argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman has made an extremely helpful point and I hope he will be expanding on it further later With the reputation of Parliament at risk of being ripped apart thanks to the actions of this Government, particularly in the past two weeks, they must start to restore trust in our democracy. There is a way they can do that: they can back this Opposition motion.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Labor
Alexander David Sobel (Labour, Centre-left): Trade unions use their political funds, which are regulated under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, voted on by millions of working people up and down this country and properly registered when they are donated to a political party. If the Conservative party is anti-worker, let it say that clearly.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Labor
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for putting it much better than I could have. Trade unions are not-for-profit organisations to help to support workers’ rights. There is a world of difference there and they are quite properly declared. As far as I can see, there is no suggestion in the report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that that should be changed. We are talking about the difference between private companies trying to buy access to the Government and trade unions that stand up for and campaign on workers’ rights making properly declared donations quite rightly within the electoral rules.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. It is a very sad day, because, rather than taking this on the chin, admitting they made a mistake, which they seemed to be doing last week, and moving on constructively, the Government just want to give the very false impression that all MPs are for sale. That is simply not true and they know it Paid advocacy has been against the rules since 1695, so it is not a new rule, but, throughout the centuries, especially in the past three decades, the standards system has been strengthened—until the last fortnight. That consensus has been systematically shredded by this Government—whether it is the Prime Minister not enforcing the ministerial code on his Cabinet or the Leader of the House seeking to undermine the standards procedure—and this has to stop. It is not good enough. The public—our constituents—rightly expect and deserve better than this The previous Labour Government legislated to clean up politics after the Tory sleaze of the 1990s. I give as examples: the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000; the ministerial code; freedom of information; public registers of donations and national election spending; and the Electoral Commission, which this Government also seem to want to undermine. Those all came about because of the Labour Government, whereas in 2018, when the independent and external Committee on Standards in Public Life, set up to deal with the previous Tory scandal, recommended that the MPs’ code of conduct should be updated, the Tory Government ignored it. The report said: "MPs should not accept any paid work to provide services as a parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant, for example, advising on parliamentary affairs or on how to influence Parliament and its members. MPs should never accept any payment or offers of employment to act as political or parliamentary consultants or advisers." It could not be clearer, and that is what our motion today sets out to achieve. I hope that the Government will be supporting this, because, as I have said and I will say it again, no MP should be for hire. This is not about outside interests per se, because the vast majority of Members work tirelessly to represent their constituents and are not seeking to privately profit from that work. Outside interests are often a way for MPs to connect with the world outside of this place—a point that has been made by many MPs and others.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing that up, because, of course, that is one thing that my right hon. and learned Friend, the Leader of the Opposition, stated clearly in his speech yesterday. He said that the default setting should be that there are no second jobs. He did say that, in certain professional circumstances, there may need to be exceptions, but that should be up to the independent body to determine, not us. The way that the Government have behaved over the events of the past few weeks, including the case of Owen Paterson, former MP for North Shropshire, have shown us that the rules are obviously not strong enough. It seems to be too easy for the Government to try to rip them up when they fancy. They have sought to weaken and undermine the rules around standards, whereas our intention with our motion is simple: we want to strengthen standards and we want to restore the public’s trust in Parliament and this is the necessary next step.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): For goodness’ sake—I am surprised that the hon. Member does not know more about the House of Lords. Unlike in this House, Lords receive not a salary, but a daily allowance, which is not the same. They work on an entirely different basis and they do not have constituents. I do not see any proposals from the Government on reforming the House of Lords in this way, so it seems hollow for the hon. Member to say that he wants such changes The Government created this mess. If they do not support our motion today, it will be yet more warm words but no action; they are very good at that. They created this mess by trying to undermine the standards process in the first place. We would not be here if they had not done so two weeks ago. They must back our motion today and not the Prime Minister’s amendment, because that is nothing but warm platitudes with no concrete action to strengthen our standards system. It has been open to the Government to strengthen the system for the past three years, since the publication of the report on MPs’ outside interests. It was down to the Government to respond to that report, but they have not—until they have been absolutely pushed, kicking and screaming, to back one or two little bits because it suits them to get out of a hole The choice has never been clearer and the solution is here: our motion. If the Government do not back our motion this afternoon and choose to support the Prime Minister’s watered-down amendment, they are sending the message that they are content with the perception that their Cabinet Ministers and MPs put self-interest and private business interests above the interests of their constituents. They are sending that message not because I have said so, but because the Committee on Standards in Public Life said so, three years ago The message that the Government will be sending if they do not vote for our motion is that nothing needs to change, that they are happy with the headlines of the last few weeks of sleaze and corruption, and that this sort of behaviour is acceptable. They really will be sending the message that it is one rule for them and another for everyone else, and that if Government Members get caught out, the rules need not apply—they will just be changed to protect them—and the consequences do not matter. None of us should be prepared to accept that.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): It pains me to have to remind the Leader of the House that Government Members seem to think that it is all right to try to change the rules to get someone off the hook, but not to change the rules to ensure that someone is properly sanctioned; I still call on the Government to deal with that situation We do not need to accept this situation. We can take the first step to changing it, and our motion today would do so. The public deserve more than where we are at the moment. They deserve a Government who will act in their best interests and in the national interest. I believe that that is a Labour Government. The public have shown that they want reform and reform is what the Labour party will do. We must never be complacent. We must protect and strengthen standards. We must have a democracy that the British public are proud of, and that people trust and believe in.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): I do agree. It would also be an awful lot more seemly if the Government were prepared to follow through on their actions The Prime Minister said yesterday that he wanted to ban these paid consultancy roles. So vote for our motion: it is there on the Order Paper; it does exactly what the Prime Minister said. Do Conservative Members actually want to do what their Prime Minister says he wants? Perhaps they do not; perhaps that is what is going on. Perhaps they do not back their Prime Minister—but if they do, they could follow through on what he said only yesterday, 24 hours ago, and vote for the Labour motion.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Deborah Angela Elspeth Marie Abrahams (Labour, Centre-left): The Leader of the House is absolutely right, this debate and this motion are about the integrity of not just this House and this place, but our political system as a whole. So should the Prime Minister have corrected the record in January when he incorrectly said that PPE contracts had been published when the High Court ruled that they had not?
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Leader of the House for giving way, and this is very naughty of me because I have only just walked in from the Liaison Committee; I am breaking all the standards of the House. The only point I want to make is that I think it would be very difficult for the commissioner to start investigating whether an MP was devoting enough of their time to their constituents. Of course, all our constituents want us to throw ourselves heart and soul into our work, and I think we all do. Many of us work many more hours than a normal working week—60, 70, 80 hours. But I am just very hesitant about going down this route of timesheets or something. She already gets thousands of requests every year saying that an MP has not replied to an email, he or she has voted the wrong way, or whatever. I just urge him, and I will urge my Committee very strongly, to think very carefully about this.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): The House of Lords already has a similar provision in its code of conduct. One thing the Committee on Standards might suggest—I do not want to prejudge, as I see the other members of the Committee staring at me in a grim-faced way—is that Members must have a contract specifying certain things that they can and cannot do, which would be fairly simple. Owen Paterson never had a contract.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Centre-left): One thing on which we can all agree today is what a sorry state of affairs it is that we are having to debate how to strengthen standards in public life. We need to be clear on how we got here, because this was coming a lot earlier than the vote on Owen Paterson and the Government’s decision to reject the Standards Committee’s report and findings into his activities In our system of parliamentary government, it has, quite rightly, been the convention that Ministers are accountable to Parliament for the actions of their Departments, but the current Conservative Government seem to take a somewhat different view. They have been content to close ranks to protect political allies from accountability and see no problem in hanging departmental officials out to dry for policy failures, deflecting blame and avoiding ministerial responsibility. It was telling that when the Business Secretary was asked to name a single thing that the Prime Minister had done to deliver integrity and probity in public life, he was unable to do so. The best he could come up with was to say that the Conservative manifesto pledge to leave the EU had been delivered. What a low bar this Government have set when they find delivery of one of their election pledges somehow remarkable—good grief. The truth is that, while the Prime Minister says he believes in high standards in public life, his actions too often demonstrate the opposite When the Home Secretary was accused of bullying civil servants, the Prime Minister rejected the findings of his independent adviser, effectively forcing his resignation. When the Government ignored repeated warnings over last year’s GCSE and A-level results, it was senior officials at Ofqual and the Department for Education, not the Education Secretary, who took the rap for that inevitable fiasco. By saying that he considered the matter closed as soon as the former Health and Social Care Secretary was found to have breached covid rules, the Prime Minister seriously undermined the ministerial code.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Transportation
Taiwo Owatemi (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last Sunday, The Sunday Times reported that the Transport Secretary misused taxpayers’ money by blocking the redevelopment of airfields. This would affect my local airfield in Coventry, which is meant to be redeveloped as a gigafactory that would bring thousands of jobs to my city of Coventry. Does my hon. Friend agree that senior Conservative Ministers should spend less time abusing their position and more—
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Centre-left): I think that we could all raise example upon example of this Government’s saying, "Do as I say but not as I do", and not following through on their promises It is difficult to imagine 10 or 20 years ago a Government unlawfully proroguing Parliament without even the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House resigning, or at least having the decency to admit that they were wrong. It is unclear what the Prime Minister thinks that he, his Ministers and sometimes his MPs should be held accountable for, if anything at all. For our system of accountability to work, we need the Government to be open and willing to learn from their mistakes. The deterioration in standards that is happening under this Government is not only morally wrong; it is the opposite of good governance. Covering for incompetence or corruption—and sometimes both simultaneously—can only lead to poor leadership and bad policy, which harms the people we are elected to represent. The scapegoating of unelected officials when things go wrong must stop My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the Chair of the Standards Committee, put it well last week when he reminded the House that parliamentary democracy in its present form has not been around for long at all. It is fragile and precious, and must be protected from Governments who seek to undermine it for their own short-term gain. The Chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Lord Evans, clearly anticipated this danger when he said: "The risk is that we think it couldn’t possibly happen in this country. The fact is it could, and that is why we need to make sure we don’t take decisions which would lead us in the wrong direction" I will finish by quoting President Lyndon Johnson, who famously said, "It takes a carpenter to build a barn, but any jackass can knock it down". I know that I am not alone in my deep concerns about the long-term impact on our democracy of a Government who all too frequently act with no sense of decency, dignity or shame.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): They say that a fish rots from the head down; is it any wonder, then, that so many Conservative MPs are happy to rake in thousands from private companies, given that as soon as the Prime Minister resigned as Foreign Secretary in 2018, he immediately retook his position at The Daily Telegraph at the staggering rate of £275,000 a year for one weekly column? That is as much per word as someone would receive on a minimum wage. The right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) earned £320,000 in one year working for J. P. Morgan and C3 AI. Let us reflect on that for a moment now that he is the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care: in that period he earned the equivalent of 13 years’ income for an average nurse I could not afford to take another job—I already work 70 to 80 hours a week, like many others, I am sure—and nor would I. Time and again this Government have tried to sweep their corruption under the carpet, but this time they have failed. The public are waking up to the fact that this Government’s interests lie with corporate companies and corrupt donors. That is why I speak in full support of the motion tabled by the Leader of the Opposition, which would ban paid consultancy work "to provide services as a Parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant" It is a step in the right direction—towards cleaning up the mess that has dogged this House’s reputation in the past two weeks.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Michael Whitley (Labour, Centre-left): The public’s confidence in Parliament and their elected representatives has been dealt a grievous blow in recent weeks, following a torrent of revelations about the scale of corruption among those on the Government Benches—from the millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money handed out to Minister’s friends for personal protective equipment that did nothing to protect frontline workers, through the scandal of cash for peerages, to the grotesque spectacle of Government Members voting to rip up the rules that govern standards in public life in a pathetic attempt to save their friend, the former Member for North Shropshire In his most recent U-turn, the Prime Minister now claims to have had a change of heart, but the amendment he has tabled today is a desperate attempt to water down the robust measures that are needed to restore confidence in this House. It is clear for all to see that the Prime Minister regards this as yet another in a long line of scandals for him to sweep under the rug. In the face of a Government who are unwilling to clean up our politics, it has fallen to the Labour party to bring forward this motion, which will guarantee that elected Members serve the interests of their constituents and not those of giant corporations and lobbyist groups I will forever be humbled by the immense trust that the people of Birkenhead placed in me nearly two years ago. I owe it to them to dedicate all my energy to standing up for their rights and interests in this House. Being a Member of Parliament is an extraordinary privilege, not a hobby or an afterthought to be indulged in from the luxury of the British Virgin Islands. I have heard some Members say that they just could not get by without their second or third jobs; that the generous salary afforded to us as MPs is not enough. To those MPs I say this: come and explain to my constituents why it is acceptable for you to plunge them into deepest poverty with the cuts to universal credit and Tory tax hikes, and why you should be allowed to cynically exploit your position to make yourself even richer still Today, Conservative Members have a simple choice: they can begin the long journey towards restoring faith and competence in our elected institutions or they can continue to slip further down into the cesspit of corruption that is fast enveloping this Government.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Social Welfare
Ian Robert Byrne (Labour, Centre-left): I thank all my constituents who have written to me asking me to voice their concerns today Being an MP since 2019 has given me an insight into how those two letters after our names can open up doors. Last year, as the MP for Liverpool, West Derby—representing many of my constituents who are part of the 32% in Liverpool suffering from food insecurity, as outlined in the report, "Feeding Liverpool"—I, along with Baroness Shami Chakrabarti submitted a proposal for the right to food to be put into law in a meeting with Henry Dimbleby, the Government adviser leading on the national food strategy. I would not have been afforded that opportunity when I was a taxi driver in Liverpool. Having the letters "MP" after my name has enabled me to make a difference. I have sat in many meetings with many people with the aim of tackling the injustices that I see in my constituency and beyond. It would have been far more difficult to organise if I were still a taxi driver—of that I am 100% certain We can say with absolute certainty, therefore, that being an MP gives us opportunities and it opens doors for us, but for me it is about what doors we want opening and how we utilise that opportunity. Do we open them with the aim of aiding our constituents and for the common good, or do we open them with the aim of aiding personal gain and wealth? That is what we are debating here, and, shamefully, for many in this Chamber, it has been the latter The public’s opinion on MPs is normally low, but with the events of the past week. it is now at rock bottom. Let us imagine being on universal credit, seeing the pain of what the £20 cut has done to our family, and hearing the same Tory MPs who inflicted this inhumane policy line up to complain about their ability to exist on £82,000 a year—a salary that puts them in the top 5% of earners in this country. For God’s sake we have 15 million people in poverty, 4.5 million kids going hungry, and, horrifically, a national pandemic that, in the past seven days, took the lives of 1,035 people. That—nothing else—should be the priority of every MP in this House The second job scandal has uncovered rot at the heart of this place that must be resolved by this House. It is immoral, and it must end with the banning of second jobs. Being an MP should be a vocation, not an opportunity to gorge ourselves on the corporate shilling. We need to show the public that being a public servant is indeed a pledge to serve the very constituents who voted us in and to try to advance their lives—not our own, courtesy of a corporate paymaster. It is time to ban these second jobs, and I will be voting in support of that tonight.