argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): I will reflect on that analysis, but I certainly hope that the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that we should not react to the events that took place last Friday and the murder of our constituents. I will set out how we are reacting As Tunisian security forces investigate accomplices in what looks like an ISIL-inspired plot, RAF aircraft have been bringing home the seriously injured and have started repatriating the bodies of those who died. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families at this time, as well as with those who have lost loved ones in France and Kuwait. Tomorrow we will hold a national minute’s silence to remember them The Government continue to work with tour operators to ensure that all those who want to come back from Tunisia can do so. Extra flights have been organised and several hundred counter-terrorism officers are at our airports, supporting travellers and gathering evidence. The UK national police response will be one of the largest counter-terrorism operations in a decade. Here at home, the threat level from international terrorism remains unchanged—severe. That means an attack is highly likely. Our police, security services and armed forces are working day and night to protect us. This year we have increased funding for our police and intelligence services, and we are legislating to give them stronger powers to seize passports and prevent travel. Disrupting violent threats to the UK mainland and our interests overseas is just one element of our broader strategy to counter ISIL. I want to assure the House that Britain is playing a full part in the international coalition to defeat ISIL by targeting the financiers, disrupting supplies of weapons and discrediting its poisonous ideology.
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): I discussed exactly that with His Majesty the King of Jordan when he was here last week. I assure my hon. Friend that we are doing everything we can to encourage the region itself to assist the legitimate Government of Iraq. For example, we are taking the lead in the strategic communications group, which is a smaller group of nations helping to battle that ideology. It is a fight in which the region itself must be fully engaged.
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: International Affairs
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): In 2013, the Government wanted to remove Assad without helping al-Qaeda or similar groups that later became Daesh. Now we apparently want to remove Daesh but without helping Assad. Those two things are incompatible. It is a choice of two evils. Which does my right hon. Friend think is the lesser of those two evils?
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): We do not want to give any succour to Assad. I do not think that anybody in this House wants the Assad regime to continue for a day longer than is necessary; we want Assad to go. But we are equally clear that ISIL operations in Iraq and elsewhere, probably including Libya, are being directed from northern Syria. We already have American air strikes being carried out in northern Syria and air strikes being carried out from other Gulf countries. We have air strikes being carried out by Canadian aircraft that are helping to keep our streets safe as well.
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: International Affairs
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): If we have a Daesh terrorist plotting murders in the United Kingdom, we arrest them, prosecute them, and put them in prison. If that same terrorist goes to Iraq, we try to hunt them down and kill them and blow up the building they are living in. How does that help create a rule of law or democratic pressures in Iraq? Is not the most important thing to try to impose a rule of law and diplomacy and work away to get some solution?
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): I recognise my right hon. Friend’s view, which he has honourably held for a long time and advocated very eloquently in the debate two years ago. However, I am afraid that the people we are dealing with—ISIL—do not respect the rule of law, do not respect our system of prosecution, and do not respect international boundaries. Everything we are doing in Iraq is at the request of, and with the authority of, the legitimate Government of Iraq, and any action that we are supporting in Syria is in aid of our operations to assist the Government of Iraq.
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): I have been generous in giving way and I will do so again in a moment I want to deal with the particular issues on the domestic front. We are preventing those who have been radicalised from travelling. Last year, the Home Secretary removed or refused, under the public interest criteria, 24 passports of individuals intending to travel for terrorism-related activity. We have given the police new powers to temporarily seize passports at the border. We have put our no-fly list on a statutory footing. The police have issued new guidance to airlines to ensure that vulnerable children travelling on high-risk routes are identified and referred. I accept that, as the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) said, this needs to be fully co-ordinated across Government, and that is the case. Our world-class security services work day and night to disrupt terrorist plots, and we will continue to give them the investment they need. We will introduce new investigatory powers legislation to ensure that law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies have the capabilities they need to keep us safe from those who would do us harm At the same time, we are challenging the extremist narrative, using strategic communications to get out a faster truth to counter the malicious misinformation of our adversaries; joining with internet companies to take down more than 90,000 pieces of extremist material; training over 300,000 people since 2011, including front-line public sector workers, to ensure that they can identify and prevent radicalisation; and excluding nearly 100 preachers of hate—more than any other Government. We are using moderate voices across the middle east and north Africa, and in the United Kingdom, to air a counter-narrative. We spend about £10 million a year with social media and local journalists to encourage millions to reject ISIL’s recruiting slogans. The terrorists should know that every cowardly attack will only harden our resolve. We are in this for the long term and we are determined to win this fight.
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): I have a lot of sympathy with that view. Of course, our interlocutors in the Gulf and our coalition allies refer to it as Daesh, and as the Prime Minister reported on Monday, we have now got the BBC to move away from calling it any kind of state. I have referred to it in shorthand as ISIL, and it may be too late to replace "ISIL" with "Daesh", but the hon. Lady is right to say that we need to reflect on it and not to confer any further legitimacy on ISIL.
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Georg John Tugendhat (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend has mentioned a number of operations on which I had the honour to serve. Although he is identifying military options for these problems, he will be more than aware that most of them do not really have a military solution. For example, in Nigeria, where we are helping against Boko Haram, the fundamental problem is the huge corruption in the Nigerian armed forces and the destructive element in the Nigerian Government. What can we possibly do with our Foreign Office colleagues to address the real problem rather than just the military fix?
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour to his place in this House. He brings a wealth of experience from the armed forces and, indeed, the Ministry of Defence to debates such as this one. His question allows me to emphasise the importance of the work of other Departments. These cannot just be military solutions The work of the Department for International Development is extremely important and I have always seen development and defence as two sides of the same coin. The money we can spend up-front on capacity building helps to avoid a bigger financial outlay downstream. That money and the work by DFID and the Foreign Office can help prevent crises and conflicts. By strengthening countries in Africa, we can do more to discourage people from leaving them, and because today’s aid budget is much better focused, with fewer countries receiving it, it has greater impact We are spending some £60 million on supporting millions of people who have been displaced by ISIL/Daesh, and we have pledged £900 million to answer the specific humanitarian crisis in Syria—the biggest ever UK response to any crisis anywhere.
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: International Affairs
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who anticipates the very next point I was going to make. If we use the term Daesh, eventually, with luck, the BBC will be the only organisation left not doing so. At that point, even the BBC might see sense I wish to paint a brief picture of the sort of problems we face that lead to the strange paradox that I alluded to when I intervened briefly on the Secretary of State. As I said, two years ago we were proposing to intervene on behalf of one side in a civil war and against the other. Now, it is being proposed that we do exactly the opposite. There are people in the House who are far more expert in these matters than I—
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew William Murrison (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that if countries want the cover, they have to be prepared to pay the premium, but does he agree that, rather than insist on 0.7% or 2% imposed by supranational organisations, we should instead focus on outputs? In other words, we should focus on effectiveness—be that international development or defence. In those respects, this country does pretty well.
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Georg John Tugendhat (Conservative, Centre-right): I have been part of the main debate from the beginning Does my hon. and learned Friend recognise that it is the governance problem in Nigeria that is causing the rise of Boko Haram? The rise of so many of these insurgent movements has rather more to do with governance and diplomatic problems than military ones.
Britain and International Security — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Phillips (Conservative, Centre-right): It is always difficult to condense a longer speech into a shorter speech, but I will take the injunction from the Chair In closing, this is a problem that Ministers must not forget. Of course the threat from Daesh is critical and something with which we must deal, but the threat of Islamist terrorism across Africa is also a very real threat. It threatens us here. I hope that the Minister will say that it is a matter of which the Foreign Office is aware and on which it will concentrate.
Hatfield Colliery — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: Energy
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) on securing the debate. I also pay tribute to all the men who have served at Hatfield and who now face the end of that work, and to their families. I say "served" because there is a service in the working of coal, especially when it takes place underground in a deep pit I absolutely understand about the age of those men, and, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, I understand—perhaps better than many Members, including those on the Opposition Benches—the effects of coalmining, and of the closure of a mine, on a community. I was brought up in Worksop, next door to Manton colliery, and I went to the comprehensive school that served the Manton estate. Because of my background, I fully understand the huge sacrifices made by men when they work underground. I will be frank: they are indeed lions, often led by donkeys in my experience I have never understood, however, why there has been such an over-sentimental attachment to working underground in, often, the most appalling conditions. As a girl, I was never allowed underground, but at Manton we built a coalface on the top: we could all visit, and see the photographs and understand the experience of men who were stripped to the waist and often worked squatting for long shifts in the most appalling conditions, as these men will have undoubtedly done at some stage in their lives. It is indeed darned hard work and it is a service I want to make it absolutely clear, however, that the right hon. Gentleman is effectively saying that millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money should now go, and continue to go, to keep open this mine until next August even though, unfortunately, it has failed to secure a single contract, despite all the hard work and efforts of its board and the will and determination of all those involved in the pit.
Hatfield Colliery — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: Energy
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): I am afraid I am going to treat that contribution with the contempt it deserves and will continue with my speech We have made a commitment, and this is what we have done. In May 2015 the Government announced we had agreed to provide Hatfield with a longer-term repayable grant of up to £20 million to enable the colliery to continue operating until its planned and agreed closure in August of next year. This funding is state aid which has been approved by the European Commission. Further funding would require further state aid approval Last week the directors of Hatfield Colliery Partnership Ltd told my officials they had been unable to secure sufficient customers for their coal, thus calling into question the viability of the original closure plan. Since being advised of this position, the Government have done all we can to assist the directors of Hatfield, including reiterating our earlier commitment to provide up to £20 million to help the company achieve an orderly and safe closure, and accepting that this funding is, in the light of developments, now unlikely to be repaid. Despite this, the directors concluded it was not economically viable to continue mining and so took the decision to stop coal production on 30 June. It was their decision To understand the cessation of mining at Hatfield, it is important—[Interruption.] No, we did not pull the plug on it; absolutely not. We said we would give £20 million. We will continue to give up to £20 million. The decision was taken by the directors because they failed to secure the contract. This is the history, which I hope the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) will listen to Hatfield’s difficulties go back some time. I believe it closed in 2001 and 2004. Most recently it entered administration in 2010—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) continues to mutter in the way she is doing, I will take great exception, especially if she makes sexist comments.
Hatfield Colliery — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: Energy
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): And no, I will not give way. I have already heard what the hon. Lady has to say Hatfield was restructured at the end of 2013,and in September 2014 had to secure a £4 million loan from the NUM to allow mining to continue. Owing to the continued deterioration in world coal prices, together with production issues, the NUM funding was fully utilised by November, so all that money had already been spent. Unable to secure further funding elsewhere, Hatfield approached the Government in November of last year to request funding. In January of this year, the Government provided Hatfield with a short-term commercial bridging loan of £8 million. The intention was to provide time for the Government to consider options for longer-term financial support, which would allow mining to continue at Hatfield until 2016 In undertaking the due diligence, and owing to changing conditions in the coal markets, it became clear that Hatfield would require funding in excess of the initial £8 million bridging loan and that longer-term support could not be delivered commercially. The Government worked extensively with the company directors and the European Commission to facilitate further support, and approval for state aid was quickly agreed with the Commission. I know that the right hon. Member for Doncaster North has paid tribute privately to, and I know he will join me in thanking publicly, all the officials in my Department for the really hard work that they put in to secure that arrangement It has been suggested that the Government could have provided Hatfield with additional support in the light of possible offers to buy Hatfield coal which might have kept the mine open until August 2016. The directors’ managed closure plan had assumed that replacement contracts, from June this year onwards, would be secured for all Hatfield’s coal output at pricing similar to what had been achieved before. I am aware that there was a possible offer—I have seen the email—from one company for about 50% of Hatfield’s coal output, in addition to other possible commitments and bridging loans. Those offers were at a significantly lower price than the previous contracts that were being replaced. That level of interest was deemed insufficient by the directors—it was they who made the decision—to support the planned closure through to August 2016, and, as we know, no contract was even drafted, even less signed.
Hatfield Colliery — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: Energy
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): I do take issue with the right hon. Gentleman, and absolutely undertake to provide him with all the figures. My argument—it is not just my argument; it is the argument of the officials—is that there is effectively no market for that coal. It would be wrong to mine that coal and stockpile it for—what?—six years on the off-chance that perhaps somebody might come along and buy it. If there had been any way in which any company might have thought it could buy that coal, those contracts would have been secured, but, despite best efforts, they were not. It would be wrong—it would be a complete failure of the Government’s duty to the taxpayer—simply to hand over over and above the £20 million that was originally a loan, but which we now accept will never be repaid.
Armed Forces Covenant — House of Commons, 2015-02-23
Topic: Government Operations
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): I am incredibly proud of the fact that it was this Government who enshrined the covenant in law. We should all be extremely proud of that, and of the work we have done I wrote to all the local authorities that signed the covenant. I have been overwhelmed by their response, and by the outstanding work that many are doing in delivering on their pledges. We must now ensure that that work continues throughout the United Kingdom.
Armed Forces Covenant — House of Commons, 2015-02-23
Topic: Social Welfare
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): That, too, is a good question. The short answer is that it varies. It is clear from the website of the charity mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) that a huge number of charities have signed up and are delivering across the country. Progress is sporadic, because not everyone "gets it", but others absolutely do "get it", and some great work is being done out there.
Armed Forces Covenant — House of Commons, 2015-02-23
Topic: Labor
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): I am really pleased that the hon. Gentleman says we are doing a good job, because I think we are, and he is absolutely right. We now must make sure others do not just sign up, but actually start to deliver. On the work the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for example, has been doing with jobcentres, I recently went to my own jobcentre in Beeston—not for reasons connected with 7 May, I quickly add—and looked at the work it is doing with reserves and veterans. That is sporadic; not every jobcentre or Jobcentre Plus "gets it", to put it in that way, but increasingly they do and that is invariably because of the good work of Members of Parliament and local councils.
Armed Forces Covenant — House of Commons, 2015-02-23
Topic: Government Operations
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I have an excellent letter here from the leader of Wigan council, Lord Smith, extensively detailing all the great work being done. One of the tasks I want to do in the remaining weeks of this Government is to make sure the covenant team with the MOD brings all this work together and gives more advice to local authorities on sharing best practice, because it is stacked full of ideas. There is £30 million available to deliver on many of these projects, and I am pleased to say many are taking that up as well.
Armed Forces Covenant — House of Commons, 2015-02-23
Topic: Social Welfare
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman makes a good point and I have to say my own county council in Nottinghamshire did not understand the covenant when it came to a soldier constituent of mine coming down from Catterick who needed to have a place for his child. I reminded the county council of the covenant. That is the sort of work that local MPs can do when these cases come to us through our casework. It is about making sure we share best practice. There is masses more work to be done, and it would be nice to think I might be able to continue after 7 May, Mr Speaker, but that takes us into different territory.
ISIL — House of Commons, 2015-02-23
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): Yazidi Christians, particularly women, have suffered more than most at the hands of ISIL. They are not alone. ISIL is a terrorist organisation that brutally beheads and crucifies people, slaughters children, sells women as slaves and has systematically used rape as a weapon. We flew supplies and surveillance missions last year to help Yazidi refugees on Sinjar mountain. Since beginning air strikes last September, we have, with other coalition partners, hit ISIL positions that have threatened Yazidi refugees and have assisted the Kurdish peshmerga in pushing back and reclaiming territory from ISIL, which, in turn, helps the Yazidi population.
ISIL — House of Commons, 2015-02-23
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): Our plan in Iraq is very simple: first, to disrupt threats to the UK mainland and to our interests overseas; secondly, as part of an international coalition, to defeat ISIL, including discrediting its violent ideology; and, thirdly, to mitigate the impact of ISIL and other violent extremist groups on the stability of the whole region.