argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-04-09
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): It is indeed, and if my hon. Friend looks at the big Green Paper plan that Labour has published, "Housing for the Many", she will see that we talk not only about building more but about building better. We talk about doing what the public sector has often done in the past—namely, building to better standards. We want these to be the highest standards of design, accessibility, energy efficiency and high tech, so that in future, Labour’s affordable homes will become people’s best choice, not their last resort. Finally, we will create a fully fledged new Department for Housing, both to reflect the scale of the crisis and to drive our national new deal on housing. This will be Labour’s long-term plan for housing that will help to fix our country’s housing crisis. Where this Government have failed, a Labour Government will bring in the radical change that so many millions of people now want and need.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-04-09
Topic: Housing
Liam Dominic Byrne (Labour, Centre-left): I was staggered to hear the Minister’s complacency about homelessness, which is wholly misplaced. In my region of the West Midlands, which is under a Tory Mayor, homelessness or rough sleeping is up by 333%. Homeless people are dying at the rate of one a fortnight. I want this House to hear, to know and to remember the names of those who have died in the past 15 months alone: Paul Williams, Laura Cairns, Steve, Daniel Hutton, Alain Simmonds, Daniel Clements, Terry Taylor, Jayne Simpson, Michael Hill, Peter Mbugua, Simon Holmes, Linda Grimes, Remigiusz Boczarski, Peter Corker, Joby Sparrey, Julie, Thomas Pulham, Kane Walker and two men whose names are known only to God The homeless people I see on the streets of Birmingham often live in medieval conditions. I have met people in subways in their hospital gowns and people with rat bites fighting and fearing sepsis, and yet the homeless people in Britain’s second city, in the sixth richest economy on earth, face a health system that is rated inadequate and a mental health service in which the caseload is rising four times faster than funding, and where only 1% of the money promised to the West Midlands combined authority for housing has actually been paid over to build new homes That roll of names is a roll call of shame. I hope that in our city, if not elsewhere, we build a permanent memorial, so that we are confronted every day with the names of those who died, the names of those whom we have collectively failed. The best memorial of all, however, would be to end this scandal for good and to sweep the disgrace of homelessness into the history books once more.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-04-09
Topic: Housing
Andrew Francis Slaughter (Labour, Centre-left): On no issue save housing is the chasm more evident between the platitudes we heard from the Dispatch Box and the reality that MPs experience every week in their constituencies. One in seven homes in my borough is overcrowded, and housing conditions are the worst I have seen in 30 years, in particular in the private rented sector. That is why we needed the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 of my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), to call out those absolutely disgusting and appalling conditions in which families are living every day in my constituency As for affordability, for the bottom quartile of homes—that is, the ones that should be most affordable—the average price is more than £500,000 in my constituency. Average monthly rent is over £2,000, and the ratio between house prices and earnings is over 20:1. And yet, because of the way in which the Government implement policies like the benefits cap, the reality is that people simply cannot afford to live in areas where they, their families and their communities have lived for decades. The only remedy is the sort of radical programme that my right hon. Friend the shadow Housing Secretary has set out. It is possible to make a difference locally. We do not have local elections in my area this year, but for those who do, I will just outline the difference between having a Labour council and a Conservative one. My council was Conservative until 2014. In its last four years, it sold off more than 300 empty council properties because they had become vacant. That included three and four-bedroomed houses, and many two-bedroomed houses and flats. These properties were sold off on the open market, putting them out of reach of families forever and a day. Cynically, that council then took a housing waiting list of over 8,000 families and reduced it to over 1,000, simply by knocking families off the list. In many cases, the council did not even have the courtesy to tell them. That degree of cynicism and that type of social engineering has gone on not just in my borough, but in many boroughs across London and elsewhere—and it is a moral crime, not just bad policy I contrast that situation with the position of my council under Labour. This issue is one of the reasons that Labour was elected in Hammersmith and Fulham, and was then re-elected with a landslide last year. Labour-run Hammersmith and Fulham Council stated this month that it "has recently secured more than 1,600 genuinely affordable homes in the borough at zero cost to taxpayers after negotiating a series of deals with developers." That is the difference that Labour makes in local government, and I believe that in national Government—with this sort of programme of housebuilding, and the crackdown on poor landlords and poor conditions—we can actually tackle this crisis. It is not just that this Government are complacent; as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) said, they simply do not care to solve the housing crisis in this country.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-04-09
Topic: Housing
Sharon Hodgson (Labour, Centre-left): Land Registry figures estimate that 19% of property sales in my constituency in 2017 involved leasehold homes. That is nearly one in five homebuyers who are experiencing the injustices of the leasehold process. I have received 54 responses to a consultation that I launched on this matter, and there was an overwhelming sense of injustice and frustration with the leasehold process, in line with the findings of the Select Committee. Constituents made comments such as: "I feel stuck in a loop", and said that they felt that they were "being held hostage". Others said: "I’ll have nothing to leave for my children" One of the most common situations I have heard about is when homeowners wish to move home in order to downsize before retirement, but no company will offer a mortgage on the property because the lease is not long enough. Those people either have to find someone to buy the property cash in hand, or extend the lease. But extending the lease costs at least £10,000 and is frankly not an option for many of my constituents, who want to use that money to live on for the rest of their retirement The Minister has stated many times that at least there is choice in the property market for those who may not wish to buy freehold, but the evidence collected by the Select Committee and the heartfelt responses I have received suggest that this so-called choice is anything but. It is not a choice if there is a lack of information about what leasehold means, and 36% of the responses to my survey indicated that people were unaware of what leasehold meant at the point of sale. It is not a choice when homebuyers are not told that the property is leasehold until the very day that they are signing for their new home, which is what three of my constituents told me had happened to them. It was also not a choice for 13 of my constituents who told me that, after saving up and wishing to buy the freehold, and paying numerous administrative fees—in the hundreds of pounds—the freeholder simply said that they were not willing to sell at that point. It is not a choice for those families Another injustice is that of leases being sold by the freeholder to third-party companies, without any consultation, correspondence or notice given to the leaseholder. Where is the accountability? My constituents are telling me of their increased anxiety at the fact that their property does not "feel like their own", and saying that "outside people control their destiny" Does the Minister agree that this is not a healthy situation for any family to go through? This is the home that people have worked for, saved for and are paying for. I hope that she understands that this is not just a case of a few people feeling a little disgruntled at the system. I hope that she will really take into consideration the well-researched Select Committee recommendations, and specifically consider an investigation into the widespread mis-selling of leases.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-04-09
Topic: Housing
Emma Ann Hardy (Labour, Centre-left): I urge everybody here to have as the backdrop to every single decision we make the emergent climate change emergency that our country and our world face. In the short time available, I will make a plea to the Minister to look specifically at modular homes, which offer an environmental and energy-efficient solution. The Labour Front-Bench team has committed to build 1 million affordable homes, and we should make sure that we build them in a way that does not harm our environment any more than it has already been harmed Because of its affordability and its green footprint, I think the future should be modular. In my constituency, I have had the pleasure of watching modular social housing coming up just outside my office. They are some of the most energy-efficient homes in the country. Not only are they providing people with a beautiful place to live, but they are helping them save money As I am sure the Minister is aware, Hull is the caravan building capital of the country. We have fantastic skills in my constituency, with an industrial base and knowledge that have developed over generations. I urge the Minister to look seriously at the businesses in Hull and to give them a secure funding stream and stability, so that these modular building companies have the capacity to develop and invest. These are uncertain times and there is uncertainty for business investment, but having a promise from the Government that they see modular homes as the way forward and are willing to invest in innovation would give those businesses the security they need Finally, the Minister or anyone else is always welcome to come and see the beautiful modular social homes in my constituency, because I really think we need to look at them again if we are serious about protecting our planet.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-04-09
Topic: Housing
Helen Elizabeth Hayes (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister spoke of the difficulty of quantifying Government targets for different types of housing. This is what can be quantified: the 1.25 million people on the waiting list for social housing, the 123,000 children living in temporary accommodation, and the fact that more than 99% of homes to rent in the private sector in Lambeth and Southwark have rent that is above the local housing allowance cap This Government are failing, as the coalition did before them, by cutting the subsidy for new social housing, redefining affordable housing to make a mockery of the word "affordable", penalising residents with the bedroom tax, and lining the pockets of shoddy developers such as Persimmon and unscrupulous private sector landlords. The Government are also presiding over the disastrous relaxation of the rules on permitted development rights. In the time left available to me, it is this policy that I will focus on The expansion of permitted development rights is delivering poor quality homes in former office buildings up and down the country, resulting in children playing in industrial estate car parks, poor fire safety standards, and homes that are not homes but essentially hotels by the back door that are let out through Airbnb and other platforms for short-term lets. Most shockingly, having introduced this major planning reform, the Government have undertaken no evaluation of its impact and propose further expansions that would enable developers to demolish and rebuild office buildings without planning permission This policy is removing quality control and democratic accountability from housing delivery. Councils and communities have no say, and the developers who profit from these developments make no contribution to local community needs or the delivery of genuinely affordable housing. In many areas, the expansion of permitted development rights is delivering the slums of tomorrow and the fire safety horrors of tomorrow. This is happening on the Minister’s watch I therefore urge the Minister to do one small practical thing: to halt the expansion of permitted development rights while a full evaluation of its impact is undertaken, and to restore housing delivery to the full democratic control of local authority planning departments, which can decide where their communities need new housing, say where it should be built, and secure affordable housing contributions and funding for community facilities, so that we build not the slums of tomorrow but the high-quality, sustainable, affordable communities that this country so desperately needs.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-04-09
Topic: Housing
Rachael Helen Maskell (Labour, Centre-left): On average, house prices are 10 times wages, and we know this skews our local economy but also drives the housing poverty that is so damaging to my city of York. The Lib Dem-Tory council has presided over this housing failure, with a fall in social housing when there is such desperate need, while at the same time developers have made their millions building luxury apartments that our city just does not need. City of York Council should be getting to grips with what is happening in housing, but it has failed, and I am glad the Government have rejected its local plan Just last Monday, the council failed again when it signed off a 72 acre brownfield site for over 2,000 luxury apartments that our city does not need. I would juxtapose that with the 11 homeless people who lost their lives in our city last year, and with the people I see in my surgeries who are living in box bedrooms—whole families are in that situation—with adults and children sleeping on sofas. That is the reality of York, as so many people in housing poverty know. Not only that, but the council has handed over its influence over the future of that site, through a commercial agreement, while contributing £35 million to the site. This must be stopped and reviewed. Residents are rightly angry. They are being driven into deeper housing poverty, while the elite moves in on their space. They are being driven out of their city, and they are being ignored. While people invest in their assets and purchase their commuter and second homes, my local families are cooped up in unsuitable, cramped and damp housing. York, which calls itself a human rights city, is the most inequitable city outside London, and this latest development will simply make it worse The Lib Dem-Tory council’s plan just supports corporate greed over local need, and it must be changed. That will start with a Labour council, which will build the housing that our city desperately needs. It will put right the local economy by ensuring that we have the skills our city needs. We need 500 people in the NHS, and there are also those needed in the care workforce, but they cannot afford to live in our city. We will relive the dream that Joseph Rowntree planted in our city as he built the houses fit for heroes and the housing developments that set the agenda for the garden villages and sustainable green homes that will ensure people across our city can live in and enjoy our city. Labour will make the difference in York: it is time for change.
Mental Health Support: Young People — House of Commons, 2019-04-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher Philip James Elmore (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend will be aware of the work that I have been doing—indeed, with the Minister—on social media and the need for more research into it to gain understanding. She mentioned the data on increased self-harm and suicide. Another correlation is that, in the past decade, social media use has rocketed and that is having an impact on our young people. The Government and the devolved Administrations need to conduct more research on the impact of social media so that we can look at early intervention and, where possible, prevention, to support young people who are addicted to social media platforms.
Horse-racing — House of Commons, 2019-05-23
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Conor Patrick McGinn (Labour, Centre-left): I am very proud to be the joint chairman of the all-party parliamentary racing and bloodstock industries group. Like many Members across the House, I strongly support our fantastic sport and our fantastic British horse-racing industry, but the sport does face challenges. Given that the yield from the levy is £17 million less than forecast, what measures will the Secretary of State and the Government take, working with British horse-racing to ensure its long-term financial sustainability?
Gambling-related Harm — House of Commons, 2019-05-23
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Questions: What steps his Department is taking to ensure adequate funding for (a) education, (b) research, (c) treatment and (d) support to minimise gambling-related harm.
Rosena Chantelle Allin-Khan (Labour, Centre-left): Some gambling companies sponsor football clubs to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds, and in return, they get branding on T-shirts and around grounds, seen by thousands in stadiums and millions on TV, including millions of children. Yet we found out recently that some of those sponsors gave as little as £50 to GambleAware—the charity that funds research and treatment of gambling addiction. Currently, just 3% of gambling addicts get the treatment they need. When the stakes are so high and contributions so low, how can the Minister justify refusing a mandatory levy?
Heritage: Cultural Importance — House of Commons, 2019-05-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jessica Elizabeth Morden (Labour, Centre-left): A big part of Newport’s heritage is the Chartist Rising, which happened 180 years ago this November. In Newport, we commemorate it every year. What more can we do in this place and nationally to recognise the Chartist movement’s critical role in shaping our democracy?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-05-23
Topic: Civil Rights
Tom Watson (Labour, Centre-left): Good morning, Mr Speaker, and my very best wishes to Jemima and all colleagues’ family members in their thespian endeavours, including my daughter, Saoirse, who has just successfully auditioned to play Nancy in the school production of "Oliver Twist" UEFA’s inclusion and diversity policy says the following: "Everyone has the right to enjoy football, no matter who you are, where you’re from or how you play." But next week, Henrikh Mkhitaryan will miss the match of a lifetime because he is from Armenia, and Arsenal fans with Armenian names are being denied visas to travel to Baku. This is a scandal. It is a deeply ugly side to the beautiful game, and if I was Secretary of State, I would make it clear to UEFA that it is completely unacceptable. Will the Minister demand that UEFA ensures that countries that force players to choose between their sport and their safety and that discriminate against travelling fans will never be allowed to host future events?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-05-23
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Tom Watson (Labour, Centre-left): A woeful ticket allocation means that the vast majority of fans will not travel to that match or, indeed, to the Champions league final, because UEFA has favoured corporates over fans. Will the Secretary of State condemn UEFA with me today? On this day when the House is divided over Europe, can we unite to condemn UEFA for its disgraceful treatment of football fans?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-05-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: I add my best wishes to the England women’s team for success in the forthcoming World cup. Will the Minister give them the best possible send-off by ensuring that the Government commit increased funding to football facilities at grassroots level?
Gerard Killen (Labour, Centre-left): Next month, UEFA will start the process of recruiting 12,000 volunteers from host countries, including Scotland and England, for Euro 2020. They will be expected to give a huge time commitment and to work for free in complex roles that involve huge responsibility, including anti-doping. Is that not just exploitation dressed up as an opportunity, and will the Secretary of State raise it with UEFA directly?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-05-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: I add my best wishes to the England women’s team for success in the forthcoming World cup. Will the Minister give them the best possible send-off by ensuring that the Government commit increased funding to football facilities at grassroots level?; For what it’s worth, I recently appeared in panto as Sir Lancingalot in the North Lancing residents association’s version of “Robin Hood”. [Hon. Members: “Oh no you didn’t!] Oh yes I did! Also in Lancing, I am attempting to arrange a programme of midnight football over the summer, which I did a few years ago in another part of my constituency that is affected by antisocial behaviour. With the help of Adur Athletic football club, the local police and the local council, we laid on football between 10 and midnight on Saturday evenings for teenagers who otherwise, as they admitted themselves, would be getting up to no good on the streets. It completely changed the dynamics between those kids and the police, who came and joined in enthusiastically. Does the Minister agree that that is a constructive way of dealing with antisocial behaviour, getting kids engaged in sport, and engaging those kids with the police and other local people in a positive way?
Alexander James Jorden Norris (Labour, Centre-left): Last week, Wolverhampton Wanderers became the latest football club to commit to rail seating at its stadium. Football fans want safe standing, clubs do, and the governing bodies are on board as well. It has been eight months since the Government announced their consultation and a review of this. When will it come to a close?
Whorlton Hall — House of Commons, 2019-05-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): What was revealed on "Panorama" last night was truly horrific. This was public service broadcasting at its best, but it should not have taken the BBC to uncover the case; the CQC got this totally wrong. However, whatever the failings of the CQC, ultimate responsibility must lie with those who own and manage these homes and make money out of them. I am therefore extremely concerned to hear that the Minister has put Cygnet on the body that is to look into this matter. There is a clear conflict of interest because Cygnet may end up needing to be prosecuted. Finally, the Government need to fund these services properly. It is no good having people who are not qualified and not properly paid working with the most vulnerable people in society.
Whitsun Adjournment — House of Commons, 2019-05-23
Topic: Other
James Fitzpatrick (Labour, Centre-left): I hope I am not interrupting the hon. Gentleman’s excellent speech, but I sense he is coming to the end of it, and I wonder whether he has included on his last page congratulations to West Ham United on finishing in the top half of the premiership this year. I only mention that because it will save me, as a fellow West Ham supporter, doing so in my speech; and because the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee mentioned Newcastle United, so we will beat them 2:1 on this occasion.