argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-01-27
Topic: Civil Rights
George Carey (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support the Bill, which was introduced so eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. I applaud her commitment to those who are oppressed, whether here or abroad It is so easy in our country to take for granted our freedom, our equality and our tolerance, but it does not take much knowledge of British history to realise that these values have been hard fought and are comparatively recent, as the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, has just said. Some might therefore wonder why it was necessary to enact this Bill when under civil law women are equal to men in every sense and have the same access to the fruits of freedom. The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, has set out the reasons admirably, but I would like to set out the following thoughts It is understandable that new citizens to our country will inevitably bring with them their cultural and religious expectations, and for the most part they are welcome to do so. In so many ways, they can enrich our common cultural life. Sometimes, though, some of those traditions may collide sharply with the resident nation and raise questions about compatibility. Such is the case when it comes to marital relationships when they appear before sharia courts. It is equally understandable that religious traditions will want to order their lives according to their faiths, and that is true for Christianity, Judaism and other traditions. However, we must all conform to standards expected by civil law in its commitment to uphold justice for everyone The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, outlined her concern for Muslim women trapped in bad marriages with intimidation and threats whenever they try to free themselves. Parliament exists to clarify the law whenever it is challenged, and it must come to the rescue of those unsure of their rights Some might say—this has already been mentioned—that a law such as this is unnecessary. All that the noble Baroness wishes to address is already there in current laws; all we need to do is apply them. That may be objectively true, but whenever there are loopholes, whenever there is confusion, whenever a minority of sharia courts—I am assured it is a minority—exist to trump, which is an interesting word, civil law, we must correct abuses by strengthening existing laws to ensure that Muslim women and other groups have the same rights as men.
Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-01-27
Topic: Civil Rights
Andrew Fleming (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I too pay tribute to the courage and determination of my noble friend Lady Cox. Not being as brave as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I would not dare to imply that she is awkward, but there is no doubt whatever that she has been absolutely tireless in bringing the suffering of Muslim women in Britain to the attention of the public As one who has lived for many years in Muslim countries, I have every respect for devout individual Muslims. That said, it is surely fundamental that there can be only one law in this country, and furthermore, that institutions operating in Britain should do so in accordance with the rights that people can expect in this country, be they men or women—that is, there must be equality under the law The problem in this instance is the growing body of evidence that arbitration by sharia courts in practice discriminates against women in a manner that is frankly unacceptable in British society. That makes it all the more important that any such mediation should be voluntary and not the result of family or community pressure. The strength of those pressures is rather hard to imagine for those of us who belong to the majority community, but it is very clear to anyone who has lived in a Muslim country and seen the way in which women are obliged by pressures of family and tradition to fall in behind their men. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, was therefore exactly right to focus on the voluntary nature of any such mediation The draft Bill before us tackles these issues in an intelligent and targeted way. It does not interfere with the legitimate mediation services, which are already bound by equality legislation, nor does it interfere with the internal theological affairs of any religious group. However, it addresses a lacuna in our law which, in practice, permits discrimination against women in a manner that is unacceptable, as I have said. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has just said, we have reached the point when it is time to intervene Finally, I was going to draw attention, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has, to the actions of the President of Egypt, a Muslim country, who has said that there must be an end to oral divorces which have been permitted. I find it deeply ironic that the President of a Muslim state feels able to take decisive action to remedy a clear injustice when our own Government apparently will not. I hope the Minister will prove me wrong.
Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-01-27
Topic: Civil Rights
David Sydney Rowe-Beddoe (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am most pleased to support this Bill, which, as has already been said many times around the House, is another example of the indefatigable force that is my noble friend Lady Cox. As we have heard, she is interested not only in this, but in so many things worldwide I have been increasingly concerned, as I am sure many of your Lordships have, to learn of the abuses to which some Muslim women—I emphasise "some"—are being subjected while living in our country and, as such, subject to the supremacy of our law. As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, mentioned, I was with him this week at a meeting at which we were presented to three ladies who gave us oral statements of what had happened to them. They described the most appalling abuse—"appalling" is a rather mild word. One striking criticism that was left with me, which was inferred from what we heard, was the failure of our police in certain cases to deal properly with such incidents as reported by Muslim women. We can speculate as to why some police may have taken the decision, if indeed they did, not to deal with this properly, but I am sure that this should be investigated and addressed. We can all understand what the possible reasons for it may be, but we must take seriously this apparent disinclination of certain police or police forces to provide appropriate support when abuse is reported In most cases, the strength of the abused is enormous, even to make such a complaint. We have to understand that these people live in a different world from ours. To have the courage to come forward and even suggest that they have a complaint to make, and then for it not to be taken seriously, is very depressing. In the interests of time, I shall move on, but so many noble Lords have referred to certain things in this area that I clearly endorse. I want to focus on the fact that we must strengthen the duties of police and social services to ensure that women are made aware of their legal rights under our law. As has been said, so many of them do not even speak our language. It is therefore not an easy task, but it must be addressed. I urge the Government to support the Bill.
Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-01-27
Topic: Civil Rights
Caroline Anne Cox (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I record my very deep gratitude to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, bringing so many distinctive and diverse contributions, with so much experience, professional expertise, compelling arguments and compassion in support of the Bill. I wish I could also thank the Minister for his response. I think the word "brush-off" has been used more than once when referring to the responses I often receive from the Front Bench. Much more importantly, the Minister’s reply will disappoint countless people who are hoping for some effective government action to be taken as a matter of urgency to help alleviate the problems that have been widely documented and highlighted in this debate. It seems that Her Majesty’s Government are living on a different planet of reality from the realities which have been put on the record in this debate. Those realities are widespread and the examples given are just the tip of an iceberg of great suffering. Instead, we have another delay during which countless women will continue to suffer, without any of the very modest remedial measures which the Bill could provide and which they emphasise would be of great help to them. They will be deeply disappointed There is much important subsequent business awaiting your Lordships so I will not take up any of the points raised in the debate, although I would wish very much to take up the points raised by the Minister, some of which I fundamentally disagree with. But I greatly look forward to working with all who have shared their concerns and expertise, to continue to seek ways forward in which we may address the serious problems we have discussed today. I give renewed thanks to everyone who has contributed to this debate and supported the Bill.
Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-01-27
Topic: Other
David John Ramsbotham (Crossbench, Unknown): Before the Minister goes on, I mentioned that I had met with the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and discussed this, so I know that they are there. They were not corrected by me but I know what they are.
Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-01-27
Topic: Immigration
David John Ramsbotham (Crossbench, Unknown): But I remind the Minister that that is not happening. Even though there is the possibility of prosecuting people for making wrong approaches, it has never happened because the DBS says that it is not an enforcement body. Therefore, there is something missing. I am very glad for the support for my proposal around the House. What I am suggesting is that in the context of the White Paper, it would be sensible for the Government to look at all aspects of resettlement, including this one. My offer to the Minister is that all those who have raised problems on the outside are more than willing to take part in that process. I hope that their evidence will not be taken lightly, because it has been drawn up over many years. As the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said, the list in Section 139 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, in response to the two consultations, Breaking the Cycle and Breaking the Circle, was all that the coalition Government could get through. There were many others—and, indeed, are many others—and some of them have been lying dormant since 2002. It is time that they were brought forward As I gave notice, I intend to table amendments in Committee. In the interim, I hope that the Minister will reconsider his rejection of what is on offer, because the issue is far too serious to be let go with the prospect of annual Bills and annual making progress on small points.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Other
Julia King (Crossbench, Unknown): I have listened with interest to the Minister and I am very pleased that he has offered to write to us. I think he also offered further discussion in this area. We are actually in strong agreement about much of what the Bill is trying to achieve in this area, but there remains some concern about the wording used to describe it. On the basis that there is further engagement to come in this area—indeed, the Minister has indicated, I think, that it is likely to come back on Report—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Dafydd Elystan-Morgan (Crossbench, Unknown): I wholeheartedly support the amendment. I wish to make a limited point. Why should it refer to "must" rather than "shall"? Both words seem to come to the same conclusion, but I would have thought that by and large the word "shall" has more of a legislative pedigree than the alternative. In saying so, I declare an interest as a former president of a Welsh university for 10 years and as the chairman of its council. I am sure that if one produced a friendly document entitled "Words and phrases judicially defined", one would probably find "shall" and "must" in many Acts of Parliament, but I would have thought in this case that "shall" was probably far more appropriate than "must".
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Housing
Robert Kerslake (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I strongly endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has said. I declare an interest as chair of the board of Sheffield Hallam University and the chair of Peabody. An explanation for that will follow There is a cautionary tale here in relation to housing associations and the story around their public body status. For a long period of time they were regarded as not public bodies and therefore able to exercise borrowing and take forward proposals outside of the public sector. The effect of successive changes of regulations and controls on housing associations then led to a reclassification by the ONS as public bodies. As a consequence we are now in a process of seeking to deregulate housing associations to move them out of that situation. We do not want to go through the same process for universities. We should proceed with care on this issue.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Merlin Hay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I put my name down to one of these amendments because I wanted to talk about appeals. The reason for that is very simple and comes back to what I said earlier. I do not think there should be any question about there being no age verification. That should be almost an absolute offence: if there is no age verification, a site can be blocked, just like that. If the relevant people want to make an appeal, they can do so later and make it as complicated as they like. The main issue has already been raised and I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, that Clause 23 is ideal. I entirely agree with the point about the foreign sites. They are not going to do anything if we do not block them. They will just mess around and children will get access to adult pornography for goodness knows how long. We need to be able to block immediately sites that do not have age verification I refer to appeals as we are muddling up the question of what is pornography with that of what is material that adults are not permitted to view. We need an appeals mechanism as we are going to get wrapped up in the lacunae and the mismatches between the Obscene Publications Act, the court cases and everything else, as I said earlier. We can see a Lady Chatterley-style case going through and taking years. In the meantime, all the non-age verified sites have to do is to keep appealing or whatever. That is not going to work. If we are going to include what is permitted for adults to view in this part of the Bill, we need an appeals process for that, but not an appeals process if the relevant sites do not have age verification in relation to potentially pornographic material. I will talk about that when we discuss the group of amendments commencing with Amendment 57.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Merlin Hay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, first I thank the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for supporting my amendment in the last group about proportionality and the order in which websites should be tackled. Moving on to this group, I spoke to this set of amendments when we addressed this issue in the group starting with Amendment 54B—so I can abbreviate my speech and be quick. I support the noble Lord, Lord Browne, on the point made in the part of the briefing he was reading about the Obscene Publications Act and the Crown Prosecution Service advice et cetera being out of step with each other and out of step with enough members of the public for it to matter—that is the real trouble. I had thought to mention one or two of the unsavoury practices that you might find that will not be classified under the current ruling in Clause 23, but I think I have been trumped by the newspapers Some in the BBFC probably see this as an opportunity to clean up the internet. But it is not going to work; it will have the reverse effect. This whole issue of what is prohibited material needs to be tackled in another Bill, with a different regulator or enforcer, so it does not get confused with the business of protecting children, which is the purpose of this Bill. It will not protect children anyway, as this material ought to be behind the age verification firewall in any event. In fact, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, pointed out why it might not be: you have a possible lacuna in the Bill. If you say that the material is stuff that the BBFC has classified, the really nasty stuff is not included, because it is not able to be classified—so suddenly Clause 23 might not apply to it. He is absolutely right there. This is one of the dangers, which is why they are having to try and draw in the idea of prohibited material. It would be much easier to remove prohibited material altogether It has been suggested to me that the easiest thing would be to alter Clause 16, which deals with the definition of pornography. Instead of having this very limited scope, it would be much easier just to have the one simple definition which is already in Clause 16(1)(e)(i), but with the wording slightly expanded to say, "Without prejudice to the application of the Obscene Publications Act 1959, any material produced solely or principally for the purposes of sexual arousal". You could leave it at that, and then you would protect children from anything unsavoury that we do not want them to see. That is a much simpler solution than getting into this terribly complicated debate about what is prohibited material.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Civil Rights
Elspeth Howe (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I very much share the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, about this set of amendments and prohibited material. As they stand, the amendments would have the effect of causing the Bill to place 18 and R18 material behind age verification checks, which Clause 16 limits to 18 and R18 material, while prohibited material would be freely available without any such protection. This would be pretty irresponsible and would show no regard for child protection. Even if the Bill was amended so that prohibited material was only legal online if placed behind age verification checks, we should not forget that the important strategy of targeting the biggest 50 pornography sites will not create a world in which children are free from accessing prohibited material, so that adults can relax and access it without concern. Even if the material was made legal online and given a BBFC classification, this would give a measure of respectability in the context of which it would no doubt become more widely available, and thus the chances of children seeing it would be further exacerbated Moreover, the crucial point is that we cannot make prohibited material legal in an online environment at the same time as maintaining the category of prohibited material offline. The former would inevitably result in the latter. Mindful of this, and of the fact that the category of prohibited material is long established, it would be wholly inappropriate for the House or indeed the Government to simply end the category of prohibited material online without a major public consultation. I very much hope that the Minister will completely reject these amendments and stand by what he said on this matter at Second Reading.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Civil Rights
Onora O'Neill (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I had not intended to speak on this point, but this may be relevant evidence. Last year, I went to a meeting with a parliamentary group that was looking at hate speech issues, and a representative of Facebook was there. She said—one may say that this did not show quite a correct view of freedom of expression—that Facebook takes down whatever its customers find offensive. A member of the public said, "Actually, when you have had 20 independent complaints, you take it down and it is immediately put up again". That second step is where the remedies are not working at present. It does not get taken down. This was mainly about anti-Semitic hate speech of a vile sort that would have been well known in certain quarters in the 1930s. This is an urgent matter, which we need some remedy for.
UK Withdrawal from the EU and Potential Withdrawal from the Single Market — House of Lords, 2017-01-26
Topic: Immigration
Jean Coussins (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I want to focus on two specific groups of EU citizens living in this country: teachers of modern foreign languages in our schools and foreign-language assistants. I declare interests as co-chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages and vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists Thirty-five per cent of MFL teachers are non-UK EU citizens, and the figure for language assistants is 82%. Quite simply, unless they are guaranteed residency status in the UK after Brexit, language teaching in our schools will collapse. The UK alone is not producing enough languages graduates to fill the teacher shortage, which is already estimated at 3,500. These points are among those made in a checklist on Brexit and languages published by the all-party group which is intended to assist government negotiators There are, of course, many reasons why learning other languages is a good thing, but given the terms of this debate, I will focus only on the economic benefits, and that boils down to two factors: economic growth, and the employability and mobility of our workforce. Research shows that the language deficit is already costing the UK 3.5% of GDP, or £48 billion every year. The CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce have called for better language skills among British graduates and college leavers in order to boost export performance. They say that language availability rather than market strategy is driving export decisions. We are overdependent on Anglophone markets, and 83% of SMEs operate only in English when over half of them say that language skills would help expand their business opportunities and build export growth The employability of UK citizens in a post-Brexit world is also a vital part of our economic well-being. Many employers are forced to recruit from overseas if they need language skills. The all-party group has heard detailed testimony from many businesses and employers’ organisations to this effect. It is no coincidence at all that graduates—in all subjects, not just languages—who have spent a year abroad on the Erasmus programme have an unemployment rate 23% lower than others In summary, we need to reverse the decline in language skills in the UK. A reasonable start has been made at GCSE level, but A-levels are in sharp decline and the number of languages graduates has fallen by 57% in 10 years. For the sake of our economic health and competitiveness, we need to do a lot better. I hope the Minister will agree that we should not shoot ourselves in the foot by forcing out EU nationals who are teaching languages in our schools. It is not enough to say, as the Government are currently doing, that residency status will be guaranteed only if reciprocated for Britons abroad. That is self-defeating and I ask the Minister if he will commit to reviewing and improving the position in the long-term national economic interest.