argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Cavity Wall Insulation: Complaints — House of Commons, 2020-03-16
Topic: Housing
Christopher Philip James Elmore (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with my hon. Friend. I shall say more about CIGA shortly, and about what I think could be done if Ministers were willing to intervene If installed incorrectly or in inappropriate properties, insulation can act as a bridge for moisture to move from the external to the internal walls, which can result in high levels of damp. Not only can damp cause higher energy bills—which is totally counter to the purpose of such schemes—but it can cause significant health issues for residents. The science tells us that regions affected by high levels of wind-driven rain are subject to a much greater risk of damp and mould-related issues. Effective safeguards are therefore vital in such areas to ensure that any retrofitting work does not make the problems of homeowners and renters worse rather than better Sadly, however, when we look at the map of the areas across the country that are most badly affected by wind-blown rain, we see that many of the areas in which there have been reports of high levels of cavity wall insulation complaints form an almost directly superimposable map. It is clear that something went wrong, and it is clear that unscrupulous companies have been taking advantage of Government schemes to make a quick buck.
Cavity Wall Insulation: Complaints — House of Commons, 2020-03-16
Topic: Housing
Ruth Lorraine Jones (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech in favour of action to assist people who find themselves in this predicament—people like my constituents Pauline Saunders and Sandra Haggerty. Sandra is out of pocket owing to the cost of repairs following the installation of inadequate cavity wall insulation in her mother’s house in Rogerstone. People have lost thousands of pounds, and they need some form of compensation. Does my hon. Friend agree that they need action now, and not fine words from the Government?
Cavity Wall Insulation: Complaints — House of Commons, 2020-03-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher Philip James Elmore (Labour, Centre-left): I do agree. I will shortly talk about my own constituents and the problems that they have faced, including the considerable cost of any sort of repair bill. I know that very many people across the United Kingdom—arguably hundreds of thousands—need support from the Government.
Cavity Wall Insulation: Complaints — House of Commons, 2020-03-16
Topic: Housing
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): I commend my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. We absolutely need the Building Research Establishment to undertake a survey of all those properties—about 1 million, I think—to understand the scale of the problem and obtain redress for the owners.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2020-03-05
Topic: Mixed Topics
Chinyelu Susan Onwurah (Labour, Centre-left): I wholly support the Secretary of State’s celebration of the work of Ada Lovelace, but does she recognise that the work of women such as Ada Lovelace and Katherine Johnson, who worked on the US space programme, was not known and celebrated? Does the Secretary of State recognise that it is important that we celebrate the work of women, particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths, where they have made a great contribution and yet have not been celebrated?
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2020-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Stephen John Doughty (Labour, Centre-left): I completely agree with the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). Is the Secretary of State aware of the scheme to erect a statue for Betty Campbell, the first black female headteacher in south Wales—a remarkable figure from Butetown in my constituency? She made an incredibly impact not only on young people locally, but on the wider community. I join with all those fighting for more women to be recognised in this way around the country.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2020-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): Before the Minister moves back to the domestic sphere, I want to ask her what her Government are doing on the international front to protect women human rights activists around the world. They are standing up for the human rights of the people they represent, but they also face discrimination because of their gender.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2020-03-05
Topic: Mixed Topics
Harriet Ruth Harman (Labour, Centre-left): I absolutely agree with everything that the right hon. Lady is saying in her speech, and I congratulate her on becoming Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee. Will she meet me so that we can plot together to use the forthcoming employment Bill as an opportunity to bring in new tougher laws to narrow the gender pay gap? Although in law it is illegal, the yawning pay gap persists. We can use that Bill to toughen up the law. Shall we work together on that?
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2020-03-05
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jessica Rose Phillips (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Lady. Throughout the year, me and Karen often meet people who have been personally affected by one of the names on the list, and that is why we keep doing it—because these women are not statistics. They are the friends of our children. They are our children. They are the woman who lived down the road from me, who I will have walked past a million times. I hope that the list reminds people how serious this is and that, on pretty much every street and in every classroom, there will be somebody who is quietly suffering, who might one day end up on the list.
Tourism Sector: Reopening — House of Commons, 2020-07-09
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Alexander David Sobel (Labour, Centre-left): After staffing, the largest cost that many tourism and hospitality businesses face is their rent. One of the sector’s main asks for yesterday’s statement was help with rent. There is a moratorium on evictions until September. However, many pubs, restaurants, amusement arcades, small museums and other tourist destinations face their quarterly rent bills when they have had no income. What additional steps are the Government taking to help them and ensure that we do not see mass closures?
Covid-19: Creative Industries and Freelancers — House of Commons, 2020-07-09
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Lucy Maria Powell (Labour, Centre-left): As you know, Mr Speaker, Manchester really is one of the creative industry hubs of the UK. It is made up not just of its institutions, but of a wealth of talented, highly skilled individuals and small and micro-organisations. Can the Minister tell them and me how the self-employed and those who are directors of limited companies will support themselves to stay in this industry in the coming months, when all their work has dried up and they have no extra support?
Bahrain: Prisoners Under Sentence of Death — House of Commons, 2020-07-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: To ask the Foreign Secretary if he will make a statement on whether he will use the UK’s constructive dialogue with the Government of Bahrain publicly to raise the cases of two prisoners who have been sentenced to death following torture, and who face a hearing this Monday when their death sentences may be confirmed.
Kim Marie Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): With only five days to save their lives, and in the light of the UK’s assistance to the bodies that enabled their torture and death sentences, can the Minister confirm that the Government will make effective representations in the cases of Mohammed Ramadhan and Hussain Moosa before the Court of Cassation’s final decision on Monday?
Housing, Communities and Local Government: Departmental Spending — House of Commons, 2020-07-09
Topic: Public Lands
Lilian Rachel Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): I will be very brief. Did my hon. Friend share my sense of déjà vu when councils were promised "whatever funding is needed"? Nottingham City spent £8 million on fire safety improvement post-Grenfell and it did not receive a single penny from central Government, despite exactly the same sort of comments being made at the time.
Housing, Communities and Local Government: Departmental Spending — House of Commons, 2020-07-09
Topic: Housing
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): I would like to start, as others have, by praising our local authorities rather than burying them, as perhaps the Government would wish. In the last few months, we have seen an extraordinary effort, contrasting very favourably with the work of our national Government. We have seen real professionalism, we have seen them deliver, whether it be business grants or addressing business rates, and we have seen them delivering on the shielding programme as well. But of course, as we have heard, no other Department has faced the same scale of cuts that local authorities have. After 10 years, £15 billion has been cut and now with coronavirus, we are seeing an £11 billion hit to those authorities, but the Government are providing them with only £3.2 billion. Contrast that with what the Government said on 16 March, which was "Whatever it takes, we will stand by you". That does not seem to be the case, and that is really hurting the authorities I commend my local authority Warwick District Council for what it has done. It has been agile, it has been active and it has delivered, and I praise it publicly for what it has done. But the challenges are great in social care, as we have heard; youth services; women’s refuges; and the enforcement that is now required of those authorities in making sure that we meet the challenge of coronavirus I want to talk about housing, because there is no greater priority. We know that there is a huge amount of homelessness in the UK. We need to build social homes on a massive scale. We need to build 300,000 houses a year, and of those 150,000 need to be social rented properties. Last year, only 6,300 were built, and in my constituency only 21 council homes—social rent properties—have been built The Help to Buy scheme is costing Government £4 billion. The Government are also spending £23 billion a year on housing benefit and paying £8 billion to private landlords. That is why we need to get hold of the issue of social rent properties and what council councils can actually deliver in that field The Government say they want to build, but they should start with rebuilding trust in our Government, and they can take a leaf out of the book of local government on how to deliver that. For 10 years, this Government and their predecessors have taken a wrecking ball to local authorities, but they have shown in the last few months what they can do and they are trusted by our public. We have seen that with covid-19, but we need to address issues such as knife crime and the issues among our social services. In closing, the Government told us that they could not address the issue of rough sleepers until 2027, but they have managed to do so in a matter of months. It is now time that they deliver elsewhere.
Housing, Communities and Local Government: Departmental Spending — House of Commons, 2020-07-09
Topic: Housing
Siobhain Ann McDonagh (Labour, Centre-left): My contribution to today’s debate is on the eye-watering £1 billion spend by the Ministry on temporary accommodation. There are now 88,330 families trapped in temporary accommodation, including 128,340 children. These families have spent lockdown in hostels, warehouses and B&Bs, including 530 children who have been stuck in the latter for longer than the six-week legal limit. The scale of our housing crisis means that local authorities cannot even find temporary accommodation locally: 28% of families are sent far away from home, and away from friends, work and school. That is 24,430 households being moved from one borough to another, with local authorities playing chequers with people’s lives. But the question is not how many, but who, where and how far away. So I commend the extraordinary investigation by ITV’s "Ross Kemp: Living with…" programme last Thursday, which revealed the detail behind these statistics and the impact that being sent across the country has on families’ lives In the past two years, homeless families have moved 400,000 miles across the country, which is the equivalent of 16 times around the planet. Councils in every region are sending families hundreds of miles away from home. There is a statutory duty for households in temporary accommodation to be housed in their home borough, or as close to it as possible. There is also a statutory duty on local authorities to inform receiving councils when they send homeless families to their borough. That groundbreaking programme found at least 60 councils that had failed to do so. The leader of Basildon Council even stated that 58% of the time a family arrive in his borough his council is not notified. That means that in the past four years more than 700 children have arrived in Basildon from London, putting the most extraordinary pressure on schools, GPs and hospitals, but putting even more pressure on these individual families, who are cut off from the support and help that they need. When will the Government enforce the law that already exists?
Housing, Communities and Local Government: Departmental Spending — House of Commons, 2020-07-09
Topic: Housing
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): It is genuinely a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess). I want to draw the House’s attention to a very serious issue, which is fire safety in flats and shared housing following the Grenfell disaster. This is linked to the funding of councils such as Reading Borough Council in my area and Wokingham Borough Council, and the funding of fire services such as the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service I would like to start by paying tribute to the Grenfell families. It is utterly impossible to imagine what they have been through both on the night of the disaster and in the three years since that dreadful time. We all want to find a timely and effective response to the problem of removing dangerous cladding and to other fire risks, and progress has been made. Many local councils and some owners of private blocks have removed cladding. Temporary fire safety measures have also been taken, such as regular patrols at night by either residents or security staff. However, this problem is on a vast scale, and there are significant obstacles that make removing cladding very challenging It is sad and deeply worrying that most dangerous cladding remains in place three years after the disaster. That includes the type of cladding used in Grenfell and a range of other highly flammable materials, such as wooden cladding and laminate. All these materials are found in Reading town centre in my constituency, and there are deep concerns about a wide range of other buildings across the area. Fire services have real concerns that temporary measures may no longer be effective because they rely on human behaviour, and they are seriously worried that human error will start to creep in and that measures such as patrols will lapse or cease to be fully effective I would like to draw the House’s attention to some of the issues in my constituency, to illustrate the scale of the problem. We have a number of large blocks over six storeys high that have these types of cladding. We have difficulties in getting owners to remove the cladding because of the complexities of the process. There are also a huge number of blocks of under six storeys, with hundreds of people living in them across Reading and Woodley, and many thousands of houses in multiple occupation, which may be terraced houses or flats above chippies or other takeaway restaurants, where there could be serious fire safety risks. New resources are needed to inspect all these premises, and more powers are needed for local authority building control departments and fire services to take action to speed up this process. I urge the Minister to work with me and other colleagues to address this important matter, and I look forward to hearing from him.
Housing, Communities and Local Government: Departmental Spending — House of Commons, 2020-07-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
Catherine Malloy Hollern (Labour, Centre-left): I can actually prove it, Minister. They have been given no information or have been given information too late to implement any changes. As for the app, I am sure we will see it some day All of this has been a recipe for disaster, but councils have kept their promises, because they are committed to serving their residents. Yet again, councils will be given no comfort in this estimates debate today. How long must council services—those on the frontline in our hard-hit communities—be treated as Cinderella services? On 16 March, the Secretary of State told councils that the Government stood ready to do whatever was necessary to support them in their response to coronavirus. By 4 May, he was back-pedalling on that pledge, and he gave a grim warning: "We would not want anyone to labour under a false impression that what they are doing is guaranteed to be funded by central Government." Interestingly, the Chancellor said the exact opposite yesterday. He says they agreed wherever it takes. Perhaps we again have an example of a headline not being a true reflection of what is happening in debates It is true that the Government have provided councils with funding of £3.7 billion in three tranches to meet the costs of the crisis. The first was mainly for adult social care and was allotted on the basis of relative need. However, the second was allocated on a per capita basis and did not take into account deprivation, despite the mortality rate from the virus in the most deprived areas being more than double that in the least deprived areas. As a result, the funding for metropolitan councils in deprived areas was substantially lower in the second tranche, whereas the allocation for many Conservative-controlled shire councils miraculously increased. Funding for Surrey rose by 32%, whereas that for Liverpool fell by the same percentage—so much for the promise of levelling up Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council received a little over £9 million, yet it has been well publicised that, with the anticipated loss of income, the council could face a deficit double the size by the end of the financial year. In March, April and May, councils lost £470 million in business rates and £506 million in council tax as businesses were forced to close and people lost their jobs Councils across the country are already making cuts to services and will inevitably be looking at serving section 114 notices. Last week, the Secretary of State announced just £500 million in further funding for councils and a yet-to-be-worked-out sum for loss of income, fees and charges. I say "yet-to-be-worked-out", because once again, there is no detail I recognise that time has marched on. I just ask the Minister to urge the Secretary of State to live up to his promise and, perhaps if that does not work, we can get the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) to get the Prime Minister’s adviser to make a difference.
Speaker’s Statement — House of Commons, 2020-04-21
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): The House is meeting today in exceptional and unprecedented circumstances. I expect today’s proceedings to be short and limited to what is necessary to enable wider participation in the proceedings of the House from tomorrow onwards and the House to be given information about the business for future days. I ask all hon. Members who are present in the Chamber to observe the guidance that has been issued about social distancing not only in relation to each other, but in relation to staff of the House who are in the Chamber and, indeed, myself. Questions to the Secretary of State for Justice will now take place next Monday I am exceptionally allowing the Leader of the House to move two motions without formal notice, based on the same criteria I set out on 19 December 2019. I am allowing the motions to be moved because informal notice was given last night, albeit later than I would I have wished. I know that the motions arise from decisions of the House of Commons Commission and have broad support across the House; they allow for wider participation in the business of the House and scrutiny of the Executive, which is crucial at this time. I also note that the Procedure Committee, in its report, which has been prepared at remarkable speed to assist the debate today, supports the principle of the motions being taken without notice.
Proceedings during the Pandemic and Hybrid Scrutiny Proceedings — House of Commons, 2020-04-21
Topic: Other
Nicholas Desmond John Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I am not sure whether I heard this correctly, but I thought my right hon. Friend said that there cannot be points of order. I know that points of order can sometimes be badly used, but sometimes they can point out an injustice or a procedural problem that needs addressing. How can we ensure that this House does have the ability to shout alarm if necessary?
Proceedings during the Pandemic and Hybrid Scrutiny Proceedings — House of Commons, 2020-04-21
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): It is a matter for Mr Speaker to take points of order. That is part of the wide discretion that he has under other parts of the motion. The key thing—this is what came out of our discussions—is that we cannot interrupt proceedings where Members are up on screens virtually. It would be impossible to interrupt them with a point of order as they are speaking. There will be a way of working on that. It may well happen, but it is entirely at Mr Speaker’s discretion. Hopefully he will deal with injustices that may occur in the Chamber I think you suggested, Mr Speaker, that there might be a dress code for the House. Certainly there is the issue of what goes on behind Members in terms of animals, children, wallpaper and all that, as we have seen. Clearly the dress code will apply only to the Member’s top half—unless, of course, it is the Leader of the House. I know that he sometimes likes to be horizontal, so for him the dress code will in fact apply to the top half and the bottom half I thank everyone for getting us to this position. Subject to certain undertakings, Her Majesty’s Opposition support the motion.
Proceedings during the Pandemic and Hybrid Scrutiny Proceedings — House of Commons, 2020-04-21
Topic: Other
Christopher Philip James Elmore (Labour, Centre-left): On the right hon. Lady’s point about this being temporary, it is fair to say that in the Procedure’s Committee’s various meetings for several weeks now there has been agreement across the Committee that these measures must be temporary, short term—or any other description we might wish to give it—and that we hope to return to a fully functioning House as soon as the health advice allows.
Proceedings during the Pandemic and Hybrid Scrutiny Proceedings — House of Commons, 2020-04-21
Topic: Other
Christopher Philip James Elmore (Labour, Centre-left): If it would help my right hon. Friend, it is fair to say that in the Procedure Committee we looked at written questions and named-day questions, and we will review that issue. We agreed to that just yesterday. I reassure him that that point is very much in the Committee’s prism of work.
Proceedings during the Pandemic and Hybrid Scrutiny Proceedings — House of Commons, 2020-04-21
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher Philip James Elmore (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with the Leader of the House that voting obviously needs to be secure, but can he provide some reassurance that when testing for voting is carried out, there is enough capacity to allow all 650 Members to vote remotely? My understanding is that the testing yesterday did not go terribly well—that is how it was described to me.