argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): I am most intrigued by the point of order raised by the hon. Gentleman, for two reasons. First of all, I think he invests me with an immediate wisdom that I cannot claim to possess on a matter which, in the previous eight years and four months of my Speakership, has not been raised with me in this Chamber in that way. I am therefore bound to say that I must reflect upon the matter. Secondly, I am even more intrigued by the sense on the part of the hon. Gentleman that it is possible to distinguish a car that belongs to a Member from any other car. My car is a very ordinary car and I do not think that there is anything to suggest that it belongs to a Member rather than to some other person, but I will look into this matter. I hope that that provides satisfaction to the hon. Gentleman and of course, very importantly, to Mrs Bone.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Gregory David Clark (Conservative, Centre-right): It is very clear that membership of Euratom requires membership of the European Union, which is why we have this Bill. We have been satisfied with the arrangements we have, and part of the negotiation will be to ensure the greatest possible continuity, but that is to be negotiated with Euratom and the partners involved. I have mentioned that the first requirement flowing from our commitments on safeguards is to have a domestic system that allows the state to know what civil nuclear material there is and where it is located, but the second fundamental principle of the global non-proliferation and safeguards regime is that there is some oversight of the system independent of the country itself. That provides obvious and necessary reassurance to the international community that material from civil nuclear programmes is not used other than for civil activities The UK has been a member of Euratom since 1 January 1973, and Euratom has carried out elements of both the domestic and the international activities set out in our agreements with the IAEA. The UK’s agreement with the IAEA on safeguards is a trilateral agreement, reflecting the relationship between the UK and Euratom. Upon withdrawal from Euratom, however, the UK’s main agreements with the IAEA will become ineffective, as they are predicated on Euratom membership. We are in discussions with the IAEA to agree replacements that reflect the UK domestic regime, including continued international verification by the IAEA. The Bill gives us the ability to give effect to precisely that regime. We have been working closely with the Office for Nuclear Regulation to ensure it will be ready to take on responsibilities for nuclear safeguarding that are currently delegated to Euratom inspectors.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the Secretary of State’s approach. Will he confirm it will mean that all the operational work that happens in the relevant plants will continue as if nothing had changed? It is done to a high standard and we wish to preserve those standards.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Gregory David Clark (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is right; there is nothing in that at all Let me state it another way: the Bill enables the United Kingdom to set up a domestic safeguards regime to enable us to meet international safeguards and nuclear non- proliferation standards after we withdraw from Euratom, no matter what the outcome of the negotiations. So we are being prudent and prepared, taking these steps now, in very good time. The ONR does not currently have this role because, under the Euratom treaty, all members, including the UK, subject their civil nuclear material and facilities to nuclear safeguards inspections and assurance carried out by Euratom. Euratom then provides reporting on member states’ safeguards to the IAEA, which conducts nuclear safeguards globally. The United Kingdom's new regime, established under this Bill, will ensure that the UK has the right regime in place to enable the ONR to regulate nuclear safeguards following withdrawal from Euratom—it could not be more simple. That will ensure that the UK continues to maintain its position as a responsible nuclear state following withdrawal from Euratom.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Gregory David Clark (Conservative, Centre-right): Is the hon. Lady saying that it is wrong for this House and this Government to prepare, in a prudent and orderly way, to maintain the excellent safeguards that we have? Is she somehow criticising that preparedness?
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Other
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady is going on and on, as is her wont, about the Government not giving the Opposition enough time or opportunities to vote against their proposals. There will, however, be a vote tonight on this Bill, so will the Opposition vote for or against it?
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher James Green (Conservative, Centre-right): We are very early on in the negotiations, and I am sure the Minister for Climate Change and Industry and the Department for Exiting the European Union will look at that The extraordinary aspect of this debate is that some people are saying we will go off a cliff edge and valuable radioactive isotopes will no longer be available. What does that suggest about our friends in the European Union—that they will no longer sell these products, or that they will choose not to allow those products to be sent over to the United Kingdom? It is extraordinary to suggest that such sales will cease.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher James Green (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, I understand that some half-lives can be as short as six hours, so the efficacy of the isotopes will diminish in an incredibly short period. However, to say that the European Union and the British Government are not fully aware of that and that getting such materials from Europe over to the United Kingdom cannot or will not happen is extraordinary.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher James Green (Conservative, Centre-right): There will be an ongoing consultation on the relationship the university and scientific sector in the United Kingdom wants on the successor programme. As I am sure the hon. Gentleman will know, Horizon 2020 really focuses on top-end research—the things that we often do very well in the United Kingdom—which is why this country has a disproportionately large share of the Horizon 2020 money. On the successor programme, however, the moneys may be directed towards capacity building, which would favour other regions of the European Union more and the United Kingdom less. We must look into that and watch the direction of travel in the European Union. This is not set in stone, and we should not think that the successor programme to Horizon 2020 will merely "cut and paste" what we have today My big concern about where we go from here, post-Brexit, is the migration to the United Kingdom of European Union citizens and people from across the world who want to take up jobs in the nuclear industry. There is a huge opportunity in this, post-Brexit, for trained and qualified staff who currently work in Euratom to come across and work in the United Kingdom or for us to recruit and bring in people from across the world. Once we leave the European Union, we will have an opportunity to set the skill requirements we need in this country.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): I let the hon. Gentleman make a long intervention when I realised that there was a point that he wanted to make. I just want to make the point that this does not create a precedent for long interventions, as it was a special case.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. There is no need for hon. Members to contradict the hon. Lady, although I know that they are trying to be helpful. She made a slip of the tongue in referring to me as a Chair rather than as a Deputy Speaker, but I know what she meant.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Other
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): Realising the risk that I take by making this comparison, may I say that it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson)? She and I served on the Procedure Committee together for some time. I listened to her speech with great attention, but I have to say in all good humour that she did a very good caricature of the P. G. Wodehouse quote that it is not very hard to distinguish between a Scotsman or Scotswoman and a ray of sunshine. Her speech was the Don Quixote speech of this debate: there is nothing good in the Bill; we are all going to go to hell in a handcart and—[Interruption.]
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Other
Oliver Heald (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend accept that it is a great pleasure for a lawyer to hear some pleasant congratulatory words from a colleague in the House? I just could not resist saying, "Hear, hear!" which I think is in order.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Other
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a valid point. These debates often get stuck in a groove on the gramophone, the needle gets stuck and we do not knock it forward. I think it was John Maynard Keynes who said, "When the facts change, I change my mind." A concern is raised, it is addressed, it ceases to be a concern and we move on to something else. I am not saying there will be no other concerns.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): No, this is not dismissing them either. Are Members honestly saying that when a question is asked and someone answers it, weight can only be given to that answer if it compounds the premise of the question that was raised? [Interruption.] That might be how the Scottish National party goes about doing its politics and its business, but it is not a particularly good way of doing it. People have raised a concern that leaving Euratom may well have an impact on access to this vital ingredient. As this vital ingredient is not covered by Euratom now, it goes beyond eccentricity to suggest that by coming out of this organisation some sort of control is going to be placed on this ingredient, as the organisation we are potentially leaving does not have control of its trade in the first place. I say to Opposition Members that that is a non sequitur. We have been trying to answer calmly and rationally a concern raised by serious and sensible medical practitioners, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds mentioned, we have heard from our Science Minister, who is held in high regard by those in the scientific and medical research community, irrespective of any of their political affiliations. Save for slashing our wrists and writing it in our life’s blood on the wall here in the House of Commons, I am not sure what assurance SNP Members are going to accept.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. It will be obvious to the House that a great many Members wish to take part in this important debate and that, although all speakers from the Opposition Benches have completed their speeches, a great many Members on the Government Benches wish to speak. I am afraid that I will have to impose a time limit from now on of six minutes. I am sorry that that may come as a surprise to Mr Mark Menzies, but I am sure that he will be able to deal with the matter.
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Kevin John Foster (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill is also about building public confidence, and that developing civil nuclear power is separate from anything being used for military purposes? That is why these safeguards are absolutely right. They make it clear that civil nuclear is completely separate from any other objectives.
Business without Debate — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): We now come to motion 5 relating to the Backbench Business Committee, but I advise the House that there are several other motions up to and including motion 13. These matters fall within the auspices of the Chair of the Committee of Selection, who is in his place, looking eager and expectant and ready to move the motion. I trust that, with the leave of the House, we can take motions 5 to 13 together.
Business without Debate — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): We come now to the petition—[Interruption.] It is unaccountable and incomprehensible that Members do not wish to hear the presentation of the petition, given its likely content and the identity of its proposer, but if Members do insist on leaving the Chamber, I should be most grateful if they did so quickly and quietly, conducting their private conversations outside the Chamber rather than noisily in it. In fact, some of them are so absorbed in their noisy conversations that they are not even conscious that they are being advised not to conduct them, but I feel sure that those noisy Members are now departing the Chamber and we are immensely grateful to them.
National House Building Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Housing
Stephen Daniel Double (Conservative, Centre-right): High on the list of priorities for many people in our country is the desire to own their own home. Indeed, a recent British social attitudes survey found that 86% of those asked said that they wanted to buy their own home. The UK has a long heritage of home ownership, which sets us up as different and distinct from many of our European neighbours. As the saying goes, an Englishman’s home is his castle. I am sure that that is also true of the Scottish, the Welsh, the Irish and, indeed, the Cornish. It is in our culture that we value highly that little bit of the country that we own and call home There is no doubt that our country faces a huge challenge with the housing market. Demand, for all sorts of reasons, outstrips supply. The Government are right to encourage new house building—those houses need to be in the right places, through plan-led development, and they need the infrastructure and services to support them. There is no doubt, however, that we need to increase the supply of housing in our nation. I welcome the new extension of the Help to Buy scheme that will help first-time buyers to get on the property ladder and achieve the dream of owning their own home with only a 5% deposit. However, if we are to achieve the aim of building hundreds of thousands of houses that people will purchase and thus participate in our capitalist democracy, we need to ensure that they can be confident that those homes will be of a good quality in both design and construction While the majority of new homeowners are satisfied with the build quality, minor issues aside, figures from the Home Builders Federation and the National House Building Council show that a staggering 27% of buyers said that their homes had more problems than they were expecting. One national house builder recently saw its share value plummet by 10% on the news that it has set aside a staggering £7 million to resolve what have been described as "customer service problems". With contracts signed, deadlines agreed, and maybe a chain involved, buyers have little or no option but to move into their new home, despite it sometimes not being finished to their satisfaction Often new homebuyers discover faults and poor workmanship that go way beyond reasonable, and even understandable, snagging. Some faults and problems are very serious indeed. So just when buyers are at their most vulnerable, too many discover serious building defects. No doubt when faults emerge, they look to the 10-year warranty almost universally offered on new homes. Several companies offer such products, but the market is dominated by the NHBC, which has roughly 80% of the market. In essence, for the first two years the builder is responsible for remedial works. If there is a dispute, then the warranty company will act as adjudicator, or if the builder is no longer trading, the warranty company steps in. After two years, the warranty company takes responsibility for the remaining eight years. The 10-year warranty is presented as a benefit and reassurance to the new homeowner.
National House Building Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Housing
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is talking about quite serious snagging problems, and slightly worse. Would he, like me, put more emphasis on getting those who produce neighbourhood plans to spend more time on making sure that the design is right rather than waiting for the buildings to be built and then people finding the snagging?
National House Building Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Housing
Stephen Daniel Double (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree that we need to put more attention into the design of the housing that we are building rather than just building to the usual design standards The experience of many is that when they take out the 10-year warranty, the insurers routinely resort to delay and obfuscation, denying and hindering legitimate claims for truly shocking examples of poor workmanship and defects or offering cost-cutting remedial works that fall short of producing a satisfactory solution.
National House Building Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Housing
Johanna Peta Churchill (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem with many of the big house builders, such as the one he alluded to that set aside a large contingency fund for these issues, partly stems from the fact that they have no workforce of their own, particularly no site managers and the like? Interestingly, that company said recently that it would not support the levy continuing for the Construction Industry Training Board, which is having to be subsidised by architects and small builders, and not by the large house builders that we should arguably be holding more to account?
National House Building Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Housing
Stephen Daniel Double (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention; she makes a very good point. At the heart of this problem is the quality control on building sites. Too often, subcontractors are used and there is not the level of management oversight of the quality of their workmanship that there has been in the past and that we need to see today I have been seeking to assist a couple in my constituency who had obvious and serious problems with their new-build house. They first discovered the serious defects with their newly built property eight weeks after taking possession. Four years later, they are still fighting their case. They purchased their brand new house for £395,000. The most recent estimate of the cost of rectifying all the faults and defects comes to £325,000. That is truly shocking, and it is surely a sign of the complete failure of the inspection regime. The level of defect is such that somebody must have known about the problems before completion.
National House Building Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Scott Leslie Mann (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Is he aware of an organisation in my constituency called Casa Snaggers? It is an independent snagging company based in Launceston. Does he think that it might help to resolve issues of the sort faced by the couple in St Austell?
National House Building Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Housing
Stephen Daniel Double (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend and Cornish neighbour for that intervention. I have heard of that company, and getting an independent inspection of a new property before signing the completion papers is one way to address the issue.
National House Building Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Housing
Johanna Peta Churchill (Conservative, Centre-right): Surely the fundamental point is that when someone spends nearly £400,000 on a product, they expect, under their consumer rights, that product to be fit for purpose—a house should stand under its own construction and be there for the duration. We should be asking for that, rather than relying on a third-party snagging company.
National House Building Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Housing
Johanna Peta Churchill (Conservative, Centre-right): Is my hon. Friend aware of whether any statistics on this are collected by the Department so that it can understand which builders are particularly poor and allow planners or other people to get involved at an earlier point?
National House Building Council — House of Commons, 2017-10-16
Topic: Housing
Stephen Daniel Double (Conservative, Centre-right): I am aware of what has been reported in the press, but I am sure that those data should be available, given the way in which the NHBC operates. That could certainly be followed up There appears to be a closed shop or old boys’ network, with the industry looking after itself, rather than the consumer. By contrast, recent legislation has strengthened consumer rights further, so that faulty goods can be rejected and a full refund obtained, but not so with housing. Homes are specifically excluded from the Sale and Supply of Goods Act 1994. The homeowner has far more consumer rights and protection for a new kettle in their kitchen than they do for the new building that houses it. For the vast majority of people, buying a new home will be the biggest purchase they ever make, and surely we should provide more adequate protection for them. On the thankfully very rare occasions when the builder has completely failed to construct a property fit for habitation, house purchasers should not have to resort to the courts to establish their rights. Sadly, that is too often the case in the current set-up Building houses is high on the Government’s agenda, and with plans for 1 million homes to be constructed, now is the time to ensure they are built well, are fit for purpose and consistently fulfil the reasonable expectations of those who buy them. When something goes wrong, there should also be a system in place to protect the purchaser. A recent report by the all-party group for excellence in the built environment made a number of recommendations. I urge the Minister to read the report and to consider its recommendations. As well as calling for a review of the warranty market, the all-party group also called for the introduction of an independent housing ombudsman.