argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Executions in Saudi Arabia — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: International Affairs
Patricia Gibson (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): To what extent does the Minister personally think that it is appropriate to continue to sell arms to the brutal Saudi regime, which has no regard for the human rights of even its own people, publicly crucifying men after beheading them for homosexuality and stoning to death any woman deemed to have committed adultery?
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Government Operations
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I rise to speak in favour of the Lords amendment, which would require any Government seeking to dissolve this House early and call a general election to first seek and receive the support of a simple majority of the Members of this House Last year, when the Bill was first introduced by the Government, it was presented as a non-controversial resetting of a mistake that David Cameron made in his attempts to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. We were told that Cameron had made a bit of a mess of things, that this Bill would simply take us back to exactly where we were prior to 2010, and that we could almost pretend that it never really happened. However, as we have heard in this place and in the Lords, that is not the case. The Bill is not about reinstating what was in place prior to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, but rather creates a situation whereby the Executive have even greater powers and the monarch, who hitherto had prerogative powers, merely enacts the Executive’s will to dissolve Parliament This Lords amendment seeks to place a very minimal check on the Executive’s power by making any Dissolution of Parliament a decision that has to have the support of the majority of this House. I do not think that our constituents would think that it is too much to ask for those who have been elected to this place, and who serve their constituents in this place, to have some say if a Parliament is to be dissolved early and a general election called.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Government Operations
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but that is a decision for this Parliament to take. We are elected to take decisions, and to abdicate that responsibility to the Executive is a dangerous route to go down; we should not do that. He says that it is the people, but we in this Parliament are the voice of the people, and there has to be a check on the powers of the Executive.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Government Operations
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): What we are hearing, especially from Government Members, is continued Westminster exceptionalism: that this place, particularly the Executive, once elected, knows what is best. That is why I raised the comparison with the devolved institutions, which operate to strict fixed terms. If they are to devolve early, that has to be a decision taken by the legislature as a whole.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Government Operations
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and he is right. What we are seeing is, as he describes it so eloquently, Westminster exceptionalism, because this does not go nearly far enough. It is the absolute minimum that one would expect As Tom Fleming of University College London and his colleague Meg Russell, the director of the constitution unit there, said of this Lords amendment: "Requiring prior Commons approval for an early general election places some check on the executive, while reducing the likelihood of either the monarch or the courts being embroiled in damaging political disputes." They are right, but the problem for Tom Fleming and Meg Russell is in believing or hoping that that this Executive would welcome having checks being placed on their power, be they parliamentary or judicial, because they simply do not.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Government Operations
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): It is very witty to frame this debate in those terms, but I think the right hon. Gentleman is missing the point. This is not about the power to hold a general election; this is about the power being ceded from this place to the Executive and what the Executive choose to do with that power when they get it. I will come on to what their powers could if that happens By opposing this Lords amendment, the Government are saying that the decision to dissolve this Parliament and call an election would rest entirely with the Prime Minister, and that that could be done without any parliamentary scrutiny whatsoever and in the absence of any judicial oversight. I suspect that many people watching our proceedings will be surprised to see that the Government are so opposed to the Lords amendment given that it is so limited and that all it seeks is a simple majority in this House.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Government Operations
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Is it not strange that Conservative Members who we have had to listen to banging on and on for years about Parliament being sovereign and Parliament having control are now willing to cede that control to the Executive for cheap political gain?
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Government Operations
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend, and I suspect he may have been reading my speech earlier, because I will come to that issue shortly This Government are determined that the Prime Minister, without consultation with or approval from this House and free of the threat of legal challenge, can call a snap general election when it is politically expedient for him so to do. Regardless of what is happening at home or abroad, basically, electoral calculus and the position of the governing party at the time will decide when we have a general election. It is wrong, and I believe it is unacceptable in a modern democracy. Of course, as my hon. Friend says, a great irony here is that the very limited check that the Government will vote down this evening will be voted down by people who were elected on a promise that this House would take back control. Well, they should realise that they are not taking back control; they are surrendering control. The collective outrage displayed at the general election of 2019 about the perceived emasculation of this Parliament by Brussels and the European Union—they were absolutely determined to restore the sovereignty of what they like to call the mother of Parliaments—is going to look rather hollow when, at the first time of asking, they vote to take powers away from this legislature and hand them over to the Executive. I hope that when they go through the Lobby tonight, they understand that this is not taking back control. Voting with the Government this evening is about this House handing control to the Executive and about abdicating responsibility to the Executive At the risk of adding a note of discord, let us have a look at who we will be handing those increased executive powers to. They will be given to a Prime Minister who has illegally prorogued Parliament, who sought to purge his party of all but his most loyal followers, and who had to remove the Whip from a long-standing and highly respected Member simply for being chosen to head a Committee over his preferred candidate. We will be giving greater executive power to a Prime Minister who, in defiance of the security services, ennobled the son of a former KGB officer turned billionaire Russian oligarch, a Prime Minister whose career three weeks ago was hanging by a thread and who has been revealed to be up to his neck in dirty Russian money, and a Prime Minister who is currently under investigation by the Metropolitan police If Conservative Members vote to defeat this Lords amendment tonight, that is the character of the man to whom this House will be handing even greater executive power. I advise them to think very carefully about their decision, because this Lords amendment is there to protect the role of the House of Commons, to avoid executive overreach and, ultimately, to protect democracy.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Government Operations
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): It is not really for the Scottish National party to defend the Westminster interpretation of democracy, but the Bill, and rejecting the Lords amendment, is such a retrograde step that we must put that on the record and see it as part of a bigger picture. This is not control being taken back by Parliament but control being taken from Parliament by the Executive and, as a number of other hon. Members have said, consolidating power as part of a package of measures—not least the Elections Bill The effect of all that is that the next election campaign starts today. Everyone in the Chamber must therefore be aware of what they are doing when they cast their vote on the amendment. The campaigning starts today. The power will end up with the Prime Minister and he alone, without the check of his Cabinet or of this House. That is a significant power grab that will further undermine confidence among the public in the institutions of this place. Again, I say to Government Members that, from an SNP point of view, that is fine in a way. The Bill and the rest of their package of reform is not strengthening the Union. As I said in my interventions, we can look at the systems in place to protect the devolved institutions’ democracies and see how they can dissolve only with the permission of the legislature or must operate to a fixed term that everyone knows in advance, but the Bill is taking this place backwards. It is increasing the divergence on these islands. Once again, from where I am standing, that is fine, but perhaps Government Members ought to think twice about it.
Professional Qualifications Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Government Operations
Owen George Thompson (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The right hon. Member tempts me, but, as I was about to explain, we have a number of qualification areas in which these are devolved matters and not reserved to this place. Under the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, the UK Government are now overruling devolved competences that were formerly in place. The Bill does not make separate provision for devolved and reserved professions, so it applies to all regulated professions active in Scotland, whether reserved or devolved. It follows from this that, for those aspects of the Bill that affect the devolved nations’ areas of competence, special provisions should have been made to require devolved consent, which was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake). It was the case then and it is still the case now Clause 16 ensures that any power conferred on the appropriate national authority in devolved areas can be exercised by UK Ministers. There is no requirement for UK Ministers to seek the Scottish Government’s consent when exercising such powers. A Secretary of State making regulations under those powers would therefore be subject to procedure in this place rather than the Scottish Parliament, or any of the devolved Parliaments. Here we have a Bill that alters the executive competence of Scottish Ministers by enabling the Secretary of State to act in devolved areas without having consent to do so. That is entirely unnecessary, and undermines the good faith agreement between the Scottish and UK Governments on the principles of the Bill I listened to the Minister, and I welcome the fact that so much engagement took place, but it is clear that, despite all that engagement, there was still a lack of any willingness to shift in any way to take account of the positions of the devolved Governments. That is why I suggested that the Government take up the Scottish Government’s proposal to introduce an amendment to clause 16 to require devolved consent before UK Ministers dabbled in devolved areas. Not only have the Government rejected that perfectly reasonable proposal; they have fabricated a convenient reason to do so, arguing that the devolved Governments "might undermine the implementation of provisions in international agreements on recognition of professional qualifications."
Professional Qualifications Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: International Affairs
Owen George Thompson (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I think the key word in that intervention is "agreements". The Scottish Government, or within the European set-up the UK Government, would agree these frameworks with Europe. In this situation, the Scottish Government, and the Governments of Northern Ireland and Wales, have no say in what is imposed by this Westminster Government The truth is that there is nothing exceptional or even particularly noteworthy about a requirement for UK Ministers to seek such consent. It has been requested by the relevant Committees of the Scottish Parliament, confirmed by a vote of the Parliament as a whole, and raised multiple times in this place. It is not worth overriding the Sewel convention—something extremely serious which has happened on only four occasions, all of them directly related to major EU exit legislation. That makes one wonder if the Government are content to undermine the Sewel convention to the point at which it is no longer even a convention. Seeking consent would constitute little more than recognising devolved responsibilities and respecting the UK constitution, so the Government have some serious explaining to do to the Scottish Parliament if they go ahead with overriding Sewel yet again This farce has brought the Scottish Government to a point at which they simply could not recommend that the Scottish Parliament give the Bill its consent, and that should not be taken lightly. That said, I am heartened that we have a new clause before us—tabled by the hon. Member for Ceredigion, albeit not to be pressed to a Division—that could deal with the issue. It changes the consultation requirement to a consent requirement, and removes the procedure by which the Government could ignore devolved views and simply report to the House on why they did so. I sincerely hope that the Government will look at the new clause seriously. This is not political point-scoring; it is about protecting the constitution as it currently exists. That is evidenced by the fact that the Law Society of Scotland supports the argument that I am advancing today. The Government have assured us time and again that they have no intention of overriding devolution, so why not put it in writing instead of relying on a pinkie promise The Bill falls into a pattern of power grabs and disdain for consent, from Brexit to the United Kingdom Internal Market Act, and little wonder, because it comes from a Government led by a man who called devolution a disaster. This disdainful attitude to UK-Scottish relations damages the UK Government’s claims that they welcome early engagement on the Bill. It also severely undermines their commitments to recently agreed intergovernmental arrangements. I hope that the Minister will reflect seriously on the unnecessary damage that the Bill will do to devolution in its current form.
Professional Qualifications Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Government Operations
Owen George Thompson (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I will be brief. The comments that I made earlier still stand. We have not seen any movement at all to recognise the genuine concerns of the devolved Parliaments of these nations, without which we cannot support the Bill as it stands. Pinky promises and "We might not do this" or "We wouldn’t intend that to happen" simply are not enough. That completely undermines the devolution we have, and on that basis we will oppose the Bill Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Agriculture
Deidre Leanne Brock (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the many animal welfare organisations that have been in touch with me, and the many constituents—I am sure this has been the experience of Members on both sides of the House—who have also been in touch because they really care. I thank all the House staff; I thank the Clerks for all their efforts, and for their patience with all of us during the relatively short period for which the Bill has been in the House and in Committee I wish the new Animal Sentience Committee well in its deliberations, and I look forward to seeing those deliberations bear fruit in the form of real, positive actions from the Government in the years ahead. We are known throughout these islands for having the greatest regard and love for animals. Let us do our level best by them, and show just how much we care through the regard that the Government show for the committee’s actions Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, without amendment. Business of the House Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 15), That, at this day’s sitting, the motion in the name of Mark Spencer relating to Adjournment of the House (Today) may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) will not apply.—(Mark Spencer.) Question agreed to.
Fossil Fuel Industry — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Energy
John Joseph McNally (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The UN Secretary-General has called investment in new fossil fuel production and power plants "moral and economic madness". The European Parliament has objected to plans to include gas in the definition of sustainable energy. Surely the COP26 President must agree that the Westminster Government are making a mockery of their presidency at COP. Not only have they increased support for fossil fuels, but their renewables policy is disguising billions in subsidies for biomass. How does he square the Government’s plans with the UK’s COP26 commitment and with the views of his possible future boss?
Fossil Fuel Industry — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Environment
Christopher Charles Stephens (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The fossil fuel lobby at COP26, covering more than 100 fossil fuel companies, fielded a larger delegation than the combined delegations of the eight countries worst affected by climate change, and was the single largest delegation with more than 500 delegates. Does the COP26 President not agree that although investment in renewables by fossil fuel companies is a key part of tackling climate change, it would not be appropriate for that situation to be repeated at COP27? The fossil fuel industry should not be given the loudest voice in climate discussions.
Glasgow Climate Pact: Business — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Environment
Deidre Leanne Brock (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The COP26 President will be aware of concerns raised about aspects of biomass, so how does he intend to ensure that carbon emissions from this sector and businesses such as wood-burning power stations are reflected in the reformed UK emissions trading system? How does he think the COP commitment to protect the world’s forests aligns with existing UK Government policies for burning imported wood and the considerable UK Government subsidies given to this industry?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: International Affairs
Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I join you and others, Mr Speaker, in remembering the Falklands conflict of 40 years ago and those like my colleague Keith Brown, the Scottish Justice Minister, who served there. In particular, our thoughts are with those who made the ultimate sacrifice Yesterday our First Minister started a national conversation on Scotland’s right to choose an independent future. When we look at nations like Iceland, Ireland, Norway and Denmark, it is clear that our neighbours are outperforming the United Kingdom. They deliver greater income equality, lower poverty rates and higher productivity, social mobility and business investment—the list goes on and on. The evidence is overwhelming: Scotland is being held back by Westminster Prime Minister, all those countries can use their powers of independence to create wealthier, fairer and greener societies. Why not Scotland?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Stronger together? Has the Prime Minister seen the pound? I think the financial markets have made their judgment on this Prime Minister The Prime Minister can afford to live in his own little world, his own little Britain, but people have to live with the reality of a failing Westminster system: a cost of living crisis that is worse in the UK than in any other G7 country; an inflation rate double that of France; the second worst economic growth forecast in the G20, behind only sanctioned Russia; and now the threat of a trade war with our European friends, triggered by a lawbreaking Prime Minister. That is not a vision for the future of Scotland. Our nation is big enough, rich enough and smart enough. Is it not the case that Scotland simply cannot afford to remain trapped in the failing Westminster system? Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on.
Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: International Affairs
Alison Emily Thewliss (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My constituent Azizullah is among the 80 families in my constituency who have relatives who are still stuck in Afghanistan. He has been in regular contact with me since Afghanistan fell; he sent me a message yesterday to say that the Taliban are abusing his brother, trying to find his father and threatening their execution. If the Home Secretary were in my constituent’s family’s shoes, would she stay in Afghanistan and wait to be executed? Or does she advise them to try to get to safety in Glasgow any way they can, because there is no safe and legal route for Azizullah’s family and the other 80 in my constituency?
Rail Strikes — House of Commons, 2022-06-15
Topic: Labor
Christopher Charles Stephens (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My understanding is that the RMT is not affiliated with the Labour party, and I say that as an SNP Member We have the strictest trade union laws in Europe, and the thresholds have been easily surpassed in this particular ballot. What discussions is the Secretary of State facilitating between the RMT and the employers to resolve this issue?