argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Agriculture Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, which I have very much enjoyed. I spent almost the whole time smiling. I note the comments from the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Wigley, about Wales, and their other comments. As I have said, there is a lot of value in that. I will say to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, that I am proselytising not for vegetarianism but for the future of the planet and the health of the people who still survive. I am happy to debate that with him The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, seems to have misunderstood my amendment, because I am not doing anything about his citizen’s freedom to eat meat—first, because we do not have citizens in this country but subjects, and secondly, I am a meat eater myself and, were I standing for election anywhere, that would probably lose me a lot of green votes. I was a vegetarian for 20 years and I have stopped. I now eat a minimal amount of healthy organic meat The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, made some kind comments. No one has ever accused me of surreptitious means—in fact, quite the opposite usually—so I feel very flattered. I also note that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, made comments about an impact assessment, which would obviously be a very valuable addition. I note that the Minister has pointed out all the difficulties that this would cause with legislation, but it would surely be just a tidying-up exercise, just like her Brexit Bill, and should not take long at all With all those comments in mind, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Agriculture Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-22
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and of course the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I support these amendments wholeheartedly. I would like to speak at length about them, but I will keep my remarks quite short so that we have plenty of time for a vote It seems strange that in America, Monsanto—or rather the new company, Bayer—is paying out $10 billion to settle tens of thousands of claims that Roundup causes cancer, yet it still claims that this a perfectly healthy product, does not put warning labels on the product and says that it is safe. It strikes me as very strange that anybody could deny that this amendment is necessary The amendment does not do what I would like it to do—that is, ban all pesticides from 9 am this morning—but it protects the more vulnerable people in our country. In particular, it protects children in schools, childcare settings and nurseries, people in hospitals, and people in any building used for human habitation. It seems such a sensible amendment—I do not know why the Government do not see that it is necessary I urge all noble Lords to please vote for this and make sure that the Government get the message very clearly.
UK Internal Market: White Paper — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: Mixed Topics
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and I very much share her concern about the maintenance of standards. In answering Front-Bench questions, the Minister said that national Administrations will keep their powers as long as they do not discriminate against goods from other parts of the country. Can he tell me how that squares with, for example, the Well-being of Future Generations Act in Wales, which aims to set up higher standards of action, in the operation of the economy, with regard to environmental and other matters, and to Northern Ireland, where European standards will apply?
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-06
Topic: Immigration
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, Amendment 24, which appears under my name, is one of a suite of amendments that I moved in Committee. I continue to stand by all of them, but in achieving a disappointing response from the Minister then, I have restricted myself to just one. I record now, as I did then, the role of Liberty in working on all of them. When I saw that no one else had brought forward a similar amendment, I felt that this issue had to be raised in any immigration Bill. This amendment is about "no recourse to public funds". It is something I find myself talking about so often that the phrase rolls off my tongue like poetry, but of course this is the stuff of nightmare, of personal desperation and great suffering. It is the situation of the victim of domestic violence facing the choice between homelessness and penury for herself and her children and the very real danger of being maimed or killed if she stays. It is the situation of the child going hungry, suffering the miserable, desperate pangs that prevent concentration or hope, when his peers get free school meals I assume there is no Member of your Lordships’ House who would deny the human right to life, but "no recourse to public funds" denies access to the most basic essentials. People are forced to rely on the fragile, overstretched resources of specialist charities, and people fall through the cracks of that hopelessly underresourced, fragile net of support I fear that in this Bill, the Minister and I are trapped on a merry-go-round. I believe I can foresee the response I am likely to receive: that this is discriminatory if applied only to people newly covered by immigration law, EU and EEA citizens, and not to everybody. At the risk of sounding like a recording, I want this to apply to everybody. The Government could and should end any application of the "no recourse to public funds" rule. In this amendment, I have tried to save as many as the rules of the Table Office will allow me. Saving some people from being penniless and homeless, from hunger and abuse, and perhaps from death, is better than saving none. I beg to move.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-14
Topic: Immigration
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): My Lords, this amendment is about basic human decency; I am very pleased to support it. Personally, I would like to scrap immigration detention altogether. It is inhumane that we as a country are doing this to people. Convicted murderers and paedophiles get better treatment than refugees and asylum seekers fleeing war, famine and persecution, often as a result of our own foreign policy. They just want to find a better life This amendment would place important restrictions on the dehumanising practice of solitary confinement. Solitude is often used as a psychological torment to break a person’s spirit and enforce compliance. It should be used in only the most extreme cases, as set out in the amendment, and be subject to many safeguards. The noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Ludford, covered some of the issues I wanted to talk about, including time limits, so I will cut my remarks short. Will the Minister please take all these amendments away and work with your Lordships ahead of Report? I hope she will be able to give that assurance.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-14
Topic: Mixed Topics
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 71 in my name and also to Amendments 42 and 52 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Ludford. They cover parts of Amendment 71 and also Amendment 43, which covers data sharing I pay tribute to the campaign group Liberty for its help with my preparation of this amendment and for its support through its unfortunately unsuccessful struggle to see its scope allowed to cover everyone affected by the hostile environment, rather than just those who face being newly affected by it—for whom, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, the digital-only status is likely to create particular issues.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-14
Topic: Civil Rights
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, my Amendment 72 complements my Amendment 71. I have spoken at length on these issues, so I will be brief. I also support Amendments 43 and 74, in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Ludford. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for making the same point as I made at the start of my speech. It might seem somewhat disingenuous to suggest that these amendments are discriminatory by choice, when we were actually given the option of applying these only to limited numbers of people. Everyone who has spoken on this subject has expressed their desire to see them used to end the entire hostile environment.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-07
Topic: Immigration
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): I am very sorry to correct the Minister, but she made a statement earlier that was incorrect. In response to my noble friend Lady Bennett, she said of retaining—or not taking away —freedom of movement that it was the will of the people and what the people voted for with their Brexit vote. That is absolutely not true. We voted—I voted—for Brexit for many different reasons, and freedom of movement did not particularly come up as a reason. Quite honestly, none of us understood that the Government were going to make such a shambles of it. We could not have predicted that it could be so badly handled. So please, it is not the will of the people, and it was not what people voted for with Brexit. They voted for a variety of reasons.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-07
Topic: Immigration
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for her very clear introduction and explanation of the reasons for Amendment 8, to which I am delighted to attach my name. The noble Baroness set out very clearly the need for legal certainty and security for Irish citizens and people born in Northern Ireland Rather than repeating all these things again, I think it is worth very briefly addressing the whole issue of deportations. Of course, in this context, I cannot avoid mentioning the Windrush generation, the hostile environment and the fact that we have increasingly come to see people who have perhaps spent effectively all of their life in the UK, who have very close ties to the country and whose entire upbringing and experiences are in the UK facing deportation. That is utterly unacceptable in any circumstances but the situation with Irish citizens and the Common Travel Area involves two countries between which there has been continual, regular interchange and movement. A large number of people could potentially be affected by this situation, people who could see their lives torn apart. It is crucial that we build in these protections We have a great deal to do and it is already late so I will not go on too much longer, but I also want to mention briefly—having listened very closely to the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and the debate on the previous amendment, in which many expressed the sentiment that we should have world-leading protection in the UK for victims of trafficking and modern slavery—that I associate the Green group with those sentiments.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-07
Topic: Immigration
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): It is my pleasure to follow the three noble Baroness who have spoken. In our earlier session I strongly disagreed with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, but in this case, I agree with her concerns and share her experience of apparent inequality. I sought to table a number of amendments to the Bill to deal more broadly not with just EU and EEA citizens, but I was told that they were outside the scope, yet it appears that the Government are being given open slather to address anything they like through the Bill.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-05
Topic: Immigration
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): My Lords, I very strongly support this amendment and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, on putting it forward in the first place. His personal experience of being part of Kindertransport in 1939 adds real texture to the amendment and makes it perhaps very personal. He is somebody who understands what it is like for these children. He came over legally, but many of these children are coming over illegally. However, the amendment is about family unity. Who can say that family unity is not a good idea? I would have thought it would be a central tenet of any Tory party manifesto, so I am staggered that there is any suggestion that this might not be a good thing The Government have recently made some fascinating announcements on asylum. New legal routes will be created; that is interesting. There will be more detention. As has already been pointed out, detention costs a lot of money and is very damaging to the mental health of people who are detained, so all in all more detention might not be the best thing. Our Home Secretary seems to mix up asylum seekers and foreign criminals. I have no idea why she experiences that sort of confusion, but it might be because the Government want us to fear asylum seekers and refugees. They are possibly creating this out of nowhere I am curious about how the Government can make announcements of this kind, without anything of substance in them. Lawyers, QCs and judges have looked at them and cannot find much of value, so why bother making such ridiculous statements? This is a question I would like the Minister to answer: are the Government and the Home Secretary completely out of ideas? In which case, accepting this amendment would be a very good idea, because it would ensure some stability in our asylum system and, I hope, would do less damage and make our country less inhumane and more welcoming.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, I declare my membership of the Roma, Gypsy and Traveller APPG which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, said, represents some of the children who may be particularly affected by our current discriminatory system, which is effectively impossible to navigate. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, made a hugely powerful introduction, so I will be brief in offering the Green group’s support for this amendment. I add my hope to that of many noble Lords that the Government will the see the sense of it and agree to adopt it. We are talking about rights that people are entitled to. We cannot allow people to be excluded from them by lack of knowledge, lack of funds to access them or lack of access to the systems needed to exercise them. Keeping that exclusion would be a profound injustice I think I have to declare a personal stake in this issue. I chose to become British, as I chose, before that, to live as an immigrant in Thailand for a number of years. But I was able to make both moves very easily, reflecting my relatively privileged background. In Thailand, the Australian state, through Australian volunteers abroad, sorted out my paperwork, then my employer did. It was then through grandparent rights that I was able to come to Britain. The family story is that my grandmother came back to the UK to have a baby. Then, after a period of residence, I was easily able to secure citizenship, back when the price of a British passport was close to the actual cost of administering it, in the early 1990s, which was not really that long ago It was only recently, when I read the excellent book, Bordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire, by Nadine El-Enany, that I was educated about the racism behind that arrangement, the grandparent right. There is much that should be tackled in our law to clear the taint of racism, colonialism and expropriation that remains central. But after Windrush, surely we can do something to clean up the structure of our systems—modest changes, as noble Lord after noble Lord, including from the Minister’s side of the House, has said before me—particularly systems that deny children and young people their right to security and a stable place in the world. Equality before the law is a foundational principle, but the letter of the law is not enough, as Windrush has demonstrated. The practice of government has to be fair and non-discriminatory.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-05
Topic: Mixed Topics
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, I offer the Green group’s support for both the amendments, but particularly Amendment 25 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, with broad cross-party support. Given the time and extensive exploration of these amendments by the movers, I shall not speak at length, but I want briefly to reflect particularly on the issues of inequality that the end of freedom of movement will bring to the science and research communities and the artistic and entertainment industries The Government like to talk about attracting the great and the good—another way of saying the established and mainstream, those backed by multinational companies and large funders. But this is very rarely where the big creative ideas come from: the truly original thinking and breakthrough artistic creations, the ideas and knowledge that will help us move away from the disastrous "business as usual" approaches that have trashed our planet and given us a poverty-stricken and unhealthy society When we look at the arts and entertainment, there is often a temptation to refer to the economic importance of those industries, and they are of course of great and increasing importance. But I also want to speak about the quality and enjoyment of life. There is little doubt that the top-charting artists, those with massive commercial backing, will be little affected by this Bill. But the small French band visiting from a town with which a rural settlement is twinned, or the experimental and innovative new artist appearing at a fringe festival, are the people who will be stopped—and we will all be the poorer. Finally, I refer to the arguments that I made in moving Amendment 2—and I put on record my thanks to all noble Lords who supported it—about the impact on UK citizens’ residence. As I said, how we treat people across Europe will be largely mirrored by how our people will be treated in Europe. I am sure that I am not the only Member to be contacted by desperate musicians and other performers who fear, with good cause, that the restrictions that they may face in response to our restrictions will end their career. I shall not seek to steal words from the Lords spiritual, but the phrase "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" comes irresistibly to mind.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-05
Topic: Immigration
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): My Lords, the three previous speakers, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, set out the situation extremely well and comprehensively, but I would like to add a few words This is a narrow, specific amendment targeted at young people who probably do not yet have their own passport. It seems that if we allow them to continue using their ID card, they will be less disinclined to come to Britain, and we all know that when young people come to another country, their views are formed, probably permanently, about that country, and if they have a good time, they will always come back and spend money and help our economy It is also a fact that these children do not pose a threat to national security; it is not as if they are going to be dangerous once they are here. These are people we very much want to come, and it seems illogical not to allow them to travel on ID cards. I want to ask the Minister a few questions about this. Group passports could actually be less secure and might be more difficult to obtain and, therefore, another deterrent to people coming here. Other noble Baronesses pointed out that this is an economic issue; they spend quite a lot of money and support a lot of the local economy What thoughts has the Minister had about planning for facilitating young people to come to visit from the EU? There has to be an incentive; if it becomes more difficult, we have to put something in its place, another incentive. Secondly, what will be the regime for young people going from the UK to the EU? How will that differ from the present arrangements? And, thirdly, this seems utterly unfair, when so many of your Lordships have benefited from travelling abroad so freely, as I have. It truly does broaden the mind, and it is a pity to not offer young people the same opportunities we had when we were young.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-05
Topic: Immigration
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who spoke very eloquently. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was also very eloquent, in spite of her brevity. This Government are famous for their hostile environment. This is really the most inhumane immigration system, and Britain deserves better. We do not even have parliamentary oversight of this system, which is an appalling lack of democracy. I have signed three amendments in this group, all of which are valid and should be taken seriously by the Government and put into the Bill. Amendment 20 is particularly valuable, and my noble friend Lady Bennett and I will be voting for it Moving on from the concept of parliamentary oversight, we need a few things in the Bill. We need time limits on detention and a test of necessity and proportionality. People should be detained only when necessary. As we have clearly heard, detention is often unnecessary. We need a right to bail, with a process in place to facilitate it, and a ban on solitary confinement unless absolutely necessary—and I do mean absolutely necessary. These measures should be applied to all immigration detention, and I call on the Government to bring a Bill to reform the whole system. They have already said that they will do that, but I think the reform I have in mind is not what the Government have in mind. I just repeat that the system we have is inhumane; we need one we can feel proud of.