argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Rona Fairhead (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I will come to that point later, which relates to the question that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, raised on whether these matters should be on the face of the Bill The essential point is this: this is the first time in 40 years that we have been negotiating a free trade agreement. We are keen to make sure that we do not lock ourselves into a process by having detailed elements on the face of the Bill which would then be difficult to change. What we want to do is to ensure that, through this Command Paper, the process of an enhanced scrutiny is clear, that there is an ability for Parliament to scrutinise at every stage and, furthermore, that there is a committee which will meet in confidence, which I think was something that was raised in this House as critically important. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, raised this with reference to the ISC, pointing to the fact that sometimes confidential discussions need to be held in a room with a committee of experts. That is what we are proposing. We would also expect these outline approaches and objectives to be the subject of close dialogue with the relevant committee.
Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Hugh Trenchard (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I know I am in a small minority in your Lordships’ House on this one, but I would like briefly to put the other argument. According to the trade data published by the ONS in September 2018 the customs union, of which noble Lords would like us to remain a member, has not actually achieved any benefits for the UK during the 20 years for which we have been a member. The UK’s slowest-growing export trade since 1998 was goods exports to the EU.
Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Hugh Trenchard (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not disagree with the noble Lord—but the point I was making is that in the period since 1998 goods exports to the EU have grown by only 0.2% per year, or 3.7% over those 20 years, reaching £164 billion in 2017. However, the UK’s goods exports to countries outside the EU customs union have grown in the same period by 3.3% a year—over 60% in total—to £175 billion. So the customs union has not been quite as marvellous for this country as noble Lords opposite suggest. I very much hope that the Government will stick to their policy of leaving on a basis whereby we will have our own independent trade policy, which will enable us to do more trade and enter into trade agreements with the economically faster-growing parts of the world.
Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Rosalind Altmann (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I support the amendment. I hope we will send back a clear message to the other place that it needs to reconsider the importance of having a customs union—for our integrated supply chains, for the success of our manufacturing industry and, indeed, for peace in Northern Ireland and security on the Northern Ireland border. I am afraid that a number of colleagues in the other place do not seem to understand how international trade deals work. The idea that we would have rolled over all 40 trade deals that we had through the EU by now has been shown to be fanciful. I do not believe that it is safe, in the 21st century, to assume that operating as a medium-sized country outside a customs union will deliver us more and better trade than remaining within it.
Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-06
Topic: Foreign Trade
Rosalind Altmann (Conservative, Centre-right): I think what the noble Baroness is doing for the House is eruditely explaining the trade-offs that the country is facing as a result of the decision that was taken and the red lines that were imposed. What this House is talking about—and what the amendment seeks to achieve—is to protect the manufacturing success, jobs and the integrated supply chains that we have built up in this country on which so many people’s livelihoods depend, as well as protecting the border in Northern Ireland. That is entirely accepted. Indeed the House has already passed the amendment which would also require us to have some kind of regulatory alignment in order to better achieve the aims we are trying to set out. However, that does not mean that we should not have and do not need a customs union.
Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-06
Topic: Agriculture
John Gummer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I wish to make a confession: when I was a Minister responsible for this area, I disobeyed the Government’s policy. Then, it was that we should be opposed to all these appellations and very determined in insisting that they were a restraint on trade and a disgrace. I thought that was nonsense. We have done great damage to our food industry by not defending so many of the things we have. Cheddar cheese, for example, can be manufactured almost anywhere in the world, but it is a Great British invention. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred to what Cornwall has produced; in Suffolk, we now have a kind of local food industry which is really important. The fact that the food is made locally matters hugely, even if it is sold a long distance away This is much closer to what people want; it is much closer to what food ought to be like. It is much further from the kind of industrialised agriculture and food industry which, we must understand, is the "museum"—if I may use the expression of the ambassador from the United States. It is a museum of the kind of food we have produced, which has not had this very important distinction. Part of that distinction is the geographical identification. I know that my noble friend will be hugely supportive of this, but I thought I ought not to leave the opportunity to admit my past transgressions.
Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointment Functions) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: Government Operations
Ian Duncan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, this Government are committed to the Belfast agreement. At the heart of that agreement is devolved power-sharing executive government. Restoring the Executive remains our priority. Northern Ireland needs the political institutions of the Belfast agreement and its successors to be fully functioning. However, in the absence of devolved government, the UK Government must ensure the maintenance of good governance and public confidence in Northern Ireland In November last year, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland brought forward legislation which, among other things, addressed the need for urgent appointments to be made to a number of public bodies. The initial phase of appointments under the Act has enabled the reconstitution of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, which recently met for the first time in its fully constituted form. This has also allowed: the recruitment of a new chief constable for Northern Ireland to be initiated; the replacement of the outgoing chair and board members of the Probation Board; appointments to the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission; and the initiation of a recruitment process to appoint a new Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland Under the 2018 Act, the Secretary of State also committed to make further appointments that are required in the absence of an Executive. The purpose of this instrument is to specify which further offices require appointment. In preparing this instrument, my officials have worked closely with the Northern Ireland Civil Service to identify those critical appointments that will arise soon. This instrument would add to the list in Section 5 of the Act, enabling the Secretary of State, as the relevant UK Minister, to exercise Northern Ireland Ministers’ appointment functions in relation to the following offices: the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People; the Northern Ireland Local Government Officers’ Superannuation Committee; the Northern Ireland Housing Executive; the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland; the Livestock and Meat Commission for Northern Ireland; and, finally, the Commissioner for Victims and Survivors. These are important offices for which the exercise of appointment functions in the coming months is vital for the continued good governance of Northern Ireland. I beg to move.
Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointment Functions) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: Government Operations
Alastair Cooke (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I operate in this House on one principle above all: to agree with everything that my noble friend Lord Empey says. I am happy to adhere to that principle again today I have three specific points that I want to raise on this instrument. First, it reaches us just days before a new Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People needs to be appointed. Why was the instrument not brought forward earlier? Secondly, the instrument specifies, as my noble friend has said, six appointments deemed to be critically important. What criteria were used to establish which appointments are critical and which are not? My third and final point follows from that and concerns offices not deemed to be of critical importance. What is to happen to them? Are they to remain vacant when their current holders reach the end of their term, pending the restoration of devolution, which today seems but a distant hope?
Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointment Functions) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: International Affairs
William Trimble (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said. I agree entirely with the comments of the noble Lord opposite, but I want to open up something that touches slightly on what he said—and I am afraid that in doing this, I may add to the list of things that the Minister has to consider I noticed that in his introduction the Minister made reference to the Belfast agreement. The Belfast agreement is in a very difficult situation at the moment, because the Government’s withdrawal agreement takes the heart out of the Belfast agreement and rips it to pieces. To give detail on that, I draw Members’ attention to a paper that may be on the Policy Exchange website this afternoon, but which will be generally available quite soon thereafter, by Graham Gudgin, who has gone in detail through the ways in which the withdrawal agreement destroys the Belfast agreement—it is as strong as that. That will also impact on the possibility of doing something through the mechanisms of the agreement for consultation between the Government and the people of Northern Ireland and bringing in other parties. This is another matter which cannot be left in abeyance. Does the Minister have any thoughts about what the Government can do to restore the health of the Belfast agreement?
Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointment Functions) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: Government Operations
Patrick Cormack (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, on Thursday last, my noble friend came to the Dispatch Box and gave another interim Statement, saying that he hoped before long to come back with definitive pronouncements. I asked him specifically about two issues. First, if we cannot have the Executive restored, which we would all like, surely the Assembly, which has been elected and the Members of which are still paid, could meet. There is no insuperable obstacle; my noble friend Lord Trimble has made this point on several previous occasions and is nodding now The other point I referred to was the appointment of what my noble friend referred to as a "facilitator"—I do not much like the word—who would be impartial and would preside over the meeting of interested parties. We must recognise the fact referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, I think: namely, that the very existence of a pact between the Government and the DUP means that there is a perception that the Government are not as even-handed as I am personally convinced that they are. That is a problem My noble friend referred to my next point last Thursday and I bring him back to it. We are having a series of holding Statements and measures such as the one this afternoon—I endorse what my noble friend Lord Lexden asked: what are the criteria?—but there comes a point, and it is coming very soon, when a real initiative must be taken by the Secretary of State to try to get the Assembly functioning and the power-sharing Executive restored. It is now more than 20 years—almost 21 years, I must get my maths right—since the Belfast agreement: an historic agreement which gave great comfort and joy to many people and which, for a time, worked extremely well. We are now teetering on the brink of the imposition of direct rule—and we must face up to that, because we cannot go on like this No one in his or her right mind wants the reimposition of direct rule, with all the problems and regression implicit in it. So I beg my noble friend to add a little, when he comes to respond, to what he said on Thursday last. We all admire him—I am one of those who believe that if he had been put in charge, things might have moved at a slightly faster pace—but we want him to tell us something that will give real, positive encouragement and will amount to a promise of a true initiative taken, I very much hope, before 26 March.
Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointment Functions) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: International Affairs
Ian Duncan (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord, Lord Lea, raises a slightly cryptic question, and I am not wholly sure I can answer it in the manner I would like. The UK Government, Ministers and civil servants have been engaged in a series of bilateral discussions with all parties—it has been ongoing for quite some time—to find the means by which we can bring people into the same room to have appropriate discussions, out of which will emerge the structures and necessary elements for talks that will lead to the formation of a sustainable Executive. That is not a secret; that is our ambition—it always has been—and we have been doing it for quite some time. It is appropriate to put the point that the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, made at the end of his speech, which the noble Lord will perhaps accept as an answer of sorts. Had there been a fully functioning Executive and an Assembly discussing the Irish backstop, they may well have come up with an answer. Just let that sink in. But for many different reasons, the political parties in Northern Ireland have not been able to find the right means whereby the Executive can be restored, and that voice has been silenced. There is no point in pretending otherwise There has been debate in Northern Ireland; it just has not been taking place in Stormont. There has been serious engagement, but mostly through the pages of the media. Politicians have been involved, but not sitting in a forum such as this where they have a particular, structured debate. So voices are being raised, but the Executive themselves and the function they represent have been missing in action. When the history books come to be written of this moment, I do not doubt that a great omission in Northern Ireland will be seen, especially on the issue of the backstop. Above all others, this is the time when we need a fully functioning Assembly and Executive in Northern Ireland to thrash out, backwards and forwards, all the issues.
Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Ashton (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I took the advice of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that it would not be easy—and he has proved to be right. It is reasonable to take on board the frustrations that some of these SIs have caused—in my view, not so much because of the process which is gone through but the fact that some noble Lords do not want to leave the EU and are highlighting the effects. What they are highlighting may well be the case, but when we are trying to pass an SI such as this one we need to concentrate on its effect and—that did not take long.
Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: Foreign Trade
Thomas Ashton (Conservative, Centre-right): It is true that they may be required to have representatives in the EEA, and it is a reciprocal benefit. The impact assessment looks at the specific requirements of the SI, not at the requirements of leaving the EU. The long-term consequences for business—
Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: Technology
Thomas Ashton (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with the noble Lord who is saying from a sedentary position that that is why he is here and why it is important. However, taking my personal experience of the telecoms SI, an hour and a half in the Moses Room and an hour in the Chamber seems to be pretty reasonable scrutiny. As for how the House in general and the Government are handling SIs—
Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Ashton (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord for his view. It is clearly not for me to promise a Statement to the House. As I said before, I will agree to take back what he said and put both interventions to the House authorities. They may or may not agree. If they do not, I am sure that he will be able to raise it in an appropriate forum direct with the usual channels—both via his own Chief Whip and also directly with the Leader of the House and our Chief Whip. However, it is not appropriate, in considering an SI, to move beyond that to the wider method used by the House to address statutory instruments. Ministers certainly feel that they have been scrutinised considerably. I do not see that the noble Lord, or others who have spoken on this, are suffering from a lack of information with which to scrutinise these statutory instruments; they seem to be scrutinising fairly effectively as far as I can tell My response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, about the effect of representatives on business, is that the need to have a representative in the EEA is not as a result of this statutory instrument—it is as a result of EU law. Therefore, as I said before, the fact that we will no longer be part of the EU means that EU law will apply to us as a third country; until now, we have not been a third country.
Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Ashton (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, because it is literally impossible to have an adequacy decision until you are a third country. Therefore, you cannot have an adequacy decision in advance. What you can do, and I should have said preliminarily that we have been discussing this—I raised it over a year ago—is start the discussions with the EU, but the decision itself cannot be made before exit day. It is impossible.
Syria: UK Nationals — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat as a Statement the Answer given in the other place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary to an Urgent Question on UK nationals and Syria. The Statement is as follows: "Mr Speaker, may I start by paying my respects to the honourable Member for Newport West? Our sympathies are with his loved ones and all those in this House who were close to him Can I welcome the Urgent Question from my honourable friend? My priority as Home Secretary is to ensure the safety and security of this country. We cannot ignore the threat posed by those who chose to leave Britain to engage with the conflict in Syria and Iraq. Over 900 people took this path. Without the deradicalisation work of our Prevent programme, there could have been many more. Whatever role they took in the so-called caliphate, they all supported a terrorist organisation and in doing so have shown that they hate our country and the values that we stand for. This is a death cult that enslaved thousands of Yazidi girls and celebrated attacks on our shores, including the tragic Manchester bombing that targeted young girls Now this so-called caliphate is crumbling and some of them want to return. I have been clear that, where I can and where any threat remains, I will not hesitate to prevent this. The powers available to me include banning non-British people from this country and stripping dual nationals who are dangerous of their British citizenship. Over 100 people have already been deprived in this way, but we must, of course, observe international law and cannot do this where it would leave someone stateless. So, where individuals manage to return, they will be questioned, investigated and potentially prosecuted Our Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act, which got Royal Assent just last week, provides more powers to prosecute returnees. It extends the list of offences we can act on when they are committed overseas and it creates new laws to ban British citizens from entering designated terrorist hotspots without good reason. Our world-class police and security services closely monitor all those returning who pose any risk. We do not hesitate to use the range of tools at our disposal, including using temporary exclusion orders to put in-country restrictions in place and managing risk through terrorism prevention and investigation measures The House will have seen the comments that Shamima Begum made in the media and will draw its own conclusions. Quite simply, if you back terror, there must be consequences".
Syria: UK Nationals — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord for his questions and am happy to confirm that anyone returning to this country would be questioned and investigated and, if there is sufficient evidence, prosecuted. The principle of a fair trial is one that this country has held dear for many years and we do not intend to change that In relation to the new proscribed areas, I will take this opportunity to thank the noble Lord for the support we received from him and his colleagues on the Opposition Benches in the passing of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill. In anticipation of introducing the proscribed areas, we have been working on those, but I remind him that it will require the approval of Parliament for any new area to be so designated—and there will not be retrospective designation.
Syria: UK Nationals — House of Lords, 2019-02-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Edward Faulks (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the House may have heard the lawyer representing Ms Begum asserting that there was no law which was in any way going to be found adequate to deal with what might or might not be considered offences committed by her. My noble friend may recall that during the passing of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and I put down an amendment suggesting that it was time to update the 1351 law in relation to treason, based on a Policy Exchange paper. Might my noble friend care to reconsider the Government’s opposition to that amendment, and to take into account that a suitably updated law would in fact deal with many of the problems that are now coming up?