argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Deborah Wilcox (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we support the principle of Amendment 171B. There are currently many barriers to further education institutions working effectively with academies and MATs, and it is apposite that this is being raised. Funding further education appropriately continues to be a prime issue, as noted by several noble Lords. Schools are more often part of the solution, not the problem, so we need a concerted, cross-government commitment to improving the life chances of young people in our most marginalised and deprived communities and addressing the root causes of underperformance, as noted by my noble friend Lady Whitaker Our Amendment 171R obliges the Secretary of State to consult on and establish access to further education for all schoolchildren aged 14 to 16 within one year of the Bill’s enactment. We understand that the Minister has discussed the matter of academies working effectively with FE organisations, and I wondered whether she could update the House on any progress made on identifying and unblocking the barriers to working together.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this has been an interesting and useful debate. For me, the report by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, was very telling. As he said, taking his report and the amendments together would be very empowering for young people with SEN and disabilities. The Minister responded to each of the amendments and that is encouraging, but I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, hopes the Government will go further. I hope there can be further discussions I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for her support. Like my noble friend Lady Chapman, I found her speech moving and instructive. I am afraid that experience is all too common. I am sure all of us have experienced discussions with parents who have real problems when their children have illnesses and the school is not able to respond in the necessary way. As I have mentioned before, I think that, in the new arrangements in the health service—the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, will know about the integrated care partnerships—there must be an opportunity for the health service and schools within health ICS boundaries to talk together about how some of this can be resolved I noted what the Minister said about statutory guidance. She will know that the problem is that it is not working in some areas—the noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about inconsistencies—so I am sure that her offer of a meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will be very welcome I turn to my amendments. I am struck by the poor outcomes for deaf people. Some 55% to 58% of deaf people are in employment, compared with 81% of non-disabled people. More generally, disabled people experience higher rates of unemployment and economic inactivity. I am convinced that part of the issue lies with schools and the need for more support of them. The Minister said on my Amendment 97 that local authorities are required to provide specialist support, but they are flexible on funding and, unfortunately, over the last few years that flexibility has not worked in deaf children’s favour I note what the Minister said about the school register on Amendment 99. That is very welcome, and I thank her for that assurance. My noble friend Lady Chapman ended by saying she thought the Government could table amendments later on to meet some of these points and respond after the Green Paper. The Minister said that that was not possible, but I still think there are great opportunities to pause the Bill to allow her time to do so, and I hope the Government will think again about that. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Deborah Wilcox (Labour, Centre-left): As my noble friend Lord Knight expressed, we support the fundamental right for home education. Interesting practice is evident in a variety of settings. However, checks and balances need to be present in the system. I echo what others have said in paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Soley, who told me earlier today that he began this work in 2017 I also echo the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about local authorities having to assume these extra responsibilities without appropriate funding, and remind the Government that local government finances are paper-thin and cannot continually absorb extra responsibilities Eventually, the Government have acted on concerns around the increasing number of children receiving an education outside the classroom. We have talked about them missing out on the many benefits that a school environment brings. An old education professor of mine once said that education is "caught not taught". I eventually got to understand what that meant, because learning and socialising with other children is very important, as are safeguarding issues For some children, home schooling can be a positive experience. The calls for a register for all home educators, as my noble friend Lord Soley pointed out earlier, have been around for at least the last five years, to ensure that children are receiving a suitable education in a safe environment, as well as the tools and flexibilities that that register would bring to check on a child’s home schooling I cannot see how we can argue with the fact that these are vital safeguards in helping to ensure that children are not being taught in unsuitable or dangerous environments. We support these school register measures in general, but we also recognise, as has been discussed in the debate, that there is a need to balance the concerns of some stakeholders.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Labor
Angela Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I think that the noble Baroness is challenging me on that point. Has she actually invited the unions to a meeting with the Government at any point? I did ask that, and I would be grateful if she would respond to it.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Transportation
Anthony Gueterbock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I get the impression that this crisis has just occurred in the past week, but that is not the case. The trade unions have been talking about this for a long time; the Government have been talking about Great British Railways for a very long time. We do not really know the extent to which these two issues are combined and whether the noble Baroness’s wish for change and the examples she gave will be included in legislation, but it seems very odd that we are now waiting until the last day before anything significant is happening I do not buy this business that the Government are not a principal. Since Covid, for very good reasons, the Government have been micromanaging the railways, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said. They are not allowing the train operators or Network Rail to negotiate. I do not know whether they mind about that but if they do not, the Government should take it on themselves I ask the Minister: what next? We have three strikes this week and, if there is no solution, what happens next? She and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, mentioned agency workers, but the last time we had an issue with agency workers related to P&O Ferries. Ministers were quite critical of P&O, to the extent that the Secretary of State said that he would sack its chairman. Whether he actually had the power to sack the chairman is a different matter, but if this goes on and agency workers are brought in, how can the Secretary of State sack himself? That really would not work. I hope that next week or by the end of this week, whatever the reasons, the Government encourage everybody to sit around the table and start talking about change and how it can be implemented while keeping the services going at the same time. As the Minister said, in France—I have a lot of experience of what happened on the railways in France—there is a rule that the trade unions allow one train in four to keep going, whatever the strike, so that there is at least a minimum service.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Labor
Brinley Davies (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I the interesting part of the Statement was, as someone said, its tone, which I think was accurately reflected in the Minister’s delivery to the House. There is clearly no intention from this Government to achieve a settlement. They have convinced themselves that it is in their interest to wind up the issue, reflected in the ministerial Statement in the use of terms such as "union barons". This strike was because of the frustration among the membership of the unions involved; a massive majority of the entire unionised workforce was in favour of taking action. This is not down to the leadership; it is down to the members and their dissatisfaction. When the Minister comes and reads us a Statement that is more like a Daily Mail op-ed on a bad day, it demonstrates the Government’s total lack of interest in achieving any settlement.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Labor
Brinley Davies (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Minister understand that part of the reason for this discontent is the Government’s intention to wind back on the pension schemes that cover the railway staff? The Government make policies to make people’s pensions worse; that is part of the problem. Does she understand that?
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Labor
Stephen Benn (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, which I have to admit she did with relish, but when I listen to the tone and content, I find it hard to escape the conclusion that the Government are content, if not enthusiastic, for this industrial action to go ahead because they think it will bring them political advantage. I have only a few moments to ask a question, so I ask the Minister to explain to the House: what is the role of an engaged, ambitious Secretary of State in a dispute such as this? What more, in her view, could the Government do to bring about the solution to this dispute that we all hope to see?
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Janet Alison Whitaker (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I welcome the long-overdue register proposals, which are a tribute to the persistence of my noble friend Lord Soley. I also commend the Department for Education’s Schools Bill fact sheet, which sets out the rationale calmly and comprehensively. Of course, with any new system there are adjustments that we can consider, but it will be a huge improvement to have registers for all the reasons my noble friend Lord Soley enumerated in the previous group and for the large proportion of Gypsy and Traveller children who have dropped out of secondary education because they feel it is not a place where they can thrive and some of whose parents struggle to educate them. Then there are those children who are not being educated at all, except by gangs and county lines—an increasing number, according to the police. Registers will be vital here In moving Amendment 97D, I shall also speak to Amendment 109A in this group. I am grateful for the support of my expert noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth, even if he is only here in spirit. The point of adding gender and ethnicity in Amendment 97D is to ensure that the full facts of drop-out from school are captured in the knowledge that local authorities have of what is happening to the children in their area. There are disproportionate numbers of children from some ethnicities who abandon school and even, among a few communities, a tendency to withdraw girls, particularly from secondary school. The reasons can include prejudice and bullying, particularly evident in the case of Gypsy and Traveller children; misunderstanding and ignorance of cultural norms; and lack of positive liaison with parents. Unless the size of these problems is known, and they must be known on a national basis from each local authority, factually and quantitatively, remedies are unlikely to be tailored to the cause Amendment 109A respects the Department for Education’s own data protection and audit report of February 2020 concerning the safeguarding of data. Although the information officer’s conclusions in this report apply to the department itself, they are equally relevant to local authorities whose procedures vary from area to area in their competency in safeguarding data. I hope for a positive response from the Minister and, indeed, from your Lordships. I beg to move.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Law and Crime
Jenny Chapman (Labour, Centre-left): I do not want to rehash everything that has been said. I think that most noble Lords who have spoken support this idea in principle and want to see it work, so I hope the Minister takes what I am about to say in that spirit I think that this is really sloppy, particularly when you are talking about something that could lead to imprisonment. I have done a lot of justice Bills, and I do not think I have ever seen anything quite like this where, in new Section 436C(1)(d), parents are asked to provide "any other information that may be prescribed", then, in new subsection (2), the local authority register "may also contain any other information the local authority consider appropriate." That is limitless at that point The Bill goes on, in new Section 436D(2)(c), to say that the onus is on the parent to inform the registering authority—the local authority—of any changes to this information, which could be anything, as yet to be decided, "of which the parent is aware" That is vague. Who decides whether the parent should be "aware"? How do you know that the parent is "aware"? That needs to be tidied up The Bill goes on to say that, should the parent fail—forgetting whether or not we can evidence whether they were "aware"—to provide something that is totally unspecified in the Bill, they can be fined and there can be an order that their child must attend school; they can decide which school. The parent can also be imprisoned for up to 51 months. I think it is pretty extraordinary that we are being asked to agree to an imprisonable offence—which we might well agree to if this was better drafted—when a parent is being asked to provide information that is unspecified. I do not think that is acceptable If the Government want to proceed with this, they need to think hard about new Section 436C in particular, because I can see that causing real problems in court should it need to be interpreted. It would be very helpful if the Government could have a rethink about this or, at the very least, if the Minister could say at the Dispatch Box, maybe this evening, what she thinks a parent who is "aware" looks like, because this will be looked to by a court that wants to understand the intention of this, should it need to. Does that mean a council has written to that parent? Would that be sufficient to then commence this whole series of interventions that could, as I say, lead to the imprisonment of a parent It is no good the Minister standing there and saying. "This will hardly ever be used; it will be an exceptional circumstance", because we are here to consider those circumstances. If that circumstance should be a very rare thing, we need to know the circumstances that would lead to it, rare or not. Being asked to agree to including in the Bill "any other information that may be prescribed" is very troubling to us. So we support the idea of a register and want very much to support the Government in what they are trying to do but we cannot just let this matter go, given the slack way in which the legislation is currently drafted.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Law and Crime
Jenny Chapman (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it is fair enough if the Minister is saying that we have misunderstood. That happens. However, the legislation states clearly that a parent who is registered by a local authority under proposed new Section 436B "must". That sounds to me as if the parent is compelled to do that and, if they do not do so, there will be a penalty. I do not understand what the Minister means when she says that it is not an offence.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Law and Crime
Jenny Chapman (Labour, Centre-left): Nobody wants to alarm anyone unnecessarily, which is why we are trying to get the Bill right, but it states clearly that a person "must" comply with the duty within a period of not less than 15 days. To me, that reads like something that we are compelling people to do and that if they do not, there will be a consequence. I do not want to drag this out further but it is important that we interpret this as something that is being made into an offence. I can see why people are concerned.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Janet Alison Whitaker (Labour, Centre-left): In her very careful responses, the noble Baroness the Minister clearly recognises that there are very wide differences between the children who are not in school. Some are well educated and nobody wants to curtail that—adjustments may be made, but this is not thought to be a large percentage. An unknown number, but it is estimated to be a very large number, of children are not well educated; I suggest that the register needs to be primarily directed at these children. There are all sorts of reasons why they are not well educated. I will not go into them at this hour of the night but, for example, the schools are illegal or extreme, or the parents are at work or cannot educate the children; there are all sorts of reasons The Minister’s responses to our questions aimed at making the register more precise—more exactly tailored to what we all need from it while not curtailing the freedom of parents to educate their children at home well—seem mainly to relegate the details to regulations. For the reasons already given in earlier debates, there are problems with this; we have difficulty with it. However, for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Bill of Rights — House of Lords, 2022-06-23
Topic: International Affairs
Donald Anderson (Labour, Centre-left): My question concerns the precedent set by allowing our national courts to trump the European Court of Human Rights. The Minister will be aware that one of the great problems of the Council of Europe is the number of serial defaulters: countries that refuse to accept the judgment of the court. I speak as someone who was once a Foreign Office adviser to our delegation and served on the legal affairs committee of the Council of Europe for 10 years. In the past, we have spoken from a position of strength, even when we disagreed with the judgment or reached a compromise, as we did over the Hirst case on prisoners’ rights. Will we not in future, because of this position, give support to those countries who wish to default and lose our high status as a country which honours its obligations?
EU Retained Law — House of Lords, 2022-06-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Jenny Chapman (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister for being here to answer questions on this Statement. We wonder about the Government’s priorities in the light of it. After all, yesterday was the day on which the Office for National Statistics announced that inflation had reached 9.1%—the highest level in over 40 years. We think that is of far greater concern for the country than anything in the Statement However, perhaps with today being the sixth anniversary of the EU referendum and the Conservative Party desperate not to lose its safe seat in Tiverton and Honiton, we can see why Jacob Rees-Mogg was deployed. The Government have long stated their intention to review retained EU law, and we await further details about the so-called Brexit freedoms Bill, which I am sure many across your Lordships’ House will take an active interest in. It was suggested that this was to be done via a default sunset clause that would delete laws unless Ministers prevented it. Has this madcap plan now been dropped Although there will be areas where it will make sense to amend or repeal retained EU law, we should remember that the framework in the 2018 withdrawal Act fed into negotiations on the withdrawal agreement and the TCA. We should have flexibility, yes, but we should also act in good faith In another place, the Minister failed to answer questions about the cost of this project, so could the Minister confirm what the costs are? Was the build of the dashboard put out to tender, for example? If so, have details of the contract been published in the usual manner In recent years, we have passed the Agriculture Act, the Fisheries Act, the Environment Act, the Subsidy Control Act and many other post-Brexit pieces of legislation. Each of these Acts presented the ideal opportunity to strip away retained law, but Ministers repeatedly chose not to do so. Is that not a sign that much of that body of law is actually highly technical and therefore not as contentious as the Government would like to make us believe? The Statement speaks of identifying "supply-side reforms" to combat inflation. Have the Government calculated the likely economic benefit to be derived from this programme? If so, perhaps the Minister could share that figure with us. How does it compare to other measures the Government could take to support the economy Finally, could the Minister explain how the Government will balance economic and other considerations, such as animal welfare, consumer and environmental benefits? What principles would be applied? The Government lack direction, so how will Ministers know how to approach this task? This whole exercise looks like a gimmick. There is no detail about the Government’s intentions. All we have is a list—calling it a dashboard is stretching it. The best advice we can give Ministers is to focus their energy on interventions that would make a tangible difference to people who are struggling every day to make ends meet.
Economy Update — House of Lords, 2022-05-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
Prem Sikka (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the Chancellor has not really done anything to control inflation. None of the measures will reduce it in any way whatever. Even on the windfall tax, and on tax, it is a sleight of hand. Let me explain how this works First, people are taxed to the hilt. The Chancellor then comes along and increases income tax by stealth and national insurance, then gives some of this money back to the people. They then give it to the energy companies, so that they can continue to profiteer and increase their profits, the same as before The windfall tax is for only one year; that will not reduce energy costs or the rate of inflation. If the Government were to cap energy prices, as the French Government have, that would definitely reduce the rate of inflation—but that is not what the Government have done. At the same time, they are handing all kinds of tax reliefs to corporations, which means that the tax base of oil and gas companies will also shrink in future—they will pay less tax. It is a very odd kind of strategy If a windfall tax on oil and gas companies is good enough—at last the Government have done a U-turn—why is there no windfall tax on supermarkets, banks, railway companies and water companies? They have been profiteering too. That contributes to the rate of inflation, which is damaging to the people, but none of that is being considered by the Government in any way whatever I have just spoken to a firm of accountants after the Chancellor’s Statement, and it is rubbing its hands and saying—