prime Minister look at the lack of availability of NHS dentists in Bradford South as a matter of urgency?
Kevin John Foster (Conservative, Centre-right): As my right hon. Friend knows, the peninsula rail taskforce is set to deliver its report on a resilient railway to Devon and Cornwall. Would he be willing to meet me and a number of colleagues to ensure that Network Rail and the taskforce have enough funding for the two studies into the electrification of the line and the necessary reduction of journey times?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Transportation
Questions: Rugby is the fastest-growing town in the west midlands, and work is under way to provide 6,200 much-needed new homes at the Rugby Radio site. My constituents are keen to ensure that public services keep pace with those developments and to see more services at their local hospital, St Cross. Does the Prime Minister agree with the NHS chief executive, Simon Stevens, that district hospitals such as St Cross play an excellent role in the NHS?; Not everybody is as satisfied as the Chancellor with what for Google is loose change to cover its tax liabilities. On Monday, the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) called on the Government to make companies publish their tax returns. In that way, we can all see how they make the journey from their cash profits to their tax bills. Does the Prime Minister agree?; As cancer survival rates continue to improve and given that this is cancer talk week, will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming a new state-of-the-art cancer information centre due to open at Royal Bolton hospital, and will he praise the collaboration of Macmillan Cancer Support, Bolton People Affected by Cancer, Bolton hospice and the Bolton clinical commissioning group, which are all making this happen?; In the summer of 2014 when I was the leader of Highland Council, I wrote to the Prime Minister asking him to join the Scottish Government and Highland Council in taking forward a city deal for Inverness. Highland Council has submitted a detailed plan on the theme of “a region for young people”. Will the Prime Minister now commit to giving this the green light in the coming weeks?; Forty-six per cent. of five-year-old children in Bradford suffer from dental decay, compared with just 28% across England. Fewer than half of the children living in the Bradford district have seen a dentist in the last two years. Given that the cost of treating tooth decay far exceeds the cost of prevention, will the Prime Minister look at the lack of availability of NHS dentists in Bradford South as a matter of urgency?
David William Donald Cameron (Conservative, Centre-right): I had an excellent meeting with the south-west peninsula rail taskforce, which has been working closely with the Government. I will make sure that we continue to liaise closely with it. Clearly, we need to find an answer and we need to find the funding to make it work. We cannot allow to happen what happened in the past when a problem on our railways led to the peninsula being cut off. We cannot see that happen again.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Brandon Kenneth Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): Once again, I stand at the Dispatch Box grateful for the subject chosen by the Opposition for debate. We are always happy to discuss welfare reform, because it is at the heart of the Government’s agenda. We make no apology for this commitment to the people of Britain Our aim is simple. We need to balance the books and introduce a welfare system that is fair to taxpayers, where work pays and where having a job is always preferable to a life on benefits. The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) speaks as though we are debating in a vacuum. We have to bear in mind where we have come from in order to understand where we are going, and the wider picture. Let us remember that in 2010 we inherited a welfare system that failed to reward work, hurt taxpayers, and was a millstone around the neck of the British economy. During the 13 years of the Labour Government, welfare spending had shot up by 60% in real terms and 1.4 million people had spent most of the previous decade trapped on out-of-work benefits. The result was a benefits system in disarray, which was costing taxpayers an extra £3,000 a year.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Brandon Kenneth Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a powerful point about the way the Labour Government worked to trap people in dependency. We want to work with people to drive aspiration, while giving a fair deal to the British taxpayer.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Brandon Kenneth Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman highlights the terrible mess that the coalition Government inherited. There was no fairness for hard-working taxpayers in such a system. There was nothing progressive in trapping people in lives without hope for a brighter future. The welfare system that his party left was broken, yet the Opposition have since then opposed every single decision we have taken to fix it. We have never heard from them proposals for alternative reforms, which can mean only that they oppose making any difficult decisions at all. It is easy to make noise, but much harder to do the right thing by the British people. We have seen one tactic time and again—scaremongering, exploiting the concerns of the very people they claim to represent, and playing politics with the lives of vulnerable people. Today’s debate is no exception.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Government Operations
Brandon Kenneth Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): We have been clear about protecting the most vulnerable people in our society; I will come to that in a moment. The hon. Gentleman is right. We need to continue to make progress in cracking down on fraud and error, and in local government as well—something that the Labour Government did nothing about.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Brandon Kenneth Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a strong point. It is rare that I disagree with him, but the figure is slightly better than he says. There is £870 million coming through. He highlights the Government’s clear focus on these issues.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Brandon Kenneth Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes another clear and important point. Not just in the past 25 minutes, but in the past six years, Labour has said nothing constructive about how to deal with these issues for the benefit of the British taxpayer.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Stewart Jackson (Conservative, Centre-right): Is not the difference between the two sides of the House the fact that we on the Government side have got 339,000 disabled people into work and off benefits, whereas in 2010 the Labour party, to its eternal shame, presided over a situation in which 70% of people on disability living allowance had never been systematically re-assessed? That is a shocking and disgraceful record.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Brandon Kenneth Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that the financial mess in which the previous Labour Government left this country means that we have to make difficult decisions and move quickly to ensure that hard-working taxpayers are properly protected. I am proud to be working with a Chancellor who sees that as one of our first and foremost duties.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Brandon Kenneth Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): It is almost as though the right hon. Gentleman forgets that when he was a Minister—I think in the DCLG, although he might well still have been at the Treasury—the Government of the time moved the spare room subsidy, which was first introduced under Labour, into the private sector and created the unfairness that we now see. I am not going to stand here and take a lecture from him about this Government doing the right thing in working with the sector to deliver the right outcome and to do what we have always done, which is to protect the most vulnerable in our society. Labour—I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman is guilty of this—simply wants to get a headline by scaremongering around the country.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Alun Craig Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): I, too, hugely welcome the exemption for a year as a really meaningful announcement. Like the £40 million for domestic violence refuges—a tripling of the budget—it is really significant and contrasts with the political point-scoring we have heard from the Opposition.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Brandon Kenneth Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a very good point. A large number of people provide phenomenal services, across the sector and across the country, in working with the most vulnerable. We are keen to work with them to make sure that, as we have said all along, the right protections are in place for the most vulnerable people. Let there be no doubt: this Government will always protect the most vulnerable and provide them with the support they need and a safe home to live in. We are a one nation Government. We want everyone to have the opportunity to live happy and fulfilling lives, whoever they are and wherever they live. We want workers to earn a living wage and benefit from our strong economic growth. We want to support aspiration, boost productivity, reward work over welfare, and allow people to keep more of the money they have earned in their own pockets. That is our new settlement for Britain—to keep moving from a low-wage, high-tax, high-welfare economy to a higher-wage, lower-tax, lower-welfare country On this journey, we will, I repeat, always support vulnerable people and make sure they have a safe home to live in. The whole House should support that aim. Instead, Labour Members are resorting to their favourite tactic of scaremongering for a short-term political headline. It is time to stop that kind of poor politics. It is time to stop playing politics with the lives of vulnerable people while we are working to help to provide the support they need and deserve—and we will provide it.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Stewart Jackson (Conservative, Centre-right): No, I will not The question has to be, where is the Labour party’s policy? Where is the coherence? Where is the comprehensive costing? Where is the alternative? It is not there. And this from the party that voted against every single welfare change that we made in the last Parliament. What would it have done? It allowed housing benefit claims to reach £104,000 for a single year. They are the people who saw a 46% rise in the housing benefit bill. They are the people who consigned millions of families to welfare dependency, with a record number of children in workless households. This Government are doing something about that.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Stewart Jackson (Conservative, Centre-right): Exactly; that is a fairness issue. How can it be fair that working families effectively give a direct payment to other people in social housing, who are often not working? That cannot be fair. We have to deal with the issue of welfare dependency.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Stewart Jackson (Conservative, Centre-right): Sorry, I would love to, but I do not have time Housing associations must work with those partners to deliver the projects that they want to deliver I am not wholly supportive of the Government on this issue and I will tell the House why. There has to be a comprehensive and holistic approach to meeting the crisis that the demographic time bomb of older people will bring to acute social care and acute hospital care. We have to reduce those numbers. We have to use the tax system—
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Stewart Jackson (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not, I am afraid. The hon. Lady is not taking the hint, but I cannot give way because I do not have time We must use the tax system and the expertise that we have to deliver good adult social care and to care for women who have been subject to domestic abuse. That is a massive issue. Of course, we have put £40 million into it. Mention was made earlier of discretionary housing payments, which will assist those tenants directly. Incidentally, we have talked about the spare room subsidy, but those payments were not always drawn down fully by local authorities, often Labour ones, because of inefficiency I say to Ministers that the Opposition spokesman made the fair point that we need further clarity. It cannot be the will of the Government to make it more difficult to develop more extra care facilities. We do not want non-viable projects to go forward. It is therefore important that the Treasury, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Communities and Local Government get round the table and work out together how we can deal with this We have a duty and a responsibility to deal with the fiscal inheritance, including the out-of-control welfare spending, but we must balance that with practical, pragmatic solutions that deliver adult social care and that are fair to the most vulnerable people in our society, whom we all care about—memo to the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle). Fairness and equity are important, but if we demand tax revenue from our constituents, we must deliver value for money. That is why I will not support the Labour party tonight, but will support the Government.
Housing Benefit and Supported Housing — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Graham Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): No, I will not Those who oppose making difficult decisions on welfare must say what they would cut or what taxes they would put up to pay for it. However, it would seem from some contributions by Opposition Members that Labour and its leader have still not learned the lessons of the past. Their plans to spend more, borrow more and tax more are exactly what got us into the mess before; and, as Labour’s great recession showed, it is working people and their families who end up paying the price for it. When we came into government in 2010, the country was borrowing over £150 billion a year. One in every four pounds spent by the then Labour Government was borrowed. Unemployment had increased by nearly half a million. Britain had suffered the deepest recession since the war and had the second biggest structural deficit of any major economy We have halved the deficit and are working to eradicate it by 2020. It is a fundamental truth that without sound public finances there can be no economic security for working families and the country cannot pay for the hospitals, schools and housing that people rely on. It is this Government’s long-term economic plan that is turning this country into a high-wage, low-tax, low-welfare economy. The Labour party is out of touch with hard-working people. Labour is out of touch, out of ideas on welfare and out of office—and, based on this debate, will be for a very long time.
Prisons and Probation — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Edward Garnier (Conservative, Centre-right): When I was in the hon. Gentleman’s position as shadow prisons Minister 10 years ago, I could have tabled a motion in the name of the official Opposition in exactly the same terms as the first four and three-quarter lines of his motion. Why did he not do something about the problem then?
Prisons and Probation — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Stephen Charles Brine (Conservative, Centre-right): It would be remiss at this point not to place it on the record that the Psychoactive Substances Bill, which passed through the House last week, will make possession inside the secure estate a criminal offence. I think the hon. Gentleman welcomed that.
Prisons and Probation — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Lucy Claire Leigh (Frazer) (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman paints a bleak picture. Of course we must always do more, but does he accept that, according to a recent report by the chief inspector, outcomes for women have improved and the number of children in custody has fallen?