argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
Luke Pollard (Labour, Centre-left): Notwithstanding what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, does he acknowledge that the boundary commission is still proposing a "Devonwall" seat, which ignores the strong identities of Devon and Cornwall and matches them together, and which would be truly unpopular?
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): One of the problems with the boundary review is that in many areas, including mine, local government boundary changes have meant that the proposed areas do not even cover coterminous wards, and some wards would be cut in half. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that allowing some flexibility would solve that problem?
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): I agree that we are the only people who go around the country getting excited about boundaries, but does the right hon. Gentleman agree that people identify with small towns, villages and other communities, and that a 5% threshold would make alignment very difficult in some places? There are examples in constituencies represented by Members on both sides of the House of small towns, villages and clusters of communities, all of which identify as a community, now being split because of that very tight threshold.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): The issue is not having a boundary review, but what has initiated it, which is the reduction in the number of MPs from 650 to 600. If we compare the average number of constituents in 1955 with the present day, the proposals in the review will increase that number by 40%.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew John Gwynne (Labour, Centre-left): Some of us have greatness thrust upon us, Madam Deputy Speaker. I only came in to observe the debate but, sadly, my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) has taken ill. I am sure that the whole House will wish her a speedy recovery It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). I suspect that he has a vested interest, given that he was the Minister who took through the original proposals, and wants to preserve his legacy. I do get a sense of déjà vu though, because of course I was the shadow Cabinet Office Minister this time last year, and I remember the right hon. Gentleman making virtually the same speech. I hope that the House will forgive me, but I will do almost the same I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) for tabling the Bill. We are all largely in agreement that a review is needed; updating boundaries is a vital part of the functioning of our electoral system. However, it must proceed in a way that benefits our whole democracy and not just the short-term interests of one political party The Opposition strongly oppose a reduction in the number of parliamentary constituencies and welcome measures in the Bill to maintain the size of the House of Commons at 650 Members, correcting a decision taken by the coalition Government to have 600, a purely arbitrary number for which no logical case has been made. The cynic in me would suggest that it was chosen purely for political advantage.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew John Gwynne (Labour, Centre-left): I will come on to those points, because the hon. Gentleman will find that the cost of politics is already being cut in a number of ways. The duty of this House is to ensure that the Government are held to account, and my concern is that the proposal to reduce the number lessens scrutiny on the Government of the day. That might not be a Conservative Government, and I would hope that the hon. Gentleman would want to preserve his rights, when he sits on the Opposition Benches, to hold a future Labour Government to account The lack of clarity from the Government has concerned many across the Chamber. The Government have stated that the boundary review is proceeding in accordance with legislation, but, according to three senior sources quoted in The Times, the plan is likely to be scrapped due to a lack of support from the Conservative Benches—[Interruption.] I hear "Hear, hears". Perhaps this will be the latest casualty following the Prime Minister’s failure to win a majority in June If the review is going to be ditched, I say to the Government: stop wasting public money. This is a charade. Let’s ditch the review now and start a fresh one based on principles we can all agree on. Suggestions that this is being done to cut the cost of politics are red herrings. The claimed savings of £13 million a year are dwarfed by the £34 million annual cost of the 260 extra peers appointed by the former Prime Minister. Can the Government seriously talk about cutting the cost of politics after offering £1 billion to the Democratic Unionist party? The contradictions in the Government’s arguments are so blatant it is insulting. This Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton would also see potential savings by requiring the boundary commissions to report every 10 years rather than every five The Government claim that a reduction will bring the number of MPs in line with that in similar sized legislatures. International comparisons should indeed play an important role in policy making. However, by cutting the number of MPs and making their constituencies bigger and more remote, the Government endanger the MP-constituency link, which is envied by democracies across the world.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew John Gwynne (Labour, Centre-left): I will not give way again, because many Members want to speak Cutting 50 MPs also presents a crisis of scrutiny, a concern raised by the Electoral Reform Society. Under the current proposals, the reduction would be made entirely from the Back Benches—the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), can shake her head, but there are no proposals to reduce the number of Ministers. That would only increase the Executive dominance of Parliament and undermine the influence of scrutiny from the Back Benches.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). It was also interesting to hear the contribution from my neighbour the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper)—we wave at one another across the River Severn. It is interesting and somewhat ironic that both the colleagues of the right hon. Gentleman who have spoken did not seem to agree with him as much as I am going to disagree with him. Perhaps that is because he was a member of the Executive and some of us have not had that opportunity I will keep my remarks much briefer than the right hon. Gentleman did, but I want to make a contribution because, quite simply, I support my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan). It is right and proper that we keep the size of this House as it is. It is somewhat ludicrous that, with an ever-increasing population, for whatever reason, we seem to be reducing the number of representatives in this House. Important though it is that we look at how to save money, there are other and better ways we can do that, not the least of which, some of us would argue, includes scrapping the House of Lords. However, that would be for another day and another debate My arguments start with the contrary point to that of my neighbour, the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean. Yesterday I was stopped in the street by someone from Minchinhampton—which is, as he may remember, now in The Cotswolds constituency—begging me to take up a case on their behalf, saying, "Why don’t you come back and become our representative again?" In that boundary review, I argued the case for keeping Minchinhampton as part of Stroud. Those who know my area would hardly describe Minchinhampton as a bastion of socialism. It is probably as strong a Conservative ward as I have in the Stroud district, within the constituency and without. Locational representation matters in this place. It matters to the people outside more than we think it does. They like to know who their MP is. They may not always agree with them or always be of the same party, but when they come to us with their problems, they know enough about who we are, what we can do, and what we should do The relationship with our local authority matters. If these proposals go through as constituted, the Stroud district, which has only 100,000 people, will be represented by three different MPs. I think that is wrong. It leads to confusion and to bitterness because people want to know who their Member of Parliament is and want to know that they have a relationship with the local authority.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): As someone who has stood in seven parliamentary elections and knows his area rather better than the hon. Gentleman, I will take that as a slight rather than a positive intervention Location matters. It matters because geography matters, ties to an area matter, local authority representation matters, and the relationship with other constituencies matters. I could not represent any other area. No other area would have me! I am quite simply the MP for Stroud, the area I have always stood for. I would never stand for anywhere else because I believe that that is what I am best at, and I think I have done a reasonable job. I have been elected four times and lost three times, so, hey, I am ahead at the moment. It did not help my predecessor that in preparation for the boundary changes he moved his constituency office. That went down rather badly in the constituency and may not have helped his cause when we stood against each other again, as we have done on a number of occasions, for election earlier this year. Geographical representation has always had a stronger hold on the way in which we decide on the electoral relationships than purely the numbers. If we want to do that, we might as well go to the Soviet system, where the constituencies are not even named—there is just a number and a way in which certain people are put in place. I believe in local representation and I will always argue that case As we have heard, in 2015 the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee savaged the Government’s approach to reducing the number of MPs. It argued very strongly that we should not just look at the numbers and proposed a 10% variance. I would still adhere to that, because I do not mind representing more people. I would rather that the people I represent—
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): No, I will not give way any more I want to bring my remarks to a speedy conclusion because it is important that this Bill is given proper air time. I could argue on the point about the 10% variance, but, more than anything, it is important that we have a proper debate on the appropriate numbers. We have heard the arguments about the Executive versus Back Benchers. We should also consider the importance of locational representation so that people know that whoever they elect, whether it is their parish council, district council, county council, or MP—we will not be electing MEPs any more—the line of accountability follows through. Anything that undermines that is a jolly bad thing. As Stephen Lukes says in his epic book "Power: A Radical View", this is about "power to" rather than "power over". It is about how we evolve representation. I get very worried when we come up with a figure that has just been plucked out of the air and tell people that that is unimportant who represents them and where that representation comes from. I very much support this Bill. I hope that we will have a proper debate in Committee and on Report. I think it is the case—as all Members other than my neighbour the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean seem to have recognised—that in the current arrangements we have the wrong arrangements.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
Paul Phillip Flynn (Labour, Centre-left): I will try to ask the right question: why is the only measure that the Government are pushing to reform our disfigured electoral system one that will give them a numerical advantage? I should declare a vested interest, in that my constituency will disappear if the changes go through, and I do have a little regret at the fact that that will interrupt my promising parliamentary career just as I am beginning to get the hang of how this place works. However, that is not why I am making a speech It is revealing that the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), had to harp back to before 2010, when he became its Chair, to be able to cite an example of a useful reform. I have been on the Committee for three Parliaments, and I know that the reputation of Parliament is as it was described by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan). That is the crucial point—it is what this debate is about. The few people who are not looking at the coverage of the royal couple in Nottingham this morning but are watching our soporific exchanges here might be surprised at our self-indulgence, but our reputation fell to rock bottom during the expenses scandal and it is now worse—it is subterranean—and that is what we should address We must address the weaknesses in our system. If we want every vote to count, we can do that through a system of proportional representation. We need a system that is fair and through which the views of the people are represented. In two Parliaments during my time in the House, the Conservative party won 20% of the vote in Wales but did not get a single one of the 40 seats for Wales, which is outrageous. If there was a PR system in the United States, we would have been spared a President who behaves like a petulant child, and we would not have had to express our anger in the way we did yesterday. That shows the major weakness in the system Other scandals are certain to take place. What happened to the system for disciplining Ministers? Under the system set up by Gordon Brown, two Ministers were called in by the adviser on Ministers’ interests. There was someone in place to do such a job, in accordance with the ministerial code, but since the Conservative Government have taken over, that post has been subsumed into other roles, and people are judged not by the adviser whose job it is, but by civil servants and others As has happened in some cases, there is now a process of absolution by resignation. Two Ministers have resigned to conceal what they were accused of doing. One was accused of having meetings with Mossad outside his ministerial role, and another was accused of considering giving international aid money to the Israeli army. Those two people lost their jobs, but they were not disgraced in the way that they should have been if the public had been informed. We had the case of two Ministers giving £3 million to a charity that was favoured by the previous Prime Minister.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
Paul Phillip Flynn (Labour, Centre-left): I accept entirely the logic behind the Bill and its arithmetic—I am not arguing about that. I am saying only that a massive programme of reform is urgent and essential. I was making a point about the two Ministers who threw away £3 million by giving it to a dodgy charity that went broke three days later. They were never called to account by the Prime Minister, but that should have happened. We must reform that system. We must get reform in the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments as well. We have a system whereby Ministers, former generals and others can—
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Government Operations
Paul Phillip Flynn (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I greatly appreciate that advice, and I shall try to focus my laser-like cranium on the effect that these measures will have in Wales. The Welsh Assembly has PR, but it now has the problem that it does not have enough Members for its increasing workload. If the number of Welsh MPs is to be reduced—it is almost certain that that will happen sometime in the future—there must be a compensatory increase in numbers in the Welsh Assembly. That would make the proposals logical and fair, but at the moment they are a piece of special pleading by the Tory party cynically to increase the number of MPs that they have in Westminster. That has nothing to do with reform of our constitution, which is in a very bad state.
Defence Funding — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: Labor
Stephen James Morgan (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Secretary of State agree that the inadequacy of current funding and the uncertainty around long-term investments that that generates has had an impact on the security of jobs at BAE Systems, including in my constituency?
Strategic Defence and Security Review — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: International Affairs
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): HMS Bulwark helped to evacuate 1,300 British citizens from Lebanon during the 2006 crisis. Given the Foreign Office’s recent problems evacuating citizens caught up in Hurricane Irma, will the Minister argue for his Department or the Department for International Development to lead on future evacuations? Will he guarantee today that the Government will maintain the fleet’s littoral capacity, which is currently provided by HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion?
European Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (Labour, Centre-left): I was making it clear that Labour’s message is different and very clear indeed: only Labour can negotiate a Brexit and deliver an economy that puts jobs and living standards first, and that is what we are ready to do.
European Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: International Affairs
Hilary James Benn (Labour, Centre-left): Can the Prime Minister explain why it is frequently said by those with whom we are negotiating that they do not know what the UK wants when it comes to a long-term deal? Does she think this has anything to do with the fact that the Cabinet appears not to have reached its own view yet about what the nature of that deal is going to be?
European Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: Foreign Trade
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): Further to the Prime Minister’s answer to the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union said last week that "a transition phase will be triggered only once we have completed the deal itself"—[Official Report, 17 October 2017; Vol. 629, c. 741.] I understand that the Prime Minister’s spokesperson said today that an implementation period is "a bridge to where you are heading. You need to know where you are heading." Will the Prime Minister clarify whether she is saying that if we have not agreed a long-term trade deal by this time next year, there will be no transition deal at all and Britain will end up on WTO terms by March 2019?
European Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): Is it not the case that the business community will be shocked to hear the Prime Minister’s words today, which seem to suggest that there will be no clarity on transition or implementation until we get a final deal in some number of months—or possibly longer—ahead? The business community wants to know that the cliff edge will not be there in March 2019. Will she not give a commitment now to treat attaining a transitional arrangement separately from trying to get a final deal?
European Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: Foreign Trade
Patrick Bosco McFadden (Labour, Centre-left): Given the report from the business groups today calling for transition, and the lust for the cliff edge being displayed by some on the Prime Minister’s Back Benches, will she perhaps introduce some facts? Will she list any major economies in the world that trade with the EU on the basis of WTO rules alone, with no sectoral or other agreements in place?
European Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen John Doughty (Labour, Centre-left): The Government’s position on the Brexit negotiations is simply absurd: the Prime Minister refused to rule out no deal just a moment ago; the Brexit Secretary was threatening no deal last week; and the Home Secretary was saying that no deal was "unthinkable". What is this going to cost the British taxpayer? The Home Secretary told us that £50 million is already being spent this year on contingency planning in her Department. How much is now being spent across Government, and how many nurses, doctors or police could that pay for?
European Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: International Affairs
Benjamin Peter James Bradshaw (Labour, Centre-left): Did the EU Council discuss Russia, and in that context have the UK Government or their agencies been asked for help or information by the American congressional team or US special counsel Robert Mueller, who are investigating alleged Russian subversion of the US presidential election?
European Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: International Affairs
Elizabeth Louise Kendall (Labour, Centre-left): The Prime Minister says she wants a deep and special partnership with the EU, but some of her colleagues want a total and complete break. Is not the truth that her failure to resolve this fundamental issue is what stalled the negotiations and put the future of our country at risk?
European Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: International Affairs
Anthony Joseph Lloyd (Labour, Centre-left): The Prime Minister has raised expectations about the situation between Northern Ireland and the Republic, and that is welcome. Having no physical infrastructure on the border must be welcomed by all parties. But is it conceivable that this can be done without real negotiation between Dublin and London, and of course with Brussels as well, and is it really possible that we can talk about no deal in that scenario?
European Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: International Affairs
Chuka Harrison Umunna (Labour, Centre-left): As we have heard this afternoon, many Conservative Members claim that leaving with no deal and trading on WTO terms will be relatively straightforward. But if we are in a no deal scenario, we will still need the EU, in its capacity as a member of the WTO, to agree to the new terms of our independent membership of the WTO. Can the Prime Minister guarantee that if there is no deal with the EU, she will at least get its agreement to the new terms of our independent membership of the WTO?
European Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): Last week, I took part in an Exiting the European Union Committee trip to Dover, where 10,000 heavy goods vehicles are processed per day. There we were told that if an extra two minutes are added to the customs proceedings, there will be an additional 17 miles of tailback—from Dover to Ashford. We were also told that, in that context, a no deal scenario would be a total catastrophe. Will the Prime Minister please explain what measures are being put in place to avoid total gridlock in Dover in the event of a no deal scenario? [Interruption.]