argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-11-21
Topic: Defense
Frank Ashcroft Judd (Labour, Centre-left): Before my noble friend sits down, does he agree that one of the reasons that British standing in the world is diminishing is that there is the growing feeling that we use all the right words about human rights and the rule of law but are pretty slow to add muscle to ensure that something is done? I believe the time has come when our credibility rests on making sure that we not only make the right statements in principle but have the arrangements in place for proper scrutiny and ensuring that action is taken I pick up the liberal position. Speaking as a former defence Minister, overseas development Minister and Foreign Office Minister, I have in my more senior years come to the firm conclusion that sooner or later we have to change our ruling culture on the export of arms. Arms have become lethal, highly dangerous and destabilising. As you get older, you can become a bit more irresponsible in the best sense in terms of holding inconvenient beliefs. I believe that the only people to whom you should export arms are those with whom you are in a close, specified alliance—NATO, for example —or where there is an identifiable, specific reason for doing so to increase stability in a particular place. Anything else is a liability, given all the problems with end-use. I do not doubt the current Minister’s commitment to human rights but we need to be able to demonstrate that this is not just a case of wishful thinking but an issue about which we are serious.
Assisted Dying Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-10-22
Topic: Health
Helene Valerie Hayman (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury and to be able to support my noble friend Lady Meacher, who I believe has brought forward the best drafted and most effective of the four Bills on this subject that I have been involved in in my time in your Lordships’ House I was a member of the Select Committee that investigated the Joffe Bill. It was that experience that led me to become a strong supporter of compassionate, structured and safe legislation in this field. I listened—with huge respect of course—to the most reverend Primate, but, when he says that this would not be a kind and infallible system, I have to say that we do not have a kind and infallible system at the moment, and I believe that our legislation would be kinder and less fallible in many areas if we pass this Bill I have a specific point on kindness. One of the reasons I became so strongly committed was the experience of going to Oregon and seeing its legislation in place. What struck me most was the number of people who entered the system and got a prescription but never cashed it—the number of people who, because they had the security, the insurance policy and the peace of mind about what would happen if things became intolerable, actually did not need to avail themselves. I think it is 35% of the Oregon cohort that does not follow through. I believe that there are penumbras here: not just the people who go into the system but the people given a terminal diagnosis and know that, if things become unbearable, there is a way out. I believe that comfort goes far wider than the people who actually enter the system I have one last point. The most reverend Primate accepted that there is no unanimity of view among people of faith, doctors, lawyers and members of my Select Committee. There is not; there are differences of opinion and they are compassionately and ethically held. But the public know what they think on this issue. They have been consistent on the issue, and I believe we should respect that and support the Bill.
Assisted Dying Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-10-22
Topic: Health
Ian Warwick Blair (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I remind the House that I was a member of the Commission on Assisted Dying chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. The word we should hold in front of us is "choice". This is a choice for a patient facing fear of a very bad death. It is a choice for medical practitioners: as in the case of abortion, while having to accept that assisted dying is an option, they do not have to take part in any such procedure. Even if it is granted, it is still a choice whether the patient takes advantage of the option, as in the Oregon case we have just heard about. However, it is not a choice between palliative care and assisted dying. They sit side by side; they can grow side by side Finally, assisting another person’s suicide is an offence which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison. If a suicide happens at home, that home becomes a crime scene, with a forensic tent and computers and last messages being seized. Even assisting someone getting on a plane to Dignitas opens people up to unavoidable police investigation. There can be a convention on no prosecution, but there cannot be a convention of no investigation. A good death is one of the last great liberal causes. I support the Bill.
Assisted Dying Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-10-22
Topic: Health
Martin Rees (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, very few people consider maximal extension of life, irrespective of its quality, to be a moral imperative. We can choose not to be resuscitated if we have a heart attack; we can decline invasive cancer treatment Viewed in this context, the Bill is incremental and circumscribed. It allows those of sound mind with a terminal prognosis to end their lives in a time and place of their choosing, rather than suffer a lingering decline marked by pain and loss of autonomy. That is why some make a one-way trip to Switzerland and why the lives of loved ones are sometimes ended in ways that are strictly illegal. These acts may not result in prosecution, but a shadow of criminality hangs over them and adds to the grief of those whose motive is compassion It is a misperception that support for the Bill betokens less admiration for the hospice movement or less motive to enhance palliative care. Likewise, it is a misperception that disabled and vulnerable individuals are less supportive of the Bill than the public at large. My late colleague Stephen Hawking thought that assisted dying would be wrong unless one were in great pain. Thankfully, his own last days were peaceful, but he thought none the less that the disabled should have the option We have heard widespread concerns that the vulnerable would be pressured to opt for assisted dying so as not to be a burden—a compelling case—but it is worth mentioning a counterargument. When the great Baroness Mary Warnock spoke in a debate in this House in 2014, she offered a countervailing view: "All the way through their life until this point, putting their family first will have been counted a virtue, and then suddenly, when they most want to avoid the trouble … sorrow and misery of disruption to their family, they are told they are not allowed to follow that motive."—[Official Report, 7/11/14; col. 1908.] She found this "extraordinarily puzzling" Baroness Warnock’s robust stancewould resonate with a few of the Bill’s supporters, but we all welcome the Bill from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, because it would surely give great comfort to far more of us than would actually use its provisions.
Assisted Dying Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-10-22
Topic: Health
John Kerr (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am a trustee of the Refugee Council, which tries to help those who get here having escaped famine, war or oppression. I am also a strong supporter of Médecins Sans Frontières, which does such wonderful work in the field of conflict, looking after the people who cannot get out, who are trapped. Nobody tells me that I have to choose between one and the other. Philosophers define a false dichotomy as a fallacy based on the exclusion of one available premise. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, knows how much I admire her campaign for improved and more palliative care. I strongly support it. I am a supporter of my local hospice; my support has roots in family experience rather similar to that described so movingly by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell. I do not see why I have to choose between improving palliative care and helping those who, while aware of how palliative care might help them, still have a voluntary, clear, settled and informed wish to bring the curtain down and end their suffering Without the legal option that the Bill would provide, we are stuck with the sadness of surreptitious suicide preparations—shocking to family and friends if they succeed, all too often traumatic and tragic if they are bodged and fail. The safeguards in the Bill are stringent and the consultations it mandates might dissuade many, but where their decision is voluntary, clear, settled and informed, it should surely be determinate The key, as I see it, is respect for the autonomy of the individual and here I fear I have to part company with the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. I think the key is not imposing one’s views on those who do not share them. I could cite Mill, Bentham, Voltaire or Hume but I will spare the House. I will quote only Stephen Sedley in his Doran Lecture this year. He said: "Nobody … doubts the importance and worth of palliative care, or the entitlement of individuals to hold whatever belief they choose about suffering, even if it consigns them to a lingering death. What they do not have is a right to force it on others." I agree. I do not think we should have the right to limit the options at life’s end so I hope the House will reject the false dichotomies and support the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher.
Assisted Dying Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-10-22
Topic: Health
Graham Stirrup (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, one thing on which I think we can all agree is that everyone speaking today does so with a sense of deep compassion, but also of great responsibility. We have heard about heartrending individual cases which cannot but attract our most heartfelt sympathy, and which lead a number of your Lordships to believe that the Bill, or something like it, is required to relieve suffering. Like many noble Lords, I have personal experience of such cases and, were I in similar circumstances, I might well wish for an accelerated and assisted death, but our task in this Chamber is not just to seek remedies for individual cases, no matter how tragic, nor to take counsel only for the present. We have a responsibility to consider the potential implications of legislation for the whole of our society, both now and in the future On these grounds, there are many arguments to be made against the Bill, but in the limited time available, I shall add my voice in support of just one: the status of the medical profession in our society At the moment, there is a prohibition on doctors actively procuring or helping to procure the deaths of their patients. They need not, in all circumstances, fight to delay death, but they cannot intervene solely to promote it. This is a clear position, and it helps to fundamentally address the inevitable asymmetry in the relationship between doctors and their often emotionally exposed and vulnerable patients If that position is ceded, however, the ground on which the medical profession stands is rendered unstable: it goes from a position of clarity to one of unpredictability, particularly when the rules governing the assisting of suicide shift over time—as they surely will. Once clinicians become involved in taking life, people change their position for ever. They will no longer be health professionals but health and death professionals, so the Bill does not represent a small change. It involves a seismic shift in the arrangements and understandings that underpin a crucial part of our society. Its dangers are many and it safeguards are, in my view, largely illusory I entirely understand the noble motives of those who support the Bill, and I wish I could see a way in which their objectives could be achieved safely, but I cannot. I must therefore oppose the Bill.
Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-04-13
Topic: Defense
Donald Thomas (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, in speaking to these amendments, my first point is that legitimate claims for misconduct by British troops involved in overseas operations are a fact that has to be faced, however unpalatable that is. According to a Written Answer given to me by the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, on 15 June last year, "in excess of 1,330 claims" have been brought against the MoD since 2003, and they have been settled at a cost of some £32 million. Nobody suggests that these were not proper claims. Indeed, the noble Baroness said: "The claims received focus predominately on alleged unlawful detention but many incorporate allegations of mistreatment at the hands of British military personnel."
Assisted Dying Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-10-22
Topic: Health
Janric Fraser Craig (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I strongly support the Bill before us, as I had its predecessors, and, as has been said, public support on this is somewhat more than 80% in favour of such a measure, even among faith communities. It goes without saying that one supports palliative care and its extension, but within its limitations. The many repetitive emails against this Bill—the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, has just referred to the "tsunami" of emails—that some of us have received appear to be embedded in assumptions that are simply not tenable. One is not against personal email lobbying, but if it is done on such a circular and commercial scale, with clear copying and pasting of the same wording and references, that would seem to be counterproductive, as well as slightly devaluing the case. I hope that we can be spared that in Committee and in the later stages of the Bill. One learns that simple repetition and copying does not make truth One false background presumption is that improving palliative care can somehow sweep up all the difficult cases and instances that might emerge and that, if we tried hard enough and provided enough increased funding, all such problems would be resolved. That is a get-out and does not and cannot deal with some really distressing and protracted cruel deaths that are presently inevitable, stark examples of which have been given today. For some, that goes over also to mental anguish and dignity, on which some of us are entitled to place importance We are trying to leave behind any paternalistic past where some doctors who knew better than you did what was good for you would patronise you. I believe that the Bill can offer genuine choice; those who deny choice or claim that it can never be genuine are espousing a form of fatalism that we must simply suffer until nature’s end, regardless of the distress or pain which, unfortunately, some claim, particularly religions, is elevating and good for us. I hope that that is what we are leaving behind, as have many millions in the rest of the world—maybe 200 million—who have changed their laws, such as the states in Australia and the USA and in the whole of Canada, New Zealand and other civilised nations. That is the direction that we will and should inevitably be following, and I hope that we will all shortly be able to join the right side of history.
Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-04-13
Topic: Defense
Donald Thomas (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am relieved to hear the Minister’s statement concerning Clause12 and its removal. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, asked who the message was to be sent to. The proposal to give notice to a potential enemy that British forces would not be bound by the restraints of the European Convention on Human Rights was truly alarming. It would have exposed our troops in the field to reciprocal treatment I followed the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, in Committee in pointing out the utter uselessness of this clause anyway, in that it could not deal with those most pertinent and significant rights in the covenant from which no derogation is possible. It did not even try to mirror the circumstances of war or national emergency contained in Article 15, which permit derogation only in very strict circumstances. I do not propose to repeat that analysis The Government have thought again on the desirability of this clause. I urge them to think again on the desirability of the whole Bill. I urge them to pull the whole Bill and bring it back in the next Session after proper consultation. I do not say this from any party-political position but wearing the hat of the chair of the Association of Military Court Advocates. I cannot say that I am speaking for that association because no meetings have been possible during the pandemic, but you will appreciate that its members’ primary concern is with defending the ordinary service man or woman in courts martial, many of which relate to overseas operations For the reasons which I gave in relation to Amendments 1 and 6 and will not repeat at this stage, this Bill does not protect our service men and women. The only body protected by the Bill is the Ministry of Defence, probably for the ignoble reason given in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Hendy: to save a bob or two. It is badly thought out, with many omissions and with repercussions that were not understood, not least in its failure to carry out the manifesto commitment of the Government to give statutory force to the military covenant—a matter which we shall shortly discuss. So, they should pull it now, and by all means bring it back in the next Session in a form which will be of use to and protect serving seamen, soldiers and airmen, without the ill thought-out provisions which expose them to danger. I say to the Government: pull the Bill.
Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-04-13
Topic: Defense
Julie Smith (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, we have heard some important speeches making it clear why this amendment is so important. However, I confess that, having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton of Richmond, I almost got to the point that my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford got to on the previous group: ought we to be killing the Bill, or asking the Government to kill it? Although I did not think at the previous stage that this amendment was necessarily a probing amendment, the more I looked at Amendment 14, the more it looked like the Government needed to be thinking about these issues more generally, not just in the context of overseas operations The Liberal Democrats will be supporting the amendment, but I think it raises issues which, if the Government have thought about them, have not yet been made clear to your Lordships’ House and perhaps to the other place. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, pointed out, since the Bill was introduced in the other place, we have had the integrated review, the defence White Paper and the defence industrial strategy. There seems to be a whole swathe of legislation coming forward. We also, I assume at some point, are going to have legislation dealing with historic issues associated with Northern Ireland, and surely the duty of care links to the issues of Northern Ireland I did not speak on the second group of amendments, but it was interesting to hear the very different approaches to saying that we need to think about Northern Ireland again. They did not fit into a Bill on overseas operations, quite clearly, yet some of the issues, and that sense of repeated investigations, apply as least as much to Northern Ireland as to overseas operations. Are the Government proposing at some point to bring these themes together? Are they going to be in the Armed Forces Bill 2021? Are we going to see questions of duty of care that ought to be embedded not just in this Bill but more broadly? If not, could the Minister take this away and talk to her colleagues in the MoD Main Building and in the other place The Armed Forces Bill is coming up this year. As we have heard, issues about hybrid warfare and artificial intelligence need to be thought about, and potentially thought about differently, but this Bill does not really get into them. I fully understand that the Minister might say that this is intended to be a very small and discrete Bill. That may be so, but if those matters are not being considered in this Bill, are they being considered elsewhere? If not, could she undertake to go away and think about them?
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Lords, 2021-01-27
Topic: Health
Lorely Burt (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, in this group the Committee has already heard a great deal about the role of substance abuse in domestic abuse. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, for her tremendous work in this respect. I will focus my brief remarks on the unholy triumvirate of substance abuse, domestic abuse and mental ill-health. There is a strong link between the three Some research findings have already been quoted. The most striking that I came across was on substance abuse: abused women are 15 times more likely to abuse alcohol and nine times more likely to abuse drugs. This is one way, but hardly a good one, to alleviate the stress and the pain. Research suggests that women experiencing domestic abuse are more likely to experience mental health problems; women with mental health problems are also more likely to experience domestic abuse. It makes total sense, when you think about it It is a vicious circle: domestic abuse leads to mental ill-health, which is often used to abuse the victim further. For example, it can be a tool of coercive control—threatening to "tell social services" and telling the children that "Mummy can’t look after you". When a victim discloses to a public authority, the abuser may say, "You can’t believe her—she’s mad". On mental health repercussions, domestic abuse is associated with depression, anxiety, PTSD and substance abuse in the general population. Of course, this all has a profound effect on the children The Children’s Commissioner estimates that over 500,000 children are living in households infected with substance abuse and domestic abuse. Children experiencing mental health issues as a result of domestic abuse have strong links with poorer educational outcomes and a high level of mental ill-health. Sadly, that is only to be expected. So the importance of, and interrelationships between, substance misuse, mental ill-health and domestic abuse can hardly be overestimated. That is why we support all the amendments in this group, and I have added my name to three Of those to which I have added my name, Amendment 21 specifically writes into the general function of the commissioner the need to include the provision of support for domestic abuse victims suffering from mental health issues and addictions. Amendment 42 sets out the requirement that the commissioner’s advisory board includes at least one person with experience in mental health and substance abuse. Amendment 94 obliges local authorities to provide mental health and substance misuse support to victims. Unless support of this nature is given, this strong interlink between the three will never be broken.
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2021-11-15
Topic: Health
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): I shall follow up on the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, in relation to pregnant women in particular. There were maternal deaths early on. It would be most helpful if we could have the data on the number of such women, the pattern of vaccination and the pattern of maternal deaths from Covid and severe infection. Women are still worried and hesitant because there was a failure to vaccinate early on, because the data on safety was not there. Having data on the drop in the number of deaths will help to persuade women of childbearing age to pursue being vaccinated, whether they are already pregnant or not.