argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-22
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, noble Lords have heard about the scale of the risk of not achieving the objective of the Bill. If you were doing a classic risk analysis in the private sector—the sort of thing that, under corporate governance, the Minister’s department requires every board to observe—you would say that there was a very high risk of not achieving that objective. Even if the Minister thought that there was only a very small chance of not doing so, if we were a board of directors he would be required to mitigate that risk. These amendments provide a pathway to mitigation—a pathway to a plan B. It is the sort of medicine that, quite rightly, the department supplies for all business and enterprise across the United Kingdom—that is, understanding the risks that they are undergoing and seeking a way to mitigate them. That is exactly what the Government and the Minister should be doing, and it is why, between now and Report, the Government have to embrace the messages that they have heard today.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-22
Topic: Other
Lynne Featherstone (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the Minister. I listened carefully to his arguments in response to the amendments. I think that our work is not done; I did not hear a meeting of minds at this point. What I did hear was a universal view from across the Committee that surety and certainty are not there. We will probably want to come back on this on Report. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-22
Topic: Mixed Topics
Robin Teverson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): It is amazing what you can do with Excel spreadsheets, and I suspect that most systems are based on something like that. I would be reassured if that were the case, but if it is rather more sophisticated, I start to get concerned.
Tributes: Lord Richard — House of Lords, 2018-03-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Richard Newby (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, Ivor Richard, as we have heard, had an exceptionally varied and successful career in both domestic and international politics. As MP for Barons Court, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, pointed out, he gained the battle honours of being sacked from his Front Bench for supporting the Bill taking the UK into the European Community in 1971. After leaving the Commons, he was a forthright UK Permanent Representative at the UN and then a successful commissioner when he succeeded Roy Jenkins at the Commission in Brussels On these Benches, he is especially remembered, particularly by my Welsh colleagues, as architect of the Richard commission report, which was commissioned in the early days of the National Assembly for Wales by the coalition Government, of which the Lib Dems were then part. The report looked at the powers and the size of the Assembly, and, somewhat remarkably, proposed changed the voting system to STV—which particularly commended it to my friends. He was a committed devolutionist and a committed Welshman. He helped push the boundaries of thinking on full powers for the National Assembly, which eventually, many years later, have come to fruition But the thing which always impressed me most was his presence and his voice. He had a solidity, an authority and a manner of speaking which commanded attention and made me, at least, want to listen very carefully to everything he said. This, in my experience, is a very rare ability and made him a most effective leader of your Lordships’ House. I will certainly miss that voice.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-20
Topic: Immigration
Robin Teverson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the Minister for his reply. It is good to have some figures: can we have more of them in these interactions around groups? I also remind the Minister that he regularly mentions the highly skilled and the talented. That may, I agree, be the case in nuclear safeguarding, but in a lot of Brexit areas, perhaps including some areas of the nuclear industry, the need is far broader. However, I take his point in regard to this Bill I also recognise that this issue will inevitably be fought out during the immigration Bill that we will eventually get. I am delighted that we will have another opportunity to debate Euratom in another Bill, to pursue sanity and perhaps get some change in this area. I therefore accept the noble Lord’s challenge—as it were—and his assurances about taking up these issues in the future immigration Bill, which we continue to await with interest. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Robin Teverson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister and welcome his undertaking that the IT systems will be included in the regular reporting. It would be useful if the Minister could answer my noble friend Lord Fox’s question about whether they are starting from zero or whether we are effectively modifying existing systems.
Gaming Machines and Social Responsibility — House of Lords, 2018-05-17
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Tom McNally (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, will the Minister take a more sober judgment? In 2005 this House, and Parliament as a whole, thought that it had done a magnificent thing in stopping the advent of super-casinos. It was the euphoria of stopping them that allowed for the introduction of gambling machines to go through almost unnoticed. There is a danger in the euphoria here also. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and others are right. It is the growth of online gambling and the changes in technology that afford it that will give us the next problem. I urge that the research and analysis into online gambling is carried out with rigour and it is not simply left to the industry to self-regulate, clever as it may be with its artificial intelligence and its algorithms. Independent research is needed, which can advise government in the future, otherwise this problem will come back in another form.
Building Regulations and Fire Safety: Government Response — House of Lords, 2018-05-17
Topic: Housing
Sarah Virginia Brinton (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the Fire Safety and Rescue APPG. I welcome the report from Dame Judith. It is time that the principle of a golden thread ran right through the entire planning, delivery and maintenance of buildings. I know that many others agree with that. I endorse the comments made by my noble friend Lord Stunell about the timing of legislation coming through, and I hope that those things that can be done swiftly will start to give confidence to the various parts of the industry that changes need to happen Wearing my fire safety hat, I am slightly concerned that in the Statement the Minister referred to working with industry to clarify the building regulations fire safety guidance. I hope that does not just mean with the private industry side but includes the public sector, whether fire services or local government—or indeed those people who act as approved inspectors going in to have a look Five years ago, the Secretary of State promised a full review of the approved document B regulations after the Lakanal House fire inquest. We need an urgent review of those. My concern is that Dame Judith Hackitt’s review is not explicit about what will happen to them. If they are to be made part and parcel of a general regulations review, please will the Government assure us that the reasons behind the review proposed five years ago remain and will be addressed as a matter of urgency? Everybody agreed five years ago that we should never let something like the Lakanal House tragedy happen again, yet here we are Finally, I also endorse the comments made by my noble friend Lord Stunell. Please can we not just have guarantees and hopes that private freeholders will not pass on the costs? I completely accept the Minister’s point that many leaseholders are also freeholders, but I am afraid there are too many examples already of leaseholders being faced with massive charges by freeholders who are taking none of the risk and none of the liability. That is unacceptable.
Building Regulations and Fire Safety: Government Response — House of Lords, 2018-05-17
Topic: Housing
Kathryn Pinnock (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, this is a good report and I am pleased that the Government have welcomed it in the way that they have. In order to give confidence to the many thousands of people who have great anxiety about the future—the residents who live in these buildings—I wonder whether the Government would be prepared for instance to take immediate action to implement some of the uncontroversial recommendations in this excellent report. For instance, the residents’ voice recommendations could be implemented almost without delay and would give confidence to people out there that the Government are taking not just the report but the actions from the report seriously Secondly, I completely agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, about transparency and independence within building control, and about giving it some teeth. That is something I have been concerned with in my role as a councillor for a number of years. I look forward to that new system being independent of current construction companies and completely transparent in how it operates, and having the necessary teeth to implement action that it currently does not. That will require funding and I notice in the report a reference to that. I hope that the Government will be able to commit to properly funding local authorities in order to undertake new, strong measures to implement building control standards.
Building Regulations and Fire Safety: Government Response — House of Lords, 2018-05-17
Topic: Housing
John Warren Shipley (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, perhaps I may remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I will raise two issues which I do not think have come out fully in our discussions so far. One relates to the fact that in the future, and depending on the consultation, it might be possible for combustible materials to be used on buildings. The Government’s Statement says that people living in buildings such as Grenfell Tower should be safe and should feel safe. But no one who knows that their accommodation is made of combustible materials is going to feel safe, and I suspect that they will also face substantial increases in their insurance premiums. So I hope that we will pay close attention to what the ABI and RIBA are saying about the need to make the use of combustible materials illegal My second question concerns the £400 million, because this issue has not yet been made clear. Is this a fixed sum of money which local authorities are to bid into or is it a flexible sum that may actually be higher than £400 million when all the costs of replacing the cladding are known? Further, does it include payment to local housing authorities for the fire watching that is currently being undertaken in a large number of high-rise blocks? It goes on for 24 hours a day, seven days a week and the costs are likely to have substantial implications for the rents paid by those who are in that accommodation. I hope very much that the £400 million is a flexible sum that will include the amount that might be loaded on to people’s rents.
Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill — House of Lords, 2018-05-17
Topic: Other
Jennifer Elizabeth Randerson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): To be fair to the Parliamentary Estate, there are two fast charging points in the underground car park at the other end of the Building. There is not one in the Lords, but there is one in the other place.
Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill — House of Lords, 2018-05-17
Topic: Housing
Jennifer Elizabeth Randerson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the Minister for her response. Once again, it is a very detailed issue, and I will read the record carefully I will respond on one point. The Minister said that it was not reasonable to complain if a parking space with a recharging point were taken out when it had never had to be put in in the first place—whoever did so did it willingly. That is what I understood her to say. My vision of how this would work is rather akin to the issue of parking spaces. There are planning permissions in certain areas where maybe for a certain size of house you need one parking space. If you choose to put in five, that is up to you; it is not illegal—you can do it. If you then want to take out those extra four spaces, no one can complain, but if you want to take out the fifth, they can. It is an issue of dealing with your minimums and ensuring, once again, that this is always at the top of consideration To be honest, I was not frightfully impressed by the concept that local authorities "need to consider" something; they need to address it, not just consider it. I listened with interest to the discussion about the mayor’s plans versus the local authorities in London. There needs to be a solution here which is not heavy-handed in taking away local initiative but which ensures that those local initiatives are empowered and encouraged and run rather more smoothly than they have done up to now. I understand the point that there has not been enough action up to now. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill — House of Lords, 2018-05-17
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jennifer Elizabeth Randerson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. I will bring in another issue, which we have hardly referred to. We have talked a lot about fast and rapid charging, and so on, but until now we have not talked about the key issue of interoperability. I take this opportunity, using the excuse of this group of amendments, to make the point to the Minister that the reason why the Committee has not mentioned it is that the Government did, and we agree with them. It may feel as if we have ignored it but it is a really key issue At the beginning of today’s debate, I talked about the frustration of getting to a charging point that was not working, as did other noble Lords. However, the same frustration is felt when you get there and it does not fit your make of car. This has also been a major own-goal by the motor industry. I hope that the industry will read the proceedings of this place in Hansard because it is undermining its own efforts with electric vehicles by hanging on to different and distinct forms of charging. There really needs to be a cross-industry meeting to reach an agreement on where it is going. We will otherwise end up with something rather like the VHS versus Betamax situation, which wasted an awful lot of consumers’ and manufacturers’ money. It always amazes me when manufacturers do not realise this pretty early on. It has taken Apple an awfully long time to realise that it just irritates us if every phone or computer we buy needs a different form of charging lead. I hope that the Government will keep interoperability at the top of their requirements in these regulations. I simply want to underline the key message in these amendments, which is that we have to have sufficiently speedy and robust charging points for them to be useful in many circumstances.
Building Safety Update — House of Lords, 2018-03-15
Topic: Housing
John Warren Shipley (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I remind the House that I am vice-president of the Local Government Association. I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and the tribute he paid to all those affected by the Grenfell tragedy I refer the Minister to paragraph 10 of the Statement in which it is said that there is no change to the fire safety advice that the public should follow. Does that mean that the stay-put policy for tenants in high-rise blocks is seen to be the right policy? I suspect that many people who live in high-rise blocks doubt that that should be the case Secondly, should the Government insist that fire regulation assessments for every high-rise building are published and made available in an accessible form for the public to read? At present, fire regulation assessments may not necessarily be public documents. If the Government are now going to say that a stay-put policy is appropriate, it follows that fire regulation assessments should be publicly available for the tenants and residents of such blocks I was struck by paragraph 14 of the Statement, which states that there is no evidence that this is a systemic issue. In one sense all the evidence suggests that that may be true. It probably is true that the data between 2009 and 2017 shows that fire does not generally spread beyond the room of origin. That may be generally true but, of course, sometimes it is not true and in the case of Grenfell it was not true. There is a huge amount of evidence being collected by all those working to prevent Grenfell happening again and it is pretty clear to me from what I have read in documents published by the Minister’s own department, the latest update being about a fortnight ago, that we need to move much more quickly than the Government seem to be working: there is an issue of public confidence in fire safety regulations and I fear that the Government are too slow in their resolution of some of these problems The public want to know whether the Government will enforce compulsory, regular electrical safety checks in high-rise blocks as a matter of policy. My final point is that there is a huge issue arising now about who is going to pay the bill for all the remedial works that are required. There is a huge amount of publicity around private leaseholders, some of whom are likely to have a fee to pay for the fire wardens who are currently in their blocks. More generally, because cladding has been put on to a large number of blocks and is having to be taken off, there is an issue as to who is paying the bill for the private leaseholders. I am not sure that it is sufficient for the Government to say simply that the solution is for private leaseholders to sue the council, the local housing authority or some other party; I fear that it is not Finally, the Government have consistently said that they will fund essential and necessary works to high-rise blocks. Will the Minister confirm that that remains their policy?
Building Safety Update — House of Lords, 2018-03-15
Topic: Housing
Sarah Virginia Brinton (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I echo the comments that the Minister and other colleagues have made about the sympathy that goes to those who have survived the Grenfell Tower fire, and also the resilience they have shown in trying to move on with their lives afterwards. I declare an interest as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group. Anybody who has an interest in fire safety realises that compartmentalisation is absolutely vital to the safety of a building. This is now the third breach of compartmentalisation that has become apparent: first it was the cladding, then the block in Camden where we know there was a breach of compartmentalisation from putting in new gas central heating arrangements, and now there are concerns about this fire door. Compartmentalisation is absolutely at the heart of the stay-put policy. I think we need reassurance that the slight complacency in the Statement that this is not a general issue, is absolutely not the case. It is easy to talk about a "batch" of fire doors, but how big is the batch? Have there been tests on other fire doors of different makes to check that they still meet the 30-minute compartmentalisation fire resistance Dame Judith Hackitt, in her interim report, talked about two key findings: improving the process, competence and enforcement of regulations, and improving testing, marketing and the quality assurance of products. I know that the Government have been saying that they will wait until Dame Judith Hackitt reports with her full report, but this particular incident means that we have to move forward now to look at compartmentalisation. This affects not just high-rise blocks but every rented block of flats in the country as well. Can the Minister assure us that there will be a Statement as soon as possible on whether it is just this one type of fire door or a more general problem, and also if it is possible to track where those doors have been placed, or whether there has to be a general request to go out and identify them.
Building Safety Update — House of Lords, 2018-03-15
Topic: Housing
Angela Harris (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, is the noble Lord aware of the real problem in the private blocks of flats that the cost being quoted for residents to have the cladding taken off and replaced is around £30,000 per person? That is absolutely unconscionable. What are the Government doing about making sure that there is some help for these people?
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Picking on the language, the Minister talked a number of times about skilled people. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made the point that the definition of "skilled people" is the problem. Will the Minister acknowledge that issue and carry that point in the discussions he is having with other agencies?
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Lynne Featherstone (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I support Amendment 11. Part of Amendment 7 said something similar. It is very important that we are satisfied on this point so that we know for sure that there can be no interference and no misdoings—if that is the right word.
Leveson Inquiry Update — House of Lords, 2018-03-01
Topic: Civil Rights
James Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, a number of victims of press intrusion sat in a room with the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, when he solemnly promised that the Leveson inquiry would be completed. If the noble and learned Lord were sitting in the room with those same victims today, what would he say to them in the light of the Statement about that broken promise?
Leveson Inquiry Update — House of Lords, 2018-03-01
Topic: Civil Rights
Kishwer Falkner (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the whole House has heard what the Minister said about the victims and, in answer to the questions of my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness about the pledge by the former Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, to the victims, the Minister responded that he was merely a former Prime Minister. Would he like to take the opportunity to reflect on those words and perhaps come back to the Dispatch Box with a fuller, more compassionate and responsible answer to the question of what the Prime Minister’s pledge means to the victims of press intrusion and abuse?