argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Jobcentre Plus: Closures — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Labor
Margaret Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): Members will recall that in December last year the Government announced that they were planning to close half the jobcentres in Glasgow. In January this year, they set out plans for further closures, amounting to the closure of more than one in 10 jobcentres across the UK. These closures have the potential for the loss of up to 750 jobs. Yesterday, the Department announced via a written ministerial statement that just six of the original 78 jobcentres earmarked for closure will remain open, and only 11 of the 80 planned to co-locate with local authorities have been given a reprieve. Two additional jobcentres that were to stay open have been added to the closure list The impact of the closures will undoubtedly be felt most by the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. By closing such a large proportion of the DWP estate, the Government would be forcing claimants to travel further to access the vital services that they need, thus having an impact on the lives of sick and disabled people, carers and parents with young children, so will the Minister commit now to publish the equality analysis on each site that is being closed? Currently these are secret, and they should be made public. Furthermore, the Government plan to subject an additional 1 million claimants to in-work conditionality, a process under universal credit by which people in work may be required to attend jobcentres. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact on demand for jobcentre services as a result of increased in-work conditionality The decision to close jobcentres on this scale at the same time as accelerating the roll-out of the universal credit full digital service makes no sense. It is simply not good enough to quote figures about online claims to justify closure plans. Universal credit will place other, new demands on staff, who will, for example, have to assess whether self-employed people claiming universal credit have a viable business plan. What assessment has the Minister made of the increased demand placed on jobcentre staff as a result of the roll-out of universal credit Finally, the closures will have an impact on jobs within the DWP. Will the Minister outline the number of jobs that will be lost as a result of these closures, among frontline jobcentre staff and in the corporate centre sites as a result of the new "hub strategy" for the corporate centre? The Government must immediately pause these closures to allow proper scrutiny of their plans.
Jobcentre Plus: Closures — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Labor
Dennis Edward Skinner (Labour, Centre-left): Is the Secretary of State aware that when we embarked on finding jobs when the pits shut in the Derbyshire and Bolsover area, we set up Markham Vale straight off the M1 and created several hundred jobs in the process? That has not yet finished with the local authorities concerned. The Bolsover jobcentre played a significant part in ensuring that those 700 jobs were available, and, as a result, needs to continue. We are enlarging the site to provide several hundred more jobs. Surely it is not appropriate to shut the Bolsover jobcentre that has played a magnificent part in providing work for the miners and families of miners who lost their jobs. Surely he should reverse this.
Jobcentre Plus: Closures — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Labor
Paul Christopher Blomfield (Labour, Centre-left): Sheffield’s Eastern Avenue jobcentre is rooted in the community that it serves. Its staff therefore understand local people and can do the job, better supporting them because of that. The Secretary of State talks about a much improved service, but does he not recognise that centralising the service, breaking that link with the local community, will damage the work that the jobcentre can do? Will he think again?
Jobcentre Plus: Closures — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Labor
Tracy Lynn Brabin (Labour, Centre-left): Having conducted a survey outside Batley jobcentre, I know that the majority of users walk there—often every day—to use the computers to look for jobs. With Batley’s closing, they will have to walk to Dewsbury, a journey of 20 minutes—if they are able-bodied. Will the Secretary of State confirm whether new sanctioning guidance will be provided for those who are late or miss appointments?
Jobcentre Plus: Closures — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Labor
Madeleine Moon (Labour, Centre-left): I appreciate that the DWP makes considerable savings from the closure of jobcentres, including the one in Pyle in my constituency, but it is passing on a huge cost to those who will have to fund out of their benefits the costs of travelling by bus to their new jobcentre. According to the Minister, it takes 39 minutes to get from Pyle to Porthcawl, but it is clear that he has never tried to make that journey on a bus. Will he undertake to ensure that no one travelling from Pyle to Porthcawl is sanctioned because of a bus service that is not regular?
Jobcentre Plus: Closures — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Labor
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): The Scottish Affairs Committee published a report at the end of the previous Parliament that was hugely critical of the Government’s approach to jobcentre closures, particularly in Glasgow, where some claimants are having to take three buses to reach other jobcentres, at huge expense. The Secretary of State has said three times this morning that he will not review the sanctions regime for people who are late for appointments. Will he look at that with the compassion that I know he has, he having been a good Minister in the previous Parliament, to see whether anything can be done to ensure that people are not put into significant deprivation as a result of these sanctions?
Jobcentre Plus: Closures — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Labor
Jessica Elizabeth Morden (Labour, Centre-left): The DWP is proposing to relocate the service centre out of Newport to some location north of Cardiff, but the exact location is unclear. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and I clearly want to keep those jobs, the expertise and the services. The centre provides 249 jobs right in the heart of our city. Will the Minister meet us, so that we can put the case in person?
Jobcentre Plus: Closures — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Labor
Maria Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Secretary of State accept that requiring some sick and disabled people to travel further to attend compulsory interviews is likely to lead to more cost, hardship and worry for our most vulnerable constituents who are looking for jobs? What will he do to ensure that his plans do not leave these vulnerable people to be hit the hardest?
Jobcentre Plus: Closures — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Labor
Victoria Jane Foxcroft (Labour, Centre-left): The jobcentre in Deptford closed in November 2010. Now the jobcentre in Lewisham will close. Young people from New Cross and Deptford will now need to travel to Peckham for support with finding employment. With youth violence on the rise, how will the Government ensure that our young people travelling to Peckham are kept safe?
Jobcentre Plus: Closures — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Labor
Martin David Whitfield (Labour, Centre-left): Given that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation used Glasgow as its study centre in its report on disconnected communities, and suggested very strongly that a well-distributed employment support network is vital, how have the cuts now being applied to Glasgow been objectively, evidentially based?
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Catharine Letitia Hoey (Labour, Centre-left): I share the Secretary of State’s optimism about the future of our country once we leave the European Union. Does he agree that we should break the myth that we need trade deals to trade? Of course trade deals are important, but we can trade without them.
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: International Affairs
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): Of course what the right hon. Gentleman says about the situation in those two countries today is absolutely right. The point I was chuntering about was that what he described was not actually happening in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s. A lot of the south-east Asian economies did have protection in those two decades in order to modernise and build up.
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Labour, Centre-left): I am listening with interest to what the Secretary of State is saying, but one point that he has not touched on yet is exchange rates. Is it not absolutely essential that appropriate exchange rates should be arranged between nations so that trade can operate fairly? If a country depreciates massively, it can develop a big trade surplus, and China has done precisely that in recent decades. Does the Secretary of State not agree that exchange rates are crucial?
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): First, I join the Secretary of State in paying tribute to PC Keith Palmer and all the other victims who suffered on that fateful day in March when this debate was last scheduled The Secretary of State is at the Dispatch Box fielding for the first time since the creation of his Department almost a year ago a debate on Government trade policy in Government time. It is not exactly normal practice for Trade Ministers to hasten to the Dispatch Box when the country has just posted one of the worst sets of balance of payments figures in its recorded history. Although I admire the right hon. Gentleman’s chutzpah, I am not entirely convinced about his timing. The figures released just last week by the Office for National Statistics show that in quarter 1, the UK’s current account deficit was £16.9 billion—a widening of £4.8 billion from a deficit of £12.1 billion in the previous quarter—most of which is due to the widening of the trade deficit. Despite sterling being so low, exports increased by only £1.7 billion, whereas imported goods increased by £4.3 billion—a widening of £2.6 billion.
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): Perhaps if I can finish responding to the Secretary of State’s intervention, at an appropriate juncture the hon. Gentleman might catch my eye There is no difference between the Secretary of State and me on those matters. In fairness, I will say that in the past 50 years there have been 15 sets of quarterly balance of payments figures that have been worse than last week’s, and one of them was under a Labour Government, just after the global financial crisis. The other 14 have all been in the past five years, under the Conservatives It would be mean of me to give the right hon. Gentleman too hard a slapdown because the Chancellor has been doing it so effectively on behalf of us all. Only yesterday, we read that the Chancellor is demanding that the Secretary of State prove the case that our ability to strike trade deals after Brexit will make up for losing tariff-free access to the EU. In other words, the right hon. Gentleman is being asked to justify his job as the Secretary of State for International Trade once leaving the customs union gives us the competence—perhaps in this case I should say the right—to negotiate our own independent trade agreements.
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): I will, in a little while A year on from the referendum, a year on from the Government’s announcement that they were taking back competence in international trade negotiations, the Cabinet is still divided on what it has all been about. That is extraordinary. The country is crying out for leadership, and all its current leaders can do is sit around the Cabinet table plotting who amongst them should be their next leader. A year on, what has been achieved?
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: International Affairs
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): I urge the right hon. Gentleman to read precisely what our manifesto says. We have made our position on those points extremely clear: we are leaving the European Union; that means that we want to secure the best benefits, and we will look to secure exactly what the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union said he would achieve, which is the exact same benefit benefits as we currently have inside the European Union.
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: International Affairs
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): As I was saying before I was persistently—and, I must say, quite rudely—interrupted, we have set out very clearly that we will try to secure exactly the same benefits that the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union claimed would be procured in the negotiations, but we are not fixated on the structures; we are fixated on the outcomes. But we will be leaving the European Union. The right hon. Gentleman can be assured that we are committed to honouring that manifesto commitment.
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend quite rightly focuses on the trade deficit, which with the rest of the European Union is gigantic, but actually we have a trade surplus with the rest of the world, so the problem is essentially with our trade with the EU. Does that not put us in a very strong position to negotiate with the rest of the EU about whatever happens afterwards?
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): I have absolutely said that I want us to be in a strong position in these negotiations, but what I also want is clarity from the Government about what the future will mean for our businesses.
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): The point I would make to the hon. Gentleman is that the triggering of article 50 was setting precisely the timeframe in which he was to buy the car. It said that within two years either we had to negotiate a deal, or we would be trading on World Trade Organisation terms. He makes my point precisely.
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Labour, Centre-left): I want to be helpful to my hon. Friend. There is a constant emphasis on access to EU markets, when they have a gigantic surplus in our markets. At Bretton Woods, John Maynard Keynes was concerned about gross trade imbalances between nations, and the conference tried to sort out a system that would avoid that in future. We have a gigantic trade distortion with the rest of the EU, which has to be sorted out one way or another. Does my hon. Friend accept that?
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Agriculture
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): I am extremely concerned to hear what my hon. Friend is saying given that there are 400 sheep farmers in my constituency, who would be very badly affected were we to have a flood of cheap lamb imports from Australia and New Zealand. Does he agree that there can be no virtue in our destroying the hill farmers in our country to benefit the sheep farmers in wealthy countries such as Australia and New Zealand?
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): No, I am about to conclude To that end, I ask the Minister to respond to the following questions about the Government’s international trade policy. What are their principal trade policy objectives? What will be their guiding principles for our future negotiations? How will they seek further liberalisation from our current tariff levels, and in which sectors? What transparency and parliamentary scrutiny will be given over our future trade negotiations? Will they commit to disclosing whether any obligations in trade agreements, both those in negotiation and finalised, are the motivation for legislative amendments before the House or regulatory changes by the Government? How will they ensure that our future trade agreements benefit British small and medium-sized enterprises as well as big business? How do they propose to protect and enhance workers’ rights? How will they address human rights within the context of new trade agreements? How will sustainable development be a guiding principle for our trade policy? How will they ensure that current environmental protections are maintained and enhanced in future trade agreements? What investment dispute resolution model, or models, are the Government willing to adopt The Department’s recruitment advertisements suggest that the priority trade sectors are healthcare, financial services, and education; clearly, food and farming do not feature among its priorities. How will trade policy address the sectors that do not appear to have been identified as a priority? Will the Government be excluding devolved Administrations and local government agencies from trade agreement commitments on Government procurement? How will they ensure that British businesses maintain access both to European markets and the markets of other trading partners, especially where there is considerable regulatory divergence between these markets? Will the UK be adopting any non-conforming measures for investment and service commitments in its future trade agreements By providing comprehensive answers to all these questions and publishing an international trade White Paper, the Government may be able to restore business confidence in the fact that they are holding current trade dialogues and working groups that are backed by a clear and strategic plan. If not, it will reinforce the sense that the Government are blundering into this process without a clear endgame and lacking a strategic understanding of the issues at stake for the UK economy and for jobs in this country.
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Anna Rhiannon McMorrin (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with what my hon. Friend is saying. Our markets and economy are on a cliff edge because of the Government’s irresponsible behaviour May I correct the comments by the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) on sheep market imports? He misquoted Michel Barnier’s remarks about 12% tariffs. Actually, sheep market imports from outside the EU are subject to tariffs of 12% plus a fixed amount ranging from €900—
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Adrian Edward Bailey (Labour, Centre-left): The ability of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) to make a speech while intervening demonstrates that she is rapidly acquiring the skills of Parliament To return to the point I was making, if being a member of the EU is an impediment to trading with other countries, why do some of our key EU rivals, such as Germany and France, manage to trade far more successfully with other markets than we do? Could it be that, notwithstanding their EU membership, they are doing something right that we are not doing? Our approach should take that into account; we should not blame the EU for the deficiencies in our ability to get the maximum from our trading potential with countries outside the EU. There is a rather naive and totally fallacious belief that somehow it is going to be easy to trade with other countries when we come out of the EU. If we look at the World Bank ratings on the ease of doing business in the expanding markets of China, India and Brazil, we see that China is ranked 96th, India 149th and Brazil 143rd. The idea that they will become any easier to trade with if we come out of the EU is, quite frankly, self-delusion. The right hon. Member for Wantage outlined some of the practical difficulties in setting up any trade negotiations with other countries, and they will still be alive The fact is that by coming out of the EU, we are moving from a trading bloc that is relatively easy to deal with to one that is not. We need to make it clear, at this point, that we want to remain in the EU single market and customs union.
Exiting the European Union and Global Trade — House of Commons, 2017-07-06
Topic: Agriculture
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): What we really want is minimal regulatory costs on businesses. That means that we should stay in the European Medicines Agency. If we leave and have to set up our own, we will be imposing a third regulatory system on them, and as I am sure the hon. Lady knows, that would be immensely expensive. We have a lot of exports and jobs in the sector. I tabled a lot of parliamentary questions to the Department before the general election and got content-free answers. I now want Ministers to be clear about what they will do not just about the European Medicines Agency but about the 40 other agencies we belong to, ranging from aviation safety to plant health, all of which facilitate trade on a level playing field for British businesses The second group of people I am concerned about, as I pointed out in my intervention, are hill farmers—I have 400 hill farmers. After Brexit, it seems that three things will matter for them: the new trade rules; the support systems; and the regulations on food safety and the environment. Again, we have had no clarity from Ministers. If they agree to the import of meat with lower animal welfare and consumer safety standards and lower prices, they could decimate British agriculture, which would be a disaster for farmers and a disaster for the environment.
Adult Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-04-24
Topic: Social Welfare
Emma Louise Lewell-Buck (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for his response, but I am sorry to say that he is wrong. The formula is broken. South Tyneside Council is the third hardest hit council in the country with a low council tax base, demand for adult social care higher than average and hospital services under threat from this Government’s forced sustainability and transformation plans. Is it not true that this Government, who created the social care crisis, cannot solve it and our constituents are suffering as a result?
Adult Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-04-24
Topic: Social Welfare
Questions: As the Minister has recognised, the social care precept means that funding available for social care is increasingly dependent on a local authority’s tax base. In 2017-18, the precept will generate £9 million in additional funding in Sheffield, compared with more than £31 million for Surrey. Does the Minister think that that is fair?
Teresa Pearce (Labour, Centre-left): Many care homes up and down the country are reliant on care workers from the EU; estimates suggest that there are about 100,000 workers. What meetings does the Secretary of State have with the care sector to reassure them that, when Britain leaves the EU, care homes will be adequately staffed with appropriately trained care workers?
Northern Powerhouse — House of Commons, 2017-04-24
Topic: Macroeconomics
Chinyelu Susan Onwurah (Labour, Centre-left): The north-east should be the powerhouse for our country’s manufacturing and exporting renaissance, with a workforce who take pride in making and building things. Why, then, do the so-called industrial strategy and the so-called northern powerhouse do so little to invest in the jobs and infrastructure that the north-east needs?