argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Next Steps in Leaving the European Union — House of Lords, 2016-10-10
Topic: International Affairs
Karan Bilimoria (Crossbench, Unknown): Would the Minister just clarify the timing? The Prime Minister has decided to go ahead with pressing the button for Article 50 by the end of March next year. Yet I heard from a very senior level of the Government at the time the referendum was declared last summer, "Why did you rush into this?". We rushed into it because the Europeans told us, "Get it out of the way before the French and German elections". Now we are rushing into it with the French and German elections, and we have two years in which to negotiate when their minds will be on their elections. Could the timing be explained On the prerogative, why is it that when a Prime Minister has a prerogative to go to war, every time—whether it is Iraq or Syria—they come to Parliament to approve it, yet in a situation like this, one of the most important decisions in 40 years, Parliament does not have a say? How can the Government say it was a definitive decision? It was 52:48. It was not 70:30 or 60:40 but 52:48. The instruction of the public was to leave—but on what basis? No immigration or reduced immigration? No contribution to the EU or reduced contribution to the EU? If it is not definite, why can we not have a say in helping the country to, in the words of the Statement, deliver prosperity for its people?
Next Steps in Leaving the European Union — House of Lords, 2016-10-10
Topic: Government Operations
Helene Valerie Hayman (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, perhaps the Minister could give a little detail about the parliamentary scrutiny arrangements that will follow on from the repeal of the European Communities Act. The Statement spoke of putting elected politicians fully in control. Can he tell the House exactly how that will work with regard to the huge volume of legislation that is envisaged following the great repeal Act? Can he assure us that there will be full parliamentary scrutiny and that the great repeal Act will not be one great Henry VIII clause?
Next Steps in Leaving the European Union — House of Lords, 2016-10-10
Topic: International Affairs
Dafydd Elystan-Morgan (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I invite the Minister to assist the House with regard to one particular aspect of Article 50. That aspect is paragraph 2, which the Minister will recollect says something of this order: that once notice has been given under Article 50, triggering the whole process, it is incumbent upon the European Commission and the leaving state to discuss matters with a view to coming to various agreements. It does not define the parameter of those agreements, which can be illimitable with regard to timing and to any other content. This is not a question of spelling out our specific position but, with regard to the choice or headings of matters to be negotiated, will the voice be heard at any stage of this mother of Parliaments, as enunciated through both Houses of Parliament?
Next Steps in Leaving the European Union — House of Lords, 2016-10-10
Topic: International Affairs
John Taylor (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, as one living on the border between the United Kingdom and the Republic, I am very relaxed that both Governments—that of the United Kingdom and that in Dublin—want to retain the common travel area in the island of Ireland. We have no problem there. I am afraid that some people in London are exaggerating the issue. The border towns are booming not with bombs, I am glad to say, but with thousands of southern Irish shoppers coming into Northern Ireland every day to do their shopping following the depreciation of the pound. We are benefiting from the referendum decision. But what worries us is the situation in the Republic, which will be the worst hit EU country following Brexit because it is one of our main trading partners. Mushroom producers’ units are being closed and meat plants are in trouble. I therefore hope that in the forthcoming negotiations, the United Kingdom will be concerned about the economy in the Republic of Ireland because a bad economy there is not good for Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Lords, 2016-10-17
Topic: Law and Crime
Alan Brooke (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I hesitate to enter the debate on the Bill at this stage because I have not been involved until now, but as I listened, I compared this in my mind with what occurred in Northern Ireland over 40 years of terrorism. I cannot support this amendment for the very reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, when nothing was on the internet because it did not exist, every bit of information was in hard copy or personal contact. We in the security forces had the right to look at every single bit of information on a person, in their car or indeed in their home if we entered it for a specific reason. That information was held for a very long time. It is amazing how much of it, how many little bits of information, one day tied up with something else and became of extreme interest. Noble Lords who are aware of what happened in Northern Ireland, especially the noble Lord, Lord King, will support the fact that in many cases people’s lives—including in part, I have to say, my own—were protected by snippets of information that at the time were of no particular value and were simply filed away, because they led to associations between people or to intelligence that people were passing to each other. Anyone who has been near to a bomb in Northern Ireland will understand that it is worth while attempting to save people’s lives by the best method I have followed the Bill from the point of view of the restrictions on holding information. I do not support the tightness of that; our problems went on for 40 years but the problems that this country is facing at the moment are relatively short-lived. We must create the right security environment by allowing people to get information, which is no longer held in hard copy, on cigarette packets or bits of paper in their homes but is now on the internet. People involved in terrorism or civil crime, including paedophilia, are going to areas either that we cannot get to or where we are wilfully restricting our access to what amounts to very important intelligence I apologise again for entering proceedings at this stage, but I could not support such an amendment that would yet again restrict our Security Service and police from gaining and keeping intelligence that one day might be vital to any one of your Lordships. I know these matters seem a long way away when they are outside, in different cities or different parts of the country. If noble Lords lived in Northern Ireland, they would understand how important it is that some sort of connection is kept with leads about what is going on. That information is not in hard copy but up there in the cloud, and while we stay down here we are not going to get it.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Lords, 2016-10-17
Topic: Law and Crime
Alan Brooke (Crossbench, Unknown): Briefly, this brings up the principle of what society is prepared to sacrifice—in this case, a little privacy—to get what it needs to fight criminals and terrorism. I am sorry to go back to Northern Ireland but everybody was stopped daily and their lives were infringed on the whole time there. But they were happy enough because the fight, which was against terrorism in our case, was succeeding. By the end, 95% of all incidents planned by the IRA never took place because of intelligence activity. We know that it is intrusive to do this but if we had stopped stopping cars, when 99.9% of those cars held the innocent and the unassociated, it would have enabled those we were up against to operate freely across everything. The very fact that people were prepared to sacrifice some of their freedom meant that it was more difficult for those who wanted to kill, maim and commit crimes. If we do not push them out of normal day-to-day activity into the more complicated part, we will never succeed in fighting them.
Terrorist Attack in Nice — House of Lords, 2016-07-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Ian Warwick Blair (Crossbench, Unknown): I would like to ask the Minister a little about the practicalities of this. The way that the truck was stopped was by the French police shooting the driver dead. If there was a similar event in Britain, those police officers would not be armed. In a previous Question for Short Debate, the idea of the distribution of armed officers across the country was raised with the noble Baroness’s predecessor. I urge the Government to look again at the ability of the police services outside London and the great cities to deliver a response to an attack like this, because I think it would probably not be adequate.
BBC — House of Lords, 2016-09-15
Topic: Technology
Dafydd Elystan-Morgan (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, the Minister will no doubt recollect that many noble Lords with a Wales connection have over the years raised the position of the Welsh language channel, S4C. On almost each occasion, encouraging words have been spoken from the Dispatch Box with regard to that particular matter. Has such a provision been included in the draft charter? If that is not the case, will the matter be swiftly remitted?
Hinkley Point C — House of Lords, 2016-09-15
Topic: Energy
Peter John Hennessy (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, there is a curse on our country when we talk about civil nuclear power. I am old enough to have read the Eagle comic in 1954 and cut out a picture of Calder Hall, which was to provide the first civil electricity in the world. Indeed it did: we had a world lead. The story is tragic ever since. I hope we will not make a mistake of that magnitude this time I congratulate the Government on boosting the national security element in future civil nuclear procurement but, alluding to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, I ask the Minister that the submissions her department receives on the small modular reactors be placed in the Library for the illumination of your Lordships. Before we go in for these huge concrete and steel water reactors, maybe the future lies in smaller, safer and cheaper.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-20
Topic: Social Welfare
Francis Hare (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I remind the House that often we are talking about families. Some time ago, I accompanied a health visitor to a property in Waltham Forest. Five families were sharing a kitchen and bathroom facilities. Perhaps the property was not so overcrowded but it was very insalubrious as they were all sharing those facilities. The front door was wide open when we walked in. We visited a mother whose child was three or four weeks old. The mother was very isolated and desperate. So I remind your Lordships that we are also talking about families when we talk about these people.
The Economy — House of Lords, 2016-04-28
Topic: Technology
Robert Mair (Crossbench, Unknown): I thank the noble Lord for that point The Secretary of State for Transport plans to make 2018 the Year of the Engineer to excite a new generation to follow Brunel, Stevenson and Telford, along with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Tim Berners-Lee. I urge that he work with major engineering employer organisations, the Royal Academy of Engineering and other engineering institutions to ensure that this is not a missed opportunity. The engineering skills crisis will not, of course, be solved by a loud noise over the course of a single year but by a real co-ordination of voices, messages and resources. These must highlight, rightly, the triumph of engineering in major projects such as Crossrail. But they must also point to the diversity of engineering opportunities and make it clear, relevant and, above all, exciting and attractive Engineering is indeed very exciting and attractive. The challenges facing our society are enormous and pressing. How and where will we provide infrastructure as resources become scarcer and energy more expensive? What will the energy mix look like in 10 years’ time? How might exciting new technologies such as tidal lagoon power and advances in battery storage influence this? What will future cities look like in the coming decades? Will car ownership disappear with the likely arrival of autonomous vehicles? The world is changing very rapidly and it is therefore vital for the economy to have a high level of UK R&D investment in science and engineering. The UK must continue to be world-leading in engineering innovation. We cannot afford to slip behind To conclude, our economy simply will not thrive if our industries fail to recruit the young men and women engineers who are needed for them to grow. Without them we will not innovate—and without innovation we will lose out to global competition. Government has a vital role in ensuring that this does not happen. I hope that it will take the necessary steps so that we can properly build a stronger economy.
Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-28
Topic: International Affairs
Paul Anthony Elliott Bew (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I rise to thank the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, on behalf of all the Northern Irish Peers for the way in which he has handled this Bill and for the excellent degree of consultation which we have all been afforded by him. I think I can say on behalf of all the Northern Irish Peers with a special interest in this problem that we are very grateful I shall make one comment and ask the Minister for his view. We are in the middle of an election in Northern Ireland. During the campaign, there has been some discussion of the reserved issues that are being dealt with in this House, particularly electoral law. When politicians have been criticised by the public, they have been saying that it is Westminster’s responsibility. Does the Minister agree that our habit here—this Bill is an example of it—is to operate on the basis of an understanding that exists in Stormont, as, for example, in the Stormont House agreement? We debate things, we put forward ideas that we think might improve things a little, but fundamentally this Parliament does not see its way to upsetting understandings that exist in Belfast. That is the way that we have tried to proceed to strengthen the peace process. I find it a little difficult that, when members of the public have doubts about some aspects of this legislation, Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly say it is our fault. We tend to be following the understandings that we believe they have. Will the Minister comment on that? I thank him again for all his help.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Lords, 2016-07-13
Topic: Law and Crime
Simon Denis Brown (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I confess to taking a rather different view of this. This is a question of judicial oversight; it is not in principle judicial initial decision-making. I am perhaps a little out of date, although I have been at pains to keep up to date with developments, and as the noble Baroness and the noble Viscount have already recognised, there have been significant developments. This is not just about process; it is not what used to be called Wednesbury review, or perversity or irrationality. Nowadays it has developed into an appropriately flexible standard of oversight. Even without the explicit requirements to look at the necessity, the proportionality and the requirements of the human right to privacy, as there are here, there is in the modern concept of judicial review an ample opportunity In recent cases—I am looking at the Judicial Review publication of March of this year, so it is fairly up to date—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, in one of these recent cases such as Kennedy, Pham, and so forth, said that it was, "improbable that the nature, strictness or outcome of such a review would differ according to whether it was conducted under domestic principles or", the EU law principle of proportionality. Therefore, even without the explicit requirement to look at proportionality, as there is in respect of all these oversight obligations, there is here an appropriate degree of flexibility You want an element of flexibility—you want the judge plainly to be able to take account of the nature of the underlying decision he is reviewing and of the extent to which there has been an invasion of privacy, against which this judicial oversight is designed to protect the citizen. This matter has been thrashed out; if you read the two days of debate in the other place, you see that there was some appropriate degree of give. However, I respectfully suggest that the oversight as now provided for is, if not more than adequate, certainly adequate.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Lords, 2016-07-13
Topic: Law and Crime
Simon Denis Brown (Crossbench, Unknown): I was not intending to say anything this afternoon, let alone on this amendment, but following what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, have said, it occurs to me that if one widens out the provision that is the subject of Amendment 48 to introduce some essentially non-legal consideration, one would have to make it subject also, as routinely across this legislation, to ministerial approval. They must be answerable for that non-legal aspect. I therefore suggest that this might be a situation in which one should have two primary decision-makers, not therefore judicial oversight but judicial primary decision-making on the legal aspect—such as whether it is in truth a legal professional privileges situation and whether, in so far as criminal purpose is relied on, that is satisfied. However, in so far as the wider terrorism situation is being addressed, the justification for all that should initially be put at the ministerial door as well.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Lords, 2016-07-13
Topic: Law and Crime
David Pannick (Crossbench, Unknown): I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, particularly those who have provided anecdotes as to their previous experience. I also thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, because I think the whole Committee recognises that he and the Government are striving to find the right answers to what are undoubtedly very difficult problems. There is a balance between maintaining legal professional privilege and ensuring the security of this country I start from the same place as the Minister: legal professional privilege is absolutely fundamental to the rule of law; there is no dispute about that. It seems to me, therefore, that there has to be a compelling justification for allowing intrusion by the authorities into matters that are genuinely covered—not iniquity—by legal professional privilege. The Minister has been very frank: in the past 16 years, there has been no experience of the ability to intrude into genuine legal discussions being of any value to the security forces. I therefore wonder whether it is necessary to have such a power. Its existence, particularly if we were to enshrine it in this Bill, would have—it does have—a damaging effect on clients’ confidence that they are speaking to their lawyers in genuine confidence The example the Minister gives—it is a real example, at least in principle—is that the authorities may learn the location of the client, which may tip them off and enable them to prevent a terrorist outrage. It seems to me that that is not part of the privileged material but incidental to it. An acceptable way forward may be that the authorities would have to show and satisfy the judicial commissioner—and maybe the Secretary of State as well—that there is compelling and exceptional evidence of a real threat to life, such that they should be able to listen in so as to obtain this incidental material, and that the authorities would be obliged immediately to dispose of, not retain, any information that is not incidental to legal advice but is the actual legal advice. I remain doubtful but I will wait to see what the Government bring forward at Report stage. No doubt we will return to the subject—we will have to discuss it again—but this has been a helpful debate. I am grateful to noble Lords and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
House of Lords: Domestic Committees — House of Lords, 2016-05-09
Topic: Government Operations
Ann Butler-Sloss (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I rise with some diffidence because I have not served on any of the relevant committees but I would like to make two points. One is that, having read the report, I can say that it is excellent and I hope that it will soon be implemented. There is a very great deal behind it that needs to be done. I picked up with some interest what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, said about the way in which it will have to be implemented. Those were useful points, which the Leader of the House might wish to take into account For my second point, it is very convenient to be following the chairman of the Information Committee as I wanted to say a few words about that. First, I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, that I am delighted with my Nokia and do not need an iPhone. However, I am concerned about the very wide duties and remit of the Information Committee and the fact that it will be subsumed into the new services committee, which will also deal with a large number of other matters. Nobody has so far raised this issue, so I thought that perhaps I should. I shall take the Library as perhaps one of the most important examples, since several people have spoken about it. It would be very sad if the new services committee was so busy with other matters that it did not give sufficient time to the importance of the Library. I have had a huge amount of help from the research people in the Library on all sorts of issues; I know that so many other Members of this House have as well The Parliamentary Archives are not to be underestimated. They tend to be, unless someone really cares about them; the Information Committee clearly does. Will the new services committee do so? The digital services, such as information services for Members, public information about the House, the education and training service and broadcasting are all important and have had their own committee. I am quite concerned that they may not be given the same degree of concern and attention in a much larger committee. What is the Leader of the House going to do to make sure that that committee, which will affect us all in this House, is given proper attention when it is subsumed into this much larger committee?