argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Questions: As my right hon. Friend knows, those affected by the devastating loan charge have welcomed the independent review, but feel that it would be better conducted by a tax judge. Does the Minister agree? Does he also agree that a suitable outcome of the review would be to apply the loan charge only from when it was introduced, in 2016, not retrospectively?; The former coalfields of England, Scotland and Wales have a combined population of 5.7 million. If they were treated as a single distinct region, that would be the poorest region in the United Kingdom. By any measure or definition, the coalfield communities are left-behind areas, so what fiscal policy steps is the Chancellor taking to address the specific structural and economic weaknesses of former coalfield areas such as mine in going forward with the shared prosperity fund?; The Cogent Power steel plant in my constituency is threatened with closure by Tata Steel but is the only plant in the UK that, with investment, could be capable of supplying electrical steels for the UK electric vehicle industry. If this Government are serious about building this new industry in the UK, will Ministers work with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to ensure that the plant has a future?; Last week, it was 75 jobs at Portastor and jobs have been lost at Nestlé. This morning I heard about the loss of 60 more skilled jobs across my constituency. Week after week, I am hearing of skilled job losses in the constituency. Instead of the Government talking about outplacement schemes, my constituents want their jobs. So how is the Chancellor investing in economies such as York’s?; Westfield and Hammerson are due to build a new shopping centre in my constituency. Westfield has been bought by Unibail-Rodamco, which is a large French developer, and it has concerns about the state of retail and Brexit, obviously. The previous Chancellor had just agreed to meet the chief exec of Unibail-Rodamco. Will the current Chancellor honour that commitment and meet them?; In June, HMRC said that at least 20% of the 10,000 trucks reaching Dover on day one of a no-deal Brexit will not comply with French customs, leading to very long delays and causing shortages of fresh food and medicines. How many non-compliant trucks does HMRC currently project at Dover on day one?; The real wages of working people are lower than they were before the global financial crisis, and while many Tory shires are better off, areas and residents like those in my constituency have been left behind by this Government. Is it not about time that this Government stopped lining the pockets of corporations and Tory shires and invested in people in communities like mine?
John Robert Cryer (Labour, Centre-left): Can the Minister answer the question asked earlier by the right hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd): what is the reason for not suspending the loan charge scheme until the inquiry is completed? It is a request not for a change of policy, but just to suspend the scheme.
Irish Border: Customs Arrangements — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Antonia Louise Antoniazzi (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland told BBC Radio Ulster this morning: "I’m clear that we can’t have customs facilities in the places mentioned in the reports" overnight, but Parliament needs to know; we need clarity. The people deserve to know what the Government’s plans are. Can the Minister tell us who is speaking for the Government on these matters—the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State?
Irish Border: Customs Arrangements — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Immigration
Rachael Helen Maskell (Labour, Centre-left): The Prime Minister has said that there will be checks, so whether at a border or a non-border, that does create a border. Whether in a non-paper or a paper, the reality is that there will be checks if the leader of our country has said so. However, the European Commission has said that it has not received any proposals from the UK that meet all the objectives of the backstop, as we have been reiterating and demanding. When will the EU see these proposals?
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): Seven hundred and twenty-six people died homeless last year. Wherever we sit in this House, wherever we live in this country, that shames us all in a nation as decent and well-off as Britain today. Every one—in shop doorway, in bedsit, on park bench—has been known and loved as someone’s son or daughter, friend or colleague. We have heard from the new Minister today, but this demands a response from the Prime Minister himself, tomorrow, in his party conference speech. It demands that he leads a new national mission to end rough sleeping and the rising level of homeless deaths The official statistics released today confirm a record high total and a record high increase—up by a fifth over the past year alone. This record high has been 10 years in the making: investment in new social housing has been slashed; housing benefit has been cut 13 times; 9,000 homeless hostel places and beds have been lost as a result of Government funding cuts; and Ministers have refused to step in and protect private renters. There is the widest possible agreement, from homeless charities to the National Audit Office and the cross-party Select Committees of this House, that Government policy has helped cause the rise in homelessness every year since 2010 Will the Minister therefore acknowledge that high levels of homeless deaths and homelessness are not inevitable? Will he accept that, just as decisions by Ministers have driven the rise in rough sleeping, Government action now could bring it down? Will he back Labour’s plans for £100 million for cold weather shelter and support to get people off the streets in every area, starting this winter? Will he tackle the root causes of this shocking rise in deaths with more funding for homelessness services, more low-cost homes and no further cuts in benefits These high and rising homeless deaths shame us all, but they shame Government Ministers most. This can and must change.
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): I welcome the Minister to his new post. Does he accept that two of the main drivers of the increase in homelessness are the shortage of social housing and the impact of the Government’s welfare policies? On housing, he said that the Government are making money available for affordable homes, but does he not accept that the Government’s definition of affordable homes, at 80% of market rates, means that they are simply unaffordable for most homeless people? On welfare, has he read the National Audit Office’s report, which draws a direct link between welfare policies and the rise in homelessness? Will he now accept that there is a need for a review of that link and then for a commitment to change the welfare policies to ensure that they do not drive homelessness up even further?
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Michael Lee Amesbury (Labour, Centre-left): Cuts have consequences. Quite clearly, if we take £37 billion a year out of social security, there are consequences. It is time to end the benefits freeze and build genuinely affordable housing, especially social and council housing—does the Minister agree?
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Karen Patricia Buck (Labour, Centre-left): My local authority, Westminster, has the highest number of rough sleepers in the country. Its rough sleeping strategy found that a third of rough sleepers had been discharged on to the streets from prison, and of course others are ex-servicemen. Can the Minister tell us how many deaths have occurred among people who have been released on to the streets from prison? If he does not know, will he place that information in the Library, and can he tell us how on earth that is allowed to happen?
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Hilary James Benn (Labour, Centre-left): Leeds City Council, through its very impressive street support team, which brings together all the agencies working with the street homeless in our city, is making effective use of funding under the Housing First programme. That enables people who might not be able to comply with the conditions that hostels reasonably require, because of their drug and alcohol problems, to get into permanent accommodation with support. May I urge the Minister to increase the support that he is making available to local authorities such as Leeds through that programme? I have seen from that team that it is being put to extremely good use.
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Chinyelu Susan Onwurah (Labour, Centre-left): Since 2010, homelessness in Newcastle has risen dramatically, visibly and tragically, with deaths in our city centre. Under the Minister’s Government, rough sleeping has been normalised, but it will never be normal to us. I have spoken extensively to Northumbria police, local housing associations, charities and public health officials, and it is clear that the cuts to public services are a prime cause. Will he acknowledge that austerity has caused this problem, and does he agree that it must be reversed?
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Stephen James McCabe (Labour, Centre-left): I understand that there have been a mere 180 transactions under the ludicrous housing association right-to-buy lottery. Why does the Minister not just admit that was always a daft idea, divert the remaining £190 million to an emergency winter programme and spare us a spate of people freezing to death on the streets?
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): Under the last Labour Government homelessness came down, partly because we made beds available for those who were on the streets so that those who wanted to move into accommodation could do so and those who were working with the hardest to move could focus their attention on those people. Does the Minister intend to return to that sort of strategy? How many of these deaths would have been avoidable had those beds still existed?
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Kerry Gillian McCarthy (Labour, Centre-left): It is right that we should get homeless people off the streets, but I also have real concerns about the unregulated supported housing sector. I have discussed that with the Minister’s officials and his predecessor. The Charities Commission has just reported on Wick House in my constituency, where several people have died, and there seems to be consensus that we need regulation of this sector, to prevent exploitative landlords from moving into it. Will the Minister follow up on my conversations? Can we see some action on this, please?
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Hugh Lawrence Gaffney (Labour, Centre-left): First, will the Minister thank all those charities that help out the homeless and have brought down the number of deaths in this country? Recently, on 9 September, I joined a rally on the homelessness campaign just outside Parliament. The message was clear from people who are homeless: all they seek is a roof over their head. No one wants to be homeless. There are many reasons for it, and many cities, towns and rural villages now have homelessness problems. Will the Minister therefore join in Labour’s plans for funding to ensure that we have emergency cover during the winter months and that no one should be allowed to die on our streets?
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Paula Michelle Sherriff (Labour, Centre-left): Every evening, as we leave this opulent building, we see a growing number of homeless people—in the tube station, outside the buildings, in shop doorways and anywhere else where they can seek shelter. It is clear that the Government are not doing enough. Homelessness has at least doubled since 2010; why does the Minister think that is? Does he recognise that swingeing cuts to the welfare budget and substance-misuse services have contributed to that rise?
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Anneliese Jane Dodds (Labour, Centre-left): There have been some groundbreaking projects to help with the rapid rise in rough sleeping in Oxford, but they have really suffered from being short-term funded. Most of the money the Minister is talking about is just for the short term. The stamp duty surcharge on overseas property buyers is sustainable funding that is meant to last over the long term, but his Government decided that it was going to be set at a third of the level they originally committed to. Will the Minister explain why his Government apparently decided to prioritise the wealth of overseas property investors over the needs of vulnerable rough sleepers? I just do not understand it.
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Neil Coyle (Labour, Centre-left): As chair of the all-party group on ending homelessness, I agree with the Minister that this is a challenging issue, but the simple truth is that this was not happening on this scale in 2010, before the cuts to mental health services, to drug and alcohol cessation services, to councils and even to benefits for some of the most disabled people with mental health conditions in our country. Does the Minister regret the lost decade of cuts and the loss of life that we now know it has directly contributed to?
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Melanie Onn (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister is before us to convince us of the Government’s seriousness in taking forward this issue. Back in March, the UK Statistics Authority urged the Government to improve the quality of their homelessness figures, because if the Government do not know exactly how many people are homeless, how can they possibly expect to deal with the issue? What action have the Government taken on that advice?
Deaths of Homeless People — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Housing
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to make a statement on his Government’s action to prevent the deaths of people who are homeless.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): In 2010, the annual count of homeless rough sleeping in Brighton was 500; it is now 1,200. Deaths on the street were a rarity; now, they come more than once a month in Brighton and Hove. What policy has changed between 2010 and now? Surely we need to understand the policy failure before we can fix it.
Yemen — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Richard Haines Burden (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Minister share my horror at the air strike that took place last week on a civilian area in Qataba, which killed 15 people, five of them children, and injured 13, seven of them children? Does he know that Save the Children has been calling for an independent investigation into that attack, so that the perpetrators can be held accountable? Will he support the call for an independent investigation and, if so, how will he help to bring it about?
Exiting the European Union (Agriculture) — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): I am delighted to be here for the second of our four statutory instruments. I want to push the Minister a bit further. He did not manage to answer one of the things that I slipped into the first SI. What is the process of accountability? As we do not have the Environment (Principles and Governance) Bill enacted, we do not yet have the office for environmental protection. I ask again politely what and who is going to provide the sort of testing regime that is now talked about in these five conflated SIs? They are largely about wine—oenological; it is good to get that on the record. It is important that we know that someone somewhere will be able properly to scrutinise labelling and to test what is coming in. Currently, as far as I know, this happens seamlessly across the 28 countries, of which we are one. It will not be seamless when we have left because the wines that come from the EU will go through whatever process the Minister is going to explain to me in a minute I am not saying that at the moment there is a clarity because I, for one, do not know exactly how wine is tested to see that what people are buying is safe and what they think they are buying in terms of the proof and the quality, and that the labelling tells us what the wine is and where it came from so that people know what they are drinking. I just push the Minister politely to ask what process the Government have put in place for these interim arrangements I know this is about transition. Maybe we shall just turn a blind eye for a time, and let come in what comes in—although someone will have to account for the tariffs, if and when we get to that stage, because the EU will put tariffs on our goods and services and we will put tariffs on EU goods and services. It would be interesting to know what the Minister has, through his Department, been able to do. Presumably, such work has been going on for the last n number of months, since we have been discussing all these statutory instruments. Following the delay—again we are at the final hurdle, or maybe not—the reality is that somebody somewhere must have this all ready to go from 1 November I politely push the Minister, given that we have not yet got the office for environmental protection, with all the different tentacles that it will have, to undertake such work. The response may be that we have our own Food Standards Agency, but at the moment a lot of that work is subsumed into that of the European Food Safety Authority, so someone needs to have this type of capability, and it would be good to know who, and when they will come into play.
Exiting the European Union (Agriculture) — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): I accept that; many of our good people currently work for the EU. But is the Minister seriously suggesting that those people have carried out proper contingency planning on how they will do this monitoring in a month’s time? How would FERA—how would the RPA, which I have significant doubts about; I do not know how many scientists it actually employs—sit down and do the work to see whether what has been imported is what it says on the label?
Exiting the European Union (Agriculture) — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Domestic Commerce
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister is being very generous in giving way. What then is to stop people labelling their cheap plonk as burgundy and sending it in the form in which they send their good stuff? How will we be able to tell that what we are getting is what it says on the label? I am really intrigued by this.
No-deal Brexit: Short Positions against the Pound — House of Commons, 2019-09-30
Topic: Housing
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): The Guardian is today reporting that Crispin Odey is shorting house builders and shopping centres, which means that in the event of a no-deal Brexit, when they cannot build homes and more shops close, he will make a packet. Surely the Minister can see that there is a massive conflict of interest, particularly for the Leader of the House, who has been financed by that man for years.
No-deal Brexit: Short Positions against the Pound — House of Commons, 2019-09-30
Topic: Mixed Topics
Tracy Lynn Brabin (Labour, Centre-left): Over the weekend, I watched "The Big Short", and I would encourage everyone to watch that film about sub-prime mortgages. In it, there were several hedge funders who made billions from the collapse of the market. They did not care that honest, ordinary Americans lost their homes and jobs. When that happens, when we have a no-deal Brexit and hedge-fund managers make billions, how will the Minister support my constituents, who will be impoverished, and will perhaps lose their jobs and homes? What is he going to do to level the playing field? Actually, it is a question of morality.
No-deal Brexit: Short Positions against the Pound — House of Commons, 2019-09-30
Topic: Housing
Catherine Elizabeth West (Labour, Centre-left): One of the areas of the economy that the casino-style hedge funds will be betting against is the housing market. What assessment has the Treasury made of how many fewer homes will be built, and which section of the house building economy will be worst affected: renters, first-time buyers or pensioners?
No-deal Brexit: Short Positions against the Pound — House of Commons, 2019-09-30
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Jenny Chapman (Labour, Centre-left): My constituents and the Minister’s constituents are working multiple jobs and long hours to keep themselves afloat. Does he understand at all just how distasteful it is for them to see people making millions betting against our country?
No-deal Brexit: Short Positions against the Pound — House of Commons, 2019-09-30
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Catherine Jane Smith (Labour, Centre-left): In response to an earlier question the Minister said he is more of a historian than an economist, so he might remember that hedge funds were also reported to have taken short positions against the pound during the 2016 referendum. Is he satisfied that the regulation of short selling and hedge funds is adequate?