argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Brain Family: Deportation — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Alexander Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): Instead of spending time and resources on the deportation of this family, is it not time that the Home Office got its actions right and ensured that dangerous criminals such as Noureden Mallaky-Soodmand, who attacked people in Stockton, are deported after their first offence, rather than waiting for them to offend again?
Brain Family: Deportation — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Law and Crime
David Julian Winnick (Labour, Centre-left): Should the Minister not bear in mind two things? First, since he has come to the Dispatch Box no Conservative supporters of his have supported in any way the decision the Home Office has made. Secondly, would it not be appropriate to understand the strength of feeling that Opposition Members have expressed throughout these exchanges? It is always important to recognise when the House of Commons feels very angry and upset over a decision, and I hope the Minister will bear that in mind.
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Labor
Angela Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his statement and for advance sight of it. I am surprised that he failed to mention any of the details of the consultation paper on pensions that his Government published today I agree with the Secretary of State’s assessment of the importance of our steel industry to the UK economy. No one who saw the steelworkers march through London yesterday can fail to be moved by the sight of a dedicated and skilled workforce fighting for their industry. I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s trip to Mumbai, along with the First Minister of Wales, to meet the Tata board yesterday—his direct engagement with the board is better late than never. I also welcome his confirmation that Tata is acting as a responsible seller. That is vital for the future of the industry here and I, too, commend Tata for it The British Steel pension scheme, especially the liabilities it now brings with it, is clearly an issue that requires resolution. Any resolution must protect the pensions of the scheme’s 130,000 beneficiaries, but it must also ensure that it avoids setting a potentially dangerous precedent for the millions of other occupational pensioners who currently enjoy retail prices index indexation rights. I recognise that there are no easy options. I welcome the consultation which has been published today by the Department for Work and Pensions, although the timeframe for responses is very short and the document has been published on the last day before a recess The suggested move from the RPI to the consumer prices index for the British Steel pension scheme risks setting a very worrying precedent for other occupational schemes. As the House will know, this change is currently illegal. Why has the Secretary of State said nothing about the details of the pension consultation he has published today? Can he now say a little more? Is there agreement across Government on the principle of the changes to sections 67 and 68 of the Pensions Act 1995, which would reduce indexation from RPI to CPI for this scheme What assurance can the Secretary of State give me that this proposed change will not be extended to other occupational schemes? Can this change be sensibly and safely ring-fenced? If not, the position is very difficult. What guarantees can the Secretary of State give the House on the future management of the British Steel pension scheme if such concessions limiting future benefits to pensioners are conceded now, especially on the administrative costs and the charges of the scheme going forward? Are there any other options that were considered by the Secretary of State but not included in the consultation, such as safeguarding the scheme on the public books, as was done with the postal scheme and the mineworkers? Finally, has the Secretary of State considered the effect on the incentive to save for the wider workforce if accrued pension rights can be arbitrarily reduced in this way, as the consultation paper suggests?
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Labor
Iain David Wright (Labour, Centre-left): I welcome the Work and Pensions Secretary’s rhetoric in today’s written statement, when he says: "Britain’s steel industry is an important part of our economy and this Government is working to help the industry secure a long-term viable future." However, may I push the Business Secretary on the risk that steps that are taken could set a dangerous precedent, whereby companies abdicate their responsibilities to the members of their pension schemes? So is this deal purely for steel, or are the Government extending it to other strategically important sectors of the economy or to companies that are identified as crucial to the UK? Is the Government’s preferred option the precedent of the Royal Mail scheme in 2012 in distinguishing between past and future service contributions to members’ pensions in the steel industry?
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Labor
Frank Field (Labour, Centre-left): Although the House is naturally concentrating on steel jobs and steel pensions, the Secretary of State must be aware that there are thousands of other schemes, covering millions and millions of members, that are equally difficultly placed at the current time, and I am sure he will find it difficult to gate this to just one scheme. Therefore, may I make a plea that, when we return from our short break, we have an opportunity to discuss the longer-term repercussions of the announcement he has made today so that there can be a feeling in the House as to what the next moves might be to defend what has been one of the great successes of the welfare state—occupational pensions?
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Labor
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): There has been speculation in the media that Tata Steel may in fact decide to retain the business. Will the Secretary of State explain what role Tata Steel would play in dealing with the pension scheme if that were to happen?
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Labor
Tom Blenkinsop (Labour, Centre-left): My father-in-law is a British Steel pensioner. What does the Secretary of State believe will happen regarding the recent deals with Liberty and Greybull if the British Steel pension has to be absorbed into the Pension Protection Fund? Will he also remind the House how much money the Treasury has already made as a result of the state taking over the miners pension fund and receiving half the surpluses every year?
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Labor
Dennis Edward Skinner (Labour, Centre-left): Is the Secretary of State aware that the last Tory Government to deal with a major occupational fund was the Major Government way back in 1994, when they privatised all the pits and then did a deal with the detested Union of Democratic Mineworkers in order to get the thing on the pension fund settled? The result was chaos, and the net result was even worse after that, because it meant that the Government were able to get their hands on billions of pounds from the miners pension fund, and then at the end, when me and my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) were calling for a little bit of state aid to save the last remaining pits, that lousy, rotten Government would not find a penny.
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
Anna Catherine Turley (Labour, Centre-left): I appreciate that the timescale in this consultation has to be short, but will the Government commit to publishing a full impact assessment on what this means for people? My constituents have suffered so much in the past six months, and if they get another kicking like this, it will be absolutely disgraceful. The Government have acted shamefully on the British steel industry—please, please look at what the impact of this will be.
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Labor
Sarah Deborah Champion (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State speaks of urgency when it comes to the pension consultation, but does he agree that if he had acted with urgency years ago, when we raised the underlying problems, we would not be in the desperate situation we are in now?
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Labor
David Anderson (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) that this issue was not related to the mineworkers pension scheme, but there are lessons to be learned from it. Members need to understand that in 1994 it was estimated that the Treasury would get £2 billion out of the scheme over 25 years, but it looks like it will get £8 billion over 25 years, when retired miners and miners’ widows are struggling to survive. That is the lesson. What is the Treasury going to take out of the proposal if it is involved? Let us not let what happened in 1994 happen again.
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Labor
Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Centre-left): I welcome the Secretary of State’s reassurance that Tata remains committed to being a responsible seller. Will he confirm that Tata has responsibilities in relation to the pension scheme and that we will make sure that it delivers on them, in partnership with other stakeholders, in order to deliver the Secretary of State’s stated aspiration that no pensioner will be worse off after the process is completed?
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
Paul Phillip Flynn (Labour, Centre-left): I declare a financial interest for the 30 years I worked in the steel industry and the pension I receive, although it is meagre compared with the amount I will be entitled to next year for 30 years in this House. Should we not recall that steelworkers have served the nation well in an industry that is usually dirty, usually dangerous and always skilled? It is right that we look at the situation—I respect the difficulties of this—and say that the nation cannot have a manufacturing base unless it is built on foundations of steel. Is there not something repugnant about expecting pensioners, who have given so much, to pay for this rather than expecting the nation, which owes so much to the steel industry, to do so?
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Labor
Sue Hayman (Labour, Centre-left): The Tata Steel products plant in my constituency is part of the sale deal with Greybull. I thank the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise for the meetings she has had and the discussions we have had to secure that site. The workers at the plant are very concerned about their pensions. Some of them have been there for more than 40 years, and they are distressed and worried. They have been loyal employees, and they have given their working life to the plant. Will the Minister assure me that he understands how worried they are, and will he give them an assurance that they will get their full pensions?
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Energy
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): May I thank the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise for coming to visit Outokumpu and representatives of Forgemasters in my constituency, and for enabling my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and me to join in the conversation? That was really helpful. For the future not merely of Tata but of firms such as Forgemasters and Outokumpu, when are the Government going to act to take away from them the unfair burden of having to pay 85% more for their energy than do their competitors in Germany?
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Labor
Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds (Labour, Centre-left): There are 133,000 members of this pension scheme, and I should say that they include many of my constituents, and my father. Given the enormous amount of work that so many people have put into their pensions, does the Secretary of State agree that even though time is extremely short in this four-week consultation, in order to be fair to all those people it must be as wide as possible and consider both the short-term and the long-term effects?
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Foreign Trade
Alexander Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): The steel industry would not be in the state it is in were it not for dumped Chinese steel. Does the Minister personally back market economy status for China, which could make the problem much worse?
Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
Geraint Richard Davies (Labour, Centre-left): Five years ago, I asked the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s Question Time whether he understood that the Chancellor—he is just taking his seat— "unilaterally setting the minimum price for carbon in Britain will drive out inward investors such as Tata Steel" in Swansea Bay. He responded: "I will of course listen to the hon. Gentleman, but I think that Ratan Tata knows a bit more about his business than he does."—[Official Report, 30 March 2011; Vol. 526, c. 338.] Having failed Tata, will the Secretary of State now promise, first, fully to fund the pension fund, indexed to RPI, so that we do not short-change pensioners or cause contagion in the pension industry; and, secondly, to ensure a 25% Government share for the long run so that investors, whether Tata or others, have confidence investing in the future—
The Economy and Work — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
Geraint Richard Davies (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend accept that in the 10 years of the Labour Government to 2008—pre-crash—the economy grew by 40% and that, after the banking crash, we left debt at 55% of the economy in 2010, a figure that is now 83%? Does that not show a failure to grow the economy effectively or to manage productivity?
The Economy and Work — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Social Welfare
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): I have a Conservative council. In my constituency tonight I will have possibly 200 families living in bed and breakfasts. There are individuals sleeping in our parks and along the canals. In my constituency, we have reinvented the back-to-back, where one family rents the front of a house and another rents the back. We have beds in sheds rented to families. It is a disgrace. This Government have been in power for six years and homelessness has escalated According to the Queen’s Speech, the Government will "spread economic prosperity". Tell that to the steelworkers I met in Redcar, where the Government failed even to mothball the plant to save their local futures. Tell that to the British Home Stores workers facing redundancy as their boss, Sir Philip Green—a Government adviser—stripped their business clean In the Queen’s Speech the Government said they will "continue to support the…Northern Powerhouse." That will be why they are closing its Sheffield office and threatening another six offices across the north with closure. That will be why, of the top 15 infrastructure projects with the most public funding, one is in the north In the Queen’s Speech, the Government say not that they will tackle poverty and deprivation, but that they will redefine them. The Chancellor’s shameful response to the 1 million people using our food banks every year is to "introduce new indicators for measuring life chances" His failed austerity programme has a human cost, with 500,000 more children in this country forced into poverty and nearly 13 million people now living in poverty. More than half of those people are in work. This Queen’s Speech offers no solutions to those who have barely enough to feed their families and cannot pay to heat their houses. Instead, the Government will simply make sure that they are counting those people’s misery properly.
The Economy and Work — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): I would celebrate it if it was a real living wage and if many of those people were not also suffering from cuts to universal credit The reality is that after six years of desperate efforts to impose cuts on our economy, against the best available advice from the economics profession itself, the Chancellor is staring an entirely predictable failure in the face. He started out with such high-flown promises. There was going to be a "march of the makers", yet today, manufacturing is still smaller than in 2008. There was going to be a rebalancing of the economy, yet today for every three jobs created in London just one is created in the rest of the country. There was going to be a modernised tax service, but, as the National Audit Office pointed out in a damning report earlier this week, the quality of service at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has collapsed in the past year as a result of staffing cuts. He promised increased investment, but he cut Government investment spending and now plans to cut it further. In 2010 he forecast the fastest recovery in living memory, but he has delivered the slowest recovery in modern British history Let us talk about job creation. The Chancellor and his Government have, perhaps understandably, clung to the job creation figures. Every month they are greeted with rare enthusiasm by Ministers. The reality is that two thirds of those in poverty—nearly 9 million people—are in work. [Interruption.]
The Economy and Work — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Labor
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): Mr Deputy Speaker, you are a class act. The shout was, "Do we welcome the jobs?" Of course we do, but let us be clear: too many of the jobs created since 2010 have been poorly paid and insecure. Some 800,000 people are now on zero-hours contracts. Insecurity at work has been made worse by the undermining of employment rights by the Government. There is no need for that.
The Economy and Work — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Social Welfare
Neil Coyle (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Trussell Trust, which provides the food bank in Southwark, is providing food bank support to hundreds of people in work? It estimates that 10% of the people it serves in central London are in work.
The Economy and Work — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): I will press on, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I know we are under time pressure All this is the direct result of a failure to invest. Too many businesses have substituted cheap labour for expensive investment. To be frank, they cannot be blamed for that, as the Government have set the lead, cutting their own investment spending. Low investment and weak productivity have real-world consequences. They mean talent wasted and opportunities lost. Some people are stretched to breaking point, working long hours just to make ends meet. Others are left to languish, desperately searching for extra hours. Even the Government’s own forecasters do not expect wages to recover before 2020.
The Economy and Work — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): I will in a second. Millions of people are now self-employed, but their average earnings have fallen by 22% since the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne) became Chancellor. The Queen’s Speech tells us that the Government plan to create an economy "where work is rewarded." Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who work hardest are being punished with cuts to tax credits, but tax dodgers and the super-rich are rewarded with tax cuts.
The Economy and Work — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Social Welfare
Neil Coyle (Labour, Centre-left): The Chancellor says he is proud of the Government’s track record on social care. How many fewer older and disabled people receive social care services from local authorities now than when he took office in 2010?
The Economy and Work — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): It is interesting that the Chancellor is talking about Labour’s future when his own is so shrouded in uncertainty. On his own record, has debt as a percentage of GDP gone up or down since he became Chancellor?
The Economy and Work — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Social Welfare
David Anderson (Labour, Centre-left): The Chancellor has taken us through what has been happening in the Labour party recently. May I ask him to comment on what has been said about him and his leader by the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), who took through welfare reform over the past five years? He called the Prime Minister "disingenuous" and the Chancellor a liar and "Pinocchio". Where does that leave you, Chancellor?
The Economy and Work — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Technology
Andrew Joseph McDonald (Labour, Centre-left): The right hon. Gentleman mentions the steel industry. The judgment of the people of Teesside is not as favourable as he seems to think it might be. There is a nationwide proposal for innovation, research and development on the table from the Materials Processing Institute that would propel our steel industry through the creation of academy centres. Will the Chancellor encourage the Business Secretary to attend the site and examine the proposal for himself? It would benefit the whole industry,
The Economy and Work — House of Commons, 2016-05-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
George Edward Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): I begin by thanking the Chancellor for the £5 million he earmarked in the Budget for Shakespeare North. May I press him a little further and ask him to waive the VAT on the construction costs I want to talk today about the link between poverty, economic progress and education. Before doing so, however, I should perhaps say a word about my position on the EU referendum. In the previous referendum, in 1975, I chaired the "Huyton says no" campaign. That merry band of naysayers was a fairly eclectic group consisting of Labour party Young Socialists, the Communist party of Great Britain and two Tories who ran a ballroom dancing academy. Fortunately, the people of Huyton sensibly listened to our local MP at the time, Harold Wilson, and voted to stay in The argument that I want to advance today takes its inspiration—fittingly, in the centenary year of his birth—from Harold Wilson’s "white heat of technology" speech. Key to his argument in 1963 was that we needed to adapt to changing economic realities by embracing the challenges presented in science and technology. It also included an element about the importance of education as a pathway out of poverty. My argument is that we now face a similar challenge. How do we compete in a rapidly changing global economy? Do we, as some international corporations would suggest, adopt zero-hours contracts and other insecure forms of employment, or do we incentivise innovation and educate and train our workforce to take advantage of the opportunities that innovation creates? The first option is, in my view, a self-defeating race to the bottom However, we have to face up to some uncomfortable truths, one of which is the decline in manufacturing in the UK. In 1972, 32% of the UK’s GDP came from manufacturing. By 1997, that percentage was down to 14.5%, and by 2013 it had dropped further to 10.4%. The economic levers available to the Chancellor and the Government need to be remorselessly focused on creating incentives for innovation, using not only the taxation system but the export guarantee system and everything else available to ensure that the opportunities that exist in the world are brought within the reach of our country We also need to talk about education. We have serious problems with education in Knowsley. I do not want to go into too much detail, but we have a serious problem of under-attainment at GCSE level.