argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Police Officer Numbers: Lancashire — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Catherine Jane Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I am sure, Mr Speaker, you will wish to join me in paying tribute to Lancashire police, who responded over the weekend to the devastating effects of Storm Ciara, alongside all the other emergency services The Minister points out that Lancashire is to receive 153 officers under this core grant allocation-style funding, but Lancashire has lost 750 police officers since 2010. On that pattern, we will not regain the total number of officers lost, whereas Surrey, which has lost eight officers since 2010, looks to be gaining hundreds of officers under this funding formula. Can the Minister explain to my constituents why that is fair?
Criminal Justice System — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Questions: What steps she is taking with the Attorney General and the Secretary of State for Justice to help ensure that people have confidence in the criminal justice system.; What steps she is taking with the Attorney General and the Secretary of State for Justice to help ensure that people have confidence in the criminal justice system.
Katherine Anne Green (Labour, Centre-left): It is not just in the CPS that there are delays and bottlenecks. The Home Secretary will know that in the court system, too, there are very significant delays exacerbated in some cases by the lack of access to legal aid, which means defendants having to represent themselves. Will she say what discussions she is having with her counterparts in the Ministry of Justice about speeding up the courts process?
Criminal Justice System — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Questions: What steps she is taking with the Attorney General and the Secretary of State for Justice to help ensure that people have confidence in the criminal justice system.; What steps she is taking with the Attorney General and the Secretary of State for Justice to help ensure that people have confidence in the criminal justice system.
Kevin Denis Brennan (Labour, Centre-left): One group of people who often do not have confidence in the criminal justice system are those with autism and their families. They often get caught up in the criminal justice system inappropriately. Will the Home Secretary agree to work with Ministers in other Departments and perhaps set up a cross-ministerial working group to ensure that people with autism are not unnecessarily caught up in the criminal justice system?
County Lines: Exploitation of Children — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Carolyn Harris (Labour, Centre-left): With no statutory definition of "child criminal exploitation", different safeguarding agencies and police forces understand the risks differently, but county lines exploitation is everywhere. In order to comply with Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary’s recommendation that we need a unified definition in law of child criminal exploitation, when can we expect such an announcement so that we truly safeguard these child victims?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Questions: I have received significant online abuse, intimidation and threats. I believe that that kind of abuse on social media, directed at me and others, is simply unacceptable. It puts off people from making a difference in public life. I have received considerable online support from many of my constituents, and for that I should like to show my appreciation. What are the Government doing to protect people who would want to stand for public office?; My constituency has one of the fastest-growing populations of any constituency in the country, partly because it is such a wonderful place to live, but police numbers, which are partly based on lagging population figures, have not kept pace. Will my hon. Friend tell me what the Government are doing to increase police numbers in Cambridgeshire?; Does my hon. Friend agree that Neighbourhood Watch is a vital asset to the detection of crime? Will he join me in putting pressure on the Mayor of London to continue to support Online Watch Link—OWL—the online system that is used by more than 100,000 London Neighbourhood Watch members and that has secured more than 1,200 hours-worth of sentences for criminals in my council ward in my constituency alone?; Glasgow has had plans for a medically supervised drug consumption room since 2016, and the evidence worldwide points to the efficacy of such rooms, so when the UK Government hold their drugs summit in Glasgow later this month, will they act on the evidence and bring in solutions for urgent change, or will it be more of the same from this Government?; Over the weekend, a large number of illegal migrants were detained trying to cross the channel. Last summer, the Prime Minister warned migrants crossing the channel that the United Kingdom would “send you back”. I have read that few of these migrants are actually sent back, because they have claims for asylum, but surely if they leave a perfectly safe country such as France and try to enter our country illegally, they should not be able to claim asylum. Will the Home Office get a grip and send these people back, in order to stop this illegal trade?; In the west midlands, violent crime is up 27%, the homicide rate is rising and, in Birmingham, drug crime is at a six-year high. The Home Secretary admitted last week that some communities had been “neglected and left behind”. Given the rises in violent and drug crime in Birmingham, will she accept that her comments include my city, and will her Department finally step up to the plate and do something about this?
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): I just want to reassure the House that, in fairness to the Home Secretary and me, we took very seriously threats made against MPs and candidates during the last election, so much so that we were constantly in touch to make sure that support was being given. That support will continue to be available to all MPs. Please, if a threat is made to any MP, make sure that you report it. The House and I and the Home Secretary will ensure that your safety comes first. Please do not shy away from reporting any incidents.
Deportation Flight to Jamaica — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Janet Jessica Daby (Labour, Centre-left): A number of those facing deportation tomorrow were found guilty of drug-related offences and have served their time. Meanwhile, we have a Prime Minister who has said that he took cocaine, which is a class A drug. Is it one rule for some and another for others?
Deportation Flight to Jamaica — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): Will the Minister provide the House with some facts, in particular the individual sentences and the offences of those on the flight; the age at which they came to this country; and whether any of them were affected by the lack of mobile phone coverage, which the Home Office recognises was an issue?
Deportation Flight to Jamaica — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Abena Oppong-Asare (Labour, Centre-left): One of the individuals facing deportation tomorrow came to the UK aged five. He committed a crime aged 17 and did the time many, many years ago. Is it fair to punish people for mistakes they have already paid for?
Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Home Secretary for giving way. I know she is impatient with my impatience, but I am speaking on behalf of constituents of mine who died while waiting for their compensation. They were promised that compensation before they died, and their relatives are still unclear about whether any of this is ever going to be resolved. That is why I am impatient. Can she even tell us how many people have died while waiting for their compensation to be settled?
Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Lucy Maria Powell (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Home Secretary for giving way. Some of the cases are, indeed, complicated, but does she agree with me and many of my constituents with whom I have spoken, that her Department has overcomplicated the issue? As she said at the beginning of her speech, we cannot put a value on some of these things. The approach being taken is arbitrary, but she could apply discretion and make it a lot simpler
Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Margaret Olivia Hillier (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend will have noted in the letter that we have seen from the second permanent secretary at the Home Office that of the more than1,000 claimants, only 36 have been settled to the tune of just over £62,000. Does she not agree that, although extending it is not a bad thing in one way, it is in danger of delaying the very vital payments that so many of our constituents deserve?
Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Diane Julie Abbott (Labour, Centre-left): The amounts being paid out are indeed pitiful. They do not compensate for material loss, or for the misery, the fear and the uncertainty under which too many people have laboured for too long There is no justification for the smallness of the amounts payable under the Government’s scheme. With criminal injuries, the state has no liability; these are serious injuries done to ordinary citizens by criminals, and we as a Parliament have rightly decided that assistance should be given to the injured. There is clearly Government liability in the case of the Windrush scandal; it was caused by Government policy, but in this case the compensation is lower. What is the rationale for that? Among other things, there should be due compensation for all the legal advice that sufferers from the Windrush scandal may have required. Also, it is wholly unacceptable that people wrongly deported or refused re-entry will apparently not be compensated for that We also learn that only slightly more than 1,000 people have applied for compensation. Obviously, that is the reason why Ministers decided to extend the scheme, but what assessment has the Home Office made of the reasons for such low numbers of applications?
Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Lucy Maria Powell (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is making a very strong argument, and I think that Members on both sides of the House support much of what he is saying. But as I said to the Home Secretary earlier, the issue is about whether criminals are regarded as British citizens or not. We are making a retrospective judgment, instead of making the judgment that we should be making. That is the issue here. We cannot be making a moral judgment today about someone’s right to be here, when they arrived 40 or 50 years ago; they had that right then and it should be acted on now.
Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Margaret Olivia Hillier (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman says that it was not intentional, but many of us were raising concerns for some time about constituents who were facing this very situation. The Home Office and Ministers failed to put that together to see that there was a systemic issue. Does he not at least acknowledge that? I hope we would all agree on both sides of the House that the Home Office systems are not, and have not been for some time, up to scratch and need to be improved.
Social Security — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Michael Lee Amesbury (Labour, Centre-left): This uprating order will increase a range of social security entitlements and pensions. As a result of the Government’s Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, most working-age benefits and tax credit elements have been subject to a four-year freeze, covering the period 2016-17 to 2019-20. It is a basic human right to have security and stability in our lives, secure housing, reliable income, and support when things get difficult. Society’s choices about benefit levels help to determine the levels of inequality and living standards, sometimes for the most vulnerable in our society.
Social Security — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Katherine Anne Green (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, especially as I did not have the opportunity to intervene on the Minister. Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the fairnesses that we have to consider is intergenerational fairness? We are seeing a widening discrepancy between the protection for pensioners—rightly—through the rise in the basic state pension, and what is provided for those on working-age benefits. If people on working age benefits are kept in very difficult financial circumstances, they cannot save for their old age. Is not this really politically motivated, rather than a genuine policy to achieve better equality and protect the most vulnerable?
Social Security — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Michael Lee Amesbury (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a very valid and powerful point For too many of our citizens, there is no such security. The responsibility for this situation lies firmly at the door of the Government, whose lack of compassion and cruel social security policies have afflicted those who are most in need.
Social Security — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Michael Lee Amesbury (Labour, Centre-left): Unfortunately, the Labour party is not in government, but I will say to the hon. Gentleman that the cuts have amounted to £4.7 billion per year, so the so-called investment that the Government propose pales into insignificance against that As we have heard from the Minister today, the Government intend to end their four-year freeze on benefits by proposing to uprate working-age benefits in line with the CPI rate as of September 2019, which was 1.7%. We welcome that slight step forward. Remarkably, for a range of benefits and not just universal credit, this will be the first cash increase in basic entitlements since April 2015. It is important to point out that there has not been any recent change in policy from the Government: the freeze was always due to come to an end in April this year, as announced by the previous Chancellor If we scratch beneath the surface of the increase, we find that, after adjustment for price increases, the four-year benefit freeze has actually meant a cut in the real level of benefits by 6%. In many cases, that has come on top of earlier cuts. The 2015-16 benefits freeze followed uprating by only 1% each year in the three years prior to its introduction. There is, therefore, now a yawning gap between the level of benefits offered and essential living costs. Those political choices have consequences, with child poverty, homelessness and in-work poverty at alarming levels, as evidenced in the recently published Joseph Rowntree Foundation UK Poverty report. Indeed, under this Prime Minister, children will receive a miserly increase of 75p per week in child benefit, and the second child just 55p per week.
Social Security — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Deborah Angela Elspeth Marie Abrahams (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making a lengthy and well thought-out speech, unfortunately not reflected by the Government. He mentioned the increase in child poverty and the concerns that so many charities, including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, have. Their conclusion is that the cuts in social security are driving not only child poverty but disability poverty. Does he agree?
Social Security — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Michael Lee Amesbury (Labour, Centre-left): I do agree with my hon. Friend. Social security has become a vehicle for cuts and children have borne the brunt, with over 4 million now in poverty The 75p per week for the first child will not even buy a loaf of bread in many shops. As a result of the four-year freeze, families living in poverty are now a total of £560 worse off a year on average, equivalent to three months of food shopping for low-income families. Harsh and punitive Conservative policies such as the benefits freeze, the two-child limit and the five-week wait have created a society in which people are forced to turn to food banks in ever-increasing numbers just to get by The flagship social security reform of universal credit is not working. The full roll-out will now be delayed yet again until 2024, seven years behind the original plan. It is driving far too many people into poverty, debt and rent arrears. One of its key defects is the in-built and unrealistic five-week wait. At what stage will the Minister apply common sense and change that to fortnightly payments According to latest figures available, in 2018-19 the Trussell Trust distributed just short of 1.6 million emergency food parcels, of which 578,000 went to children—the highest level since the charity opened and up nearly 20% on the previous year. In some parts of the UK—Scotland and London and the north-east—the percentage increase year on year was even higher. That represents a depressing 73% increase in food bank use over the past five years, and the Trussell Trust identifies the failing benefits system as one of the main reasons behind that. Behind these devastating statistics are real people, families and children up and down the country, many of them in the constituencies that the new Tory MPs in the north represent I turn to the freeze in the local housing allowance. Evidence suggests that it has been a particular source of hardship because of the increasing number of people forced into private rented accommodation by the shortage of social housing. The charity Shelter has calculated that as a result of the benefit freeze, 94% of areas in the UK are unaffordable for people claiming LHA. Recent research by the charity Crisis and the Chartered Institute of Housing found that almost 93% of areas were still unaffordable. There are huge discrepancies throughout the country. For example, an average of £87 a month would be needed to make the bottom 30% of the rental market available in the UK. However, in London a claimant would need an extra £1,398, so the uprate of £10 per month is totally unrealistic.
Social Security — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Michael Lee Amesbury (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is totally correct. It is not sensible at all The devastating repercussions of 10 years of Tory austerity and the impacts of the benefit freeze will remain for a long time to come. The 1.7% uprate is a token mild thaw at the tip of the iceberg of systematic and pernicious cuts to the benefit system. It is too little, too late, and it does nothing to repair the damage done to people’s lives by this Government’s failed social security policies. It has served to further entrench poverty in society. For those reasons, it is Labour’s intention to abstain from voting on this statutory instrument.
Social Security — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Deborah Angela Elspeth Marie Abrahams (Labour, Centre-left): On that point, I wonder what the hon. Member thinks of the Citizens Advice proposal that all frozen benefits be uprated not just by CPI, but by CPI plus 2% for the next four years. That would go some way to addressing the appalling imbalance, and the poverty that so many of our children and our disabled people have found themselves in.
Social Security — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Deborah Angela Elspeth Marie Abrahams (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend—the new Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee—for giving way. Many of us are concerned that the Government’s proposed increase is not at all going to rectify the dreadful social security situation that exists at the moment. Is he as concerned as I am about this?
Social Security — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Macroeconomics
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): I am very concerned. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think that the Government are making sure that the situation is not going to get worse, or at least not much worse, but they are certainly in no way putting right the damage that has been done over the last few years—indeed, over the past 10 years.
Social Security — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Katherine Anne Green (Labour, Centre-left): Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a cruel lack of logic in the household benefit cap because it is a blunt instrument that takes no account of different family structures and different forms of need in different households?
Pensions — House of Commons, 2020-02-10
Topic: Labor
Michael Lee Amesbury (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for his comments On the uprating of the state pension in line with the triple lock, we are pleased that the Government have kept to this despite some voices on the Conservative Benches arguing, at an early stage, that the triple lock should be scrapped. This comes at a time when pensioner poverty is on the rise for the first time in five years, according to the recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, "UK Poverty 2019/20". The shadow pensions Minister, my hon. Friend—my good friend—the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who cannot be with us today, is correct to assert that the Government have failed to encourage take-up of pension credit, which is down from 70% in 2010 to 64% in 2016-17, and have introduced new rules on eligibility that put a young partner at potential risk of being sanctioned and could leave couples over £7,000 a year worse off The other point I would like to pick up on with the Minister and the Government is that they have failed to address the financial hardship faced by millions of women born in the 1950s due to the hurried and unfair changes in pensions policy. I do hope that the Minister and the Government rectify this to ensure that these millions of women get justice over the duration of this Parliament Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2020, which was laid before this House on 27 January, be approved.
Road Safety — House of Commons, 2020-01-30
Topic: Transportation
Lilian Rachel Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): The right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) has this week accused Highways England of "a shocking degree of carelessness" in rolling out all-lane-running motorways, and the chairman of the Police Federation has described smart motorways as "inherently dangerous" and "a death trap". I welcomed the Secretary of State’s announcement of a rapid evidence stocktake, and he promised to bring forward recommendations in a matter of weeks, but it has now been three months. What is he going to do, and when, to prevent further avoidable deaths?
Road Safety — House of Commons, 2020-01-30
Topic: Transportation
Karl Turner (Labour, Centre-left): It has been clear for some time that all-lane-running motorways are death traps. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) has pointed out, five people have been killed in just 10 months on a 16-mile stretch of the M1. The Secretary of State has the power to scrap these dangerous motorways now, so will he stop this dither and delay and act now to avoid further tragic deaths and serious injuries? Will he also assure the House that there will be no restoration of these motorways without full radar coverage?