argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
International Aid: Treasury Update — House of Commons, 2021-07-13
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Murray Alexander Law (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I agree with every point that the hon. Member makes. It is important for our national security and in our national interest to be stepping up at this point, not stepping away The UK Government’s funding to the United Nations Population Fund, which provides contraceptives and reproductive health supplies globally, is being cut by a staggering 85%. Yes, Mr Speaker, you heard that correctly: 85%. The UNFPA has stated: "These cuts will be devastating for women and girls and their families across the world." The money being withheld by this Government would have helped to prevent a quarter of a million child and maternal deaths, nearly 15 million unintended pregnancies and more than 4 million unsafe abortions A third example, which just shows how ridiculous the cuts are, is that tens of thousands of people are likely to die needlessly because nearly 300 million doses of medicine for the treatment of neglected diseases in Africa are at risk of expiring following the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s announcement that it is almost entirely withdrawing its allocated funding. So far, the UK Government have not confirmed that the expiring medicines will be distributed urgently rather than destroyed. What an utter folly—an absence of simple human decency. Hon. Members voting on the motion must tell their constituents that, because these are the simple facts Those are just three examples that cover women’s reproductive rights, disease prevention and urgent humanitarian assistance, but cuts are happening across the board. Programmes to eradicate poverty, to prevent conflict or even to combat climate change—in the year that we will host COP26 in Glasgow—are all suffering a similar fate. Each budget reduced, each project scaled back and each programme cancelled results in a loss of hard-fought progress, a loss of expertise and, fundamentally, a loss of trust. This so-called temporary measure will inflict long-term damage and long-term pain and suffering, which is why the cut must be urgently reversed. The Government are pretending that there is no other option than to cut from 0.7% to 0.5%, but we know that that is not the case. In fact, it is blatantly not the case It must have been a complete humiliation for the UK Government when they hosted the G7 summit in Cornwall last month, which should have been a moment of pride in demonstrating our shared collective values. This House may ask why. It is because every other G7 country has recognised the necessity of helping those in urgent need at this time of unprecedented volatility and increased aid spending.
International Aid: Treasury Update — House of Commons, 2021-07-13
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Murray Alexander Law (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Member for his comments. This is not a question of pride that we are still giving very generously—that we will be the third most generous. We are the sixth wealthiest nation. We keep talking about global Britain, but we are actually a shrinking Britain with these cuts. We are actually losing our soft power. You are going against national security. You are going against our collective national interest right across this House, with every party that is here today Sadly, because of these brutal cuts by the UK Government, the massive increase in spending—to come back to the hon. Gentleman’s point— by Germany was effectively cancelled out. Within these islands, I should also add, the Scottish Government have increased their international aid budget by 50%. That puts this House, frankly, at shame with this motion It is simply a matter of political priorities, and this Chancellor and this Prime Minister have shown where their priorities lie. Let us not kid ourselves that this is being spent on health, welfare and education at home because it clearly is not. The Chancellor chose to take money away from preventing famine and malnutrition, conflict prevention, and protecting our planet and marginalised communities from the devastating effects of climate change. Instead—I am glad to see the Chancellor in his place—he chose to spend the money on enhanced cyberweapons, AI-enabled drones and, the biggest folly of all, increased stockpiles of nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, after he delivered a windfall for the defence budget—in the very same month the cut from 0.7% to 0.5% was announced If that is not an act of national shame, let us look at the icing on the cake. The Prime Minister, who is no longer in his place—he should be embarrassed when I read this—believes that spending upwards of £200 million on a shiny brand new royal yacht, Britannia 2.0, is more important than using lifesaving aid to deliver a more just, peaceful and secure world. That is despite the fact of the royal family’s complete displeasure. Mr Speaker, how un-British could that be?
International Aid: Treasury Update — House of Commons, 2021-07-13
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Murray Alexander Law (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I raised it only because it is on the record elsewhere Even every former living Prime Minister has opposed this cut and continues to do so. The simple fact is that aid spending has always been in the Prime Minister’s sights, ever since he described it as "spending huge sums of British taxpayers’ money as though we were some independent Scandinavian NGO" and "shovelling money out the door" He has now chosen to go against a decades-long cross-party consensus, breaking his own manifesto promise and that of all his Conservative colleagues as he is dragged far right by the UK Independence party and the Brexit party, and implementing their promises to cut aid instead This will likely herald a new decade of austerity. Let us call it austerity 2.0. We all know what the first decade was like. There is nothing temporary about this motion. This is not global Britain; this is a nasty, short, poor, brutish and, most of all, very little Britain. Across this House, we all stood on a manifesto commitment to protect the 0.7% spend on international development. That is, for those who are not very good at maths, 7p in every £10. When I describe that to children in primary schools I visit and to young people in my constituency, they are surprised at how little we spend as the sixth wealthiest nation in the world and they are right to be so Today, we have an opportunity to reaffirm our values, rather than be led into voting to balance the imaginary books on the backs of the world’s poorest. We must all keep to our word to deliver on our promises to our fellow global citizens who are the most marginalised and vulnerable people on earth. If covid has taught us anything, it is that we all share in the same struggles and challenges, but also the hopes and dreams of a better future, working together as one planet and one community. Now more than ever before we must step up to support our global community, not step away. There is no honour for those who have suffered as a result of this pandemic in stepping away. There is no meaning in the phrase "building back better" if we turn our backs. For those who decide to vote for this immoral motion today, there is no place for you to hide. When asked the question, "Why did you vote for this?" by your own children, friends and family and, equally importantly, constituents, it will be an indelible mark against your opportunity to do the right thing here today and you will have to live with it for the rest of your time in this House.
International Aid: Treasury Update — House of Commons, 2021-07-13
Topic: International Affairs
Alyn Edward Smith (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The Scottish National party opposes these cuts, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) eloquently outlined. We are committed to our 0.7% manifesto commitment. Some 98.2% of the votes cast in the Sterling election in 2019 went to parties committed to the 0.7%, so I am representing my party and my constituency in the stance we have taken I pay tribute to and warmly praise a number of Members on the Government Benches; we have heard some refreshing blasts of integrity throughout this discussion. This is too important for Punch and Judy politics There are just three points I would make, because this is a well-trodden path at this point in the debate. First, the 0.7% figure is a Government manifesto commitment made barely 18 months ago. Secondly, yes, covid has changed everything of course, but it has changed everything for everybody else as well, and to use covid as a pretext for this cut when the developing world is also dealing with covid and the effects of the economic impact is reprehensible Thirdly, the cut is out of step with the rest of the world. The UK is the outlier in this; other countries are increasing, not decreasing, their aid spending. The UK remains, as we have heard, a significant donor of international aid—I applaud that, I welcome that, I acknowledge that—but this is a broken promise to the poorest people in the world at the worst possible time, and it flies in the face of the global consensus. Canada is increasing its spend by 28% while the UK is decreasing its by 25%, and France is increasing its spend by 36%, Italy by 13%, the US by 39.4% and Germany by 6%. It is the UK that is out of step Global Britain is clearly not the SNP’s project, but we are engaged in this because we do not want to see the poorest in the world let down. We want to try to rectify a mistake and to see Scottish taxes—or, more realistically, Scottish debt—go to effective purposes rather than where this Government might take them. We are entirely unconvinced by the Government’s compromise proposal; we think that to present this as an arithmetic formula is to misrepresent this issue entirely. Estimates and numbers are arguable of course, but, as has been acknowledged throughout this debate, only once in the last 20 years have the criteria foreseen within the Government’s mechanism been met. We fear this is a formula to entrench the cuts, not to bring the spending back Now, of course the books need to be balanced, and I feel for the Government in that task, but the difference between 0.5% and 0.7% is barely 1% of the global sum. For a Government who have spent money on increasing defence spending and nuclear capacity, blown £1.3 billion on a needless stamp duty freeze and yet—worse—are talking about a royal yacht, I think the priorities are wrong. I do hope that a significant number of Conservative Members will join the coalition to put this right.
International Aid: Treasury Update — House of Commons, 2021-07-13
Topic: International Affairs
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The Prime Minister brought a very sombre tone to the Dispatch Box this afternoon, trying to convince us that this decision was all a regrettable consequence of the economic impact of the pandemic, but that rings hollow when we remember the glee with which he stood at the Dispatch Box this time last year and announced the abolition of the Department for International Development, when he described aid and DFID as a "giant cashpoint in the sky".—[Official Report, 16 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 670.] We also remember that, as Foreign Secretary, he quoted Kipling in a Buddhist temple in Myanmar and, when he was a journalist, used the language of "piccaninnies" and "watermelon smiles" This is a Prime Minister and a Government who know little and care less about the struggles of poverty, whether at home or abroad, or about the life-saving, life-changing difference that aid can and does make around the world. A bit like the English votes for English laws Standing Orders that we will be debating later today, the aid budget to them is just another part of David Cameron’s legacy that they seem so keen to bury. I think the Prime Minister likes the fact that he is the only living Prime Minister who supports the cut in the aid budget. It is part of this year zero, hard rain approach to the UK consensus that has existed for so long. That consensus saw every single Member of this House, as has been said, elected on the commitment of 0.7%. It is a consensus that has existed for 20 years, with a target that has been met consistently since 2013. The 0.5% figure is completely arbitrary; 0.7% was calculated by international organisations when it was set in the 1970s. As I have said, the 0.5% figure is completely arbitrary, and we have not heard why it is not 0.4%, 0.6% or 0.3%. It is simply that it sounds good and sounds as though the Government are taking decisive action. That seems to be their attitude to so many aspects of government just now, never mind the impact or the feasibility.
International Aid: Treasury Update — House of Commons, 2021-07-13
Topic: International Affairs
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): But the UK is now resiling from that. The Government are resiling from it, and they will not even give us a legally binding vote on the decision to resile from the commitment agreed by the entire House. What we consistently hear from the Dispatch Box is about being a soft power superpower and about global leadership, and in a year when the UK should be taking the lead, it is taking a step backwards Of course, the decision to cut aid has been shown to be doubly problematic because aid was due to fall anyway. GNI has been falling as a result of the pandemic-related economic contraction anyway, and there would have been tough decisions and funding squeezes, but those would have been predictable and manageable. There is this notion that it is all being paid for by debt, but we could say that about all kinds of aspects of Government spending. All Governments around the world run debts and deficits, and they invest for the future. Aid is an investment in all of our collective futures, but what is happening now in real time is that drastic, sweeping cuts have already been made to get down to this completely arbitrary target of 0.5%, and these will be massively difficult to undo Despite today’s attempt to bounce the House into a decision and all these other shenanigans, the Government’s own rhetoric does not add up. The Prime Minister repeatedly says that the covid investment they are making is going to be additional. Well, if it is going to be additional, how can the Government spend 0.5%—they must be spending more than 0.5%—and if it is not additional, then what else is going to be cut? It does not make any sense I did not get an answer in the last debate about the concerns raised about UK Aid Match. The public have been donating £1 to certain charities in good faith on the basis that the UK Government would match that, but charities such as Mary’s Meals have now been told that this funding will be delayed, and they will be wondering whether it will ever appear at all. Hundreds of constituents in Glasgow North have contacted me about that since the cut was first announced. That speaks to thousands of activists and organisations across the country Aid works best when it is stable and predictable in the long term. There will be no undoing some of the damage caused by the UK Government’s cuts. They have been hastily and, in some cases, disastrously implemented. A return to 0.7% as soon as possible will at least mitigate some of that damage. I hope that some of the Tories who have been opposed to the Government’s decision so far will continue to show resilience and vote tonight to restore our aid commitment to our poorest brothers and sisters around the world.
International Aid: Treasury Update — House of Commons, 2021-07-13
Topic: International Affairs
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): May I begin by saying how pleased I am that the Government have finally bowed to pressure and that we in this House are having the vote that we were promised on cutting money to the world’s poorest people? It is absolutely right that we have that vote because every Member of this House must declare his or her position. I fear that, without a meaningful vote, Members on the Government Benches could continue to hide behind crocodile tears or meaningless words of regret, without ever having to display the courage of their convictions and stand up and tell this Government that the decision to take £5 billion away from the world’s poorest people is fundamentally wrong and morally repugnant At the end of this debate, we will all have to declare where we stand, and no one can continue in the hope that, by choosing to stay silent, he or she will not be asked to come off the fence. Although this vote has been a long time coming, it does mean that we are all in this House well rehearsed in the arguments. Absolutely no one can pretend that he or she does not know what they are voting for this evening, or that they do not understand the consequences of their actions when they vote. They now know that, if they support the motion, that money is not coming back I find it utterly incomprehensible that the Government of one of the richest countries in the world appear hellbent on making the poorest people on this planet even poorer and more susceptible and vulnerable to disease, hunger and the lack of clean water. For them to push this as vigorously as they have, despite every single analysis telling them and us that millions of people will die, simply beggars belief. It is shameful that, if the motion is agreed tonight, it will mark a new low point for a country that pretends or boasts about being a beacon for tolerance, decency and humanity. This is the test of that vote As I have said before, this country has a moral obligation to help those in what we now call the developing world, not least because this country is in no small way responsible for the situation in which they now find themselves. The UK—Great Britain—grew rich and powerful on the backs of the world’s poor. We invaded, conquered, divided and plundered, leaving behind an impoverished wasteland. It is about time that this country woke up to its moral responsibility to assist those we abandoned to live with the consequences of British imperialism. We should not be running away from that responsibility. Those on the Government Benches have to accept that that is the consequence of their action tonight.
English Votes for English Laws — House of Commons, 2021-07-13
Topic: Government Operations
Peter Wishart (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am thrilled to be called to speak now, Madam Deputy Speaker May I start by setting something straight? There is an answer to the West Lothian question. Tam Dalyell and I actually came up with two answers some 17 years ago. One, Madam Deputy Speaker, as you know, is the Harthill services, and the second is salt and sauce. I will leave it to the House to determine which one is the correct answer What an utter humiliation this is for the Government. A flagship policy of the 2015 manifesto will soon be nothing more than a footnote in future constitutional history books, and, remember, it is just another Tory policy disaster. God knows what they were thinking about when they introduced this some six years ago. They were consumed with the notion that we, the unkempt Caledonian hordes, were somehow stopping them securing the democratic outcomes that they desired—us, the 59 Scots MPs out of 650 MPs, needed to be constrained and curtailed. EVEL was just about the worst solution to a problem that did not even exist Never before has a procedure come to this House that has divided the membership of this House into two different and distinct classes. Not only did it do that, it did it by nationality and by geography. It is a procedure that barely anyone understands, that is a burden to the management and administration of the business of this House, that is entirely unnecessary, and that produces almost unprecedented resentment. Something that it will be remembered for more than anything else is what it has done for the cause of English devolved governance. This was the first serious attempt to create some sort of forum for English democracy. We actually agree with them. They do deserve their English Parliament. They should always get the outcomes that they want and deserve. We have even got a neat, practical and elegant solution to that, but, of course, they will not even start to look at that. There are myriad solutions to resolving this within the precious Union. The thing is that they could not be bothered doing the work. They could not be bothered rolling up their sleeves and designing a Parliament of their own. They decided instead to come here and to use the national UK Parliament of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for this doomed experiment. Imagine a quasi-English Parliament squatting here in the national Parliament. What an absolute and utter disgrace.
English Votes for English Laws — House of Commons, 2021-07-13
Topic: Government Operations
Peter Wishart (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I do not have time to give way to the right hon. Gentleman It satisfied absolutely no one. All it did was infuriate Scotland. Instead of securing the near federalism that was promised, Scotland instead saw its MPs become second-class Members in the Parliament that they had just been invited to lead. There were signs in the Division Lobby saying, "England only." They would have been better saying, "Scots out." That is what the Government did with this procedure The Government knew it would never work. From the first moment when they suggested this nonsense, we have told them again and again that it was madness and that, at some point, they would be here—as they are this evening—to withdraw it. Now under pressure from the SNP, EVEL is to be abandoned. This is a spectacular victory for the Scottish National party, and I congratulate all my hon. Friends on bringing down this nonsense. This is one victory that we have secured this week in the United Kingdom and, by God, we are going to celebrate like it is 1966. Believe me, we will be banging on about this for the next 55 years and we will enjoy every minute of it There is a part of me that will miss the entertainment of it all and the laughs that it gave us. It was designed to quell this tartan menace, but I ended up making the most contributions in the Legislative Grand Committee. With 57 contributions, not only was I the most committed and dedicated Member of the English Parliament but I beat all the English Members combined two times over.