argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Fixed Odds Betting Terminals — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Tom Watson (Labour, Centre-left): It was a very good day for both sides of this House back in May when the Minister for Sport and Civil Society, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), announced this document and that the Government would reduce fixed odds betting terminal stakes. Everyone on both sides of the House was led to believe that that cut would take place in April 2019, at the start of the new tax year. Why was that? Because in answer to a written parliamentary question, the Minister herself said that the enabling statutory instrument would be taken this autumn and verbally confirmed, in a minuted meeting of the all-party group on FOBTs, that that would be the case On Monday this week, the Chancellor announced that the cut in stakes would be further delayed by six months. This is extremely disappointing, not least because the Secretary of State’s predecessor also implied to the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) that April would be the date Research shows that half of people struggling with problem gambling have had thoughts of suicide. The bookmakers will pocket an estimated £900 million because of this delay. This amounts to a betrayal of the promise made by the Secretary of State’s two predecessors and of the Government’s own three-year review, which was meticulously conducted by the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford. When the Government themselves have admitted the social blight of FOBTs, it seems incomprehensible and inconceivable that they would delay a policy supported by many people on both sides of the House and in both Chambers Has the Minister resigned? If not, why is she not here answering this urgent question or sitting by the Secretary of State on the Front Bench? She has presumably had time to freshen up since travelling on the red eye from the US When did the Secretary of State read the report on gaming machines and social responsibility measures? He failed to answer the question earlier in oral questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan). Had he read it when he indicated to the DCMS Select Committee that the policy could be delayed? What discussions did he have with the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford before he decided to delay the policy? On what dates—I have informed his office of this question—did he meet the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), a well-known advocate for the industry, to discuss FOBTs The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford did the right thing in announcing this policy, and the House supported her, as did those working to eradicate gambling addiction. In capitulating to the gambling industry, the Secretary of State has not just let the victims of gambling addiction down; he has let his own team down, and ultimately he has let himself down.
Fixed Odds Betting Terminals — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), is certainly a very principled person, whom I respect enormously, and I would not be surprised if she resigned over this delay. The betting industry is prepared for this change. The machines can be changed in a matter of months, so there is no reason for this other than the fact that the biggest profiteer from the tax from these machines is HM Treasury. The Treasury has won its argument against this Secretary of State because he told the DCMS Select Committee last week that he was not convinced about the reasons for the delay, so why have we got one?
Fixed Odds Betting Terminals — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Carolyn Harris (Labour, Centre-left): As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on fixed odds betting terminals, which poked the hornets’ nest and brought us here today, I am incandescent, as are other Members across the House—including, I would argue, the Minister for sport, the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch). If she does resign, it will be a great loss to her Front Bench, because her integrity and bravery surpass those of anyone else I see in here today. What is happening to the families who are losing children? What is happening to the children who do not get Christmas presents because of an addictive parent? What happens to the people who have to go to food banks because they have an addiction to these machines? Don’t give me warm words—give me action. April 2019! We cannot lose any more lives because of these dreadful, dreadful machines.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Other
Jessica Rose Phillips (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I apologise for not giving advance notice of my point of order. I am not normally here on a Thursday and the moment just took me. Lots of people have been in touch with me in the past week or so who wanted to speak to me, as either their local Member of Parliament, or a Member of Parliament about whether they can talk to MPs about non-disclosure agreements that they have signed. Can you give me some advice—I am happy for it to be given to me afterwards because I did not give notice of this point of order—about whether those agreements can stop people seeking advice from their Member of Parliament?
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Housing
Neil Coyle (Labour, Centre-left): If the Secretary of State is serious about house building, where is the funding in the Budget for the Bakerloo line extension, which would provide not only vital transport infrastructure for south-east London, but bring with it house building—private house building as well as 5,000 social housing homes and 2,000 genuinely affordable, London living rents?
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Housing
Edward Samuel Miliband (Labour, Centre-left): I am glad to follow the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening). I want to focus on housing, which was where she ended her remarks. In particular, I want to focus on what the Secretary of State said in his opening speech, which is that this is the biggest domestic policy priority for the Government We should begin with a moment of candour. If we are looking across the piece at policy failures of Governments of both parties, we can see that this is the biggest single failure over the last generation. I am proud of some of the things that the previous Labour Government did, but we did not build enough homes, and this Government have not done so either. I am serving on a social housing commission run by Shelter. It comprises residents of Grenfell Tower and people from across the political spectrum, such as Baroness Warsi and Lord O’Neill from the other place, and is precisely designed to try to fashion a new cross-party consensus on these issues Reading the Budget, I was encouraged by some of the measures in it. It mentions the broken housing market, to which the Secretary of State also referred today. I must confess that I am old enough to remember when such talk was part of living in a Marxist universe, but it is genuinely good that things have changed. It is a positive step that the Government have lifted the local authority borrowing cap, and indeed that they are providing housing associations with some money to build. They say that their measure on council house building will mean that 10,000 council homes are built each year, and that the housing association measure will lead to 13,000 being built over three years. The question at the heart of any analysis of this Budget on housing is: is that enough? I argue that it is not nearly enough Let me provide some context to this. The Secretary of State said that he wanted to be like Macmillan. Indeed, I think all of us can praise what Harold Macmillan’s Government did. Let me tell the House about the scale of building in that era. The 1951 to 1955 Government built an average of 193,000 social homes each and every year. That is more than this Government have built in the last seven years. Each and every year, the 1955 to 1964 Government built 116,000 homes, the 1964 to 1970 Government built 143,000 homes, and the 1970 to 1979 era saw the building of 116,000 homes. We are way off that.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Housing
Edward Samuel Miliband (Labour, Centre-left): I will get to the question of funding and whether it is an investment in the future. The figures I have read out are actually flattering to the era since 1979. I am genuinely saying that this a cross-party failure, because under the right to buy we have sold off 2 million homes since 1979—far more than we have built The question is, what do we do? My argument is that this is not just about a change in policy. It is actually about a change in the whole philosophy on social housing. I argue that there are three principles that have been in effect since ’79 and need to be replaced. These principles were brought in by the ’79 Government, but have not fundamentally changed The first principle is that the market will provide; the market will build. We know from experience, despite the many efforts of different Governments, that the structural barriers in the market such as developers, incentives to build for the high end of the market and the cost of land mean that the market will not provide sufficient housing at the scale and speed required. There is no historical evidence to suggest otherwise. Indeed, the figures show that it is not in the private sector that the failure to build is most pronounced compared with the 1970s; it is actually in the social housing sector The thing that we have all missed is that the social housing sector is the bedrock of an effectively functioning housing market. In other words, it does not just benefit those who live in social homes. It benefits everybody, because it is more likely to keep prices down and avoids some of the problems that we see in the private rented sector. The Government have to be fair and recognise—at least at the level of principle—that saying the market will build will not cut it any more, and that the Government need to play a substantial role when it comes to building.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Housing
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is making a valuable point. I think it was the last Housing Minister but four—now the Prime Minister’s chief of staff—who accepted that social house building provides continuity to the construction industry, as it does not go up and down with the cycles of the private sector. That is very important for maintaining skills in the industry in the long term.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Other
Rosalie Winterton (Labour, Centre-left): Order. As colleagues will have noticed, there have been a number of interventions, which have extended people’s time. When that happens, it prevents others from speaking, and I am afraid that after the next speaker, I will have to reduce the time limit to three minutes.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Shabana Mahmood (Labour, Centre-left): After listening to the rosy picture painted by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government when he opened today’s debate, I had to wonder what planet he is living on, because austerity is definitely not over for my constituents and my city. It is not even close to coming to an end. In response to the Budget, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies said: "If I were a prison governor, a local authority chief executive or a headteacher I would struggle to find much to celebrate. I would be preparing for more difficult years ahead." The Prime Minister stood up in Birmingham and made a promise that turned out to be nothing more than hollow rhetoric. For the people of Birmingham, austerity rolls on. Our city has had around £700 million cut from its budget since 2010. In fact, the Government found more money in this Budget for adult social care for the whole country compared with what Birmingham has had cut from its budget since they came to power in 2010. By 2020-21, we will have to find an additional £120 million of cuts to our budget. I do not think that my community of Birmingham, Ladywood has that much left to lose or much more that can be cut. I wonder how we are supposed to keep our city and our corner of British society functioning given the scale of cuts that we have faced. We have seen a total degradation—a decimation—of our public realm, and that has had profound consequences not just for my constituents, but for our country as a whole For my constituents, that degradation of the public realm has led to the removal of the things that enable a sense of human flourishment and wellbeing and things that allow a degree of comfort or enjoyment, such as libraries, leisure centres, parks, clean streets, and community and voluntary groups. The disappearance of all those things in Ladywood, which has the highest unemployment rate in the country and all the attendant problems of child poverty that follow, means that community life and individuals’ lives are reduced simply to surviving and enduring. That is unconscionable and immoral in one of the richest countries in the world, but it is entirely a result of political choices made by this Government The degradation of the public realm also has profound consequences for us as a country. All the things that enable people to come together and form relationships and friendships are part of our shared common life. If that is taken away, we start to tear apart the ties that bind our nation together and, in an era of anger, greater division and rising populism and nationalism all around the world, that choice is profoundly wrong. This is not just about economics; this is about the tearing apart of the things that keep our country together. We need and deserve more than this.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Madeleine Moon (Labour, Centre-left): Austerity is not over for those who are terminally ill. Those with pancreatic cancer, three out of four of whom will die within a year, and those with motor neurone disease, one third of whom will die within a year and half of whom will die within two years, cannot access terminal illness benefits under the current regulations until a doctor decides that they have six months or less to live—that is nonsense. Universal credit, employment and support allowance, and personal independence payments are a nightmare to negotiate for people who have a short time left to live. My ten-minute rule Bill will address this anomaly. It was supported by the Conservative party in Scotland and it will come before this House on 23 November. I hope we will finally make sure that those who are terminally ill have a chance of justice and of dignity as they head towards death. I hope we will ensure that they have a chance to put in place the things that will allow them to stay and live at home with their family, so that they have a chance of dignity in dying, which this Government seem determined to prevent them from having. I recognise that others want to get in at this late stage, so I will stop at this point.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): Order. The hon. Lady knows as well as I do that you cannot stay on your feet if the Minister is not going to give way. [Interruption.] You do know that. Oh come on now, you could not have done that six months ago.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Immigration
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. On Tuesday, the Home Office told the Home Affairs Committee that there would be additional checks by employers on EU citizens in the event a no-deal Brexit. However, the Home Secretary appears to have told the media yesterday that there would not be any such checks and that there would be a transition. Today it appears that No. 10 has told the media both that there will be no checks, and also that free movement is starting straight away, and that planning is continuing so nothing is certain. Have you heard anything from the Home Office about whether a Minister will come to the House to clarify this chaotic mess? With five months to go, will you use your offices to ensure that somebody either from the Home Office or from No. 10 tells us what on earth is going on?
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): There are obviously many alternative options and avenues to go down, such as an urgent question on Monday. I know that the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee will not leave the matter at that, and I think that different approaches will be being used by Monday.
Leaving the EU: Central Counterparty Clearing — House of Commons, 2018-11-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Stephen John Doughty (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is drawing attention to an important set of issues of which I was not fully aware. He would probably agree that we cannot have an "It’ll be alright on the night" approach from the Government to such complex arrangements—we need surety on them. Was he interested, as I was, to see Commissioner Barnier talking earlier about how there had been misleading press reports about a deal on financial services and about many of these matters being close to being agreed, and saying that that was not the case?
Monopoly Water Providers: Senior Executive Pay — House of Commons, 2018-07-12
Topic: Mixed Topics
Ian Colin Lucas (Labour, Centre-left): The chief executive of Severn Trent earned £2.45 million last year. As a Wrexham customer I have to contribute to that salary, following the hostile takeover of our local water company. Does the Secretary of State, in his new progressive form, agree that Severn Trent should follow the example of the John Lewis Partnership and link the pay of its highest paid chief executives to those within the business who are lower paid?
Leaving the EU: Food Quality Standards — House of Commons, 2018-07-12
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: What plans the Government have to maintain UK standards on food quality and safety in trade agreements concluded after the UK leaves the EU.
Danielle Rowley (Labour, Centre-left): The Government are demonstrating today that they are happy to roll out the red carpet for unpalatable arrivals from the US, so can the Minister confirm that the Prime Minister’s Chequers agreement means that we will hold a stronger line when it comes to rejecting chlorinated chicken imports?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2018-07-12
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: A recent paper by the International Solid Waste Association has shown that much of the plastic we declare as recycled, when it is exported to China and other Asian countries, ends up in rivers and accounts for at least 25% of the plastic pollution going into the seas. Is the Secretary of State aware of that, and what action does he intend to take to improve the situation?; When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State visited my constituency last month, he met some outstanding members of both Radnorshire and Breconshire young farmers clubs. Will he confirm both to them and to the House that those young farmers have a future in farming post Brexit?; Given some worrying air quality hotspot alerts in my constituency and the projected significant increase in vehicle volume, what extra measures will the Department deploy to help my local authorities combat those pollution hotspots?; My right hon. Friend will be aware of the happy news that Finn’s law, the Animal Welfare (Service Animals) Bill, achieved its Second Reading last week. Once enacted, it will make it easier to convict people who attack police dogs and other service animals. The Secretary of State has consulted on increasing the sentence for such attacks to five years’ imprisonment. Is it possible to have an update on the timetable for that so that we know when we can expect it?
Kerry Gillian McCarthy (Labour, Centre-left): I do not know whether the Environment Secretary has had a chance to look at Oxfam’s excellent new report, "Behind the Barcode", which looks at modern slavery and human rights abuses in the food supply chain. I know that it is not his primary responsibility to consider issues such as modern slavery, but given that it is so prevalent in our food system, what conversations has he had with his colleagues about trying to stamp it out?
Ordination Numbers — House of Commons, 2018-07-12
Topic: Civil Rights
Questions: To ask the right hon. Member for Meriden, representing the Church Commissioners, what progress the Church of England has made on its target to increase ordinations by 2020; and what proportion of recent new ordinands are women.
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the right hon. Lady for that answer—it is good to hear that the stained glass ceiling is being well and truly smashed. However, is it not about time that, in the evolution of the established Church of England, the special arrangements that were put in place for those who do not accept the equality and ministry of women were abandoned?
Ordination Numbers — House of Commons, 2018-07-12
Topic: Civil Rights
Questions: To ask the right hon. Member for Meriden, representing the Church Commissioners, what progress the Church of England has made on its target to increase ordinations by 2020; and what proportion of recent new ordinands are women.
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): I hear what the right hon. Lady says, but will she also consider the impact of the number of churches that new ordinands have to look after? It is a real worry, given the pressure we are putting on these poor people, particularly if they are not full time, in order to carry out their ministry.
Referendum Rules — House of Commons, 2018-07-12
Topic: Civil Rights
Questions: To ask the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, what proposals the Electoral Commission has for changing the rules on referendums.
Benjamin Peter James Bradshaw (Labour, Centre-left): If the ultimate findings of the Electoral Commission investigation into law-breaking by the leave campaign are as serious as the version that was leaked disgracefully by the leave campaign, will my hon. Friend make it absolutely clear to the Electoral Commission that this House and the public will expect full criminal investigations by the police and the National Crime Agency into this alleged wrongdoing, so that the public can have confidence in the integrity of our referendum and electoral system?
Church Building — House of Commons, 2018-07-12
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: To ask the right hon. Member for Meriden, representing the Church Commissioners, what progress the Church of England is making on building new churches in London.
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): Will the right hon. Lady confirm that the Church of England is now building its first new church buildings in London since the 1950s to accommodate not decline, which is widely understood to be what is going on, but a very sharp increase in the number of people attending public worship?