argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Pat Glass (Labour, Centre-left): I want to speak today about tax avoidance and its impact on the UK economy and on the economies of the developing world. In this I follow the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), who spoke earlier, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier). I hope that between us we will be the beginning of a chorus that is so loud that the Chancellor will not be able to ignore it I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement today about closing tax loopholes for big companies, but without transparency this will make little difference to a tax avoidance industry that is out of control here and across the globe. This Government and other western Governments around the world are presiding over a global economy in which inequality has reached crisis point, and today’s Budget will not make that any better. Oxfam’s "An Economy For the 1%" report tells us that the richest 1% now have more wealth than the rest of the world combined, that power and privilege are being used to skew the economic system to increase the gap between the richest and the rest, and that a global network of tax havens across the world, including here in the UK and in our Crown dependencies and overseas territories, contributes to the richest being able to hide $7.6 trillion, which is contributing to cuts in public expenditure here and across the world. Here in the UK that means longer NHS waiting lists, teacher shortages and decreasing levels of care for the elderly and frail, and it means that the poorest living in the developing world see every penny of international development funding wiped out by what is, in effect, stolen from them in tax avoidance.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Margaret Olivia Hillier (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend think it is an interesting contrast that the US chief executive of Google was paid a salary package of bonuses, shares and so on worth about £130 million, and Google’s tax settlement with HMRC for a 10-year period was around the same amount?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Pat Glass (Labour, Centre-left): I agreed with everything the hon. Gentleman said until he said that this is "exactly what the Chancellor has been trying to do", because unless there is mandatory reporting, and it is transparent, it will not make any difference The Government need to ensure that the mechanisms for public country-by-country reporting benefit developing countries as well as the UK. We did not see that in today’s Budget. The Government must require the UK Crown dependencies and overseas territories to set clear timetables for public registries of beneficial ownership. After all, the Prime Minister promised this three years ago at the UK’s G7 summit in Lough Erne and has failed to deliver it, and again it is not in today’s Budget We cannot call ourselves decent people and cannot claim to be a decent country if we stand by and allow the inequalities that exist between the rich and the poor to grow. The British people understand the unfairness of the current situation, and they want it to change. They understand that despite opportunities such as today’s Budget to address some of this, the Chancellor has chosen not to do so. This country, and this world, is not short of wealth, and it makes no economic, political or moral sense to allow the current obscene situation to continue. It is wrong that 62 people have more wealth than the poorest 3.5 billion people on this planet, wrong that companies operating in the UK routinely avoid paying the tax they owe, and wrong that the Government and the Chancellor seem content to allow this to continue
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Education
Margaret Olivia Hillier (Labour, Centre-left): As the hon. Gentleman is probably aware, the Public Accounts Committee recently held a hearing on teacher training. We discovered that, after an eight-week course—sometimes it did not even last eight weeks—a staggering number of teachers who had not been qualified to teach certain subjects to a higher level qualified to teach them to our students and young people. Does he not think it is more important to sort out having qualified teachers in the classroom than to force every school into academy status?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Alison McGovern (Labour, Centre-left): A "Just say no" speech then from the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) I want to begin my comments not from where the hon. Gentleman finished his speech, but from where he began when he read out the figures that will get us to the promised surplus, which, according to the Chancellor ages ago, we should have reached. He said that we will get to the "sunlit uplands", or, in the words of that great song: "The sun will come out tomorrow." However, there is a pretence. The Chancellor is not the austerity iron Chancellor that we have been led to believe he is. He is a rule-breaking, U-turning, target-missing chancer, who is living on the never-never and who never passes his own tests. That is why I want to make my contribution today not on economics, but on cynicism. I am talking about the cynicism that people in this country will feel when they realise that this is a sham. In fact, my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) made the point quite well, too. She talked about how people had been promised a living wage, but how, in their pocket, there will be nothing of the sort That is not the only place in which the Chancellor has said one thing and done another. He told us that he had three targets in the last Parliament and they were all missed except one—the debt target. He said that debt would be falling, not rising, by the end of the last Parliament. Well, it was. Debt was falling, but only because he flogged off some assets to make it so.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Transportation
Yasmin Qureshi (Labour, Centre-left): No, I am sorry; I am coming to the end of my speech The other fiction that exists is that of the northern powerhouse. As a north-west MP, I have not seen that. The electrification of our railways has been cancelled or delayed, and I do not see anything else happening. This Budget is all about smoke and mirrors.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Labor
Siobhain Ann McDonagh (Labour, Centre-left): I would be delighted to accept that offer, and I will show my right hon. Friend all the emails I have received about people in desperate situations. These people are the ones who political parties say they are there for: the hard workers—the people who believe it is their job to support their families and who just get on with it. But they are not able to get on with the living wage because their pay is going to be cut I was going to come here and say today, "Look it doesn’t have to be this way. Some of these companies just need to pass on a hit to their shareholders. Some of them need to improve productivity and staff training." But I did not know then that what the Chancellor was going to announce was a further cut in corporation tax. He has given these companies the opportunity to get out of these appalling contracts and give people £7.20 an hour, on top of the benefits they already get. I ask the Chancellor and his Government to make it unquestionably clear that they expect, and we expect, that the honour of the national living wage will be a reality. We are not talking about small companies living on the margins; these are some of the most famous names on our high street. They are currently getting away with murder, and they can because these people have nobody to speak for them I may just be a lowly Opposition Back Bencher, but if I can help any of those staff get a decent result on what should rightfully be theirs—this is not because they do not try; it is because of their direct effort—I will be doing my job. I ask everybody in the House to join me in standing up to these companies and saying, "Put the money you’ve got in today’s Budget in the hands of those people who have worked longest and hardest for you."
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): It is a privilege to speak on the first day of the Budget debate. This has been a fascinating journey, following the Chancellor as he has brought us to this point. Following the Chancellor on the economy has been a bit like following a drunk driver on the road, swerving all over the place as his description of the state of our economy has moved from the sunny uplands that lie ahead to the stormy weather of the global economy. Instead of focusing on the long road ahead to our national recovery, he seems to be more interested in the short walk next door to No. 10. So keen is he to avoid any focus on his record as Chancellor for the past six years that we have been reduced this afternoon to talking about fizzy drinks. Like the very worst fizzy drinks, this is full of fizz and leaves us with a bad aftertaste Let us start with the Chancellor’s own performance. Who would have thought that six years into his term as Chancellor, growth would be being revised down, national debt would be continuing to rise and he would have failed to meet his targets for deficit reductions once again?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Adrian Edward Bailey (Labour, Centre-left): No, I will not give way, because I respect the ability of others to have time to make their points as well The Government have simply moved from a short-term, politically expedient solution, subjected it to political window dressing and then had to explain its failure in a subsequent Budget. This is a Government of missed targets, U-turns, incoherence and, quite frankly, incompetence.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard), and I agreed with much of what he said about equality. Everybody understands that the Chancellor was in a tight spot when he came to construct the Budget, but it is difficult to feel very sympathetic towards him, because he has constructed that tight spot. He drew up fiscal rules to bring the budget into balance without taking account of the economy’s need to invest in capital infrastructure, and that is why he is in a tight spot. The Treasury Committee took evidence from a whole range of economists, and we did not find one who agreed with the Chancellor’s approach to fiscal policy. Another problem is that the Chancellor’s focus has been very short-term, and he has failed to do the things that need to be done for the long term. He boasted that unemployment in the north-east had fallen rapidly recently, but that has to be set in the context of the fact that it is the highest in the country Many hon. Members have talked about the productivity problem. Productivity fell in all the major economies when we had the big crash in 2008, but whereas in America and the other G7 countries it is back above where it was before the crash, we are still just about reaching that level. The Chancellor highlighted the economic headwinds coming from the international economy. However, the downgrading of productivity, which is why his growth forecasts are down, is solely due to domestic factors. We cannot blame other countries if we have not invested enough in our infrastructure and skilled our workforce adequately. Those are the things that we need to do more of I have a couple of questions for the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, and I hope that I will get answers to them.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Transportation
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): I do not mind whether I get the answers today, next week or even in a letter from the Treasury. One of my questions is about infrastructure in the north. The increase in spending on that infrastructure is only £300 million. We see in the Budget: "£75m to fast-track development of major new road schemes including…the…A66" When is the A66 going to be widened? I am not talking about getting some little feasibility study done. When will we actually get a change to the infrastructure, which is so essential for people who make things in the north-east and sell them to the rest of the country?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Education
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): I would rather not take another intervention, because I am running out of time On the skills gap, there is no evidence that changing the governance status of our schools will make any difference to their effectiveness. In four academies in my constituency, GCSE scores have fallen in the past three years. At one point they achieved a figure of 66% of children getting five A to C grades, but last year they were down to 50%. There has been no analysis of such falls It is regrettable that the Chancellor has not produced any distributional analysis along the lines of what we on the Treasury Committee have repeatedly asked for—in other words, an analysis of the impact by decile of tax and benefit changes in this Budget. It is absurd that we have to wait for the IFS because the Treasury is trying to hide the impact of the measures in the Budget. Many hon. Members have pointed to the unfairness of the measures that will give people £700 million through cuts to capital gains tax and give higher rate taxpayers £400 million, but take £1.2 billion from disabled people. This is not only about fairness, but about economic efficiency. The OECD has looked at all economies and has found that more equal societies grow faster. Giving money to the bottom half of the income distribution raises the growth rate by 0.4% for every 1% redistributed, whereas giving money to the rich hinders growth and slows it down There are a number of hidden things in what the Chancellor is trying to do. Table 2.1 in the Red Book sets out the £3.5 billion of cuts that he needs to make to hit his fiscal target in 2019, but it does not specify which Departments those cuts will come from. We would like Ministers to explain that The Chancellor flunked the tax reforms on pensions, because he is concerned to maintain support in the run-up to the referendum.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): If I may say so, what the hon. Gentleman says is somewhat unrealistic and optimistic. Even the Treasury’s own figures on Help to Save, which were published this week, suggest that only one person in six will use the new scheme. People’s incomes have been cut, so they do not have the money to set aside large amounts for savings On tax reforms, my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) gave a thorough critique of the changes to business rates. We need to change business rates, and I was feeling quite optimistic about that until he spoke. There are questions for the Treasury to which everybody would like answers: what will be the impact on local authorities? What will the distributional impact be—where in this country will the changes to business rates have the most significant effect? Will such changes tip some local authorities into having even more serious financial problems than they have already It would be churlish not to welcome the new sugar tax on fizzy drinks and the measures on tax avoidance. The Treasury Committee is doing an inquiry on tax avoidance, and we will look at those measures in more detail As hon. Members may know, people who have been advised to have music therapy can go to or listen to operas that deal with their particular problems. At the moment, the Royal Opera House has an opera on about a regent who is trying to become the tsar, but he has to do some rather unpleasant things to achieve his ultimate ambition. I thought it would be ideal for the Chancellor to go to until I discovered that it was called "Boris Godunov".
Commonwealth Games: Wales — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: International Affairs
Jessica Elizabeth Morden (Labour, Centre-left): Newport kindly shared the NATO summit with Cardiff. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there would be huge potential for Cardiff to share the games with Newport, given our excellent facilities and expertise in planning this type of event?
High Speed 2 — House of Commons, 2016-01-28
Topic: Transportation
Graham Peter Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I share the concerns of the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat). Is not it poor that there are no plans for any HS2 rail service north of Manchester, particularly to Wigan? The 530,000 people in east Lancashire will be completely disconnected from phase 2 of HS2. Will the Secretary of State look at that?
High Speed 2 — House of Commons, 2016-01-28
Topic: Transportation
Margaret Olivia Hillier (Labour, Centre-left): This is one of the largest and most expensive Government projects on the table. Just before Christmas the Public Accounts Committee heard from the Secretary of State’s permanent secretary about the evaluation of High Speed 1, which was two years late and was therefore not included in the evaluation for the early stages of High Speed 2. How can he convince us that he really has a grip on the costs of this project and that the House will have proper, full scrutiny of that challenge?
High Speed 2 — House of Commons, 2016-01-28
Topic: Transportation
Lilian Rachel Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): We welcome the decision to accelerate HS2’s construction to Crewe. However, the whole of phase 2 is crucial for the midlands and the north. We were told that Ministers would confirm the route by the end of 2014, but that target has now slipped by at least two years, prolonging blight for residents, creating uncertainty and scaring off investment. Does the Secretary of State agree that there must be no doubt about the Government’s commitment to phase 2? Does he further agree that were a Chancellor with a Cheshire constituency to terminate the route south of Manchester, that would be an abject betrayal of the northern powerhouse?
Transport Fuels: Renewable Sources — House of Commons, 2016-01-28
Topic: Environment
Questions: What recent assessment his Department has made of when the UK will meet its target in the EU renewable energy directive of 10% of its transport fuels coming from renewable sources.
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Minister agree that it is absolutely essential that we get on with developing alternative fuels of a variety of kinds to power our vehicles? Without that, the levels of nitrous dioxide are causing permanent health damage to many people in this country. At Tinsley, the local authority in Sheffield has decided to move a school away from the motorway because of the levels of NO2, but residents are still living there. The city council is responsible for air quality to some degree, but in the end it is down to Government to deal with problems such as air pollution from the motorway. When are they going to act on this?
Transport Fuels: Renewable Sources — House of Commons, 2016-01-28
Topic: Energy
Questions: What recent assessment his Department has made of when the UK will meet its target in the EU renewable energy directive of 10% of its transport fuels coming from renewable sources.
Richard Haines Burden (Labour, Centre-left): I really do need to press the Minister a bit further on this. Recently, British Airways postponed its GreenSky project to establish a facility to produce advanced biofuels for aviation here in the UK. While the issues involved in that are no doubt complex, will the Minister listen to the increasingly widespread warnings from those involved in aviation that inaction and lack of clear policy direction from the Government are holding back the development and use of renewable fuels in aviation, thereby missing opportunities to boost jobs and skills in these technologies and making it more difficult to meet our obligations on carbon and harmful emissions?
Local Roads — House of Commons, 2016-01-28
Topic: Transportation
Emma Louise Lewell-Buck (Labour, Centre-left): From this year until 2021, both the A1 and the A19 will be undergoing extensive roadworks. Although that investment is welcome, the current plans show that both roads will be upgraded at the same time, which will create total chaos on our region’s road network and bring the north-east to a total standstill. I have already written to the Secretary of State about this, and he is clearly not interested. Will he show some interest from today?
Local Transport Projects — House of Commons, 2016-01-28
Topic: Transportation
Caroline Louise Flint (Labour, Centre-left): The National Infrastructure Commission has called for evidence on future road projects, and one such area is about connecting northern cities. Doncaster and Barnsley have put evidence in to the commission for the trans-Pennine tunnel link. Does the Minister know when the commission will report, and how soon after the report will he have a chance to make up his mind about which projects he will fund?
Local Transport Projects — House of Commons, 2016-01-28
Topic: Transportation
Andrew John Gwynne (Labour, Centre-left): At the last Transport questions, I asked the Secretary of State if he could look into the issue of excess noise coming from the M60 motorway, which has been made worse as a result of the Denton pinch point scheme. Since then, I have met officers of Highways England on site with the residents. Highways England officers have basically told me that they will not do anything, because the noise affects only eight properties. Will the Minister please meet me to discuss this matter, and will he knock some common sense into Highways England, which, quite frankly, has given me a jobsworth’s answer?
Rail Lines: Flooding — House of Commons, 2016-01-28
Topic: Transportation
Lilian Rachel Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): Two years ago, the Prime Minister stood on the ruins of the Dawlish sea wall and said: "If money needs to be spent, it will be spent; if resources are required we will provide them" Now, we learn that Network Rail cannot even afford to fund a report on improving the south-west’s rail lines, putting millions of pounds of investment at risk. Yesterday, the Prime Minister could not say where that money would come from. I want to give the rail Minister a chance. Will she honour her right hon. Friend’s commitment and fund that study?
Trans-Pennine Rail Line — House of Commons, 2016-01-28
Topic: Transportation
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): Mr Speaker, may I quickly associate myself with the generous tribute you paid to those great servants of the House, but point out that you seemed to omit the time and date of the lavish retirement party you are putting on for them May I say to the rail Ministers that they have challenged us to speak to the facts? According to the BBC, the facts are that the trans-Pennine electrification is in severe doubt because of what is happening in the south, where electrification is four years late. New trains are arriving before the rails are ready and they are parking them up in sidings.