argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Immigration
James Peter Brokenshire (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not want to conflate, as the right hon. Gentleman seems to be doing, those who claim asylum in this country and are then determined not to have a valid asylum claim—we would therefore seek to remove them on their 18th birthday—with the arrangements we are contemplating and which I am setting out to the House this evening. Obviously, we are looking carefully at the nature of the leave that will be granted. It is important to understand and recognise that where we are seeking to reunite children with parents here, the Dublin arrangements would normally mean that they would have the same leave as the person who was here. Equally, if we are looking at resettlement, different leaves may be involved. We are looking at this carefully with UNHCR and others I hope that colleagues will agree that accepting the amendment is the right thing to do. No country has done more than Britain when it comes to help for Syrian refugees. Accepting this amendment demonstrates the Government’s approach of doing more for refugee children across the globe while upholding the principle that we should not be encouraging vulnerable people to make that perilous journey. We remain of the view that we can have the biggest impact by supporting refugees in affected regions and the countries hosting them. Those we resettle here are the exceptions and the vulnerable whom the UNHCR advise need to be resettled in a country such as the UK. That has always been the cornerstone of our policy and that should remain the case, but we recognise our duties, both in the EU and beyond.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Immigration
Timothy Paul Loughton (Conservative, Centre-right): I also pay tribute to the Government for the immense amount they have done to help displaced Syrian refugees. Will the hon. and learned Gentleman also take on board the huge pressures that are already on children in care in this country? Some 70,000 children in England are in care, and there is a shortage of 10,000 foster carers. It is really vital that we are able to offer safekeeping to those children who are coming here and to do it sustainably and not to the detriment of the other children to whom we already have a responsibility.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Other
James Gerald Douglas Howarth (Conservative, Centre-right): If the Scottish National party would like to intervene, of course I accept that intervention, but if the SNP feels so strongly about this, it should not ask the British Government for money. Put up your own money to cover the costs.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Immigration
James Gerald Douglas Howarth (Conservative, Centre-right): The whole point is that they are in safe countries. The criticism should be levelled not at the British Government, but at other Governments. If the Scottish nationalists wish to take the children in and they have the capacity in Scotland, they should pay for it themselves and not ask the Minister to go to the British Treasury to fund it. Put your money where your mouth is I fear that the Lords amendment will send out a very dangerous message. It is also an insulting message to our continental partners, whom we all know, because we see it night after night on our television screens, are wrestling with the consequences of this tragic migration flow into Europe. The Lords amendment sends out a damning message to them that they cannot cope and that their conditions are inadequate to look after vulnerable people That is my first point. My second point is this: my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) rightly asked the sanctimonious hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), who is parading his compassion—[Interruption.] We have free speech in this country. My hon. Friend made the point that there is a shortage of 10,000 foster carers in our country to look after our own children in need of foster care.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Immigration
Heidi-Suzanne Allen (Conservative, Centre-right): On that point about the language around registered children—I, too, welcome the Minister’s response to that—I am interested in my hon. Friend’s views on how we can work with NGOs to identify the children who were in Europe before the Turkey deal, because a lot of them will not be in the system.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Immigration
Helen Olivia Bicknell Whately (Conservative, Centre-right): Like many other Members of this House, I welcome amendment 87B, as a more thoughtful articulation of the widespread desire to help unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, one that takes into account the practical challenges of doing so and recognises that it will be on top of the enormous amount we are already doing to help refugees from Syria I have three brief points. First, I urge us to make sure that we take the most vulnerable young people, whether from camps in the region around Syria or from the camps in mainland Europe. Whatever we do, we must take the most vulnerable children, because our capacity to help is limited—although I believe it is greater than the numbers we have at the moment. But we should not have targets for a particular place. Let us simply make sure that we help the most vulnerable along with those who have connections to and family in the UK, and so will be more able to settle in.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Immigration
Helen Olivia Bicknell Whately (Conservative, Centre-right): I am going to be very brief, because others want to speak. My second point is that we must make absolutely sure that we avoid the pull. I know some Members are sceptical about that, but from my conversations with young men in Calais I am convinced that there is a pull factor, particularly for older teenagers—16, 17 and 18-year-olds. We must not encourage people smugglers to be paid to bring more of those people across Europe, so we must do this in a way that avoids a pull—as is, quite rightly, the plan My third and final point is we must make sure that we do it well. The Government are absolutely right to carry this out in consultation with local authorities. I represent a Kent constituency that is managing over 1,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and care leavers. It is a huge burden, and very few other local authorities have stepped up to help. I sincerely hope that more local authorities will now take on their fair share. As part of that, let us make sure that we make use of the upsurge in interest in fostering—many people have put forward their names to be foster carers—not only to look after unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and refugees but to provide more homes for British children who are in care.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Immigration
Kelly Jane Tolhurst (Conservative, Centre-right): I am actually quite sad tonight given what I have heard, because there is a clear sense and determination among Labour Members to suggest that the Government have not been doing enough. I spoke to the amendment two weeks ago, and the county of Kent has been rehoming unaccompanied minors and refugees for decades. Kent has been a gateway for people making their way to safety into this country, and this Government, and previous Governments, have been doing their bit As I have outlined previously, it is all very well making a simplistic argument—"We’ll just put these young people with foster carers"—but the reality is, as my hon. Friends have said, that we have a shortage of foster carers in this country. What I have found saddest about this whole debate in the weeks leading up to it has been that, week after week, Opposition Members have stood up and spoken about unaccompanied minors. I do not know about them, but I do a hell of a lot of work with looked-after children, and since I have been elected to this House I have not heard Opposition Members stand up and champion the outcomes of young looked-after children in this country. Labour Members have stood up and talked about unaccompanied minors, but they have not made that point I have spoken to friends on the continent over this past week, and as has been said, they feel quite depressed about the debates that we have had in this House, the accusations that have been levelled at some countries on the continent, and the fear that this is unsafe. This Government and country are doing enough.
European Convention on Human Rights — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Civil Rights
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): I am most grateful to Mr Speaker for giving me the opportunity this evening to raise the issue of the UK’s membership of the European convention on human rights. I want to focus on the issue in the context of the referendum that will take place on 23 June—and let me say, as a Brexiteer, that it is good to know that a fellow Brexiteer will be responding to the debate I should, at the outset, set out my position on sovereignty and human rights. I want our Parliament to make the laws to which United Kingdom citizens are subject, and I want our independent judges to interpret those laws without fear or favour. I believe that if Parliament does not like a court’s interpretation of the law, Parliament should be able to change that law, prospectively but not retrospectively. I also believe that supranational courts should not be able to legislate for us by judicial means. If the wording of a treaty is to be changed, it should be changed by an amending protocol and not by judges That is why I support the European convention on human rights, but am very uneasy about the way in which it has been extended by judicial activism into fields that Parliament has never approved—a prime example, obviously, is giving votes to prisoners, an issue which the Prime Minister told us made him feel physically sick—and that is why I am so keen for the United Kingdom to take back control over the making and interpretation of our laws. Currently, 60% of our laws are made by the European Union, and they can be changed at will by the European Union against our wishes, because even if all United Kingdom Members of the European Parliament vote in one way, they can muster fewer than 10% of the votes in that Parliament I applied for this debate because I am very confused about Government policy on UK membership of the European convention on human rights. I read the speech delivered by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers on 25 April, entitled "The United Kingdom, the European Union, and our place in the world". In that speech, my right hon. Friend set out what she considered to be the principles for Britain’s membership of international institutions. She said: "We need…to establish clear principles…Does it make us more influential beyond our…shores? Does it make us more secure? Does it make us more prosperous? Can we control or influence the direction of the organisation in question? To what extent does membership bind the hands of Parliament?" Having asked all those questions, she said that "the case for remaining a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights—which means Britain is subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights—is not clear." She went on to say: "The ECHR can bind the hands of Parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign" criminals "If we want to reform human rights laws in this country, it isn’t the EU we should leave but the ECHR and the jurisdiction of its court."
European Convention on Human Rights — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Civil Rights
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): Perhaps all these complexities explain why so little progress is being made on our manifesto commitment to leave the European convention on human rights. When the Minister replies, I hope that he will make it clear that the Government have not gone cold on that.
European Convention on Human Rights — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Civil Rights
James Gerald Douglas Howarth (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry that I missed the first part of my hon. Friend’s speech; I very much look forward to reading it tomorrow. While the view of the general public is that infringements on the rights of Parliament are the result of the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights, will my hon. Friend confirm that even if we were to leave the European convention on human rights and remain in the EU, we would still be subject to the same kind of interference from the European Court of Justice?
European Convention on Human Rights — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Civil Rights
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes. It would be not only the same type of interference, but graver. That is the conclusion of the House of Lords EU Justice Sub-Committee, the report of which I referred to earlier and came out today. The European Court of Justice has much greater powers and can effectively remove legislation from our statutes. The European Court of Human Rights is much more restricted and can deal only with individual cases, which then can be the subject of negotiation and we can ultimately exercise more discretion or have a greater "margin of appreciation", to put it in legal language. As Lord Woolf was saying, the European convention on human rights may not be perfect, and we may not like the way in which it has been changed by judge-made law, but most people would agree with its actual wording The European charter of fundamental rights is anathema. You may recall, Mr Deputy Speaker, that when the charter was first brought forward and the then Labour Government were saying that it would have no application to the United Kingdom, the then Minister for Europe, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), memorably said that it would have no more status in UK law than a copy of the Beano. That just illustrates the speed with which change comes about. One moment we think something has been passed which is not going to apply to us and now we find, on the highest authorities in the land, that we are indeed subordinate to the European Court of Justice and that the European fundamental rights agency and charter are supreme. My plea to the Minister is: can we get this sorted out? Will he confirm that the UK would be in an absurd position if it wanted to stay in the EU but denounced the European convention on human rights?
European Convention on Human Rights — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Civil Rights
Dominic Rennie Raab (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on securing tonight’s debate and pay tribute to his recent work as chair of the UK delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He is very knowledgeable in this field and he made a very powerful speech For all the contentious debate about human rights, few argue against the common-sense list of rights set out in the text of the European convention on human rights. The Government are and will remain committed to the protection of those rights. The United Kingdom was a founder member of the convention and was instrumental in its drafting. I have said on a number of occasions that those who suggest it was somehow an exclusively British creation are overegging the pudding or rewriting history. The negotiation of the convention saw an interesting contest of views between the common law and civil law traditions, as evidenced clearly in the travaux préparatoires of the convention, which are available online. The convention—the product of those negotiations —reflects the compromise between those two very different traditions and approaches Nevertheless, the concerns that have arisen about the convention are far less about being objections to the strict list of rights set out there; they lie more with its interpretation and application, which has been expanded and extended exponentially, well beyond what the original drafters intended. That is partly the result of judicial legislation by the Strasbourg Court, but it has been compounded by the design and structure of the Human Rights Act. It should be pointed out at this stage that serious criticisms have come from Labour Lord Chancellors, lawyers across the spectrum and senior British judges, as well as from Government Members. These problems have fuelled a rights inflation that has undermined this country’s liberal tradition of freedom and its approach to human rights, which is founded in Magna Carta and in the thinking of great British philosophers from John Locke and John Stuart Mill through to Isaiah Berlin. We have shifted towards imposing more and more obligations on government that require it to provide, rather than merely insisting that it refrain from acting in certain arbitrary ways, which was very much the history and tradition of the liberal approach. These developments have exposed us unnecessarily to judicial legislation at home and in Strasbourg that takes decisions out of the hands of this House.
European Convention on Human Rights — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Civil Rights
Dominic Rennie Raab (Conservative, Centre-right): I will come on to the manifesto commitment and resolve to deliver on it shortly I want to make this point very clearly: there are legitimate different views as to what we should include in a list of fundamental human rights. There are liberal models, Marxist models and a social democratic tradition, which informs an approach to human rights. There is even a shift from individual rights to collective ones, including environmental rights. We can take different views on that, and hon. Members will, but whatever our view, if we are a democrat, the legislation and the definition of that list of rights must be made by elected representatives who are accountable to the British people. That is the objection to a rights inflation through judicial legislation—whether it takes place at home or abroad. It corrodes the most basic principles of democracy, and that was a point that my hon. Friend made very clearly and powerfully.
European Convention on Human Rights — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Civil Rights
Dominic Rennie Raab (Conservative, Centre-right): I will come on to address that point very squarely in a moment. I hope to be able to give the hon. Lady the reassurance that she needs I will, if I may, return to some of the problems of the democratic deficit that have been created. One example that has been mentioned by Members on a number of occasions is the creeping extra-territorial extension of the convention. The negotiating record of the European convention—the travaux préparatoires—is very clear on that point. No one intended that those making military decisions on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan should or would be subject to the convention. That area was rightly left for the law of armed conflict, including international humanitarian law Another example, to which my hon. Friend referred, is the situation whereby increasingly elastic interpretations of article 8 rights to family life override the very clear public interest in deporting serious foreign criminals. The Government are clear that where there is a real risk of torture to an individual, they should not be deported, but the right to family life is an inherently qualified one and must be balanced against the rights of others. That balance, which should properly rest with Parliament, has been tipped out of kilter too much and by too great a degree by the courts. This is not to attack the ECHR. In truth, those making that point are being faithful to the convention, because paragraph 2 of article 8 makes it crystal clear that Governments should be able to qualify the right to family life to take effective law enforcement measures. In this regard, it is the judicial branch, which is, through creative extrapolation—that is the most generous gloss that can be put on it—departing from the convention. Those are two illustrations. There could be many more, but we have limited time this evening. There are two strong reasons why this Government will reform the UK’s human rights framework, and with it, our relationship with the Strasbourg Court. The Government were elected with a clear mandate to deliver that reform, and I can confirm to my hon. Friends that we remain absolutely resolute about delivering on that pledge Our proposals will remain faithful to the principles in the European convention—I hope that the hon. Lady will be reassured on that point. Our focus will be on restraining and restricting the expansion of rights by the Strasbourg Court and the Human Rights Act, without proper democratic oversight.
European Convention on Human Rights — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Civil Rights
Dominic Rennie Raab (Conservative, Centre-right): If the hon. Lady will give me more of an opportunity to address her concern As the 2015 Conservative party manifesto pledged, the Government will repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. Our aim is to protect fundamental rights, prevent the abuse of human rights law and restore some common sense to the system My hon. Friend asked for clarification—the hon. Lady did as well—on the Government’s position on the European convention. Let me repeat what I and the Justice Secretary made clear at oral questions towards the end of last month. Although we cannot rule out withdrawal from the convention forever, that is not part of the proposals that we are finalising for consultation. We aim to achieve reforms while remaining members of the European convention. Our proposals will help restore a more balanced separation of powers between the proper role of the courts and greater respect for the Supreme Court in this country, and also the proper role of the Legislature and of Parliament.
European Convention on Human Rights — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Civil Rights
Dominic Rennie Raab (Conservative, Centre-right): On the position on the convention, I think the hon. Lady will find that the Home Secretary’s remarks were made not in this House, but elsewhere. The Home Secretary is, of course, entitled to her view; there is a degree of licence and latitude in the current debate on the EU. What I have explained clearly to the hon. Lady is the Government’s position on the ECHR. On the application to the devolved Administrations—I understand the hon. Lady’s particular concerns relating to Northern Ireland—obviously we will consult fully, including with the devolved Administrations. We are mindful of the interrelationship of the convention with, and its effects on, the Belfast agreement, which she mentioned. Critically, our reform agenda is not about eroding people’s fundamental rights. The United Kingdom has a proud tradition of respect for human rights that goes back long before the Human Rights Act 1998, and long before the European convention. Our history of protecting human rights at home and fighting for them abroad stretches back over 800 years to Magna Carta, and even before that, in truth We will take no lectures from the Labour party on this front. It was the last Labour Government who introduced identity cards and proposed 90 days’ detention without charge.