argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Igor Judge (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, it is very geeky to wonder whether secondary legislation amending a schedule should be affirmative or negative. It is rather like a storm in an egg-cup. But there is rather an important issue here. If I may for present purposes adopt what my noble and learned friend has recently said rather than repeat it, the issue that troubles me about this is in the Schedule itself. It makes very clear provision for the Lord Chief Justice to have various responsibilities. He may authorise a person to do this; he may do that; he may nominate the other, and so on. The whole Schedule contains a series of powers and responsibilities vested in the Lord Chief Justice The Schedule also includes a number of provisions which expressly say that the Lord Chancellor may not interfere in the exercise of these powers, for which, on page 11, new Section 67C provides a perfect example. I shall not burden the House by going through all the provisions. My concern is that it is not at all clear from the Bill that the Lord Chief Justice is to be consulted, let alone asked for his concurrence, with any of these proposed changes—and the proposed changes relate to issues over which the Lord Chancellor now has no statutory authority Since the changes—I shall use the word advisedly—in 2003, 2004 and 2005, the Lord Chancellor has ceased to be head of the judiciary. He no longer has any of the functions that former Lord Chancellors used to have. All those responsibilities are vested in the current Lord Chief Justice and, in relation to tribunals, the Senior President of Tribunals. Suddenly, there is a clear danger that, by exercising the powers given in Clause 3(3), the Lord Chancellor may seek at some stage in the future to transfer back to the Lord Chancellor powers that have been vested in the Lord Chief Justice.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-16
Topic: Other
David Pannick (Crossbench, Unknown): Can the noble and learned Lord not merely give the House an assurance that the Government do not intend to use the power to amend primary legislation but also tell the House that the Government’s intention and understanding is that the scope of this power in Clause 3 is such that it could not validly be used for that purpose?
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill — House of Lords, 2018-10-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
David Anderson (Crossbench, Unknown): On a point of order, I have always accepted that the Schedule 7 power to stop should be exercisable without the need for reasonable suspicion. I said that some higher threshold should perhaps be required for some ancillary powers, for example those to detain and examine electronic devices.
Gambling: Fixed-Odds Betting Terminals — House of Lords, 2018-11-01
Topic: Domestic Commerce
David Alton (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, what will the tax yield be from delaying this between now and implementation? What funds will flow into the Treasury which would not otherwise have come and might that money be used to support the voluntary levy, which is inadequate to help charities such as GambleAware to deal with gambling addiction? Does the noble Earl contest these figures from GambleAware: that there are 430,000 problem gamblers; that around 500 suicides annually are linked to gambling; and that 2 million may be at risk from gambling? Will he return to the question that I asked on Tuesday about how advertising is directed unscrupulously at children and young people, especially through things such as virtual games?
Higher Education — House of Lords, 2018-07-19
Topic: Mixed Topics
Karan Bilimoria (Crossbench, Unknown): I appreciate, as I think do all noble Lords, the thorough way in which the Minister has answered so many of the questions we have raised, and we appreciate the British Council and the GREAT campaign. But I asked an important question about India being excluded from the 11 countries that were added for the fast-track scheme for student visas. In fact, yesterday the attaché from the Indian High Commission was very upset about that. A clear answer to that question was not given.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Mixed Topics
Elaine Murphy (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am the world’s greatest pragmatist in this matter. I am very sympathetic to what the noble Baronesses, Lady Barker and Lady Tyler, are saying. This Bill is by no means perfect. It has huge gaps and we would not have started from here, but the reality is that this Bill will be with us for the rest of the autumn and I believe that Sir Simon Wessely’s report will be submitted to the Government around 12 December, so it is likely to come before Third Reading and before we finish the Bill. We will be able to see if there are great big gaps. I do not think the two things will overlap very much. We might be helped out, particularly on amendments on advanced directives, and in that context we can perhaps make ourselves closer to what Sir Simon Wessely recommends, but I do not think there is anything to address, except that the current Bill is not working. We have all those people waiting for an assessment who will never be assessed. We need some legislation in place. There is some urgency. I know we would like a perfect Bill, but we are not going to get one. What we need is an implementable Bill which makes assessments doable for people who need them and so that we can get some process in place. The Bill is not perfect. We would not start from here, but we have this Bill and we should continue with it.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Other
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): I agree with the noble Baroness that when they work well, they can work extremely well. As I said earlier, I would also caution against the family and other people being potentially pushed aside, and people being not adequately supervised or monitored We have a great deal to consider outside the Chamber tonight. I am grateful to the Minister for being in listening mode so far. This group of amendments and the next are the ones that we will need to have a big discussion about. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Other
Elaine Murphy (Crossbench, Unknown): May I just add that I think it is important to read all the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton? She provides for any opportunity, any chance, that the individual may indicate that they have changed their mind, at which point those things come to an end, essentially. They have to be quite specific that if there is any doubt in somebody’s mind that this is no longer something that can be continued, that there is anxiety about them being implemented, then it comes to an end. So I think those things can be taken care of.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Mixed Topics
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): It could have wide-reaching consequences, but a lot of people who have lost capacity and are in a state of high dependency are already in nursing homes, so they are already being cared for in the system and may be subject to deprivation of liberty. Some of them have long-term continuing funding for their care, but they been there for a long time and the donee, who is managing all their affairs and advocating on their behalf, is very concerned about their welfare in the event of them failing.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Mixed Topics
Elaine Murphy (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lady Meacher, but I will sound a few words of caution. As I understand it, cases in domestic settings are not included under the current DoLS arrangements. However, there have been several cases where Cheshire West has been quoted in instances where domestic settings have been challenged—with, in my view, some ludicrous outcomes. These have put people who were doing their best by their relatives, as they saw it, in the invidious position that they could no longer continue to care I have a case that is similar to that of my noble friend Lady Meacher, where a man was looking after his elderly mother at home. She wandered on most nights, and he put some gates at the top of the stairs to stop her falling down the stairs. That allowed him to get a good night’s sleep and she did not go downstairs. It is a very difficult issue: there was the question of whether she could have gone over the gates and come to more harm. He was also told by the professional carer who was helping him—from a private care provider—that he could not do this because it was illegal. Under the legislation, it was now not possible for him to do that, nor could he put a lock that she could not undo on the outside door. He would have to accompany her if she wanted to go out and come back. The implication is quite clear: he actually gave up caring for her because, as he said, if he could not look after his mother in his own home, he was not going to be able to have a life that was possible for him to live. I have no doubt in my mind that that elderly woman would have given her last sixpence to stay at home being cared for under her son’s restrictions, rather than go into a care home with strangers. She would probably have had her liberty restricted anyway under some new procedures We have to come back to this numbers game, because we want a situation where it is only in cases involving people being treated inappropriately, with cruelty and thoughtlessness, where we want to expose something that is just unacceptable. When we are challenging arrangements that would, if they were for a person of a different age, for example a parent protecting a child—when we are putting in the same things because somebody is mentally incapacitated, it is quite wrong.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Civil Rights
Molly Christine Meacher (Crossbench, Unknown): I thank the Minister very genuinely for an encouraging and positive response. I recognise that this matter of deprivation of liberty in domestic settings needs to be addressed and that we need to have a conversation about exactly how it should be done. I also thank my noble friends Lady Murphy and Lady Watkins and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for putting their names to my amendment, albeit that it still needs a lot of work. I am grateful for their helpful comments, along with those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Jolly and Lady Barker. I look forward to discussions with the Minister and others.
Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill — House of Lords, 2018-06-13
Topic: Mixed Topics
Bryony Worthington (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I too thank the Minister for her introduction of these amendments. They are very helpful; they clarify the position and make the Bill much more useful. In Committee we debated the fact that this is a very narrow power being taken in relation to the infrastructure necessary to facilitate a greater uptake of electric and zero-emission vehicles. It is important that we look carefully at what more can be done to encourage everybody, at all levels of government—whether national, metro mayor or indeed at borough level—to take stock and introduce an effective network of chargers, which can help people to be confident that they will be able to use electric vehicles in a way that matches their current vehicle use I echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, in asking: can we hear a little more from the Government, specifically about car parks but about destination charging in general? I feel that it is a little too laissez-faire to think that this will all happen through market forces. There are going to be times when we will need to take a strategic look at this in a specific geographical region. We need to have sufficient powers to enable us to make this infrastructure happen; we will otherwise not see the uptake that we need to hit our air-quality and climate-change targets.
Operation Sophia: A Failed Mission (EUC Report) — House of Lords, 2018-06-13
Topic: Immigration
Michael Hastings Jay (Crossbench, Unknown): I do not think it is right to turn people back in those conditions unless one is absolutely certain that where they are going back to is a suitable place. That is why I think the idea, and it is only an idea, of some kind of UN-sponsored camps in, say, north Africa, where economic migrants—not refugees—could be turned back to is worth exploring The response of the Italian Government and the reaction of the Spanish Government show only that the European response to migration as a whole is increasingly fractious, and I very much regret that. The only possible response to a crisis as serious as the migration crisis today is working together, in or outside the European Union. As the Spanish Foreign Minister said yesterday: "This is a shared problem and it has to be treated as a shared problem" Sir Alan Duncan said in his reply to the report that we are debating: "Although we are leaving the EU, we continue to cooperate with European partners, including through Op SOPHIA, on these shared challenges" That is a welcome statement as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough of course. Perhaps the most important question to ask the Minister this evening is whether she can confirm that we shall continue to work with our European partners through and indeed after the proposed transition or implementation period, for only by such co-operation, in our own interest, can we hope to solve the problems which Operation Sophia has tried, nobly, to solve.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-07
Topic: Other
John Anderson (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, the time for practicalities has arrived. Without wishing to incur the wrath of those who remain, those in line and those who kindly enable me to stay on, the time has come to recognise that if a strategy manifestly will not deliver, dithering must end. However, I wish to counsel against endless new appointments until the whole question of this second Chamber is satisfactorily resolved—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Browne, made this point earlier. At this stage, matters relating to Burns or any other way in which we can move on with this whole question must surely be taken. Why not today?
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-07
Topic: Other
Michael Berkeley (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, to my shame, I invited a young political student to observe this debate. I am embarrassed that I did so. This debate reflects appallingly on this House and I hope that the Government will seize the nettle. We need to get on with it; it is disgraceful that we are trying to advantage one small section of society over another, as my noble and learned friend Lord Brown has pointed out. I am deeply ashamed to have been a part of these proceedings.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-07
Topic: Other
Merlin Hay (Crossbench, Unknown): I wish to say—very quickly, because we have just had a history lecture—that, under the Peerage Act 1963, hereditary Peeresses, Peers in their own right, could sit for the first time in the House of Lords. My mother was one of the 16 elected Scottish representative Peers to sit, and one of the first five hereditary Peeresses to sit in the House of Lords—so we did get a bit of female representation. The answer to the Wales question is that of course it was not a kingdom. The issue of the Scots Peers was around the merging of two kingdoms under a Scottish king.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-07
Topic: Mixed Topics
Colin MacKenzie Low (Crossbench, Unknown): Instead of addressing us at some length for the rationale for his amendment, could the noble Lord possibly answer an important question about the process or the mechanism by which it would operate? As I read the amendment, it says that whenever a vacancy occurs by reason of the death—or, I suppose, the resignation—of a hereditary Peer, the whole panoply of a general election has to be mobilised to fill this one vacancy. Is that really what the noble Lord’s amendment suggests?
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-07
Topic: Other
Godfrey Bewicke-Copley (Crossbench, Unknown): Whatever one’s view of the amendment, and of the view of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, of an elected Chamber, I think he indicated in his opening remark that this is a frivolous amendment. Can we not just knock it on the head?
Grenfell Tower — House of Lords, 2018-06-11
Topic: Public Lands
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, on 14 June it will be unbearably painful for everybody who was involved. I should declare an interest as my daughter, seven weeks after a caesarean section, was called in. She worked that night as an emergency medicine doctor. She had no doubt that she had to go in as something major was going on The Government are saying never again. This year, or next year, we may be thinking of it—everyone will this year—but in decades on it will be emblazoned on the memory of every survivor and everyone who was bereaved, although the rest of the country may have forgotten. I just wonder whether the Government have given any consideration to discussing with Grenfell United and others—not now when it is so raw, but in the future—about marking the day as a national fire safety day, whereby the whole country will be expected to test their fire alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, and evacuation procedures. We would get into a national pattern and once a year make sure that in every workplace, every residence—everywhere that people are—they remember that fire safety is paramount. Some schools I know in the area have upped their evacuation procedures since this happened, but I offer it as a suggestion.
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill — House of Lords, 2018-11-14
Topic: Immigration
Alexander Carlile (Crossbench, Unknown): I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. If somebody is coming through a port of entry and their passport is examined, and in the moment of examination it becomes apparent that there is something about the passport that does not look quite right—for example, there may be very few entries in it whereas the person concerned looks to be a sophisticated traveller—would not such a situation fall well short of being reasonable suspicion but be a proper exercise of the ability of good officers to use intelligence applied in the moment?
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill — House of Lords, 2018-11-14
Topic: Other
David Anderson (Crossbench, Unknown): The noble Baroness has asked whether I am satisfied with the response. As the independent reviewer, I was told four years ago that this was happening, and it was not the first time that I had been told it was happening, in relation to Schedule 8. I am sure that the Minister did not mean to backtrack on that commitment, but I would be very grateful if she felt able to give someone a bit of a push.
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill — House of Lords, 2018-11-14
Topic: Other
Elspeth Howe (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply although it was obviously not the one I would have hoped for. I will have to think about it in quite a lot of detail before coming to a conclusion about what should happen on Report. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, for his contribution and for backing what I still consider to be a very important range of thoughts. As there is a need for a bit of talk before we come to any full conclusions about this, a look at diaries before Report would be good to fix a convenient time for all concerned. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill — House of Lords, 2018-06-05
Topic: Other
David Brownrigg Craig (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, on the subject of title change, I think the Minister is absolutely right. I have some previous experience of trying to change the title of a Bill: the department was quite determined that the title could not be changed but further advice from the clerks of this House assured me that it could be, and that was accepted. So I hope there will be no misunderstandings this time.
Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill — House of Lords, 2018-06-05
Topic: Mixed Topics
Bryony Worthington (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I shall speak briefly to this group of government amendments. I thank the Minister for listening to our interventions on the topic. At the moment, we do not have good oversight of how the market will develop; we have what I feel is a somewhat unnatural market in infrastructure, as the Government have chosen to focus on charging infrastructure without sufficient attention to whether there are enough cars for people to buy and use affordably to make use of that charging. As a result, we may have boom and bust in the charging infrastructure. We must keep those two important aspects in parallel: both the charging infrastructure and the cars. In the absence of a more natural market with more cars, it is very important that we have the regulations to ensure that where charge points are installed, they are maintained, so I am very grateful to the Minister for tabling the amendments, and fully support their intent.
Saddleworth and Tameside Moors — House of Lords, 2018-07-03
Topic: Public Lands
David Alton (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I endorse what has been said about the unspoilt beauty of the area. I too saw Winter Hill at the weekend, and have seen Saddleworth Moor too. As the Minister has said, it is a real tragedy to think of the risks that there have been to the countryside and wildlife. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, it is crucial that those who have been responsible for so irresponsibly lighting fires on these moors are brought to justice. I hope that the Government will speak out clearly that no quarter will be given on this. Huge damage is being done, which will have to be remedied in due course. There have been reports that some of the communication structures and masts on some of the moors are at risk. Can the Minister tell us anything about that?
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-12
Topic: Mixed Topics
Merlin Hay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I will make one very brief comment. If this is the problem, why can we not move all these Private Members’ Bills to the Moses Room? Maybe they could move there and that would also unblock it; I do not see why this particular one has to go there The challenge with the Bill is that it is antidemocratic. It does not propose—noble Lords should read the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—that we are replaced with a democratically elected House, which was in the agreement when the hereditary Peers came here. It mainly achieves an appointed House through the back door, steadily over time. That is a huge matter of principle and should not be brushed under the table.
Ivory Bill — House of Lords, 2018-09-12
Topic: Other
Igor Judge (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am always willing to talk to the Minister, but the courteous way in which both Ministers have treated me during our discussions would make it extraordinary if I did not come straightaway when they were ready. However, the issue that has to be addressed is a simple one, which, unless something is done about it, will eventually lead me to invite the House at a later stage to consider its view. We cannot have a ministerial task force with these powers. That is what is not acceptable. Beyond putting that marker down for myself, I am willing to talk at any time, but for the purposes of today, I withdraw my opposition to Clause 17 standing part of the Bill.