argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: Environment
Thelma Doris Walker (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this debate, and I pay tribute to the West Yorkshire fire authority officers who worked so bravely to put out the moorland fires in Saddleworth and Marsden this week. They are heroes It took a 15-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, to speak the words that needed to be spoken about the destruction of our planet and to prick the world’s conscience. Now our children and young people are grasping their future, condemning the irresponsible actions of past generations and demanding a cleaner, greener, more sustainable environment, which is their right. Article 24 of the UN convention on the rights of the children states that every child has the right to the best possible health and that Governments must provide good-quality healthcare, clean water, nutritious food and a clean environment, and education on health and wellbeing so that children can stay healthy. We owe it to future generations to be doing all we can to give them a clean environment to grow up in In England and Wales, hundreds of thousands of children are being exposed to illegal levels of damaging air pollution from diesel vehicles at more than 2,000 schools and nurseries. The World Health Organisation estimates that around 7 million people die every year from exposure to polluted air. Air pollution alone causes many adverse health effects for children, from neurodevelopmental issues, child obesity and asthma to childhood cancers and higher infant mortality rates Article 12 of the convention states that every child has the right to express their views, feelings and wishes in all matters affecting them and to have their views considered and taken seriously. I was proud to see children protesting earlier this month, engaging in political action, to share their concerns about the future. I believe that environmental studies and climate change should be an integral part of the curriculum, but it needs to be part of a society-wide rethink on the environment. Yes, positive steps have been made, but there is much more to be done. Labour’s green transformation, covering the economy and the industrial strategy, aims to address the calls from our youngest citizens. It will be driven by science—by what is necessary, instead of what can be achieved through political compromise. In addition to supporting the target to build a net zero emissions economy by 2050, Labour will ensure that 60% of the UK’s energy comes from low carbon or renewable sources within 12 years of coming to power I want children and adults to work together to drive forward the UK’s progress towards making net zero emissions a reality. To the children and young people worldwide who took a stand a fortnight ago, I say thank you for making your voices heard and for advocating a better future. We hear you.
Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: Environment
Darren Paul Jones (Labour, Centre-left): Rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all parts of the economy: that was the call to action from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Without acting on it, we will miss our climate change targets and global warming will cause fundamental damage to our planet and the way we live our lives. So why is this the first time in two years that we are debating climate change on the Floor of the House of Commons? Why is this debate not being led by the Prime Minister herself? Why is not climate change at the heart of every major statement from this Government The IPCC has given us 12 years. The independent Committee on Climate Change has said that we are falling behind and not acting with enough urgency. The climate strike protestors, whom I visited in Bristol, are rightly demanding more radical and urgent action now. What has been the response? The response to the IPCC report was to write a letter to the independent Committee on Climate Change, asking for advice. We should have been amending the Climate Change Act 2008 by now to upgrade our climate change targets in line with the Paris accord. We should be setting out how on earth we are going to finance the huge investment needed in upgraded infrastructure, energy and food security and in the technologies needed to meet our negative carbon emissions in future.
Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: Environment
Darren Paul Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I cannot give way because we are so short of time. That is the problem: it has taken two years for this issue to get to the Floor of the House, and we have four minutes—four minutes!—to deal with an issue of this enormity. There is no time at all to talk about how we will not be able to meet our electric vehicle targets without investment in the infrastructure system; no time at all to talk about the efficiency of energy use in our homes; and no time at all to talk about food security, agricultural reform or the need for investment in the energy network. That is completely unacceptable I do not think that climate strike protestors from my constituency will be particularly pleased with the idea that their Member of Parliament—and many other hon. Members here today—has only four minutes to deal with this issue. When will it come back to the Floor of the House? Will the Minister tell us in her summing up when we will have days’ worth of debates to get into the issue of climate change There is a total lack of vision about the long-term risks. A world that is 3° warmer than pre-industrial levels is unimaginable yet is within the lifetime of my daughter. The United States and China—gone; Africa, southern Europe, the middle east, India, South America will be uninhabitable, based on models from universities. Refuge for the world will be focused on Canada, the United Kingdom, northern Europe, Scandinavia and Russia. Hundreds of millions of people will be displaced as climate refugees. The world will be dominated by Canada and Russia. Agricultural and food supply chains will be completely lost. This happens within the lifetime of people born in the past year or two, yet we have four minutes to talk about it How we live, what we eat, how we collaborate in a global community: how on earth will we meet the cries from the independent advisers, from the community, from young people, from the scientists—from everybody in the world who says we are not doing enough to tackle this problem? We have four minutes to deal with those issues We are talking about the future of our planet, the world that we want to live in and the role that this country must play, and it is all up for grabs. I stand in solidarity with those young people, the next generation, who took their time away from school to strike on this very issue and say that not enough was being done, and I say that this debate is not enough, although I congratulate the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing it. I look forward to the Minister’s confirmation later of when more time—Government time—will be allocated to this important issue.
Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: Environment
Alexander David Sobel (Labour, Centre-left): Time is short for this debate and for the planet. I am going to speak up for the 3,000 young people who came out in Leeds two weeks ago on the youth climate strike and all the other thousands of young people who came out in every other town and city in the country. I spoke to those young people and said that I would come to the House and support their call for us to address the climate emergency. I call on the Minister today to say that the Government will declare a climate emergency as they would a civil emergency, because we are on the precipice of disaster NASA’s latest measurement of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 411 parts per million. The historic high for this planet is 300 parts per million in 325,000 BC. In 2005, it was 380 parts per million. We are on a trajectory towards the global extinction of humanity. The insects are the canary in the coalmine of our planet. There has been a 75% reduction in flying insects in Europe in the past 25 years. Where the insects go, we will follow. How are we going to tackle this scale of emergency We need a rapid programme of decarbonisation. We need to become a leader in decarbonised technology in this country and in Europe. We need a world in 2030, not 2050, that looks radically different from the world we have today, a world where petrol stations are as common as coaching inns, if we are to avoid climate disaster. We need electric vehicle charge points in every parking bay. All new houses need to be made in factories from airtight and energy-efficient timber. We need to harness the internet and open and smart data, so that everybody knows everything about their lives, from the quality of the air to the amount of carbon in their clothes. This is the brave new world we need to aspire to. We do not need gradual change; we need a paradigm shift in our system. I call on us not to have a green new deal; I call on us to have a Marshall Plan for the environment across Europe and across the planet.
Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: Environment
Alexander David Sobel (Labour, Centre-left): Time is very short, so I am going to continue After the second world war, we got together and we rebuilt this continent. We need to rebuild a planet free of emissions. That needs to be our single, unifying goal. We need to readdress the COP process to that point. We need to re-energise our relationship with our European Union partners—I say that in the strongest sense—to engage and to create this plan. That is where we need to be. If we do not get there we are failing not ourselves, but our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. At the end of the century, they will look back on the Governments of the early part of the century and say, "They failed us. They did not do what was needed." They will be looking at their own extinction—the extinction of our race.
Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: Environment
Mohammad Yasin (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this very important debate This surprisingly warm weather has been a pleasure for most of us this week, but I know I am not the only one who feels unnerved by it. We must be cautious about attributing every single extreme weather event to climate change, but the evidence of our senses, as well as what the vast majority of climate scientists tell us, is overwhelming. The Met Office has already warned that changes to our weather are unprecedented. In 2018, global carbon emissions, a key driver of global warming, reached an all-time high. We are going in the wrong direction It is difficult to know why political leaders have taken so long to address climate change when the public want them to, and it is impossible to comprehend why some are still wasting such precious time denying it. I am pleased that Bedford Borough Council has committed to declaring a climate emergency, but the older generation is really letting young people down on this issue. They have every right to be angry about the future that we shall pass on to them. Rather than criticising them for taking time out of school to protest on the biggest issue facing our planet, it is time we listened to them and shared their sense of urgency and alarm Sir David Attenborough stole the show at the World Economic Forum in January. He said: "We are destroying the natural world, and with it ourselves." Many of my constituents were moved and compelled to write to me after the shocking scenes in "The Blue Planet", which showed the impact of human activity on marine life and the extent of plastic pollution in our oceans. There is a huge appetite from the public to stop this I am pleased that the UK has signed up to the Paris agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, but we are a long way off achieving it. Tougher action is needed, which is why I support the target of net zero emissions by 2050. The Government claim to support the target but that has not been followed up with action. The scale and scope of our policies to address climate change should be defined not by political compromises and unambitious targets but by what is necessary to keep temperatures within safe levels. I agree with Sir David Attenborough: unless we sort ourselves out now, we are dooming our children and grandchildren to an appalling future.
Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: Environment
Alan Patrick Vincent Whitehead (Labour, Centre-left): This has been a tremendously good, positive and applied debate, and, from my 21 years in this House, I cannot say that has always been the case. I have attended virtually every climate change debate in this House, and it is shocking that we have not had one for two years Those previous debates were usually characterised by a claque of climate change deniers who regularly attempted to derail them. This debate is perhaps a reflection of where we have got to now. I thought that one of the last remaining serious climate change deniers in the House, the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), would take part, but it turned out he wanted to talk about Welsh tourism, which is a mercy We are all together this afternoon, perhaps for the first time, when it is almost too late. Everything that has been said by climate scientists, and that has been said in all the debates I have been involved in during my long time in the House, is coming true and proving to be right. We should perhaps talk not about a climate change debate but about a climate is changing debate I am not smug about the fact that what I was saying in our previous debates has been proved right, and what those climate change deniers were saying has been proved wrong; it scares me stiff. We are now at two minutes to 12 on the climate emergency before us. I thank all the hon. Members who, in different ways, have contributed this afternoon on that central point I thank the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing this debate, and I thank the hon. Members, such as my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) and for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), who pointed out just how little time we have had for these debates. When we get the advice of the Committee on Climate Change on a net zero future, it might be appropriate for the Minister to make sure that we can have a debate in Government time, for at least half a day—or a whole day, if we want to be ambitious—on that advice and its implications and ramifications so that hon. Members are allowed the proper time to put across what they want to say about this climate emergency and what we need to do to deal with it I am scared stiff because I know that the ability to do anything about this climate emergency is on our watch. Members of Parliament over the next 12 years, as mentioned in the IPCC report, will have to get their act together on climate change or forever miss the opportunity to do anything about it.
Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: Environment
Paul John Sweeney (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making an important point about the time constraints, and about how this House has not done nearly enough to debate this issue. Does he agree it is critical that other Government Departments, not just BEIS, focus on the implications of climate change, particularly the Department for Transport, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Defence and so on? We must understand the impact those Departments have on Government policy in shaping a holistic approach to policy making across all parts of Government.
Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: Environment
Alan Patrick Vincent Whitehead (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes an important point, which is that the action we need to be taking in this House for the future must not just be the province of one Department, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) pointed out. It needs to be something that seeps to the core of every part of government and of this House. Everything we do must be judged by whether we are making progress on reducing carbon emissions and fighting the effects of climate change or whether it is going in the opposite direction In that context, I want to draw the House’s attention to what we have done so far and what we are—we hope—going to do for the future, because that is crucial in terms of moving from our current target of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 to that net zero target. Of course a net zero target does not just mean doing things that reduce carbon; it means doing things that actually put carbon back in the ground. We are talking about negative carbon emissions, as well as positive carbon emissions. It means planning a whole different system of doing things, as my hon. Friends the Members for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) and for Cardiff North drew attention to. We need to do things in different ways in order to make that change in our economy, so that we have a permanent low-carbon, sustainable economy for the future.
Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: Environment
Alan Patrick Vincent Whitehead (Labour, Centre-left): Yes, the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct about that; using carbon cycles so that they are as long as possible and in the end the carbon is sequestered is a good way of ensuring that we make our economy as circular as possible, in addition to sequestering the carbon arising from it We have been given the Government’s clean growth plan. It was set out in response to the fifth carbon budget requirements, which, among other things, require us to get our carbon emissions down by 57% from 1990 levels by the end of the fifth carbon budget. I have to say to the House that the clean growth plan fails to do what it says it is going to do about the fifth carbon budget. Indeed, it suggests that we may be as much as 9.7% over the targets for the fifth carbon budget in terms of the things that the Government are setting out to do. So absolutely the first thing we need to do in considering our progress towards zero carbon is to fundamentally make over, that clean growth plan so that it actually works. Not only must it achieve the terms of the fifth carbon budget, but it must go beyond that so that we are ready and setting ourselves up for the advice we are going to get from the Committee on Climate Change as to how we get to zero carbon. I invite the Government to start work today on getting that clean growth plan reorganised so that it can meet the terms of net zero when they come to us. Were the Government to embark on that strategy, they would have the full support of the Opposition in making that work and making sure that we are ready for net zero, and not running along behind, as we have for so many years in this House since the climate emergency started to come upon us.
Yemen — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: International Affairs
Keith Anthony Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): I am most grateful to Mr Speaker for granting this debate. I am glad to see the Minister for the Middle East, the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), present today, for he is a person of great knowledge and experience regarding this matter. I am also glad to see other colleagues in attendance In a world beset by multiple crises, Yemen continues to exhaust all comparisons as a political and humanitarian crisis. There has never been a conflict quite like it. In 26 days’ time, we will be approaching the fourth anniversary of this gruesome and tragic war, when the first bombs fell near the city of my birth, Aden. By the minute, by the hour and by the day, Yemenis continue to die. Whether by air raids, landmines, starvation or illness, Yemenis from the north and the south are suffering unimaginable trauma, and are being killed Yemen holds that bleak title of the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. The scorecard of shame brings tears to my eyes. Eighty-five thousand children have starved to death, 24 million people need humanitarian assistance, 3.1 million have been displaced and 60,000 have been killed since conflict began in March 2015. That is 294 each week, and 42 every single day Yemen is still suffering because, despite recent discussions and negotiations, in Yemen itself nothing has changed. When I meet and speak to Yemenis, they are crying out for peace. But they are asking searching questions of this Parliament and our Government: "Why is this still going on? How much more suffering can we take? And why is the world appearing to do nothing about it?" This humanitarian situation is a tragedy. For six months, until only last week, there was absolutely no access to the Red Sea mills in the port of Hodeidah, which can feed up to 3.7 million people in a month. A UN report published just 14 days ago on 14 February reported that 14.3 million Yemenis are now in acute need. BBC News on 4 February revealed harrowing images of children starving; 10.3 million children do not know where their next meal will come from. Yet the war continues. Bombing runs—155 in January this year—are terrorising people, and destroying buildings and 1,000 years of Yemeni heritage.
Yemen — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: International Affairs
Keith Anthony Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): I absolutely agree and I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for all the work that she has done on Yemen, keeping this issue very much alive in this Parliament and elsewhere. She is right that there is no excuse for bombing medical facilities In fact, 19,200 airstrikes have hit since those first raids in 2015. Violence is being perpetrated on all sides. A total of 267 civilians have died because of landmines that are now hidden in the landscape of western Yemen. In January 2019, five charity workers were killed while trying to de-mine. There is no point in the UK Government generously pledging funds if the aid cannot actually reach the people of Yemen.
Yemen — House of Commons, 2019-02-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Keith Anthony Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): What is the key blockage? I know that it is very complicated and there are lots of different factors, but is there one key issue? It was prisoner swaps before. Is there something else holding this up?
Public Services Delivery: Technology — House of Commons, 2019-02-06
Topic: Technology
Joanne Marie Platt (Labour, Centre-left): When it comes to the delivery of technology with the use of public money, we know whose side the Government are on: their mates in the megafirms. Their spending on Cloud provision with just one company, Amazon Web Services, has increased by 8,000% since 2015. The next time the Minister signs off another multimillion-pound tech contract, will he perhaps spare a thought for one of the UK’s incredible small and medium-sized enterprises?
Public Sector Procurement — House of Commons, 2019-02-06
Topic: Government Operations
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): Is not the Minister guilty of a bit of jiggery-pokery? [Hon. Members: "Oh!"] The fact of the matter is that if the Government looked at good examples such as Huddersfield University and Kirklees Council, they would see the way in which they emphasise local and regional procurement, which brings in jobs and wealth and retains them in our communities. Why do this Government not do the same?