argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Cost of Living Increases — House of Commons, 2022-03-16
Topic: Social Welfare
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making an excellent point that a lot of the pressure on families predates the current crisis by some months. There are an enormous number of food banks across the whole of the UK—in Scotland and England—and my experience of working with constituents and those hard-working charities is that there is an enormous need out there that predates the crisis in Ukraine. I hope that the Government will listen to that point.
Cost of Living Increases — House of Commons, 2022-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend raises a critical point and we have to keep dragging the Government back to their responsibilities as a result of being in power. Much of the crisis in our public services, including the NHS and social care, also predates covid but the Government keep telling us that perhaps that is not the case Inflation hit 5.5% in January and is expected to rise even further. Scots are facing the prospect of council tax, water bills and train fares rising while wages, as I have said, are falling in real terms. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Conservative party failed to back the fully costed plans of the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), to tax the oil and gas companies’ excess profits to reduce people’s energy bills. Instead, the Chancellor’s response to the crisis has been to make matters worse, not better. We have already heard about the buy now, pay later scheme using taxpayers’ money to lend money back to taxpayers via the energy companies that they will have to pay back on future bills. That is not helping; that is deferring the problem The Government have refused to exempt VAT on skyrocketing energy bills, which was supposed to be one of the much-vaunted Brexit dividends.
Cost of Living Increases — House of Commons, 2022-03-16
Topic: Energy
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): Those are some of the consequences that we start to see when the chickens come home to roost When the Minister responds, perhaps he can also clarify the Government’s policy on VAT on energy bills, because VAT is one of the most regressive taxes. By removing VAT on energy bills, the Government would remove a regressive tax that affects the poorest the most. I understand that if they remove the VAT, they help everyone, but perhaps it could be done temporarily and perhaps the £2.5 billion-plus, and increasing, that is taken from VAT on energy bills could be diverted to those who are required to pay higher energy costs There will be the largest tax burden since the 1950s, which is astonishing for a Conservative Government, and a more than 10% increase in national insurance, not just for working people but for businesses. We have a Conservative Chancellor who is high tax and the highest-taxing Chancellor in more than 70 years.
Cost of Living Increases — House of Commons, 2022-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): It certainly is. To correct the Minister—I hope it is not the third time already; I am on only the second page of my speech—she assumed that the SNP motion backed a windfall tax on oil and gas, but it is actually the opposite. The motion is not to back a windfall tax on oil and gas, but to back a windfall tax on everything but oil and gas—maybe the SNP can clarify that later This Chancellor is also presiding over the largest hit to disposable income since the second world war. How are any of those policies helping, alongside, as we have already heard, the largest ever overnight reduction in support for the poorest households through the reduction in universal credit and the scrapping of the triple lock for pensioners? They are making people poorer and taking more money out of their pockets at a time when everything is going up—a cocktail of Government decisions that mean the discussions around the dinner table for many families are about the worry of paying the rent, the mortgage or the energy bill or for the weekly shop or to fill the car they need for work Families face a perfect storm of the Government’s own making: rising taxes, rising bills and rising inflation, and lower wages in real terms. This is all the result of over a decade of Conservative mismanagement of the economy. They like to think they have been in government only since 2019, but they have now been in place for 12 years. The policies of a succession of Tory Chancellors have created a low-wage, low-growth insecure economy I want to talk for a minute or two about the Scottish Government’s role in this. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) rightly said when he moved the motion, the Scottish Government have a stake in this and I am grateful that the SNP has brought this debate to the House. The SNP is correct to point out the lack of action by the UK Government in trying to tackle this, as we have all discussed, but it is not an observer in this crisis as it is in government and can also help Scots are facing the prospect of higher council tax bills, because for over a decade the Scottish Government have decimated local government funding and spent 15 years promising to scrap the council tax—a promise that they continue to break at every election.
Cost of Living Increases — House of Commons, 2022-03-16
Topic: Energy
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): Yes, if we increase the additional rate on the oil and gas sector from 40% to 50%—10 percentage points extra—that will generate the money towards our fully costed plan for raising energy prices, but very well done for defending the Scottish National party, and both the Conservatives and the SNP knocked back the oil and gas sector’s windfall tax when it was brought to this House To go back to the central question of this debate on the cost of living crisis, many families are worried about the email dropping into their inbox telling them that a direct debit will treble, or the bill landing on the mat saying their energy bill will become unaffordable, yet both Governments refuse to ask the companies making the money, directly driven by the energy crisis and the energy prices that are generating those extra direct debits or those extra bills, to put a little bit more into the pot to help. With the SNP’s current policy in the motion, and SNP Members still will not tell us if it includes the oil and gas companies, AG Barr, a successful Scottish business that made more profit last year than pre-pandemic, would pay a windfall tax, but the oil and gas companies would not—taxing ginger, not taxing gas.
Cost of Living Increases — House of Commons, 2022-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making an excellent point because surely the point is that, with the super-profits for these very wealthy companies, senior leaders of a number of them have been quoted as saying that they see their own business as a cash machine. If we contrast that with the day-to-day struggles of people of this country, surely he is putting forward the right policy.
Cost of Living Increases — House of Commons, 2022-03-16
Topic: Energy
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): Those with the broadest shoulders should pay the most, but I just say to everyone in the country watching this who is worried about their bills that we have two Governments who could do something about this, but they are defending the profits of the oil and gas companies rather than trying to help them with their bills. We could achieve so much more if all put our shoulders to the wheel and helped with this energy crisis.
Cost of Living Increases — House of Commons, 2022-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): If the SNP has an argument for not taxing the oil and gas companies, it can have the floor to tell us. I am happy to take an intervention. I am also happy to take an intervention that clarifies what their motion means. Does the line that says "a windfall tax" include the oil and gas companies? Not one SNP Member, including the BEIS spokesperson, will intervene and tell me that that is what it intends. That tells us all we need to know. The SNP is sitting on the fence, hoping that the Government get the wrong idea, and putting out the press release to say that the Government are attacking it.
Cost of Living Increases — House of Commons, 2022-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): I make this substantive point. Your motion, which you brought to the House to debate today, says that you are happy to tax Irn-Bru and Pets at Home, but you are not willing to tell me whether you will tax the oil and gas companies. Am I correct? I am correct. Excellent.
Cost of Living Increases — House of Commons, 2022-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): Apart from chairing the debate wonderfully, of course Let us make the serious point. We are debating the motion in front of us and we cannot get clarity from its mover about whether it includes a windfall tax on the oil and gas companies that would give every single household in Scotland £200 off their bills and the poorest 815,000 households £600 off their bills. That is what we are talking about. That is the substantive point that I am making Children will be going to bed cold or hungry—or both—and the best that the Chancellor can do is put up their parents’ taxes and lend them their own money to take a tiny amount off their energy bills. It is simply not good enough. The Trussell Trust says that two out of five people on universal credit are forced into a spiral of uncontrolled debt. Labour’s plan to tackle the cost of living crisis would put money in the pockets of Scottish families, helping them to make ends meet, and take worry out of receiving that unaffordable direct debit increase from their energy supplier. Across the UK—I repeat this again, because the right hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) wants a substantive point—we would introduce a fully costed, worked out plan for a windfall tax on oil and gas companies through which every single household in Scotland would get £200 off their bills and the 815,000 hardest hit households would get £600 In Scotland, the Scottish National party has the power in its hands to do more than just bring Opposition day motions; it can change lives, too. That is what Labour would do. We would use the Barnett consequentials that the SNP has spent on replicating the Chancellor’s unfair policies to give a Scottish fuel payment of £400 to nearly 600,000 households facing the brunt of the crisis. We would top up the Scottish welfare fund so that local authorities could use their discretionary offer further to support households.
Cost of Living Increases — House of Commons, 2022-03-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): The bottom line is that I should not be getting £150 off my council tax bill. That seems fair, and I think that we agree on that. We need much more imagination in how to get money into the pockets of the poorest who require it. The best way is to ask those with the broadest shoulders to put a little more into the pot. It is certainly not the whole host of Ponzi schemes reeled off by the Minister whereby people are lent their own money and will have to pay it back later. We need to implement long-term solutions to keep bills low such as improving the energy efficiency of Scottish homes and, as was mentioned, dealing with off-grid, which is a huge issue in Scotland That is a proper plan to tackle the cost of living crisis, unlike this back-of-a-cigarette-packet plan designed to help solve a political problem for the Scottish nationalists—who do not want to back a windfall tax on oil and gas but will not even tell us in public if that is what their motion is intended to do—or the Chancellor who is not only doing little to help but is costing people much, much more and making it worse. That is the difference Labour can and would make in power. We do not want just to oppose the Government in Opposition day debates; we want to replace them altogether, which the Scottish National party can never do.
Speaker’s Statement — House of Commons, 2022-05-11
Topic: Government Operations
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): As colleagues will know, the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee is elected each Session. Nominations are now open and will close at 5 pm on Monday 16 May. Nomination forms are available from the Vote Office, the Table Office and the Public Bill Office. Only Members from a party not represented in government may be candidates. Candidates need the support of no fewer than 10 Members from the Government side of the House, and no fewer than 10 Members from a party not represented in Government, or from no party. If there is more than one candidate, the ballot will take place on Wednesday 18 May from 11 am to 2.30 pm in the Aye Lobby As Neil Parish has ceased to be a Member of this House, I must declare the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee vacant and announce arrangements for the election of a new Chair. Nominations are now open and will close at 12 noon on Tuesday 24 May. Nomination forms are available from the Vote Office, the Table Office and the Public Bill Office. Following the House’s decision of 16 January 2020, only Members of the Conservative party may be candidates. If there is more than one candidate, the ballot will take place on Wednesday 25 May from 11 am to 2.30 pm in the Aye Lobby. Briefing notes with more information about each election will be made available in the Vote Office.
Ukraine: UK Military Support — House of Commons, 2022-05-11
Topic: International Affairs
Mark Phillip Hendrick (Labour, Centre-left): I commend the Minister for the amount of humanitarian and military aid going to Ukraine, but what assessment has he made of the Ukrainians’ capacity to distribute that humanitarian aid effectively, and of the Ukrainian army’s ability to get that equipment into the theatre effectively, and its skills and capacity to use it effectively?
Jim Fitton: Detention in Iraq — House of Commons, 2022-05-11
Topic: International Affairs
Charalambos Charalambous (Labour, Centre-left): I would like to congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on securing this urgent question today and on her tireless advocacy on behalf of her constituent, Jim Fitton. My thoughts are with Mr Fitton and his family, and I would like to echo the concerns raised by colleagues across the House. In March, Mr Fitton, a British citizen and retired geologist, was arrested in Iraq on a charge that carries the death penalty. He remains detained. As we have heard, he was part of a tour group visiting Iraq on an organised geology and archaeology trip. During the tour, the group picked up some broken fragments of stone and pottery from the ground. The fragments were out in the open, unprotected, and without nearby signage warning against their removal. Members of the tour were told that they could take the fragments as a souvenir as they held no economic or historical value. Mr Fitton’s family have made it clear that, as a retired geologist, he would never in any way intend to disrespect or appropriate the rich and fascinating culture of the region; rather, he would celebrate it However, Mr Fitton awaits a trial date for sentencing, which is expected imminently. The window for intervention from the Foreign Office is therefore narrowing. Urgent Government action is needed, and the lack of engagement from Ministers is creating frustration for everyone who wishes to see the situation resolved. The Foreign Office needs to do everything it can to protect British citizens who are wrongfully detained abroad. I hear what the Minister has said about the consular support that has already been provided, but I would like to ask him what efforts the FCDO is urgently taking on behalf of Mr Fitton not only to secure a high-level meeting with judicial officials in Iraq regarding legal representation in order to resolve the case, but to engage with Mr Fitton’s family. Does he share my concern that dragging his feet in cases such as these is resulting in public trust in the Government’s commitment to protecting British citizens wrongfully detained abroad being profoundly impacted? As each day passes, this case becomes more serious and I urge the Government to take the necessary steps to allow Jim to be reunited with his family before it is too late.
Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice — House of Commons, 2022-05-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Margaret Eve Hodge (Labour, Centre-left): I am very grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way. I want to engage not in the to and fro on which she started her contribution, but on a subject where I think there is unity across the House, which is in the fight against economic crime. Does she agree that if we are to be effective in fighting economic crime, we must have measures that introduce better transparency, that properly fund our enforcement agencies, because, at the moment, they are not fit for purpose, and that also hold to account the enablers of economic crime for the actions that they take?
Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice — House of Commons, 2022-05-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): I am very grateful to the Home Secretary. On the issue of convictions for rape and serious sexual assault, one of the recommendations from the Home Affairs Committee was to have RASSO—rape and serious sexual offences—units in all police forces. Will the Home Secretary ensure that all police forces now have those specialist units, because we know if that is the case, it is more likely that investigations will be more thorough, victims will be treated better and convictions will follow?
Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice — House of Commons, 2022-05-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): If the Home Secretary will allow me to intervene, I co-chair with the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) the all-party parliamentary group on miscarriages of justice. We are looking at the real problems with forensic science since its privatisation. If we are going to catch more criminals and have a more effective criminal justice system, will the Home Secretary make it a priority to ensure that forensic science in every part of the country is as good as it can be?
Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice — House of Commons, 2022-05-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): I have to say, that was an astonishing refusal by the Home Secretary to take interventions and questions from the shadow Home Secretary and a shadow Cabinet Minister. I have been taking part in Queen’s Speech debates for 25 years and I have never seen a Government Minister at the Dispatch Box afraid to take questions from her opposite number—I have never seen that anywhere. She took questions from a few other Members; her predecessors always took questions from me. I wonder what she is so frightened of. All my questions would have been really factual—maybe that is what she was frightened of When the Prime Minister opened the Queen’s Speech debate yesterday, he did not mention crime—not once. Those of us out on the streets talking to residents in different communities across the country—an experience that was probably rather better on our side of the House than theirs this time—know that crime and antisocial behaviour were raised a lot, but the Prime Minister did not mention them once The cost of living, soaring bills and rising prices were top of people’s list, but they were followed by crime and antisocial behaviour and a real persistent concern that when crimes are being committed, too often, nothing is done. There was nothing in the Queen’s Speech to tackle rising bills and rising prices and also no serious plan to tackle rising crime and falling prosecutions. There was nothing from the Prime Minister yesterday about the basic issues bothering people across the country.
Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice — House of Commons, 2022-05-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is right to talk about the public health approach and the need to prevent crime and work across communities to do that Across the country, in the last few weeks alone, I have heard from residents and victims talking often about there being no action when things go wrong; about repeated vandalism not being tackled even though there is CCTV evidence of who is responsible; and about the victim of an appalling violent domestic attack who was told that it would not come to court for two years I have heard about repeated shoplifting where the police are so overstretched that they have stopped coming; about burglaries where all the victim got was a crime number; about scamming, where Action Fraud is such a nightmare to engage with that pensioners have given up trying to report serious crimes; about persistent drug dealing outside a school where nothing had been done months later; and about a horrendous rape case where the brave victim was strung out for so long and the court case was delayed so many times that she gave up because she could not bear it anymore I have heard about police officers tearing their hair out over Crown Prosecution Service delays because they know that the victim will drop out if they cannot charge quickly; about other officers who are working long hours to pick up the pieces when local mental health services fail but who know that that means that they cannot be there to deal with the antisocial behaviour on the street corner; and about women who no longer expect the police to help if they face threats of violence on the streets or in their homes. There is case after case after case where crimes are being committed but no one is being charged, cautioned or given a community penalty and no action is being taken—and it is getting worse Since the 2019 general election—in fact, since the Home Secretary was appointed—crime is up by 18% and prosecutions are down by 18%. The charge rate is now at a record low of 5.8% compared with 15.5% in 2015. Cautions and community penalties are down too, notwithstanding the Prime Minister and his Downing Street staff’s attempt to make valiant personal efforts to get those numbers back up again The Home Secretary made an astonishing claim. She said: "We have reformed the criminal justice system so that it better supports victims and ensures that criminals are not only caught but punished." Where are the criminal justice reforms that are pushing the prosecution rates up? The prosecution rates have plummeted on the Conservatives’ watch, which means that under the Home Secretary and the Conservatives, hundreds of thousands more criminals are getting off and hundreds of thousands more victims are being let down.
Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice — House of Commons, 2022-05-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): I will give way to the Policing Minister. I will also give way to the Home Secretary as many times as she wants, so that she can explain why prosecution rates have plummeted and cautions and community penalties have collapsed.