argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-10-20
Topic: Social Welfare
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): In my constituency, there are around 8,000 families with children claiming tax credits, 5,000 working families, and almost 10,000 children. We know from the Library briefing that they will lose more than £100 a month, but some families will lose more. One of my constituents, a mother with a disabled child, has worked out that her family will lose £200 a month from the tax credit cuts. Instead of just sitting there, perhaps Government Members can tell me how, if they back these changes, such families will manage? I do not think that they will manage. Another constituent, a single mother, told me that she uses tax credits to pay for school uniform, food and travel expenses. Those are the things that will suffer Earlier, I mentioned the impact that these tax credit cuts will have on the incomes of many thousands of unpaid carers who juggle care and work, particularly those who claim carer’s allowance and working tax credits. Carers UK told me that all carers who are claiming carer’s allowance and working tax credits will lose under the current proposals, even taking into account the introduction of the so-called national living wage Tax credit cuts will make it more difficult for working carers to balance work and care and that will hit their standard of living. They do not deserve that. Last week the Minister for Community and Social Care told me that he did not think that carers’ invaluable contribution to society had ever been better recognised. Is that hit to the income and living standard of working carers what he means by recognition? I hope the Minister will tell us when he responds what consideration the Government will now give to protecting working carers on low incomes from these unfair, savage tax credit cuts. Those cuts will hit families with disabled children. They will hit carers and millions of working people. I urge Government Members, the few who have managed to stay for this debate, to rethink this deeply unfair policy change.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-10-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Rupa Asha Huq (Labour, Centre-left): I know that this Government and this Chancellor in particular are fond of political cross-dressing, but robbing 6,500 children in 3,500 hard-working families in my constituency of £1,300 a year makes a mockery of all that—and that is in an affluent west London suburban constituency where the average property price is over £500,000. The Prime Minister pledged during the election campaign not to cut tax credits, but the fact that he is doing this only months after the election is not just a concern to the Opposition; it brings politics into disrepute We have heard about the so-called compensation that will come from the national living wage. It is not a living wage, and it is compensation for only 26% of people. Politicians like to go on about hard choices, but this is about whether to penalise people who are doing right and playing by the rules, or to give a tax cut to the 60,000 wealthiest estates at the expense of 200,000 working families. Some 6,500 families in Ealing Central and Acton are a chunk of 3 million families across the country. The fact that the notices informing them of the changes will arrive just before Christmas is deeply immoral. It shows the Scrooge-like attitude of this Government I have had dozens of emails about the cuts, both around the time of the emergency, that is the crisis, budget and now. I urge Members in suburban London seats like mine—the Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), whom I can see, and the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias), constituencies where those affected by the change outweigh the majority that those Members have—to join us in the Lobby tonight.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-10-20
Topic: Social Welfare
Marie Elizabeth Rimmer (Labour, Centre-left): Hon. Members should be aware that it is a disgraceful, shameful example of very poor governance when a Government attempt to cut £4.4 billion from the poorest people in society by a statutory instrument. It has taken the Opposition to call for this debate and to ask for the reversal of this decision Areas of my constituency have been recorded as suffering from the highest levels of employment deprivation and the sixth highest income deprivation affecting children in England. My constituency has some 7,900 families with children claiming tax credits, and many are unemployed. Some 5,800 working families claim tax credits. Many of those are on the minimum wage, with two parents working and two children. They are set to lose more than £1,800 next year and £7,700 over the life of this Parliament. Other families with one earner will lose more than £1,500 a year, or more than £7,000 over the life of this Parliament. Some 4,800 working families with children in my constituency claim tax credits, and 8,300 children in those working families benefit as a result. Many of the schools in my constituency have been forced to introduce free breakfast provision, with hundreds of children taking it up. They have done so to improve levels of concentration and learning. If our children are to get out of poverty, they need to be educated, but first they need full stomachs I call on Conservative Members to examine their consciences and not to involve themselves in this further attack on the poorest people in society.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-10-20
Topic: Labor
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): We have heard from more than 50 Members in this extraordinary debate, which I think is a measure of how vital it has been, and how much we need to understand properly the full impact of the changes that the Government are proposing. Running through so many of the speeches has been the message that politics is always about choices: what are we going to prioritise; who are we going to stand up for; and what, as the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) said in her brave and heartfelt speech, do we stand for? This debate has laid bare those fundamental choices The simple question that the Government must face tonight, and the simple question that will be asked right across Britain, is this: is the Conservative party what it says it is? Is it a party for the workers, with the interests of the workers at its heart, or is it a party that has its own self-interest at its heart and that is set tonight to dock the pay of workers across Britain? It cannot be both—even this most Janus-faced of Governments cannot turn both ways at once. It cannot be the party of workers while cutting workers’ pay. Each Conservative Member will need to answer for how they vote this evening, because there is no plausible defence for a policy that will take, on average, £1,300 from the pockets of working families, and with 70% of the losses falling on working mothers. It is a Tory tax on workers, and a Tory tax on working mums How do the Government justify that? As we have heard from successive speakers today, they say that the tax credits bill has gone up and that it has to be cut. Well, it has gone up on the Tories’ watch. They say that the minimum wage increase will compensate, but let us have none of this nonsense about a bogus living wage.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-10-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker I have heard this nonsense from the Government several times; I heard it from the Exchequer Secretary earlier today. The truth is that when this variation of tax and child credits came in in 2003-04, the original bill was £19 billion. It went up to about £23 billion under Labour, and then in 2009, after the crash, it went up to £29 billion. Under the Chief Secretary’s Government, it has been £30 billion each year, so the largest bill we have paid for tax credits has been under the Tories. Why is that? It is because the low-welfare, low-tax, high-wage economy that he talks about is a myth—the Tories have failed to deliver it. Instead, we have a tax credit system that is a vital lifeline for working people on low and middle incomes who have relied on it to make ends meet over the past few years and still rely on it. The Tories will be pulling the rug out from under those people if they persist with this policy tonight. They know that none of the measures they have talked about—the personal income tax rise or the childcare provision—will offset the vast losses we have seen. It is an absolute con, just as it was a con from the Prime Minister when he told the country that he was not going to cut any tax credits I would like to be able to point to a Government impact assessment that would tell us the truth of this, but it is so thin it is barely worth mentioning. It is about as useful and reliable as a Volkswagen engine test. However, we have not needed an assessment because we have had one from the Chief Secretary’s own Back Benchers. Successive Back Benchers have stood up today and offered their view—their impact assessment—of what this Government are going to do to our constituents, and to Conservative constituents, across this country. I referred earlier to the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), who made a scintillating speech. I will quote a few words for the delectation of the Chief Secretary. She said that these measures were "betraying who we are"—that is, who the Conservatives are. She said that they would lead to working people having to choose between heating and eating The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) gave another excellent speech in which he said that his blue-collar city opposes these reforms. He pleaded with his Front Benchers, as a compassionate Conservative, to think again. The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) talked about the impact we would see on carers and on people on low incomes. The hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) said that as a one-nation Conservative he could not support these reforms without significant mitigation. We heard interventions from the hon. Members for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). Those are just some of the Conservative Members who are opposed to these measures.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-10-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): Let me start with that number of 4.4 billion, because about 4.4 thousand of the Chief Secretary’s constituents will be hit by these changes. The real question he should be answering is what he says to his constituents about the cut they are going to have. He mentions my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), who of course spoke with great eloquence and knowledge. The crucial thing he said was, "Think again. Mitigate these measures. Understand that your mitigation measures are not going to work or offset the losses."
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-10-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his eloquent intervention. He reports accurately his own words, even if the Chief Secretary did not Let me be clear: tonight’s vote may not be a binding vote, but it does allow Members on both sides of the House to send a message to Conservative Front Benchers. These measures are a tax on working people The Government say that the national minimum wage increase, welcome though it is, will offset the changes, but it will not for a cleaner who is on £13,500, who will lose £7,000 over the term of this Parliament, or for a secretary with two children who is on £22,000, who will lose £9,500. Those are not small sums of money; for those people on low and middle incomes, they are enormous sums of money. It ill becomes the Government to dismiss, with the stroke of a pen, the concerns not only of their own Back Benchers, but of this country’s ordinary working people. Too many Labour Members—far too many for me to list them all—have spoken today with great passion and conviction about their knowledge of their constituencies, the contents of their postbags and how the proposal will affect their people. The Government should read their speeches and listen carefully to the views of Members It is not just the Opposition who oppose the proposal. The Mayor of London—the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson)—and the bloke who is going to fail to succeed him on behalf of the Tories are both opposed to it. For heaven’s sake, even the Bow Group—I thought it had disappeared in 1980, before the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) was Chancellor of the Exchequer—says that the proposal represents a crisis for entrepreneurial Britain and that it will hit the self-employed. The Adam Smith Institute, the Murdoch press and, from what I have seen, most Tory Back Benchers are also opposed to it I urge the Government to think again; to look to their conscience and understand the damage they are going to do to the working people of this country; and to please vote with us tonight and offer some solutions in the forthcoming autumn statement.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-10-20
Topic: Social Welfare
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I am really enjoying the Chief Secretary reading excerpts from The Spectator, but will he answer the fundamental question? Will he confirm that 3 million people in this country will be £1,300 on average worse off as a result of these changes? Let us not hear about the past; he should tell us about the future.
Long-term Deteriorating Health Conditions — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Labor
Emily Thornberry (Labour, Centre-left): The answer is, according to the Work and Pensions Committee, about 8,000 Ministers seem to have discovered remarkable healing powers over the summer break. They believe cutting benefits will help people in the work-related group who have been assessed and deemed as being unable to work to suddenly find work. It will give them an incentive, we are told. These are people who have deteriorating conditions such as Parkinson’s and MS which medical experts have said mean they will never be able to work. Which medical condition would the Minister deem might be cured by cutting benefits by £30 a week?
Long-term Deteriorating Health Conditions — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Social Welfare
Melanie Onn (Labour, Centre-left): I wrote to the Secretary of State over the summer following the news that his Department has been publishing fake quotes which it attributed to benefit claimants who had been sanctioned. As I am yet to receive a response, perhaps the Secretary of State or his team could answer one of my questions today. Has this practice of fabricating people and quotes been used by his Department in other instances? If so, can he provide details of when, and, if not, will he apologise to the British public for misleading them and commit to ensuring the practice is never undertaken again?
Long-term Deteriorating Health Conditions — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Social Welfare
Katherine Anne Green (Labour, Centre-left): On Second Reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, the Secretary of State said that if someone is in the work-related activity group, they should be "capable of doing some work very soon."—[Official Report, 20 July 2015; Vol. 598, c. 1260.] But in July 2014, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions said that 80,000 people had been placed in the WRAG with a prognosis that a change in their condition was unlikely in the long term. Does the Minister agree that those people should not be in the WRAG?
Long-term Deteriorating Health Conditions — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Social Welfare
Katherine Anne Green (Labour, Centre-left): But 80,000 people who are not expected to get better have been placed in the WRAG, including 8,000 with degenerative conditions, which by definition mean they will become less well. Cutting £30 a week from such people’s benefit will not make them better or help them work; surely it will just make them poorer.
Unemployment Rate — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Labor
Questions: What assessment is being made by the Department for Work and Pensions of the impact of cuts to the teaching of English as a second language on over 50-year-olds who are seeking employment?
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): Unemployment went up last month. The Government’s commission on employment and skills pointed out earlier this year that although we currently have German levels of adult unemployment, we have eurozone levels of youth unemployment, which went up in July and in August. Does the Secretary of State accept that much more needs to be done to give young people the chance of a decent start?
Pensions Advice — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Labor
Yvonne Helen Fovargue (Labour, Centre-left): Will the Minister tell us when the Government are going to publish the information on the take-up of the Pension Wise service, and what action they are taking to combat the scammers, who have scammed £4.7 million out of people in the first month of the new scheme?
Child Poverty — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Social Welfare
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer, but children growing up in households where the parents are on the national minimum wage will see their household income cut next year by up to a maximum of £1,426. He punched the air when the announcement was made in the House in the Budget in July. Was he being incompetent or just callous when he did that? What is he going to do to deal with this cut in household incomes?
Child Poverty — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Social Welfare
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): Until a few weeks ago, the Secretary of State told us that he was committed to the targets in the Child Poverty Act 2010, but now he has brought forward legislation that not only scraps those targets, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) pointed out, will leave Ministers with no child poverty targets at all. He has just denied that from the Dispatch Box, but the fact is that the Welfare Reform and Work Bill removes all the child poverty targets. Why are the Government, in reality, despite his fine words, throwing in the towel on child poverty?
Child Poverty — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Social Welfare
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): The truth is that child poverty is now going to rise even faster than already predicted because of the huge cuts in tax credits next April, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) referred. With most children in poverty now living in working households, not workless households, should the Secretary of State’s children’s life chances reports not include data on children in low-income working households, as well as on those in workless households?
New State Pension — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Labor
Andrew John Gwynne (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Minister understand that a great number of women who were born in the 1950s feel that the Government did not adequately inform them not only about the changes to the state pension age affecting their retirement, but about the speeding up of that process? Will he look again at that basic unfairness for a group of women who have paid in but who are getting nothing out?
New State Pension — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Labor
Fiona Margaret Mactaggart (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister will be aware that the Association of British Insurers published figures this summer about the new pension freedoms which show that people with big pots are buying income drawdown and that people with small pots are cashing out. He knows that women live longer than men and that they have smaller pots than men, so what is he doing to ensure that women’s income in retirement is properly protected?
Universal Credit — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Social Welfare
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): The number of people receiving universal credit remains derisorily small. Four years ago, the Secretary of State told us that the transition to universal credit would be complete by 2017. We told him he would not manage it. We were right; he was wrong. He still has not given us a revised date for the completion of universal credit roll-out. Has he given up entirely on ever having one?
Work Capability Assessments — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Labor
Louise Margaret Haigh (Labour, Centre-left): Contrary to the Minister’s earlier remarks, figures finally released by the Department over the summer showed that 2,380 people died after being declared fit for work—more than four times the death rate of the general population. In a harrowing case, a constituent of mine reported to me that she frequently considered committing suicide, both before and after being found fit for work. Does the Minister not feel that it is therefore high time to review the work capability assessment and that thousands of people are being wrongly defined as fit for work?
Support for Young People Seeking Work — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Education
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Minister agree that what all our young people deserve is high-quality training and high-quality apprenticeships? Is she aware that young people suffering from autism face a particular struggle in getting into the labour market and staying there, even though they might be very talented indeed? What is she doing to help them?
Support for Young People Seeking Work — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Education
Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds (Labour, Centre-left): Last week I visited the Newport and District Group Training Association in my constituency, which provides higher national diplomas and higher national certificates, which bridge the gap between school and the workplace. I was told that what they want more than anything is a UK Government who are committed to those qualifications and to funding them. Is that a guarantee the Minister can give?