argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Nigel John Mills (Conservative, Centre-right): I will make a couple of brief remarks. I think the whole Committee wholeheartedly supports any effort to tackle paramilitarism. I think we would all agree that anyone who engages in or supports paramilitarism has no place in a democratic assembly, making and enforcing laws. I absolutely agree that all the sentiments in the oaths make sense Where I get a little concerned is when we start talking about investigating and sanctioning breaches. We must be careful about exactly what some of these words could involve. What we have in these undertakings are not entirely pledges not to do things. They are pledges to do things, so we get phrases such as, "to challenge all paramilitary activity and associated criminality" I could be accused of breaching that undertaking because I have not sufficiently challenged something. What does challenge mean? Does it mean that I should verbally dispute the validity of something? Should I say that paramilitary activity is heinous and I have therefore met that pledge, or should I be out on the streets of Belfast, physically challenging that activity where I see it Equally, MLAs will undertake, "to challenge paramilitary attempts to control communities" and "to work collectively with other members of the Assembly" I am not sure how we can have a sensible situation where someone is investigated because they have not quite worked collectively enough with other Members on something. Would that happen because they had been working independently, not collectively, and therefore that would not count, or because they had been working a bit collectively but not collectively enough? I am not sure how we go from an oath that sets out undertakings and beliefs to something that we could try to investigate and enforce The Oath we take in this place is to be loyal to Her Majesty the Queen and her successors, but I do not think that Members get taken to the standards board because we have not quite been loyal enough to the Queen, or because something we have said has not been entirely consistent with the Oath. There is a separate code of conduct that we have to follow where the investigation of standards applies. We would not try to follow that from an oath. I am just not sure how the Members proposing the amendments could make the investigations and sanctions link to positive activities.
Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Nigel John Mills (Conservative, Centre-right): I entirely agree. Where someone says or does something that clearly contravenes the undertakings they have given, we should be able to investigate it and sanctions should be available. My slight worry is that the amendments might allow a complaint to be made that somebody had not sufficiently challenged all paramilitary activity—that they had not said enough times how heinous such activity is, or they might not have taken any physical action in the community, for example. I am not sure how it can be proved or enforced when somebody has not done something. That is my point. If we wanted a code of conduct that could be followed, it would have to be clear that people were prohibited from speaking or acting in any way in support of paramilitaries.
Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Nigel John Mills (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sure that that could be said, but I am not sure whether that is set out in the amendments. We all know that such processes can be abused for partisan reasons, by people making scurrilous complaints that we know will never go anywhere, but which take up time and cause anxiety and spending Let me provide a further example. There is another pledge to support those who are determined to make the transition away from paramilitarism. There could be a complaint that somebody had not given sufficient support to those who wanted to move away from paramilitary activity. That would be a nonsense, because there could be many reasons why an individual might not have given that degree of support in that situation. What kind of support are they meant to be providing as an individual MLA? I think we need to be cautious about moving from a set of extremely well-meaning and well-intentioned objectives, such as enforcing acceptable pledges and undertakings, and making them into a code of conduct that I believe we would struggle to enforce sensibly in this form.
Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Labor
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): I shall be short, sharp and to the point. I have listened to the contributions today, and feel that I must take Members back to what the Bill is about, which is to enable the "Fresh Start" agreement to be implemented in law. That is the basis on which we must draw the line of consensus. I have heard the arguments of the SDLP that the "Fresh Start" agreement was not really a consensus—that actually no one was massively behind it.
Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): People can access a range of veterans organisations, including regimental associations and the Royal British Legion, as well as the Government themselves through the Ministry of Defence and Veterans UK, and I encourage them to do so. Perhaps I should declare an interest: I lost 30% of my sight while serving in East Tyrone on a tour of Northern Ireland in 1994, so perhaps I will be covered by the definition of a victim. It is important that we help the victims and recognise that they are not equated with the terrorists and those who sought to spread murder and chaos I am afraid that the Government will oppose the measures that have been tabled, but we call on Members to continue to work with us on resolving the legacy issues. As well as people’s physical suffering, we must consider their mental health and how they deal with memories of the past. This is about not only drawing a line under what has happened, but allowing people to know as much as possible about what happened to their loved ones or, indeed, themselves. The narrative of, "It wasn’t the terrorists fault," that is being pushed has the negative effect of preying on people’s bereavement by trying to come up with a ready excuse that it was not actually the terrorists who killed their husband or wife, but somebody else all along. That preys on people’s fears and their real pain, and those who seek to do that should be ashamed of themselves.
Newark Free School — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Education
Robert Edward Jenrick (Conservative, Centre-right): The petition is from certain residents of Newark, in Nottinghamshire, in connection with the Newark free school. It refers to "many parents", but in fact the number of signatures approaches that of most parents If ever one were to look for a more compelling case or site for a free school than this one, I doubt one could find it. I urge the Secretary of State and Lord Nash to approve the Newark free school as soon as possible. The petition states: The petition of residents of Newark, Declares that the Torch Academy Group’s application for a free school in Newark should be accepted; notes that almost 50% of all secondary school pupils, resident in Newark, are currently being educated at schools outside of the town; further that many parents choose to educate their children at schools outside of the town because they are not satisfied by the academic standards routinely achieved by existing secondary schools in the town; further that over 400 children from Newark are currently being educated at Toot Hill school, Bingham, an outstanding Academy run by the Torch Academy Group; believes that the application provides a once in a generation opportunity to establish a benchmark outstanding secondary school in Newark which all parents of the town can have the confidence to send their children to; further notes that in excess of 200 children have already been registered as prospective pupils for Newark Free School; and acknowledges the outstanding leadership of Mr John Tomasevic, Chief Executive Officer of the Torch Academy Group which is leading the application The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to approve the application for the Newark Free School as soon as possible And the petitioners remain, etc [P001678]
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Transportation
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a great privilege to be called to speak in my first Adjournment debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, and for it to arrive early, which is not something we can always say about trains on the great eastern main line The great eastern main line is a massive issue for people in my constituency. Our railways are a key strategic asset and the performance of the line has, frankly, not always been up to scratch. I want to focus on an important part of the line: the ticketing structure, and the annual, monthly or weekly season tickets that my constituents buy. I feel strongly about the availability of part-time season tickets I am the first to recognise that hon. Members on both sides of the House have raised this issue and my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) has done a lot of work on it. Pressure groups such as Transport Focus have campaigned for it. I am proud to say that it featured in the victorious Conservative manifesto at the last general election, which stated: "We will also introduce smart ticketing and part-time season tickets." Why did I want to secure this Adjournment debate? It is basically due to lobbying from the focus group—the lobby group—that matters more than any other to me: the hard-working commuters and constituents of South Suffolk. To make my case, there is nothing better I can do than to follow the example of the Leader of the Opposition and read two emails from my constituents. I have had many emails about this, but two in particular cover the case for flexible ticketing The first is from—
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Transportation
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): Calm down. It is from Deborah Adams of Sudbury. Sudbury is the main town in my constituency—a beautiful market town; the home of the great Thomas Gainsborough. She writes: "A few years ago David Cameron announced the phased introduction of flexible season tickets for rail travel. As someone that commutes to London from Sudbury 2-3 days a week, this struck me as a very good idea. However, I have not been able to find out any more about it Flexible season tickets are an excellent idea, especially for constituencies like ours where there are large numbers of commuters. Many work from home some days, which makes the price of a regular season ticket of questionable value Flexible season tickets would encourage more people to work from home some days, which would reduce overcrowding on the trains, and would benefit South Suffolk, as more people would have time to spend their London wages locally It is very old-fashioned to think that workers go to their office every day and we should not be penalised for flexible working A system whereby a commuter could say buy 10 day returns for the price of 6-7 would really encourage the flexibility that the modern work force needs when juggling work and family life What do you think about this?" She hits the nail on the head.
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Transportation
Ranil Malcolm Jayawardena (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend agree that his constituent makes a good case for using new technology and the new options in e-ticketing? If it is possible to board a plane using one’s iPhone, would it not be possible to board a train?
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Transportation
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I will talk about technology later in my remarks Another email that hits on some other points is from Russell Badrick, a solicitor who works in London but lives in Nayland, a beautiful village on the Suffolk-Essex border by the river Stour. He says: "I was born in the constituency, and have recently moved down the road from you, to Nayland. I am a commuter and work in London. I work from home one day a week, and I commute the other four days You no doubt must receive a great many messages complaining about the Abellio Greater Anglia Services, which are generally very poor. The notion that they might be nationalised is obviously crazy"— he is clearly sound. He continues: "I wanted to ask you if anything was being done to persuade Abellio to introduce flexible tickets? It is becoming increasingly common for people to work from home, yet we are still forced to pay the season tickets for the entire week, month or year. For me, that means paying for 365 days of travel, when in fact I only travel on 208 of these. In fact, when holidays are discounted, I only travel 192 days a year On the basis of me paying £5,520 a year (i.e. 15.12 a day), this means I am really overpaying for 173 days a year – i.e. a full £2615.76 – again, obviously crazy I appreciate this is a business decision on the part of Abellio, but in this situation I, like many of your constituents, are captive consumers. Can anything be done about this?" I should add as a caveat that while he talks about £2,615.76, Members—especially my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay), who I believe is an accountant—will know that that is taxed income, so the real figure is far more than that.
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Transportation
Robert Edward Jenrick (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a compelling case. We all know that there is a commuter belt around London and other major towns and cities, but there is a huge economic opportunity for towns and communities just beyond that, from where commuting into a great city full of opportunities, such as London, is possible one or two days a week, but is onerous five days a week. In my constituency, there are 500 people with daily commuter season tickets from Newark to London, but it is very tiring to make that journey every day of the week and most of those individuals do it only one, two or three days a week. Does my hon. Friend agree that we want people to have these opportunities because that brings wealth and new opportunities for fulfilling careers into a whole belt an hour or more further north, south, east and west of London?
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Transportation
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. When I had the pleasure of campaigning in his by-election, I remarked that I was in a beautiful part of his constituency Before turning to the points made by my commuting constituents, I want to set the context of South Suffolk. In many ways, it fits the pattern described by my hon. Friend. The key to its beauty is that although we are not that far from London in commuting terms, we really feel like we are in East Anglia. There are many beautiful counties in the south-east, but people feel the pull of the M25 and of London. Once they get to South Suffolk, they feel as though they are in a different part of the country. The area has beautiful ancient villages such as Lavenham and Long Melford, which are famous and attract many tourists. Nevertheless, from Colchester, which is an 18-minute drive from my village, we can take the express train and get to Liverpool Street in 47 minutes. Although we are a long way from London in one respect, we are certainly well within commuting distance.
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Transportation
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. Towards the end of my remarks, I will come on to the question of how we pay for cheaper travel, because the rail operating companies obviously have to find the revenue from somewhere I represent a commuting constituency, although fine manufacturing industries are based there, as well as agriculture. I was brought up in Barnet in north London and moved first to Essex. When Emily and I moved our family out to South Suffolk, it was because we wanted to be able to afford a house that had some land and was in a beautiful part of the world so that we could have that quality of life, and because we wanted to move out of the London rush, so to speak This issue will become ever bigger. Partly because of London house prices, there will be a great exodus, particularly of professional families, to Suffolk, Kent and so on, right up to Newark. People will move out in search of a better quality of life. If that is their motive, will they still expect to travel five days a week when they face such a long journey? As my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) said, many of them will travel four days a week, and that is my experience. I have noticed a marked number of people on my local trains doing four or three days because the journey is so long.
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Transportation
Alan Mak (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate on an important subject. As in his constituency, many of my constituents have moved away from London for precisely the reasons as he articulated. They now travel from stations around the Solent region—Havant, Emsworth and Bedhampton —to London for work. Will my hon. Friend join me in calling on South West Trains and Southern to reflect changing living and working habits in their flexible fare arrangements?
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Transportation
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): I am more than happy to do that. The franchise in our area is Abellio Greater Anglia. My region is fortunate in at least one sense—I am not sure what the score is in my hon. Friend’s region—because the franchise is up. There are three bids going in for it. Let me take a few of the key points from my constituents about why we should have part-time tickets and more flexible ticketing. Deborah from Sudbury said: "It is very old-fashioned to think that workers go to their office every day and we should not be penalised for flexible working"— I totally agree Some years ago, I went to a presentation about voting patterns by a leading American psephologist. He said there are three groups of voters in the country. I cannot remember two of them, but the other was symbolised by a grey cloud. That was not a political point; it was about character and how we appeal to different types of voter. The voters symbolised by the grey cloud had certain features, one of which was that they were moved by newspaper headlines about bad weather, which is quite interesting. However, the most common feature was that they ate their dinner at the same time every day—quite frankly, that describes my late grandad. However, the era of predictability, of nine to five and of everyone doing the same thing all the time is gone; it has been shattered and blown apart by liberalisation and globalisation. That might be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a fact of life that we and our constituents all face, and our rail ticketing system should reflect that.
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Kevin John Foster (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Would he say that this is also about reflecting families’ changing lifestyles, in that the 1960s model—the father commuting to work five days a week while the wife was at home with the children—is now gone? With men and women rightly sharing parental responsibilities, they may wish to divide up the days of the week that they work, and season tickets need to reflect that.
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Transportation
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): That is an excellent point. Recent Office for National Statistics data show that between April and June 2015, just over 7.3 million people had a flexible working pattern. By the way, that is people who are employed; it does not include the army of people such as self-employed contractors who go into London a few days a week. We have a flexible labour market and flexible working, but our rail ticketing system is, in effect, stuck in the same Julian calendar that we have had since 46 BC. If that sounds like a long time, hon. Members should wait until they get stuck on a delayed service out of Liverpool Street Russell from Nayland made an important point about bad value for money: "On the basis of me paying £5520 a year…this means I am really overpaying for 173 days a year" of travel, which is an extraordinary statistic. That means that he is, in reality, paying £2,615.76 or, depending on his tax bracket—if he is a solicitor, I suspect it is 40%—£4,000 or more for those 173 days. That is a big deal, particularly in our region, because an extensive survey recently undertaken by Transport Focus found that just 21% of the commuters on Abellio Greater Anglia were satisfied that their ticket was value for money, compared with 34% on other lines. I realise that I may end up in a competition with hon. Members in the Chamber about whose line has fewer happy customers, but there is no doubt that value for money is a big concern. It is fair to say that if there was more satisfaction with value for money in general, the issue of part-time tickets would not actually feature. I get these emails because people feel frustrated that they look hard at what they are getting and think, "Hold on a minute. I’m paying for Saturday, Sunday and Friday."
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Transportation
Robert Edward Jenrick (Conservative, Centre-right): Perhaps I could add another point. When we think of those who commute into central London, we tend to think they are on higher incomes, but that is not always the case. I have many constituents who commute into London, but also some who commute into Nottingham and Derby, and some of them might be on very low incomes. The average wage in my constituency is £23,000 a year, and commuting costs, even from Nottingham to Derby, certainly eat into that. One group that came to me recently was made up of apprentices; they do not go to work every day of the week, because, in many cases, they will be doing courses at the local college. They might want to go to Newark College, which they can walk to, one day a week, and do three or four days a week at Rolls-Royce in Derby. A full-time season ticket will eat into their quite modest incomes.
Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport — House of Commons, 2016-03-10
Topic: Transportation
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): Another excellent point What is to be done? To go back to my constituents, Deborah suggested this: "A system whereby a commuter could, say, buy 10 day returns for the price of 6-7 would really encourage the flexibility that the modern work force needs when juggling work and family life." There is a word for what she proposes—it is "carnet"—and I must confess that, when I lived in Barnet, I used a carnet. [Laughter.]