argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Joanna Penn (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss further education and take the opportunity offered me by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, to say how much the Government value further education and its part in the educational landscape I turn to Amendments 91A and 91B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and start with a general point. The framework set by the Bill does not intend the content of the funding formula to be specified in legislation itself. As such, any detailed provision would not be dealt with here. More specifically, schools are already fully able to make arrangements with colleges to allow their 14 to 16 year-old students to undertake part of their education at college, so there is no need for further legislation The funding arrangements in the Bill are designed for schools and could not be readily applied to colleges. The noble Lord will know that there is a separate approach to funding the relatively few 14 to 16 year-olds on full-time courses at colleges, aligned to their post-16 funding. However, I agree with noble Lords that we need to ensure that funding for 14 to 16 year-olds in colleges is sufficient. Noble Lords will know, and I hope be reassured by the fact, that the basic rate of funding per student will increase by 8% next year as part of the work to close that gap.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for her answers to my amendment. By and large, she has answered extremely well, and I thank her for that I would like to press her a bit further on the business of identifying people who identify themselves as elective home education. There is a real importance in making that distinction, because elective home educators are taking responsibility for educating their children and the local authority has only a supervisory duty. If a child is not in education and is not being electively home educated, the local authority needs to take a very different kind of action. It is therefore very important that, in this register, we should differentiate between the two so that we can focus on what local authorities need to be doing. I am delighted to see my noble friend shaking her head on that I have been a user of the national pupil database for a very long time and, in the annual school census, I have never found information on independent schools. The pupils appear for the first time in the data when they take GCSEs—if they take GCSEs. I am puzzled by my noble friend’s response that the data is there. I will write to her, if I may, to see if we can solve that problem I am grateful for what my noble friend has said about Section 19. At the moment, some children under Section 19 get five hours of education a week. My understanding is that those children would have to be on the register because that would not qualify as full-time. If I am wrong about that, I would be grateful if my noble friend could let me know, because I am comforted that, where a child is not being provided with full-time education, it must get noticed, and that there are no circumstances under which five hours of education counts as full-time for the purposes of the conversation that we have just had I am attracted by the idea from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, of a unique children’s number—a crossover between the medical and teaching professions—and getting some integration there. It really helps to know where and how children are, particularly when it comes to supporting children well. Knowing that the information is available to professionals when appropriate and required in an integrated way seems sensible. But then I am very much a data person so perhaps I am pushing further there than the noble Lord, Lord Knight, would do.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful for that. Perhaps we will get to the stage when there is a single identifier for a school. At least three different numbers are used by the Department for Education, as far as I know. It would be nice to have consistency. There is a fourth number, too—universities—so it all gets extremely confusing when one is trying to understand which school the data is talking about. I am all in favour of identifiable numbers. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for saying that he sees this proposal as a supportive measure. That is good and is, I hope, absolutely the basis on which we are all going forward on this When we come to later groups, my focus will be on: how do we make this a Bill whereby it is advantageous to be a supportive local authority and harder to be one that is not supportive? At the moment, I have big worries about the Bill making things easy for an abusive local authority, without giving any incentives to supportive local authorities. There are some wonderfully supportive local authorities. I come back to what the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said. There are local authorities that are just hymned by the home educators in their patch, who say what a wonderful experience they have had and how supported they feel, how good the relationship is and how good the authority is at picking up cases where home education is not working because everyone feels like telling the local authority about it and because they know that the parent will be treated well and the child will be looked after I therefore approach the rest of the discussion on this part of the Bill with optimism—but possibly after supper. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Labor
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): Well, that is marvellous; I have only just started my response, so if the noble Baroness could just hold her horses, that would be brilliant. Let us get back to the questions that she asked and indeed to the Government’s Statement. At face value, it is indeed the case that the current Rail Minister and her predecessor have met the unions in the past to press the need for reforms, and to outline the reforms set out in the Williams-Shapps plan for rail about the establishment of Great British Railways, changes to terms and conditions, modernising railway and creating this fantastic thing that we all want. But this was not part of the negotiations, because the negotiations are between the employer and the unions, as they have always been. That does not mean that the Government do not take great interest in the negotiations—we want to see an increase in pay—but it has to be done fairly, between the passengers, the taxpayer and the workers There are working practices that need to change. I am sure that all noble Lords will have heard of some of them, and I suspect that some have thought, "Yeah, it does need to change". The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked about job losses. Over the course of the Covid pandemic, any job losses that have happened to date have been voluntary. A very successful voluntary severance scheme was launched in October 2021. There were 5,000 applications for that scheme—I am sorry, would the noble Baroness like to intervene?
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Transportation
Andrew Robathan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am a great supporter of the railways and use them the whole time—in fact, I used them today. I am also a believer, contrary to what some opposite might think, in everybody deserving a decent day’s pay for a decent day’s work, and I think the unions have a role to play in that. However, this strike is politically motivated: the pronouncements of Lynch and others show that to be the case. Their stopping on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday is designed to cause chaos on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday as well. Would not the answer therefore be—I understand the Secretary of State has this power—to close the railway system between Tuesday and Sunday?
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Transportation
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): I recognise that my noble friend is trying to be helpful here, and I appreciate it, but the Government are committed to working with the train operating companies to put in place as many services as we can to minimise disruption to both freight and passenger operations where possible. Shutting the railway for the entire week would be shooting ourselves in the foot. We absolutely need to provide those services for as many people as possible, because we know that so many people are reliant on the railways.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Transportation
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked: what next? The most important thing, to my mind, is for the unions to come back to the table—to sit down with the train operating companies and Network Rail to reach a resolution.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Labor
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): A review by the independent regulator for pensions recognised the pension scheme is underfunded. There clearly has to be some sort of remedy to address that. In most train-operating companies, workers can retire at 62—several years earlier than most people are able to retire—and, for those who worked for Network Rail after 2012, at 65. There is lots of work to do on pensions, but the noble Lord spoke about the tone and it is quite interesting to see how this has developed. I do not know if the noble Lord was able to watch Mr Lynch on the television this afternoon and take note of his tone.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Transportation
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): I completely agree with the right reverend Prelate and noble Lords will have the opportunity to quiz the Government on the longer-term plan as we bring the legislation forward to put it into place. The right reverend Prelate may have seen the Williams-Shapps plan for rail: it sets out exactly what we want to do with the railways. We are hugely ambitious for our railways; we are investing in our railways; we are reopening abandoned routes all over the country; we are electrifying lines all over the country; we are opening high-tech networks such as the Elizabeth line; we have HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail; and we are creating thousands of jobs, particularly, for example, in train manufacturing. But, as I said, you have to build a modern railway on firm foundations, and we have to get to the stage where there are firm foundations on which to build that modern railway.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Labor
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): Obviously, in the discussions around this dispute, it is important to separate out the workers and the leadership. No disrespect whatever is intended to the members of the union. We believe that those members who are choosing to strike may not be doing the best for their industry as a whole or for their long-term future. We are trying to get that across to them. I say again that it is important for the union to come back to the table and meet to find a resolution.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Government Operations
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): The structure of the Statement is very much to set out the Government’s position and, to be a little bit Cuprinol about it: it does what it says on the tin. It sets out exactly how the Government feel about this, how we see the necessity for reforms and how we would very much like the union to come back to the table. It tries to dispel some of the myths out there around the role of government and sets out how we can reach a resolution.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Transportation
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very grateful that the noble Viscount is taking such a key interest in freight and I look forward to working with his APPG as it takes shape and moves forward. Freight is an incredibly important area that historically has sometimes been slightly forgotten about. We are hugely ambitious for freight on our railways. We have been working closely with the freight operating companies and Network Rail to see what we can do to get as many freight trains as possible moving over this period of disruption. We also had several meetings, in the weeks prior to any potential industrial action, about what is currently carried by rail freight that we would need to make sure continues to be so, so we feel content that we have a good handle on that On longer-term ambitions for freight on rail, we are hugely ambitious for it, as set out in the Williams-Shapps plan for rail but also in the Future of Freight strategy. I will have to beg the noble Lord’s patience because, when we come to debate Great British Railways in the transport Bill, I hope we will have many positive discussions about what GBR can do for freight.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Transportation
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, that question goes a little further than my brief today, but the Government are very clear that we want a cleaner and greener transport system. Yes, we want to attract passengers back to the railways. At the moment, as I think I said in the Statement, numbers are down by one-fifth, but the interesting thing about the number of passengers travelling at the moment is that the shift has changed quite significantly. Far more people are travelling for leisure purposes; it is wonderful that they are choosing to go by train if they are travelling in the UK for leisure reasons. We have to provide the best possible modern railway that we can, which provides value for money for the taxpayer and for the travelling public, and that is what we intend to do.
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Labor
Andrew Robathan (Conservative, Centre-right): As we are all having a second bite at the cherry, if my noble friend believes that the strike is politically motivated—some of the comments from union leaders have been very political, such as "Get the Tories out", and that is one of the nicer ones—does she expect these strikes to be repeated every other day, perhaps every month, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays? If it is politically motivated, will she look again at the idea of taking on the political motivation of the union and closing it down?
Industrial Action on the Railways — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Transportation
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): I think the reality is that nobody wants this strike to continue. We will do whatever we can to support the train operating companies and Network Rail to reach a resolution. There has been some pretty sharp rhetoric, and one does not want to see widespread discontent, because that would be harmful to our economy and ultimately damaging to the workers themselves.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have a few amendments in this group. Amendment 97E is an echo of Amendment 101B and may well have already been answered. Amendments 98A, 101A and 104A seek to offer a defence of reasonableness for withholding. An obvious example of that would be where a parent has escaped an abusive relationship and does not want the details of her spouse and other such information to be on, in effect, a public register, or one which the local authority can use widely down its existing channels. There have already been examples of local authorities leaking such data. It is reasonable, where you have a proven history of suffering abuse, to withhold the information of a spouse, and it ought to be a defence I also join the right reverend Prelate in my concern for the data-related clauses. Amendments 110A and 126B address that in rather more general terms than he did. This seems to be highly personal data, very loosely regulated, and I am concerned that that is neither appropriate nor actually needed I urge the Committee to take a close look at proposed new Sections 436C(1)(c), 436C(1)(d) and 436C(2), all of which seem to display the characteristics of some of the earlier clauses in the Bill that we have expressed concern about. Where there is already a mechanism for assessing whether a child is being offered a suitable education, what on earth would Section 436C(1)(c) be required for? Paragraph (d) allows the Secretary of State to invent anything. This really gets at undermining the relationship between the Government and home educators; just at a flick of the pen, some whole new suite of information can be required of them, greatly altering the relationship between them and the system, and introducing that level of uncertainty. Unless the Government have clear plans for what they want to do, and a clear understanding of why it is needed, this seems very damaging for their plans and quite unnecessary Subsection (2) is devastating. It allows the local authority to invent anything. Given the powers of compulsion in this Bill, the short timescales and the way in which that could cascade into school attendance orders, this is really unreasonable. If we want to give powers to local authorities, we should specify exactly. We should not allow them to mess up the relationship on a whim. There are some lovely local authorities—I will give some quotes later—and some home educators are really happy in their relationships with them. However, I have read extensive correspondence from and about some of them that is, frankly, abusive.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, if I may, before turning to the amendments in this group, I shall respond to the request of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that I should clarify my remarks regarding criminalisation. I am happy to do so The context in the previous group where this was mentioned related to parents who failed, if I remember correctly, because they were on holiday or away, to provide information in time for their home-educated child to be registered with the local authority. To be clear, there is no criminal sanction for not providing information for registers by parents. The offence mentioned by the noble Baroness is an existing offence: the breaching of a school attendance order. Nothing is being made an offence in this case that is not already an offence. I hope that that clarifies that point I turn to this group of amendments, which broadly concern requirements to collect information for the children not in school registers and how this information will be shared.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): The example to which I was alluding in my remarks on the previous group was the one whereby parents would be asked to provide information but missed the deadline because they were on holiday and would be criminalised. That is not accurate. Parents who are asked to provide information, who miss the deadline and then provide the information, will not be criminalised The general point that I was trying to make in the earlier group was that I felt that language was being used in the Committee about the way in which the Government were approaching the Bill that would be taken at face value by home-educating parents, many of whom, we all agree, are already anxious about this matter. That would not help. Any challenge is absolutely right and proper; I was just requesting that we should do this in a way in which home-educating parents are not alarmed inappropriately.
Standards of Behaviour and Honesty in Political Life — House of Lords, 2022-06-23
Topic: Government Operations
Patrick Cormack (Conservative, Centre-right): I live in hope. My noble friend talked about the Lord Chancellor, and about having a Lord Chancellor who is in a destination office. He used the analogy of the station. We are shortly going to be saying goodbye to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, one of the most distinguished and distinctive Lord Chancellors we have had. He was always in residence in King’s Cross or St Pancras, but his successors have all got off at Adlestrop. It is very important to recognise that a Lord Chancellor, in a high and exalted position, having taken the oaths to which my noble friend Lord Wolfson referred, can be in a position, to a degree, of moral guardian of the ethics of the Cabinet. Although he would never put it that way, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, fulfilled that role to a degree. It is very important that we try to restore public confidence in those who hold high office. If we do not, our very democratic structures are at risk There has been a great change in the other place since I entered it 52 years ago last Saturday. There were not enough women then, but there were a number of colleagues who had fought in the last war with great distinction and had MCs, and almost everybody in the House had had a successful career somewhere. Even I, entering at the age of 31, had done 10 years in the real world as a schoolmaster, a deputy head and so on. There are far too many these days who come in without having had any experience at all of the real world. They come in very often at the first time of asking—their first election—and many have done nothing outside the party-political arena. They have been spads or assistants to MPs, but they do not properly understand the real world. Because of that, what was a vocation to public service has become a job and a career in itself That is really what is behind much of what we are talking of today, but it is not only that. They have dispensed—as I hope we will not in your Lordships’ House—with the hours that enabled the House of Commons to have a collegiate structure. I was sitting in my office last night and at five-something the House was up and they were gone. That did not use to happen and because of that, we were together, collegiately, talking and mixing, as we do in your Lordships’ House at the Long Table. A fortnight in advance of a very important debate, I urge your Lordships to remember what happened in the House of Commons when it lost its collegiate structure and gave up the scrutiny of legislation because of timetabling. All these things are enmeshed, but above all, we have to have standards in public life which enable the electorate to respect those whom they elect.
Bill of Rights — House of Lords, 2022-06-23
Topic: International Affairs
Douglas Hogg (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy for the general position articulated by my noble and learned friend, and I expressed my reasons earlier. If we transfer to the Supreme Court the role of the ultimate arbiter of the convention rights, what impact does that have on obligations overseas and international obligations we have already undertaken? Would he give this House, either today or more fully later, a fairly comprehensive statement on the impact on our international obligations so that noble Lords can take a considered view on where the balance of advantage lies?
Bill of Rights — House of Lords, 2022-06-23
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Bellamy (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord makes a fair point. My reply is that we have no reason to suppose that the UK’s exemplary record in Strasbourg will in any way weaken as a result of this legislation. As the noble Lord knows, we have far and away the best record of compliance—certainly in recent years. In 2020, of the 268 cases brought against the United Kingdom, in only two were breaches found. Our record, plus our very active and continuing involvement in the Council of Europe, in which the noble Lord was previously involved, continues, and will continue. That is why I use the word "constructive" together with the word "balance".