argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Agriculture Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-22
Topic: Government Operations
John Eric Gardiner (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the government amendments in this group are technical. They amend the list of provisions in the Bill for which the Secretary of State and the devolved Administration Ministers can make supplementary, incidental, consequential or transitional provisions. We have brought them forward at the recent request of the devolved Administrations—that perhaps pre-empts the question as to why this was a recent request of the devolved Administrations. The effect of these amendments is that the devolved Administration Ministers have the power to make supplementary and consequential provision to amend primary legislation, either UK or devolved, in all additional areas of the Bill where a legislative consent Motion is being sought. This is not about filling any legislative gap or changing government policy. These are technical amendments which were needed to ensure that the devolved Administrations have the necessary powers to make such provisions, should it be required. The amendments reflect the slightly different powers each devolved Administration is taking in the Bill. For example, Clause 34, on agricultural tenancies, applies only to Wales. Officials from the four Administrations have worked closely together on this issue to ensure that the scope of powers under Clause 50 provides all Ministers with the necessary powers, consistent with the devolution settlements. I am pleased the clause has been amended to satisfy Welsh, Scottish and DAERA Ministers. I beg to move.
Agriculture Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-22
Topic: Agriculture
John Eric Gardiner (Conservative, Centre-right): I would just like to thank the two noble Baronesses for their very kind remarks and brief contributions to this debate. I wanted to thank them and all on the Front Bench, including my noble friend Lady Bloomfield, and other noble Lords, for this Report stage of the Agriculture Bill. Our disagreements have always been civilised, and there are many things on which we can agree. I think these amendments are also important because they put into reality the very strong working relationship between Ministers and officials across the devolved Administrations.
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Peta Buscombe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I congratulate the Chancellor on his Statement, which injects an important degree of realism into all this. I pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister who, I know, with his considerable expertise and experience, is an invaluable person at the Treasury The Chancellor talked about living without fear. Many of us do not fear Covid. What we fear is how on earth we are going to pay for it. The Chancellor referred to collective responsibility, costs paid by all of us and truths, so I shall suggest to my noble friend just two of a number of changes that are needed to demonstrate collective responsibility and truth before we have to pay, as we will, more tax. I am not expecting answers today. Will the Treasury lean on the Department for Work and Pensions to use mechanisms already in place with the banks to tackle tax evasion and to expose benefit claimants who do not declare their true assets, because we have to be sure to target welfare where it is needed? Secondly, will the Chancellor once and for all deal with and end the crazy truth that the United Kingdom is a tax haven for people living here who were born beyond our shores? There has to be equality and fairness for all in the tax system.
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Social Welfare
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my noble friend for her questions. In short, I will write to her on the DWP’s policy on fraud checks for newly registered universal credit claimants. It suspended a number of the checks at the height of the crisis, but I am aware that it is going to reintroduce them. I do not have the date, so I will write to her. On us being a tax haven for dubious people, I share her concern. It perhaps takes a crisis such as the Covid crisis to focus minds, and I hope very much that we will taking much more assertive action.
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Government Operations
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): I can confirm to the noble Lord that levelling up is very much on the Government’s agenda. I am, as part of my portfolio, the Minister responsible for government property, and one thing that I have instituted is to ensure that no break clauses for major buildings in London are allowed to run over during the next three or four years to force the issue of moving staff out of London. In addition to that, I receive monthly all the job advertisements for senior civil servants, and I am continually pressing and challenging departments that do not advertise those jobs outside London. That is improving slowly In the Budget in March, we announced one of the largest infrastructure commitments since the war, with some £600 billion-worth of infrastructure, and I can confirm that a great deal of that will be going into areas which have been left behind in the past Lastly, the noble Lord asked about the comprehensive spending review. I can confirm that 24 September was the deadline for all departments to submit their returns and their bids. We will be responding to that within the next couple of months.
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Labor
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, universal credit has turned out to be a total game-changer for those thrown out of work by this crisis. It has been extraordinarily flexible. If we look at the past three or four years, we have always responded to criticism and have improved universal credit when it has been clear that it needed improving, and I can assure the noble Lord that I will make sure that the report to which he referred is made available to my right honourable friend.
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Labor
Philippa Stroud (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, since the coronavirus pandemic has struck, two in three, or 65%, of those employed and in deep poverty prior to the crisis have seen reduced hours or earnings, been furloughed and/or have lost their job. I welcome the Chancellor’s strategy of balancing measures to combat the spread of the virus with measures to preserve viable jobs and grow the economy, but what is the Minister’s strategy for ensuring that those who are working and already on the lowest of incomes are protected at this time, particularly as the nature of the work they undertake is often already less stable?
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Labor
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the furlough scheme has protected probably millions of jobs. That was the idea of it. We continue to want to protect jobs that are viable in sectors that will recover quickly. Beyond that, the emphasis, particularly for lower-paid people, is on skills upgrading and training, and that has to be the future for the group of people that my noble friend refers to.
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Labor
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the announcements last week included a number of matters around the extension of existing loan facilities and keeping open the window for loan applications under the various support schemes that the Treasury has created. On encouraging part-time working to enable staff to use the spare time for training, I think that that has to be an individual matter between employees and employers. However, to me it seems fairly straightforward that a part-time employee can access, in particular, online training, which has become the method by which most training is now distributed.
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the Chancellor has consistently said that his interventions have to be macroeconomic. However, we have tried to create safety nets to protect as many people as we can in the economy. I share the noble Lord’s concern for the music industry. My own father read music at Cambridge before the war, and I completely agree with the noble Lord that it is a very important part of our culture.
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: International Affairs
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I think that we have published our worst-case scenarios for a no-deal Brexit or leaving the European Union without a free trade agreement. Of course there are risks, but we remain optimistic that a deal will be done.
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Labor
Byron Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, following the Chancellor’s Statement last week, the Welsh Labour Government issued this Statement in response: "More needs to be done to help people find new jobs and incentivise employers to hire new workers." They added that there was a need for "more action on skills, training" and a "greater focus on supporting job creation" Does the Minister agree that responsibility for the devolved issues of growth and development of business, and support for inward investment and enterprise, rests firmly with the Welsh Government and that they should refrain from passing the buck and get on with accepting their devolved responsibilities?
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): I am not quite sure that I heard the full question from my noble friend, but I absolutely agree that inward investment is crucial for the future. As I mentioned in response to an earlier question, I believe that the huge infrastructure projects that we have committed to in the Budget will form part of the regeneration of the economy.
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I think the noble Baroness is looking too narrowly at the comparison. If we summarise the total fiscal interventions of the various economies over the last few months, the UK contribution has been somewhere just under 11%, those of Canada and France under 10%, Germany’s about the same, and Italy’s is about eight and three-quarters. My point is that you should not look at any one of these individual interventions as the single solution; we have tried to aggregate them.
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: International Affairs
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord that there needs to be integration. The overriding priority is to crank up the economy again; that is why we have created a group in Downing Street called Project Speed, which is designed to take hold of any opportunity that is being blocked in any way, to shake it and make it happen quicker. I remain optimistic, as I said in response to an earlier question, that we will resolve our difficulties with the European Union and will have some form of workable deal by the end of the year.
Economy — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Social Welfare
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, while there might not be individual schemes available for the group of people that the noble Lord talks about, we have made wider funding available through the uprating of universal credit and additional grants to local authorities. I am very aware that there are people in difficulty but we believe that the wider social security safety net is there to support them.
Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Michael John Dobbs (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, your Lordships should take no more attention of my speaking from the Cross Benches than you have of my noble and learned—and very welcome—friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham speaking from the Bishops’ Bench. I trust that we will both get back to normal soon. It is also a pleasure to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Clark of Kilwinning I start by thanking the Minister for his prodigious personal efforts over all these months. We are asked to follow the science, but what science? Is it the science that said that there would be half a million deaths? If that is so, we have done remarkably well. Or is it the science that said that 20,000 deaths would be a good figure? In that case, we have done considerably less well. Perhaps it is the science that points to the tens of thousands of excess, non-Covid deaths that we have been suffering because of people not going to the doctors and getting the treatment that they require, or the science that predicts that there will be many tens of thousands of deaths in the long run if we go into a period of endless recession. This is not a matter of science but of judgment—political judgment—as we search for a balance between impossible demands I want to share two concerns today. The first is that, despite all the Government’s best efforts, the judgments that are being made are exceptionally confusing. Let me use young people as an example. We have just sent them off to university, where we have often locked them in and told them that they may not get back for Christmas. I do not know what they are going to do for Christmas; perhaps they should all gather at Barnard Castle, where apparently, we can all have a jolly good Christmas. What future are we offering our young people with this economic policy of stop, start, stop, stumble again, then stop? The latest ONS figures show that the number of under-45s who have died from coronavirus amounts to 1.1% of the national total, whereas the over-65s amount to 89.3%. Yet, we treat them all the same, when clearly, they are not. Why do we devastate the entire economy and the future of young people? Can we not find a better way of protecting the vulnerable while allowing the young to carry on with something like a normal life My second concern is the damage being done not just to health and the economy but to our fundamental rights and democratic accountability. We are infringing on individual rights on a massive scale. After seven months of this Covid nightmare, we need to revisit not just our policies but their legislative basis. We must not forget the lessons of Brexit. Government got too far from the people; as one Prime Minister said, government was done to the people, not for the people I wish to help my Government and support them in their fiendishly difficult task. I believe that the way to support them tonight is to support my noble friend’s Motion if he asks us to.
Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew Robathan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend on what I thought was a very good summary of the debate. I was almost persuaded I would just like to clarify with the House that there is some confusion about the Motion of Regret that I put down, because the Government Whips sent out the wrong Motion, which I put down to cock-up rather than to conspiracy. For clarity, my Motion calls on the Government "to ensure that Parliament has an opportunity to debate and approve any national restrictions introduced to address the COVID-19 pandemic before any such restrictions come into force." I would be surprised if any parliamentarian does not agree, not least because we all understand that the gentleman in Whitehall does not know best. I hope that the Brady amendment in the Commons is agreed on Wednesday, or that the Government give way on that, but this House now has an opportunity to register its belief in greater parliamentary scrutiny. I wish to test the feeling of the House and divide the House.
UK Internal Market: White Paper — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: Foreign Trade
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for their questions. I pay tribute to the support that he offered for the principles of this legislation, for which I am grateful. He asked about the timetable. As he is aware, consultation on the White Paper closes on 13 August and we are committed to bringing forward legislative proposals following that when parliamentary time allows—likely to be as soon as possible after the Summer Recess The noble Lord asked about the continuing discussions on common frameworks. Indeed, those discussions continue, and our proposals will maintain consistently high standards across the whole UK, promoting co-operation between the UK Parliament and the devolved legislatures. He referred to the Agriculture Bill and the Trade Bill. Those are, of course, separate discussions and separate legislation, but let him be in no doubt that we are committed to high standards across the whole United Kingdom. Under our proposals, the devolved Administrations will continue to have the power to regulate within their areas, and they are going to gain a whole load of new powers when we leave the European Union transition period at the end of this year and will continue to be able to exercise their powers in those areas, as long as they do not discriminate against goods and services from other parts of the country. He also asked about state aid. I cannot give him a timetable for that, but it is under active consideration by the Government at the moment The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, referred to the creation of a UK body. We are indeed suggesting that for consultation in the White Paper but we envisage that such a body will act to monitor the operation of the internal market across the country. We do not envisage it as having compliance powers, and of course dispute resolution is ultimately a matter for the courts The noble Baroness also referred to trade deals. Again, that will be subject to separate legislation—a separate Trade Bill is coming before your Lordships. However, I reiterate that our commitment is to the highest possible standards across the whole country, and we have no intention of watering them down.
UK Internal Market: White Paper — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: International Affairs
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend makes an excellent point, as he so often does. These proposals are designed to ensure that devolution can continue to work for everyone while ensuring that seamless trade in the United Kingdom can continue. From 2021, the devolved Administrations will have power over many more issues than they have ever had before as policy areas formerly managed by the EU flow back to them for the first time. Our proposals would do nothing to stop those Administrations introducing rules and regulations for their own businesses operating within their region, as long as those proposals were not applied discriminatorily.
UK Internal Market: White Paper — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: International Affairs
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with the noble Lord that the internal single market is indeed the economic glue that binds the four nations together. I can confirm that we will continue to respect the devolution settlement and indeed, as I said in response to earlier questions, the devolved Administrations are gaining many new powers as we leave the European Union. There is no power grab involved here—in fact, the opposite is the case—and we will continue to want to work as quickly as possible with the devolved nations and legislatures as much as we can.
UK Internal Market: White Paper — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: Foreign Trade
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord for his support. I was happy to be able to brief him personally on the proposals, because I know he speaks with great authority on this subject. He is right to refer to the market access commitments. It is a simple set of legal principles which guarantees UK businesses access to trade across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. They have tremendous benefits for businesses in Scotland and Wales, as well as those in England. The noble Lord is right to say that we are considering setting up a body to monitor the operation of the single market across the United Kingdom. If we proceed with those proposals, I am sure that it will be sensible to have representation from the devolved Administrations.
UK Internal Market: White Paper — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: Agriculture
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): I am afraid I cannot agree with the noble Baroness’s point. We are committed to high standards; we had these debates endlessly during the passage of the EU withdrawal legislation, and similar debates are going on during the passage of the Agriculture Bill at the moment. However, we are very proud of the high standards we have in this country and we will not dilute them. This is not about a race to the bottom.
UK Internal Market: White Paper — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: Environment
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): These proposals will not affect the ability of the Welsh Government to proceed in those environmental areas if that is a power they already have under the devolution settlement. As I said, we are not removing any of the powers that the devolved legislatures already have. In fact, we are increasing the number of powers that they have, and they can use them to the fullest extent. The only proviso is that they do not discriminate against companies and businesses in other parts of the country.
UK Internal Market: White Paper — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: Foreign Trade
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): As he so often is on these matters, my noble friend is exactly right. Some 50% of Northern Ireland’s exports are sold to the rest of the UK, and the figures are even higher for Scotland and Wales. We therefore propose to legislate through this measure by the end of 2020 to guarantee unfettered access for Northern Ireland’s businesses to the whole of the UK internal market, which is so important for it.
UK Internal Market: White Paper — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: Law and Crime
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): I hope there will not be any disputes, but if there are, they will be legal disputes and the correct forum for resolving those is the courts system. We have no intention of setting up an alternative dispute resolution procedure when we have one of the best and most efficient court systems in the world to resolve disputes.
UK Internal Market: White Paper — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: Transportation
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): While that is not the subject of this legislation, I can reassure the noble Lord that the Government’s proposals on the UK internal market will not impact on the transport system between the constituent parts of the UK. I totally accept his wider concerns on the need to revive the public transport industry. I believe he is in correspondence with my ministerial colleague, my noble friend Lady Vere, and I am sure she will respond to him shortly.
UK Internal Market: White Paper — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: International Affairs
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): I accept the concerns that the noble Baroness raises, but the UK’s single market proposals—I am talking about the White Paper—have no impact on any of these matters. I will need to write to her separately with regard to the gender impact survey policy.
UK Internal Market: White Paper — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: Foreign Trade
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend asks a very good question. Without mutual recognition, different rules on products would increase costs and burdens on businesses and hinder trade within the country. Businesses could face serious problems. To give some examples, a Welsh lamb producer could end up being unable to sell their lamb in Scotland, or Scotch whisky producers could lose access to supply from English barley farmers, putting jobs at risk in both jurisdictions. Our modelling shows that a supermarket operating across the UK could face a tariff-equivalent cost of up to 2.3% if differences in food labelling, product packaging and food hygiene regimes arose in different parts of the country. That is why we think this framework is necessary.