argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2017-11-28
Topic: Transportation
Antonia Louise Antoniazzi (Labour, Centre-left): It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) The Budget is a prime example of the contempt that this Government continue to show towards the devolved nations. By holding the purse strings on infrastructure investment, the Government are sucking the hopes and dreams out of future Welsh generations. The announcement that electrification to Swansea was cancelled followed months of weasel words from the Tories. They professed that that was a crucial project and that it would happen, and it did not I now have the privilege of sitting on the Welsh Affairs Committee, which, only last week, listened to evidence from two experts. It was a revelation to hear evidence of fake news on electrification from those on the Government Benches. The Secretaries of State for Wales and for Transport have frequently told us that we would be welcoming bi-modal trains to Swansea. I do not share their enthusiasm for bi-modal trains in Swansea; I would prefer electric trains. If the Government’s target is to lower carbon emissions, here is an interesting fact for them: these wonderful bi-modal trains use the same dirty old diesel engines that are found in diesel high-speed trains. People welcome bi-modal trains because they are, allegedly, lighter and therefore more efficient than the current diesel high-speed trains. That claim too can be blown out of the water: whereas a nine-carriage diesel high-speed train weighs 408 tonnes, a bi-modal train weighs 432 tonnes, as it has 9 tonnes of diesel fuel under every coach—an interesting fact. If only the Government would further devolve transport and give that power to Wales, so that we were in the same position as Scotland, we could successfully move ahead with electrification and increase the productivity of the Welsh economy. The whole of Wales has been let down by the refusal to electrify from Cardiff, let down by the refusal to sign off on the Swansea bay tidal lagoon and let down by the refusal further to devolve rail transport to Wales. Those constant refusals highlight that the Government are not interested in Wales, its future or, more importantly, the economy that is to provide the opportunities for young people in Wales to prosper.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2017-11-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Gerard Killen (Labour, Centre-left): This is a "nothing has changed" Budget from an out-of-touch Government enabled by Conservative Members who have no idea of the reality of people’s lives. In the midst of it all has been a battle between the SNP and the Scottish Conservatives to claim credit for the Chancellor’s climbdown on the VAT charges imposed on Scotland’s emergency services. As ever, the reality has been lost in the performance that has played out between them. I thought for a moment earlier that the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) might break into song in his praise of the Scottish Government, but of course he failed to mention that growth in Scotland is even lower than it is in the UK The whole VAT situation could have been avoided if the SNP had listened to Unison’s advice at the time, although that is not to let the UK Government off the hook on the matter. It was wrong to impose charges on Scotland’s emergency services, and the Chancellor has admitted that with the Budget. It says very little for the persuasive powers of the Secretary of State for Scotland that the election of 12 new Scottish Tory MPs was seemingly required to convince the Chancellor to introduce the exemption Perhaps the new intake will bend the Chancellor’s ear once more and use their new-found influence to get back the £140 million that Scotland’s police and fire services have already paid in VAT. Surely, if it is wrong to pay it in 2018, it has been wrong to pay it all along. If that money is refunded to the Scottish Government, I hope that it will be ring-fenced. I know that my constituents do not want to have to repeat the successful local campaigns that they had to launch to save police stations in Rutherglen, Cambuslang and Blantyre from the threat of closure. That additional funding for the emergency services is much needed The Budget also failed to address the misery that is being caused by the Government’s social security programme. The move from an initial six-week wait to a five-week wait for universal credit payment will be cold comfort to the people who contact my office in desperate need of help. Some of them tell my staff that they feel suicidal, because the Government are driving them into debt and they have nowhere else to turn. What must it be like for them to spend Christmas worrying about whether they will have a roof over their head or food to put on the table? Here is an opportunity for the Government to get two things right amid this woeful Budget: backdate the VAT refund for the Scottish emergency services and pause the roll-out, to fix universal credit.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2017-11-28
Topic: Social Welfare
Mary Elizabeth Twist (Labour, Centre-left): I declare an interest as an elected member of Gateshead Council I want to speak about what is not in this Budget, because those things are important to my constituents in Blaydon, many of whom are struggling to cope with daily life and supporting their families. First, I want to mention the absence of any reference to social care. We all know that the demand for social care is growing, and we know from experience that it is essential that people have access to high-quality social care when they need it, but the Government continue to cut the local authority budgets that go towards providing that support In my council of Gateshead, we spend more than half our budget on the most vulnerable adults and children. Our funding has been cut by 52% since 2010, and the number of people who use and need our services is rising. I checked the Tory manifesto earlier and found this on long-term care: "Where others have failed to lead, we will act." But there is no action on social care in this Budget There is nothing in this Budget for education, other than for maths teaching. Maths teaching is, of course, hugely important, but many of our schools are struggling to balance their budget so that they can provide the best education possible for our young people, and despite changes to the schools funding formula over the summer, 91% of schools still face a real-terms reduction in their budgets as per pupil funding has reduced. We may have a commitment to maths funding, but increasing pupil numbers and increasing demands versus decreasing funding means that the sums do not add up for schools On housing, we had a raft of measures that the Chancellor says will increase house building, but the announcements fall far short of a proper plan to help to fix the housing crisis. We need all councils to build again to create the houses we need I heard the Chancellor repeat this morning that the public sector pay cap has gone. But NHS workers, who were specially mentioned by the Chancellor, will receive an increase only on condition that they increase productivity by renegotiating their terms and conditions under "Agenda for Change". This does not just affect the NHS; for staff right across the public sector, work has increased and pay has fallen in real terms. The Government need not only to lift the cap that they imposed, but to fund the NHS, local government, fire and rescue services, the police, education, the delivery of universal credit and many other areas, to give those staff the rise that they need, without further reducing services.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2017-11-28
Topic: Education
Anthony Joseph Lloyd (Labour, Centre-left): The huge gulf across the Chamber between Government Members’ world of disbelief and Opposition Members’ world of reality mirrors how modern Britain is divided. Ministers are looking astonished, but Britain is a very divided society. The rich are doing extraordinarily well, but many other people are struggling. Public sector workers will once again have another year of pay cuts, and there is no money to fund any realistic investment in our public services. The police in Greater Manchester have been cut by 2,000 officers. There is less money for our local authorities, and in Rochdale, where social care and children’s services have been decimated by this Government, there has been no relief whatsoever I want to concentrate on productivity, which this Government claim they intend to make the keynote of this Budget. Let us look at the reality of what is taking place for those with intermediate skills. Rochdale, like many other towns across the north of England, needs investment in education and training, but what have we seen? Let me take Meanwood Primary School. It is a great school with great teachers, but this Government are putting the "Mean" into Meanwood because the school, despite the rhetoric of Conservative Members, has faced cuts this year. It has lost a teacher and teaching assistant hours. In effect, the school has been made worse for children from some of the most deprived parts of my constituency, which cannot be right. The further education college has been damaged by cuts. The figure of £4,000 per pupil has been consistent over the years but, de facto, that means cut after cut, and the real number of hours per student is far less than in almost any other OECD country. Intermediate skills are simply not being invested in as they should be I challenge this Government. Rochdale needs a Rochdale education challenge, just as there was a London challenge under the previous Labour Government. It is now up to this Government to get real and to have the ambition to change this nation. Quite frankly, given the complacency of Conservative Members, it is hard to believe that this Government can have the ambition that the people of this country deserve, so it is about time that they went and we had a Labour Government to show such ambition.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2017-11-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Woodcock (Labour, Centre-left): No party has a monopoly on damaging people’s faith in politics and in government, but I genuinely believe that the Budget could do significant further damage to people’s faith in the ability of the political process to deliver for them. That is not so much because of what is in the Budget, as because of the huge mismatch between the scale of the economic challenge facing the country and the behemoth of Brexit coming down the track, and the sense of a lack of grip and lack of ambition in the Budget to deal with any of those things. That is combined with some truly extraordinary contributions from Government Members, who talk about the Budget as if it is a genuinely transformative experience for the country. That is simply not the lived experience of many of our constituents. It does the Conservative party no favours to pretend that we are in that situation Briefly, given the time I have left, I will look at how my constituents will feel let down by the Budget. Once again, WASPI women get nothing and Cumbria’s infrastructure needs are ignored. For people in Furness and across the country, wage growth has not kept up with increases in living costs for years, and that will potentially be true for another decade. The public are sick to the back teeth of austerity measures being imposed with no end in sight The rest of my remarks will focus on the most ominous omission from the Budget speech and almost entirely from the Budget documents: defence. On the face of it, there are continuing increases in the defence budget, but it is no accident that the Chancellor—a former Secretary of State for Defence—chose to ignore defence completely. He knows and the Government know about the terrible crunch in the defence equipment programme and the amount of damage that may be done in the coming months, let alone years, by the way in which our nation’s resources are being starved. There may be no way back from that and the Government must pay heed.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2017-11-28
Topic: Education
Tulip Rizwana Siddiq (Labour, Centre-left): This Budget was guided by the political considerations of the Tory party, rather than the day-to-day reality faced by my constituents in Hampstead and Kilburn. It was well briefed before the Budget that the Chancellor’s hands would be tied, but I refuse to accept that Brexit allows for a total cop-out and a Budget that is so utterly feeble in confronting London’s problems In the short time I have, I will focus on education and policing. The Red Book reveals worrying cuts for school buildings and says next to nothing about concerning signs over the Government’s childcare promises. I want answers on why the Budget statement did not include a single mention of counter-terrorism in a year when we have seen five terrorist attacks, four of them in the capital. I want answers on the total failure to acknowledge the immense financial strain that our police are under. The omission of police funding is simply scandalous. Today, I want to provide a voice for those in my corner of north-west London who are concerned by rising crime on our streets, the continued terror threat and the Government’s utter failure to compromise with the Met commissioner and the Mayor of London Capital investment in schools is crucial, yet the small print of the Budget reveals that over the next four years, there will be £1 billion less in the Department for Education’s capital budget than was outlined in the Chancellor’s spring Budget. The Chancellor failed to announce that at the Dispatch Box, but local parents and pupils will lose out as a result. The verdict of headteachers in my constituency could not be clearer. My local paper, the Camden New Journal, published an open letter to the Chancellor signed by 41 school heads saying: "We cannot see how we will be able to continue to provide our current level of provision in the future with such drastic cuts to our funding." The absence of early years funding from the Budget is similarly concerning. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on childcare and early education, it has been a privilege to hear from colleagues from across the House about their experiences of the roll-out of the 30 hours of childcare policy. In principle, getting parents back to work and ensuring that every child has the best start in life is something that unites us. However, as I wrote in my letter to the Minister for Children and Families last week, the policy is underfunded. As was revealed in the latest Ofsted figures, more than 1,000 nurseries and childminders have gone out of business since 2010 On police funding, I will echo the Mayor of London’s response to the Budget last week in the short time I have left. Given the cuts of £600 million since 2010 and the fact that we are set to lose another £400 million before 2020, I wonder at what point the Government will stop compromising the safety of Londoners.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2017-11-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Alexander James Jorden Norris (Labour, Centre-left): This is my first Budget, so I was geared up for tweeting furiously, poring over Budget papers and analysing it in the local media, but it is striking how little of any of those things I have had to do, because the Budget represents an incredible lack of anything at all for my city of Nottingham and my constituency The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who is no longer in the Chamber, termed the Budget as "not exactly a non-event", and he meant that as a compliment: there was just above nothing in the Budget, and that for him was a good thing. For my constituency, only a grade above a non-event is not good enough. On the issues that really matter to us, such as decent wages, a fair benefits system, healthcare, schools, transport, community safety and so on; on the things that are making people’s everyday lives more difficult than they ought to be; and on the issues leaving children in working families in poverty with no way out —on all these things—we feel let down by the Government, and the Budget is emblematic of that failure Another incredible omission was the fact that the east midlands was not referenced at all. Treasury stats show that, whether it is transport investment or infrastructure investment in general, the east midlands will always come last, and once again the Budget and the industrial strategy do nothing to fix that. After the cancellation of the midland main line electrification, we are in desperate need of more money for our transport links, but that has not come. It is not just for getting to and from the capital that we need midland main line electrification; this is also about east-west connectivity. Both those things have excellent business cases and are crying out for a bit of vision to support them It is not a coincidence that today’s Social Mobility Commission report has the east midlands as the region with the worst outcomes for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, but we know that that is not inevitable. The poverty profile of my constituency is similar to a number in London, but while 17 out of 20 mobility hotspots are in London, none is in the east midlands. My area is one of the coldspots, and that is because of the level of investment into the community. I say that not because I want London’s investment for Nottingham; I want investment levelled up, because it works. It is good for society and for the Exchequer. That shows what we should expect from the Budget, but instead we have something that is not quite a non-event which, frankly, is not quite good enough. In fact, it is not good enough at all.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2017-11-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Laura Pidcock (Labour, Centre-left): As a nation, we have been socialised to think of the economy in abstract terms. It is analysed as a distant entity that needs to be served, slavishly, to keep the big, scary beast from collapse. When we hear the Chancellor tell us that inequality has narrowed, that there are more people in work and that our public services are protected, we could almost believe him. That is, if we did not actually speak to any real people outside the Westminster bubble. We could suspend disbelief if we never spoke to any workers or reflected on what is happening in our communities Every time Government Members cheer about the new jobs on the Government’s watch without any critical analysis of the nature of those jobs —short-term, insecure and low-wage—they lose credibility. On behalf of my community in North West Durham, I must convey extreme disappointment and anger at the Budget. Aside from the pantomime proceedings, it offered nothing to my community I shall give one example in illustration—the stamp duty giveaway. In the north-east, average house prices for first-time buyers are £125,591. That would mean a tiny giveaway of £11.82. Please forgive those people who have endured seven years of pay freezes—a typical prison officer, for example, who is now only £30 better off now than seven years ago—if they do not jump with joy at those announcements We need something completely different. We must be brave enough to say that borrowing is necessary for investment and that people must have a wage that they can live on—it is not fine to pay them a minimum wage that keeps them in starvation. I have met people who have been broken by this system and it is not their fault. The global banking crisis was not their fault. The recession was not their fault. The rules and traps of the system were not of their making To see the tears of grown working women and men flow directly as a result of Government policy tells me that we need a complete overhaul of our economic system. If the Government are not brave enough to do that, they must move over. If the economy does not work for everyone, it is not worthy.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2017-11-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Helen Elizabeth Hayes (Labour, Centre-left): The measure of the Budget must surely be the promises that the Conservatives made to the British people over and again during the election campaign in June. They promised the British people a strong economy that would deliver investment in our public services. The Budget reveals just how badly the Government are letting down the British people and just how high the costs of the Government’s botched and divided process are proving to be. Instead of the strong economy that was promised, we see a forecast of poor productivity leading to exceptionally weak economic growth, wage stagnation and rising inflation. We were promised a strong economy, but instead, families up and down the country are facing an unprecedented further five years of falling living standards. They are running to stand still, but the best that the Chancellor can offer is that by 2025 average wages will have reached the same levels as in 2008. And instead of committing to the £350 million a week for the NHS promised by his colleagues in the Vote Leave campaign, the Chancellor is committing more taxpayers’ money to fund the cost of Brexit than he is to our NHS It is on the NHS that I wish to focus the remainder of my remarks today, as the scale of the financial challenges facing it makes the Budget look like a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. We are approaching the most pressured time of year for the NHS, and its hard-working staff are approaching the winter in fear and trepidation because the pressures under which they are already working absorb all the resilience and reserves they can muster. The local hospital in my constituency is King’s College Hospital. Prior to 2010, King’s was performing well and was financially stable, but when I contacted it recently on behalf of a constituent who had spent five days waiting on a trolley to be allocated a bed on a ward, I was told that the hospital was more than 100% full. King’s is an exceptional place full of exceptional people, but it is being asked by this Government to deliver the impossible The performance of our NHS is inextricably linked to the performance of social care services, yet the Budget made no mention at all of social care. Funding sufficient high-quality social care would be the single most transformative measure that the Government could introduce for our NHS. The failure of this Budget on social care is just one of the many ways in which the Government continue to disadvantage women, who make up the overwhelming majority of hard-pressed carers, both paid and unpaid. It is one of the many ways in which the Budget is failing people up and down the country.