argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Eurotunnel: Payment — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Transportation
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): There is something quite wrong here. I have been in the House for quite a few years—usually people say, "Too long," but I have been here a long time. This almost seems to be an abuse of the House. The fact is that the Opposition asked for an urgent question on the Eurotunnel payment of £33 million. I do not know what £33 million means in Suffolk, but in Huddersfield it would make a hell of a difference in regenerating our local economy. I am not calling for the Transport Secretary’s resignation because he is a symptom of something deeply wrong with this Government. They are totally incapable of arranging their policies ready for Brexit. That is the truth of the matter. There is total chaos on the Government Benches because they had not predicted what was going to happen with Brexit, and they are showing no ability to cope with post-Brexit conditions, what is happening in the Eurotunnel and so on.
Eurotunnel: Payment — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Transportation
Lilian Rachel Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State for Transport may have ducked today’s questions, but I am pretty sure that my Committee will still require his answers. If there is a Brexit deal or, indeed, if there is no Brexit, how much of our taxpayers’ £33 million do the Government expect to recover from Eurotunnel?
Eurotunnel: Payment — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Transportation
Stephen James McCabe (Labour, Centre-left): With all due respect to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, surely the House and the taxpayer are entitled to hear today what the main mistake made by the Secretary of State for Transport was that has resulted in this unnecessary pay-out of £33 million. Where does this latest shambles rate in the Secretary of State for Transport’s top 10 catalogue of ministerial mishaps?
Eurotunnel: Payment — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Transportation
Graham Eric Stringer (Labour, Centre-left): This expenditure is only necessary because of the sheer incompetence of the Secretary of State for Transport. I have sat and listened to him in this Chamber and listened to him in the Transport Committee, and after every fiasco his defence is that it has not cost the Exchequer any money. The fact is that this has cost the Exchequer £33 million. Has he not run out of runway and should he not resign?
Eurotunnel: Payment — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Government Operations
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): Does the £33 million include all the possible expenditure under this agreement, or are there any additional costs, such as legal fees, that need to be added on top? If there are, how much are they?
Eurotunnel: Payment — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Education
Roberta Carol Blackman-Woods (Labour, Centre-left): I have recently been to see the Secretary of State for Education to lobby him for desperately needed resources to rebuild schools in my constituency and I was told that there is no money. Can the Secretary of State tell me how incompetent I need to be to walk away with £33 million for my constituents?
Eurotunnel: Payment — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Government Operations
Luke Pollard (Labour, Centre-left): I know that the Health Secretary dreams of being Prime Minister, but to his great surprise, and to ours, he woke up as the Transport Secretary’s fall guy this morning. Trying to explain to constituents what is happening in this place is really hard. Trying to explain why a Transport Secretary has not been fired or has not resigned for effectively taking a decision that has lost the taxpayer £33 million is really difficult. Why is it that the Health Secretary cannot get up and simply apologise for the Transport Secretary’s error here? It would go such a long way to restoring confidence in politics. At the moment, this shows Parliament and the Government at their very, very worst.
Eurotunnel: Payment — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Transportation
Andrew Joseph McDonald (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance. This is now the second time that I have tabled an urgent question asking the Transport Secretary to come to the House and respond. We are told that he is busy—presumably pouring more money down the drain. Should he not be here, and what can you do to secure his attendance While we are at it, will the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care come to the Dispatch Box and explain that he has inadvertently misled the House by saying that this has nothing to do with Seaborne Freight? It has everything to do with that contract. That was the reason Eurotunnel took the Government to court in the first place. He must put the record straight.
Eurotunnel: Payment — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Transportation
David George Hanson (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State said in response to me a moment ago that the Seaborne Freight issue was nothing to do with this contract and the payment of £33 million to Eurotunnel, but it self-evidently and centrally is. Could you give me some advice as to how we can ensure that Ministers at the Dispatch Box who do not have departmental responsibility are better briefed and/or that the real Secretary of State comes to this House to answer legitimate questions on factual matters about which this Secretary of State does not know?
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: International Affairs
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State will be aware that, if the UK were still a member of the EU after 2020, South Yorkshire would again be eligible for less-developed region status because its economy has fallen back against EU averages since 2014. If it were entitled to EU funding, South Yorkshire would receive £1 billion over seven years. So either his announcement today is totally inadequate, or he is going to promise that, under the shared prosperity fund, South Yorkshire will get exactly what it would have got under EU funding if we were still in the EU.
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Government Operations
Lisa Eva Nandy (Labour, Centre-left): I welcome the Minister’s understanding that, for decades, our towns have suffered from chronic under-investment and disrespect from national politicians. It is therefore frustrating to hear him talk about handing decision-making powers over this funding to local enterprise partnerships, which have enabled this city-centric model of decision making to persist for far too long. They do not understand our towns and they are not accountable to them. I urge him to make a commitment today to move those decision-making powers to communities and their local councils, which understand best what we need. If he is serious in his acknowledgement that our towns are proud, important places, he must trust us to make these decisions for ourselves.
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Mann (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) and the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) have made important points, which I am sure the Secretary of State will contemplate. Is he delighted by the cross-party support for this welcome initiative? In accepting the enthusiasm, including from the Labour Front Bench, will he feed back to the Chancellor that such is the enthusiasm of Members across the House for this idea, that if more moneys are put into the fund, that will be even more welcome?
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Government Operations
Gordon Marsden (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State said that towns such as Blackpool are bursting with ideas. Unfortunately, his funding for such towns is wholly inadequate. His seven-year itch, if I can describe it as such, will deliver £280 million to the north-west. By my reckoning, that is £40 million a year for the whole of the north-west. Blackpool, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) said, has lost half a billion pounds in council funding cuts from this Government and their predecessor since 2010. So how can he possibly sit there with a straight face and say that this is a transformative process? I think the old saying, "The louder he protested his honour, the faster we counted the spoons" is probably more appropriate.
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Government Operations
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): The north-east will get £105 million, which means £15 million a year over seven years. That is £5 per person each year. Under the European system, we would have received €500 per person each year. At the same time, Durham County Council has had cuts of £212 million. This is totally inadequate. Furthermore, the Secretary of State’s practice of having a packet for this and a packet for that, and a fund for this and a fund for that, means long-term planning is impossible. The only productivity he is increasing is the productivity of his officials in increasing the number of press releases they deliver.
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Shaun Ruane (Labour, Centre-left): To put this rehashed, re-mashed £1.6 billion into perspective, Wales alone has received £4.5 billion in funding from Europe since 2000. Will the Secretary of State explain exactly how much Wales will benefit from this funding announcement? Does he agree, to draw upon some porcine sayings, that this is pork—barrel politics at its lowest and that the good people of Wales will see this pig in a poke a mile off?
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Macroeconomics
Stephanie Louise Peacock (Labour, Centre-left): My town of Barnsley has seen its budget cut by 40% over the last nine years—nearly £700 per person. Does the Minister honestly think that today’s announcement makes up for the huge cuts that the Government have made to my town?
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I like the Minister, but I simply cannot recall a ministerial statement that has angered me more. My constituency, the Rhondda, is one of the poorest in the land. My council, because of the Government’s cuts to the Welsh Assembly grant of several billion pounds over the last few years, has had to close schools and libraries. The Government have closed the courts in the constituency and we have some of the lowest wages of anywhere in the country. When he suddenly turns up having discovered the magic money tree, having lectured us for years about its non-existence, I frankly feel furious that we are now meant to feel awfully grateful that we might have a few crumbs from the table. The worst of it is that today, he cannot even bring himself to say how much money is going to go to Wales—probably not a penny, or is he going to say now, "Yes, you are going to have £5, maybe £20, maybe £100"? Come on, tell us how much we are going to get in Wales.
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Macroeconomics
Chinyelu Susan Onwurah (Labour, Centre-left): I welcome the Government’s conversion to regional funding, but the amounts are derisory by comparison with what has been lost through austerity and economic neglect and what will be lost if the Tory Government’s no-deal/bad-deal Brexit goes through. They refuse to give any details of the shared prosperity fund that the Secretary of State has mentioned a few times, which shows that by comparison with the European Union the Government are less transparent and open—we know that under European Union funding, we would have got up to £1 billion in the north-east. Will he at least say that the north-east would be better off with European Union funding?
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: International Affairs
Antonia Louise Antoniazzi (Labour, Centre-left): I join hon. Members from Scotland and Wales across the House in being disappointed at today’s statement. The Secretary of State says that the Government will communicate soon what the deal will be for the devolved nations. Does he realise how insulting today’s statement is? Wales is not an add-on or an extension of England. I hope he realises how upset we all are.
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Luke Pollard (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State’s allocation of just £33 million over seven years for the 5.4 million population of the south-west is insulting. The far south-west and Cornwall in particular contain some of the most deprived communities in the country. The Secretary of State has said that this fund, and the shared prosperity fund, will be allocated on the basis of need. What faith can the south-west have in that when we receive one of the highest levels of needs-based EU funding and one of the lowest levels of need-based Government funding?
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Government Operations
Wayne David (Labour, Centre-left): Most Members can welcome a bit of extra cash for their areas, but we cannot avoid the context of huge cuts in local government funding. Nor can we avoid the context of a possibly imminent Brexit, which makes it difficult to believe that today’s announcement has absolutely nothing to do with that. My question, however, is this: if the Secretary of State can produce indicative allocations for England, why on earth can he not do the same for Wales?
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State has linked this fund to Brexit. My constituency voted leave. As its name suggests, it consists of two towns, both of which contain significant pockets of deprivation. I should have thought that they were exactly the communities for which the fund was designed, but under the rules there is no guarantee that they will see a penny of it. If that comes to pass, will the Secretary of State be saying that he has learned nothing about the reasons why people voted leave, and about the idea that some areas deserve more opportunities than others?
Stronger Towns Fund — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Government Operations
Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Centre-left): Bottesford, Kirton and Scunthorpe are all great towns, but they have all been badly affected by the cuts in Government spending in our area across a whole range of services since 2010. The money that is now being talked about is only a third of what is being cut from local government over the next two years, and there is a bidding culture as well. Sometimes the areas most in need of support have the least capacity to make bids; what is the Secretary of State going to do about that?
Tax Avoidance, Evasion and Compliance — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Centre-left): Is not the Government’s decision to pull the Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill in the face of the amendment on public registers of beneficial ownership, tabled by my formidable right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), reflective of their entire approach to the wider issue? Can the Minister confirm when the Government will finally take decisive action on extending corporate liability for economic crime? Their call for evidence closed two years ago and we are still waiting for a response.
Tax Avoidance, Evasion and Compliance — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Macroeconomics
Ruth Margaret Cadbury (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister needs to clarify whether he is just writing a report or whether he will genuinely do a serious review. He says that the bulk of the loan charge tax by volume has already been collected. However, 50,000 ordinary, hard-working people are in despair and living in limbo, waiting to know whether the tax returns they put to bed years ago are to be reopened I am the vice-chair of the all-party loan charge group, and last week we heard from the family of a man who committed suicide over a small amount. It was the shame and fear that he would go to prison that sent him over the edge. The Sunday Telegraph has reported on a leaked HMRC letter from 2011 that clearly shows that it knew it was out of time for pursuing these cases back then, so will the Financial Secretary now admit that the real reason for the loan charge is HMRC’s failure to act when it was legally entitled to do so and that that is no good reason to undermine the rule of law by retrospectively rewriting the rules?
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Government Operations
Tracy Lynn Brabin (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your advice as to how Members of this House might be able to debate the allocation of MPs’ pay and their staff budgets. Last Thursday, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority announced an inflation-busting 2.7% pay rise for Members of this House; however, our staff budgets are set to rise by a much more modest and below-inflation 1.5%. Some 200 MPs have already signed a letter expressing disappointment that we may not be able to grant staff the pay rise that they deserve, and I am aware that another letter is being circulated among staff I understand that the Leader of the House, as a member of the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, would be the most appropriate member of the Government to respond to a debate on this matter. However, Members are unable to apply to the Leader of the House for Westminster Hall or Adjournment debates, so those avenues are not open to us. I note that the changes are set to take effect at the end of the month, so any advice that you can offer on this pressing matter, which is clearly a concern to many Members, would be greatly appreciated, Sir.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Emma Louise Lewell-Buck (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Last Monday, I was advised that the Department for Work and Pensions intends to implement the asks in my Food Insecurity Bill, which is an important step towards ending the devastating levels of UK hunger. I was, however, notified of this via an outside organisation. On Wednesday last week, the news was confirmed by an anonymous DWP spokesperson via an article in The Guardian newspaper. Although I am of course delighted that the Government have eventually listened to me and the 159 MPs across this House who supported my Bill, I am a little bit put out that they did not feel it necessary to contact me directly, worse still to make no written or oral statement to this House on such an important matter Can you advise me, please, Mr Speaker, if there has been a change in practice whereby Secretaries of State and Ministers are no longer required to give updates to this House on important policy developments?
Social Security — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Alison McGovern (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for giving way again. He knows as well as I do that none of the figures he has just announced add up to the £12 billion of welfare cuts previously announced in this House by George Osborne. By the end of the benefit freeze and the other measures that the Government have introduced, children in poverty in this country will be worse off—is that not right?
Social Security — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Margaret Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): This uprating order increases a range of social security entitlements. However, it does not uprate those included in the Government’s freeze to working-age benefits enacted in the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016—a freeze that is causing real hardship to some of the poorest people in our country. The Minister set out the range of benefits to be uprated in line with the consumer prices index. The order also increases the state pension in line with the triple lock—a measure that the Opposition fully support—and increases universal credit work allowances by £1,000, in line with the announcement in the last autumn Budget While we welcome measures to increase those payments, we are deeply concerned that most working-age benefits remain frozen. The fact is that austerity continues under this Government, and it is pushing individuals, families and children into poverty. This order fails to uprate a long list of social security benefits: child benefit, jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance, income support, housing benefit, local housing allowance rates, child tax credit, working tax credit and the equivalent elements in universal credit. None of those are uprated by this order Let us think for a moment about who that failure affects. It is the person who has just lost their job after working for 20 years in the same firm. It is the parents struggling to feed their children. It is the sick or disabled person who is looking for work. These are vital social security payments that should lift people out of poverty and ensure that they do not become destitute.
Social Security — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Margaret Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes an absolutely pertinent point, and she does so with her usual alacrity and attention to detail These vital social security payments should lift people out of poverty and ensure that they do not become destitute, but under this Government that aim is not being met. Last year, research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that more than 1.5 million have experienced destitution in the UK, and the social security freeze is a key reason for that. To put this in perspective, destitution in this context—[Interruption.] Yes, destitution. I do not know why the Whip on the Government Front Bench finds destitution such a matter for mirth.
Social Security — House of Commons, 2019-03-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Margaret Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker To put this in perspective, destitution in this context means that a person has lacked two or more of the six essentials in the last month—shelter, food, heating, lighting, clothing and basic toiletries. It is truly shocking that 1.5 million are going without basic essentials in modern Britain The Social Metrics Commission, whose members are drawn from the left and the right of the political spectrum, has found that 14.2 million people in the UK are in poverty, including over 4 million children. More than one in 10 of the UK population live in persistent poverty. This is a shocking indictment of a country that has the fifth biggest economy in the world.