argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, we support these amendments. It is not just victims of domestic violence who need help and support from housing authorities in escaping serious violence. Young people groomed and exploited by criminal gangs also need and deserve to be urgently rehoused in certain circumstances, as the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, so clearly set out Again, this needs to be a truly multiagency approach to reducing serious violence and not a police-led enforcement approach. The police need to provide information to housing authorities where they believe that someone is being coerced into criminal activity and is threatened with serious violence if they do not comply, and that taking that person out of that scenario by rehousing them can reduce the risk of serious violence I repeat that option 2 of the Government’s consultation on the serious violence duty is the best option and the one preferred by the greatest proportion of respondents to the Government’s own consultation—that of enhancing existing crime and disorder partnerships. These are the existing and well-established mechanism, where local authorities and police forces work together to prevent and tackle crime and disorder and where the local police chief and the local authority chief executive are equal partners in doing whatever each partner and others can do to reduce crime and disorder.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, can I ask the Minister to clarify something? I think the noble Baroness said that this additional duty was not necessary, as it was with domestic violence, because the violence does not happen in the home. In the example I gave, where a drug dealer owed money harasses and threatens a family to get their money back, surely you could say that that violence is happening on the doorstep, or perhaps inside the home if the drug dealer breaks the door down. Surely there is a need in those circumstances for that family to be rehoused to reduce serious violence and get them out of the way in a similar way to a victim of domestic violence.
Free Trade Agreement: New Zealand — House of Lords, 2021-10-25
Topic: Agriculture
Angela Harris (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, notwithstanding what the noble Viscount has just said, and I am grateful to him, this is not yet a done deal. It is aspirational, and I would be grateful if he would recognise the need for small farms, especially up here in the Yorkshire Dales, where I live, which are the lifeblood of our food industry, to get a fair deal from this proposal. As we have heard, we have extremely high animal welfare and food standards in this country, so will the Government promise to prevent anything entering the UK from New Zealand or elsewhere which does not comply with those standards?
Free Trade Agreement: New Zealand — House of Lords, 2021-10-25
Topic: Foreign Trade
Menzies Campbell (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I declare an interest, as a member of my family is an arable farmer in Scotland. As I listened to the Minister expounding the merits of these two agreements, it occurred to me that we have not heard much recently about the—to coin a phrase—super-duper trade agreement we were promised with the United States. What progress is being made on that agreement and when may we expect an announcement containing the necessary information from the Front Bench opposite?
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, in moving Amendment 28 in my name, I will speak also to the other amendments in this group. Those under the new legal obligation to collaborate with each other to prevent and reduce serious violence are set out in Schedule 1 to the Bill and include clinical commissioning groups and local health boards, but they do not, for example, include hospital trusts. We will come to what should be included in serious violence in a later group, but in that group, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, has an amendment to include violence that results in the victim receiving injury that requires emergency hospital treatment, or where the injury amounts to grievous bodily harm Leaving the definition of serious violence to one side until we reach that group, we know from the work of Professor Jonathan Shepherd of Cardiff University how important information about knife crime, for example, is to the police in tackling that type of serious violence. It therefore seems to be a serious omission that not all NHS bodies in the area are listed as bodies that must be consulted as provided for in Clause 7(4), particularly hospital trusts. This omission leads one to question again to what extent this is really a public health approach to tackling and reducing serious violence. I have suggested that hospital trusts, for example, are included as bodies that must be consulted, rather than specified authorities, to avoid hospital trusts being compelled to divulge sensitive personal patient information under the other provisions of this chapter Hospital trusts can also play an important role in allowing charities such as Redthread to engage with victims of knife crime at "teachable moments" when victims involved in gangs are at their most receptive to being approached to discuss a way out of their violent lifestyles, particularly when they have been seriously injured or their injuries are life-threatening. I have personally heard powerful testimony from a young father, the mother of whose child had committed suicide, realising when in A&E with a serious knife wound that his child might have to grow up without either of his parents if he did not turn his back on his violent past. This is an example of a truly multiagency, public health approach to serious violence, where those involved in violent gangs are not necessarily imprisoned—where they may be further brutalised—but are supported to turn their lives around The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, suggests that young people’s groups and religious and cultural groups must also be consulted. In these cases, such groups can have a crucial role to play in providing a safe alternative to the sense of belonging that many young people desperately seek and that criminal gangs appear to provide.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Sarah Virginia Brinton (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I support Amendment 28, tabled by my noble friend Lord Paddick, which would add each NHS body in an area to the formal list of bodies to be consulted on a local plan, including why NHS bodies should not be a specified authority. I will use one example of how critical to planning they can be to support the argument Our Liberal Democrat colleague Caroline Pidgeon, a member of the Greater London Assembly, wrote a report in 2015 to the Greater London Assembly on knife crime. She encouraged the then Mayor of London to adopt the Cardiff model in A&E to help tackle knife crime. After a long campaign, Mayor Boris Johnson finally agreed, and one of the key recommendations in Caroline’s report was to collect anonymised data Currently all accident and emergency departments in London collect anonymised data on violent crime for those who need treatment. The scheme means that A&E departments share key information on things such as the location of crime and weapons used with the police and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, while protecting personal data. This data helps to guide interventions and prevention programmes and is invaluable in gaining knowledge on violent crime patterns. This is recognised as good practice, but there is an enormous amount of learning going on in our A&E departments as they collate that data. If the Government intend to emulate this elsewhere, it would also be helpful for the Bill to recognise that there is an enormous amount of expertise in our health bodies that can help tackle serious violence. It seems logical therefore that health bodies should also be statutory consultees.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Alan Beith (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, my name is on the amendment, following that of the chairman of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I commend the committee’s work in general, with more general comments on this Bill and the two amendments to which it has given rise in this particular case I am not persuaded of the merits of having a statutory structure for local co-operation strategies. I am strongly in favour of local co-operation; it should be happening everywhere to deal with serious violence and many other problems in the system. Where that is done and works well—as it has done in youth justice, to some extent—it demonstrates its value pretty quickly However, this is a statutory scheme; because of that, statutory obligations are created and there must be accountability for them. I am in a charitable mood so I will suggest that, if not exactly careless drafting, this did not anticipate the question, "What if no provision is made for publication of the strategy?" That is what the two amendments deal with. Perhaps the Government are undiminished in their intention that the strategies will be published and will therefore be accountable to the communities in which they are deployed but, as the Bill stands, it is weak on that point and it would be much better to make it clearer This is not by any means the worst delegated power issue to arise in the Bill—I am intrigued that the Home Office got off lightly tonight, with the chairman of the DPRRC calling it not the worst department. However, in this particular case, it needs to be made much clearer that, if statutory obligations are created and strategies have the force of statute, they must be published and must be accountable to the communities in which they operate.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, particularly my noble friend Lady Brinton for her support for my Amendment 28 and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and my noble friend Lord Beith for powerfully explaining their amendments calling for the publication of strategies, despite my noble friend’s scepticism about having statutory strategies Other parts of the Delegated Powers Committee’s report criticise the fact that there is no indication that guidance issued to the Government will be published. There is also no requirement in the Bill to publish the serious violence reduction strategies; that is the main criticism in this group, as that clearly cannot be right The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, talked about drug-related homicides; I was not sure whether he was talking just about drug-fuelled perpetrators or other deaths associated with drug misuse. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, graphically illustrated the alarming increases in serious violence, particularly knife crime—there has been an 88% increase in recent years. He asked a very important question: how will this part of the Bill, and the strategies associated with it, succeed where previous strategies have failed? I am not sure we have heard the answer to that I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, that we need to do whatever it takes to make sure that we succeed this time, because we have not succeeded up until now—provided that whatever that is, is effective. Clearly, there is a need for national co-ordination, for the very good reasons she explained The noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, highlighted the need for smart objectives in strategies—specific, measurable, achievable and realistic objectives which have a timeframe. That is what effective strategies contain, and they do not appear to be present in the Bill. I thank the Minister for her comprehensive answers to the issues raised. She appeared to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, but it is not simply about sharing trends and monitoring; crucially, it is about setting smart objectives The Minister talked about clinical commissioning groups and local health boards; I have been told by my noble friend Lady Brinton, our health spokesperson, that these bodies do not include NHS hospital trusts, which at least should be included as bodies that must be consulted in developing these strategies. Accident and emergency hospital data is even mentioned in the guidance referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, as a crucial measure of serious violence, yet accident and emergency hospitals are not even required to be consulted, according to the Bill. So we need to have further discussions on these issues.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I have Amendments 35, 45, and 47 in this group. This is a very large group of amendments covering a range of issues and I apologise in advance for the length of my comments Noble Lords will forgive me for sounding like a broken record, but I go back again to the Government response to the consultation on the new legal duty to support a multiagency approach to preventing and tackling serious violence, which supports my own consultation with relevant stakeholders, which revealed universal concern that the Bill as drafted actually facilitates a police-led enforcement approach and not a genuine public health approach—a genuine multiagency approach to these issues The Government set out three proposals in that consultation: the one in the Bill, a new duty through legislation to revise community safety partnerships, and a voluntary approach. More responses were in favour of revising crime and disorder partnerships than the Government’s preferred approach set out in this Bill. Can the Minister tell the Committee what the purpose of the consultation was if the Government had already made up their mind The revising of crime and disorder partnerships was supported by 40% of respondents, including half of all police responses, compared with 37% in favour of the approach in the Bill. It is not too late to accept the result of the consultation and to revise crime and disorder partnerships. Amendment 35 is a probing amendment giving an example of how this might be done: for example, by adding authorities to existing crime and disorder partnerships Amendment 45 raises the concern that sensitive personal information, which this Bill forces public authorities and even doctors and counsellors to disclose, may be disclosed to private sector or third sector organisations that the Home Office, police forces or others may subcontract work to, to tackle or prevent serious violence, whose data security and personnel vetting procedures may not be as good as that of public sector organisations, and that this may result in sensitive personal information leaking into the public domain What assurances can the Government provide that such data, if public authorities are forced to share it, will be kept confidential? Cybercrime experts tell us that no database is secure and that data holders need to work on the basis that their security will be breached and that they need to have back-up plans. The more sensitive personal information about individuals is shared, the greater the risk that confidential information will end up in unauthorised hands, potentially used for illegal purposes such as blackmail, and ultimately end up in the public domain. Amendment 47 removes any requirement to disclose information that would breach an obligation of confidentiality.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the noble Baroness for her explanation. I did not quite understand when she seemed to suggest that this was all facilitation and to enable different authorities to share information—and that there was no compulsion to do so. Could she therefore explain Clause 17, where it says that, "if the Secretary of State is satisfied that … a specified authority has failed to discharge a duty imposed on it by section 7, 13(6), 14(3) or 16(4), or … an educational authority, prison authority or youth custody authority has failed to discharge a duty imposed on it by section 14(3), (4) or (5)(b) or 16(4)", then "The Secretary of State may give directions to the authority for the purpose of securing compliance with the duty" and can enforce that requirement by a mandatory order? In what way is that voluntarily facilitating the exchange of information? Clause 17 is all about the Secretary of State forcing authorities to share information.
Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-06
Topic: Education
Susan Garden (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 1 and 6, to which I have added my name, and to Amendment 20 in my name and that of my colleague and noble friend Lord Storey. I declare an interest for the whole Bill: I am a vice-president of City & Guilds, an organisation for which I worked for some 20 years On Amendments 1 and 6, I have been crossing out what I would have said as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has said it far more effectively than I could. I do not believe in repeating what others have said, even if I have not said it myself, so I shall just agree with what he said. It is essential that we take into account potential students—and not just the young people of Eastbourne, I suggest—who should surely be important players in any discussion. If there are no students, there is no point in employers wishing to train them. It is not just the views and interests of students but those of student unions, trade unions, relevant community groups, agencies and local government that need to be taken into account. There should also be constant dialogue with careers advisers. Funding must be made available for social mobility. An aspiring blacksmith or chef should not be disadvantaged if local needs are engineering-based. Dyslexic students should not be disadvantaged if their skillset is different from local needs. Amendment 20 ensures that providers of distance learning are brought into play. As the Explanatory Notes set out, the role in the local skills ecosystem played by providers without a local bricks and mortar presence in a particular area is taken into account in local skills improvement plans. Of course, it may not be bricks and mortar. It could be any skills area, but distance learning is truly important, as the work of the Open University and other distance providers makes clear. The OU has been a life-changer for many who could not study residentially Often, people may wish to study for employment not directly available in their area but for which they can develop skills and earn qualifications which will serve them well in other parts of the country. We should not be depriving them of the wherewithal to do just that. Throughout the Bill we shall seek to ensure that distance learning is taken into account. This amendment will do that and provide opportunities for learning to those without local provision I add my support to Amendments 11 and 81, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, a staunch supporter of the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities, but these proposals go much broader, to those who have problems with GCSE English and maths which, for so many skill areas, are not essential. To have an academic qualification in English and maths is not necessary for a whole range of perfectly useful employment opportunities. I also support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Addington, who will be following me to speak for himself. They are important amendments too I hope that the Minister will be able to look favourably on the amendments in this group.
Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-06
Topic: Education
Michael John Storey (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I ought first to declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I looked at these amendments and found myself agreeing with every single one. I looked back and remembered when we had the technical education Bill and, when we were in Committee in the Moses Room, I think there were probably about eight to 10 of us. How wonderful it is now to see how people have realised the importance of technical and vocational education—we have a proper Committee for a further education/vocational education/skills Bill I do not have a problem with local skills improvement plans—does anyone? It seems eminently sensible that you look at the needs of each locality in terms of business, job creation and development, and put that plan together. It is not something where you say, "Nationally, we will all do this"; you look at each local area. I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, talk about Cumbria. He will be pleased to know that I spent a week in Keswick and, as we walked around, virtually every single restaurant, hotel and shop had an advert pleading for people to work in the hospitality industry. Clearly, that is a skill that is needed in that area. It is obviously brought about because of Brexit, but that was a problem even when we were in the EU—there were not enough people in the hospitality industry I look at my own city of Liverpool, and back in the 1960s and 1970s we were the poorest region in Europe and, as a result, we qualified for what was called Objective 1 money—nearly €1 billion, I think. We got that twice; we got two tranches because our GDP was among the lowest in Europe. Why did we get a second tranche? Because the first time we failed completely to use the money effectively. We did not draw up a plan; we did not say, "What skills do we need? How can we turn the economy around?" We just sort of threw the money about. For example, FE colleges were booming with hairdressing and beauty treatment courses, so we gave them money to develop those courses. Yet there was a shortage at the time of engineers and of people in the construction industry, but there was no plan to say, "This is how we should be doing it." So the notion of a local skills improvement plan seems eminently sensible.