argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): May I suggest that in fact it is a quadruple whammy, because the hon. Gentleman has not yet referred to the fact that the mythical impact assessments that the Government have or have not conducted—we are not quite sure—probably contain some very large figures about the damage Brexit is going to cause to the 58 sectors on which those reports were apparently conducted?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Does the hon. Gentleman believe, as I do, that the Government have managed to convince themselves that the EU is going to "go whistle" and that leaving will not cost us a penny because they get their information from too limited a number of sources? I do not know whether he is familiar with the Legatum Institute—I know that the Minister on the Front Bench is a fan—but the Government seem to give it undue access, and possibly influence, and it has a specific agenda.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Although new clause 17 may be otiose, to echo the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), it does at least give Members the opportunity to express strong views on aspects of Brexit. I wonder whether among Government Members there is any sense of humility, shame or embarrassment about what they are inflicting on the country. Looking at the chaos and instability, and indeed the loss of influence, the UK has experienced in the past few months, I would have thought that some Conservative Members would be starting to question their enthusiastic endorsement of action that is weakening the United Kingdom and leaving us much, much poorer. I know there are Members on both sides of this House who were remain supporters and who are keeping quiet and biding their time. They tell me that they are waiting for the polls to shift before coming out and voicing their concerns about the impact of Brexit more openly. I point out to them that they do not have much time to wait for the polls to shift before Brexit goes ahead—if it goes ahead. I say "if" because there is nothing final about it. Clearly article 50 is revocable, and although the will of the people on 23 June last year expressed itself one way, current polling suggests a majority in favour of a vote on the deal.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I agree absolutely. That is why new clause 17, which the hon. Gentleman moved, is not otiose at all. It would put people on the spot: they would have to vote, hopefully for a figure. I hope the Government will want to do that, in the name of accountability and transparency. We need a figure, because there is a real risk. We have seen press reports that some arrangement will be reached whereby the Government and the leading leave campaigners within the Government will be saved the embarrassment of a very large—£45 billion to £50 billion—figure being put into the public domain. As several Members have said this afternoon, that is the down payment, not the final divorce settlement.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am absolutely not doing that. That is why I just referred to the idea of having a vote on the deal. The whole point of that is to have a public popular vote. We, the Liberal Democrats, have made it clear from the outset that the only way democratically to answer the question posed by the marginal result on 24 June last year—52% to 48%—is through a vote on the deal for everyone in the country. Before the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) intervened, I was talking about current polling. The Survation poll suggested that 50% of the population now support the idea of a vote on the deal, and only 34% oppose it.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I agree. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will regret, as many Opposition Members and I do, that very early on, the Government shut down some of the options available to us regarding the single market and the customs union. There was no attempt by the Government to negotiate with the European Union on whether there was scope for the EU to give ground, including on freedom of movement. I know from contacts that I have had that there would have been some appetite among some EU countries to give ground on freedom of movement, but that is not something that the Government sought.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): The clearest outcome of the general election was that the hon. Gentleman’s party lost its majority and is now in an unwieldy and dangerous relationship with the Democratic Unionist party. The route that the Government are going down—a particularly hard Brexit—was not endorsed in the general election.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): The British public cannot but note the incompetence that our Government have shown. Whether they were leave or remain supporters, when they see a Government in chaos, conducting negotiations in a cack-handed manner, it is not surprising that they are beginning to worry about the impact of Brexit.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): We are here today debating the impact that the hon. Gentleman’s Government will have on every single man, woman and child in this country by pursuing a hard Brexit agenda. I do not think he believed what he was saying when he tried to shift the blame to the EU for what happened to David Cameron’s negotiations. However, I made the point earlier that if the EU had been faced with the realistic prospect of the UK leaving, I think it would have been much more amenable to making more substantial concessions. Hon. Members may be pleased to hear that I am about to conclude—[hon. Members: "Hooray!] Thank you. Apparently, Brexit is about taking back control. We therefore need to ensure that new clause 17 is put into statute so that Parliament has the opportunity to take back control and demonstrate whether we think that the down payment of £45 billion, £50 billion or £55 billion is a price worth paying for the views of a relatively small number of Brexit-obsessed Conservative Members of Parliament.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Wera Benedicta Hobhouse (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Is not this debate bringing out the fact that the will of the people is a very mixed bag? Is it not therefore admissible for us to get close to the will of the people through these debates and, if it appears that we are going to get a great result out of Brexit, to go to the people again and ask them to confirm or reject their original decision? That is what I call democracy.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): The hon. Gentleman says that the proposal has been rejected. He might have heard me refer earlier to a Survation poll at the weekend which confirmed that 50% of people now support the idea of a vote on the deal, and that only a third of them oppose it.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I just want to get the hon. Gentleman on the record saying that, whatever happens to public opinion and however bad the negotiations go, even if the 50% who believe that there should be a vote on the deal grows to 90%, he is adamant that, because of the vote on 23 June 2016, nothing can ever change.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: Government Operations
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Does the hon. Lady agree that a good way for the Government to publicise precisely how much the bill will be is for them to put the figure on the side of a red bus and for senior members of the Government to drive around the country publicising the £45 billion down payment?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) listed as one of the costs of Brexit all the costs to us as a nation—individually—of establishing all the agencies we currently share with the EU.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-06
Topic: International Affairs
Wera Benedicta Hobhouse (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): As a member of the Labour party, the hon. Gentleman should understand the word "solidarity". He has just been talking about the fact that Europe is much more than just a financial project. Is this not about European solidarity and we, as one of the richest countries in the world, acting in solidarity with people and countries in eastern Europe, which, for decades, have been losing out? Now we are helping those countries and their democracies to thrive.
Race Disparity Audit — House of Commons, 2017-10-10
Topic: Education
Layla Michelle Moran (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I welcome the focus in the audit on educational attainment and many Members have already spoken about the subject. That shows how stubbornly the gap persists between pupil premium children and others. If the Government are serious about addressing this burning injustice, should they not allocate the money to schools to tackle the problem rather than forcing them to make damaging cuts, which the poorest families are least able to mitigate?
Bombardier — House of Commons, 2017-10-10
Topic: Foreign Trade
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): This situation is a tragedy for Northern Ireland and for Bombardier, and particularly for Northern Ireland industry, which, as I know from when I visited last week, is clearly reeling from the impact of Brexit and the concerns about our leaving the customs union. I welcome the steps the Government are taking, but I wish to press the Secretary of State on the punitive tariffs. What does he think such tariffs imply for the prospects of a beneficial future UK-US trade deal? It is true that this is all happening while we are in the EU, but does he think we will be more or less vulnerable to this sort of bullying in future if we are in or out of the EU?
Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House — House of Commons, 2017-10-10
Topic: Government Operations
Christine Anne Jardine (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) for his contribution, but I promise to confine my remarks to affairs of this House. I apologise to colleagues who, like me, perhaps thought that they had nodded off and woken up somewhere else. It is almost exactly four months since we were all elected to this place—many of us for the first time—on a pledge to serve our constituents and the country, but I find myself increasingly dismayed by the attitude and flagrant disrespect for the values of the democratic process that are displayed by those on the Government Benches. First we were presented with the Henry VIII power grab in the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, and now it seems that the Government intend simply to allow Opposition days to happen and then ignore them, paying no respect to the views of the House, elected Members or, by extension, the electorate who sent us here to oppose and scrutinise. It is not good enough, Mr Speaker, and if we continue along those lines, we will not be serving democracy At the moment, politicians spend a lot of time debating and lamenting public apathy, searching for ways to engage the younger generation, and asking why they find so little in the work we do to spark their enthusiasm for public service. Perhaps we had our answer, or at least part of it, during the Opposition day on 13 September, with its debates on NHS pay and tuition fees—hardly unimportant issues. If any young person was visiting the House on that day or watching the TV coverage, what did they witness? Petty political game playing—not dissimilar, I have to say, from what we have seen from those on the Government Benches today.
Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House — House of Commons, 2017-10-10
Topic: Government Operations
Jamie Hume Stone (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thought the day would never come when a newbie Lib Dem would agree with the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), but I like the cut of his jib. I think there is something more dangerous here, and I will probably incur the wrath of the House by turning to the territory of the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), but in the place where I once served for 12 years, we had private Members’ debates of an evening, to which a Minister would reply and after which, to be honest—I have to be careful about parliamentary language—damn all happened. That was dangerous for democracy in Scotland because the general public started to lose faith in the purpose of that kind of debate, and when we lose that, we are in danger of losing something incredibly important.
Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House — House of Commons, 2017-10-10
Topic: Government Operations
Alexander Morrison Carmichael (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I can assure the House that it has been some years since I wrote my own press releases. What I want is an assurance that where the House reaches a decision—this is the point that the hon. Member for Wellingborough made—that decision will be acted on and respected by the Government. We have had no assurance on that point for the third time today. The House will draw its own conclusion from that failure to deny From any Minister of the Crown, that would be regrettable. It pains me to say that, from the Leader of the House, who is supposed to be the House’s representative in Government, it is a dereliction of her duties. Those on the Treasury Bench can continue to avoid this issue if they wish, but if they do, it will keep coming back. Inevitably, because this is a democracy, the day will come when they are sitting on the Opposition Benches and somebody else is sitting where they are now. I fear that it is only then that they will understand the damage that they are doing to our House and our constitution now Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the Government's policy in relation to the proceedings of this House.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2017-09-14
Topic: Technology
Questions: Many businesses in Wealden are forced by BT to depend on slow, unreliable broadband, and they get appalling service if they are ever unlucky enough to have to contact the company. Can the Minister update the House on progress to improve rural broadband, especially in Wealden?; Scottish politics can be rather tribal, but yesterday Scottish politics united in support of Paisley’s bid to become the UK City of Culture in 2021. Paisley’s bid is now Scotland’s bid. The final stage of the competition is looming, and a win for Paisley would create a bigger legacy than a win for anywhere else. Will the Minister join us in supporting Paisley 2021?; The Minister will be aware of the great success of initiatives such as the Seafood Coast in promoting tourism in Torbay. What further support will the Government offer to encourage more people to come to the coast in the south-west?; Following the creation of the Ebacc, the take-up of music education is going down. Given the value of the UK’s world-leading music industry to our economy—it was £123 million in Bristol alone in 2015—will the Minister please listen to the music industry, reverse the Ebacc and invest in music teaching?; Further to the answer that the Secretary of State gave to my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Tom Watson), the online gambling industry has exploded since the Gambling Act 2005 and is now worth more than £6 billion a year. Too much advertising is now reaching young people, particularly through social media outlets. What is the Minister doing to regulate advertising through social media outlets and the offers that allow young people to gamble for free?; Blaydon has a growing number of small and micro-charities, many of which are trying to fill the gaps left by Government cuts to local authorities, and their survival is often precarious. Following the Secretary of State’s discussions within the sector, what action is she taking to help those charities with fundraising and other support?
Alexander Morrison Carmichael (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I welcome the inclusion of "Digital" in the Department’s title. However, despite that bold and innovative step, the availability of superfast broadband in Orkney and Shetland remains disappointingly low. I suspect that the roots of the problem lie in how the contract was tendered under the Broadband Delivery UK system, so will the Minister work with the Scottish Government to ensure that the mistakes in that process are learned?
Police Pay and Funding — House of Commons, 2017-09-14
Topic: Law and Crime
Alexander Morrison Carmichael (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Just last week, the chief constable of Northumbria said that his force was getting "very, very close" to not being able to deliver a professional service because of budget cuts. Does the Minister think that burdening him with extra expenditure without giving him any extra budget is going to make that situation better or worse?
Schools: National Funding Formula — House of Commons, 2017-09-14
Topic: Education
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Sutton has excellent schools and teachers, but it is a London borough with a very high cost of living—higher as a result of Brexit-driven inflation. Now that the Government have breached the pay cap for police and prison officers, and as they could not defend NHS pay levels yesterday, do they agree it is time to fund a proper pay rise for teachers, to reward them for their professionalism and to help them address the pressures of cost of living increases?
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2017-09-14
Topic: Law and Crime
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. You may be aware that while the Government commissioned a report on the funding of extremism, they have subsequently have said they are not willing to publish it. However, they are on record as saying that Privy Counsellors who want to access the report can do so and consider it in what I guess would be a confidential environment. I have made multiple attempts to get such access to the report, but the Home Office has so far seemed incredibly reluctant to make it available. I hope you are able to assist me in ensuring that the Home Office delivers on its promise.
Polio — House of Commons, 2017-11-29
Topic: Agriculture
Jamie Hume Stone (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Will the Minister show the same level of commitment he has shown on the international level to the prevention and eradication of animal and livestock diseases—something that poses a grave threat to very rural constituencies such as mine?
Rail Update — House of Commons, 2017-11-29
Topic: Transportation
Edward Jonathon Davey (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I welcome today’s big message that our railways work better when track and train are operated together and the fact that the Secretary of State is now trying to correct the big mistake in the original rail privatisation, when his party separated track and train ownership. May I ask him, on behalf of my constituents in Surbiton, to consider the urgent safety case for a new staircase at platforms 3 and 4 at Surbiton train station, given how dangerously overcrowded they can become during the evening peak?
State Pension Age: Women — House of Commons, 2017-11-29
Topic: Social Welfare
Stephen Anthony Christopher Lloyd (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am grateful to the SNP for securing this important Opposition day debate, and appreciate the opportunity to speak in it. Like every other Member, I have been contacted by numerous WASPI women in my constituency. We all know how much of an impact this has had, and we all know just how upset, frustrated and deeply angry many WASPI women feel Before I go on to ask the Government for transition payments, let me point out that we are all culpable. One of the things that I have found so interesting while sitting here listening to all the different arguments is the element of amnesia. Every political party that is represented in the Chamber now is culpable because of the WASPI issues: the Conservatives, the Labour party and possibly, it appears, even the SNP. I do not know that for sure, because I am not a Scottish MP or a Scottish constituent, but I do know that, during the passage of what became the 1995 Pensions Act, the Tories did not tell people what was happening right at the beginning. In 1999 and then in 2001, 2002 and 2003, Labour did not engage in the mass communication that would have warned the women of what was coming—and I hold my hands up as a member of the coalition Government. I do not think that we gave enough information in 2011, when we changed the retirement ages. So the first thing I want to say, despite all the Sturm und Drang in the Chamber, is that I think we have let WASPI women down. End of Secondly, I feel that the Government should give serious consideration to finding some transitional money. As a number of Members have pointed out, many of these women, particularly those who are in menial and artisan jobs, will not be in the same physical shape in their early sixties as someone who has not done a backbreaking job for 40 or 45 years. I do believe that the Minister and the Government understand the strength of feeling, the passion, the anger and the exceptional frustration that so many WASPI women feel.
State Pension Age: Women — House of Commons, 2017-11-29
Topic: Labor
Stephen Anthony Christopher Lloyd (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): That is an important point about the many years of contributions and of back-breaking jobs I return to the fact that we are all culpable; we know that in this Chamber— Conservative, Labour, coalition and, according to the Conservatives and Labour, the SNP as well. I do not say—because I would be lying to my constituents—that we are going to cancel the new retirement age and take it back to 60; anyone who says that knows they are telling whoppers, and that that is not going to happen.