argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Warm Home Discount (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-07-19
Topic: Energy
Lynne Featherstone (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, obviously, we welcome the extension of the warm home discount, which has been successful. It has been in operation for seven years, and it benefits those in fuel poverty, so a further three years is welcome I noticed what the Minister said about energy efficiency. We on this side could not agree more that energy efficiency is massively important, and we welcome all and any measures the Government might take. However, we also encourage the Government to reintroduce the zero-carbon homes standards. When you have the opportunity to build new homes, it seems a pity not to reduce the need for heating and expense in that way. Two million low-income and vulnerable households have benefited, and the main elements remain in place and intact. I do not know how widely this consultation is marketed, as there were only nine individuals out of a total of 60 respondents. While the changes are not earth-shattering, that is a very small number for an issue that affects every household in the country I was pleased to see that the Government took notice of the concerns, and although they have agreed to reduce the threshold for suppliers, in the end all suppliers should be able to offer it or should offer it. At the moment, people are having to choose between keeping the warm home discount and saving by switching, and it seems that people would rather keep the warm home discount, even though savings might be larger than £140 by not doing so. However, we welcome these regulations.
Oil and Gas Authority (Offshore Petroleum) (Disclosure of Protected Material after Specified Period) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-07-19
Topic: Energy
Lynne Featherstone (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the legal obligation to retain specified classes of information and samples and specifying when such obligation ends is important, and these regulations will deliver that obligation clearly. What it also indicates, I hope, is that it is important to make the samples and analysis public, as opposed to keeping them hidden. That means that the exemptions such as commercial sensitivity should be very few and should be monitored to check that they are not used inappropriately The principal objective for timely and transparent access to petroleum-related information and samples was, as the Minister said, one of the recommendations in the 2014 Wood review. Making access to information a better process—I have a very similar speech to the Minister’s—can only help the industry. It is estimated that a potential £140 million in additional revenue may result from the more timely management of samples and analysis. Is it million?
Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Law and Crime
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. Unless she wishes to contradict me, I think she just said that these treaties are very important to the extent that the British Government are prepared to allow people to be executed on the basis of data provided by British companies to overseas law enforcement. The essence of these amendments is that that should not be allowed and we want that reassurance on the face of the Bill.
Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: International Affairs
Sally Rachel Hamwee (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, we welcome the Government’s significant movement towards the use of the treaty procedure, which we and, I believe, the Labour Benches argued for at the previous stage. I was concerned that the amendment was incomplete, and the Minister has explained why her amendment refers to "laying" the treaty, but not the other provisions of Section 20 and several subsequent sections of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act As the Minister has told the House, it is quite a complicated and potentially long drawn-out procedure. I accept that, but it is long drawn-out because it is designed to give Parliament a proper opportunity to have input into the final product of the treaty, with various stages for its consideration, ending up in ratification. The Minister, in arguing on the first group of amendments, stressed the importance of the procedure. She has just said that the Government might want to make a designation before ratification. It seems to me that this nullifies the impact of the procedure process, and assumes that Parliament will ratify—in other words, will vote as the Government tell it to, which is precisely the arrangement we do not want in place The Minister has, however, just talked about the treaty not coming into force until ratification—she is nodding at that, for which I am grateful. I wonder whether she would be prepared to have a discussion—she has been prepared for lots of discussions on the Bill already, for which we are grateful—about an amendment we might table at Third Reading to tidy this up, encapsulating what she has just said to the House about delaying the process until the parliamentary process has been completed. I had better move this amendment, and then we can debate it.
Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Law and Crime
Sally Rachel Hamwee (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, Amendment 7 is an amendment to Clause 5, which deals with the contents of an order. If my amendment were agreed to, subsection (2) would read: "The judge must not specify or describe in the order electronic data that … consists of or includes excepted electronic data" The clause would not include the phrase, "the judge has reasonable grounds for believing", includes excepted data. That may sound as if I am dancing on the head of a pin but I think it is quite an important issue. In Committee I explained that I was seeking a formula that was objective. The Minister responded by referring to the phrase "reasonable grounds" being used elsewhere in the Bill. Indeed, the clauses that she mentioned, Clauses 1 and 7, include that phrase but they are not about an order; they are about the basis for making an application, which I suggest is a rather different matter I accept that, as she said, the contents of data may not be known until they are produced, but without our amendment, or some such amendment, the judge could make an order that it later turned out did include excepted data. I was looking for an objectively based exception because how otherwise do you appeal? Would you be appealing against the judge’s reasonableness? That would not be the same as appealing on the basis that the data was excepted. I would find it very uncomfortable to have to appeal against whether or not a judge was reasonable. What really should be at issue is the character of the data, and we are not satisfied that the Bill really addresses that. I beg to move.
Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Law and Crime
Sally Rachel Hamwee (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, Amendment 9 is grouped with Amendment 10. I thought that the point about court rules might get a bit lost in the debate on journalistic data, which is why I separated them when we were asked to approve the groupings In the context of journalistic data, in Committee the Minister relied heavily on how rules of court would operate. Clause 11 provides that the rules "may" make provision. I appreciate that rules will be made, because that is the way things are, but drafting styles change. I find this quite difficult; I get left behind with what is the up-to-date style. In ordinary speak—and I understand that attempts are being made to make parliamentary drafting as close to that as it can be—"may" is not the same as "must" or "shall". I appreciate that there are differences between "may" and "must" elsewhere in the Bill, for instance in Clauses 8(1) and 8(3).
Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Law and Crime
Sally Rachel Hamwee (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, we have learned about the draft of the new rules and I am grateful for that. It is obviously difficult to take them in simply by listening and not reading them, although I noted the wording that one of the exceptions was that the court was satisfied that the person concerned—I am not sure what the technical term would be—"cannot" contact somebody. That is not the same as "will not" contact: anybody "can" contact someone, so I suspect that there might be a little more reflection on that Throughout the Bill’s progress, we have been told that the Government "intend" something or "expect" something. There comes a point when one hears that rather too often not to want to see something on the face of the Bill when it is material to the Bill. However, I am glad to have heard that progress has been made with regard to the rules and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
October European Council — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: International Affairs
Sarah Ludford (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, it is surely not good enough for the Leader of the House to reply to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that she cannot answer his question. You do not need to be an insider in the negotiations to realise that it is complete nonsense to say that an extension of the transition period is an alternative to the existence of the backstop, whether it is Northern Ireland-specific or UK-wide. They are apples and pears, very obviously, and I want to press her on this point. It is a longer time, surely, to find a permanent relationship that makes the backstop redundant. Why do the Government continue to create smoke and mirrors, which presumably is for internal consumption in her own party but does not give honest, real explanations Secondly, if the Government want the temporary customs arrangement to be written into the withdrawal agreement as legally binding, how is that commensurate with their professed desire to maintain the ability to make a sovereign choice to exit from the temporary customs arrangement? If it is legally binding in the withdrawal agreement, as the Government want, how can you make a sovereign choice to abandon it?
October European Council — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: International Affairs
Menzies Campbell (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, no doubt inadvertently, the Leader did not respond to the final point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. Do the Government accept that during the period of implementation or transition—call it what you will—the United Kingdom will be subject to the jurisdiction of the ECJ and that that jurisdiction will also last for as long as any extension to that period of transition?
October European Council — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: International Affairs
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Does the Leader recognise that a prolonged period of uncertainty in which many of the complex details have not been decided will be disastrous for the private and public sectors across this country? I have been briefed in the past week by people from two of Britain’s leading universities on the desperate uncertainty they have over future access to European research networks and research funding and visas for foreign academics and their wives and husbands who come to this country, and the likelihood that the Home Office visa system, which is presently close to breaking down, will break down unless this is clarified fairly quickly. If we have an agreement now which is loose and short, these details will remain uncertain. Can we be guaranteed that, before a lot of these things are swept away as we formally leave, there is much more certainty on the detail across different sectors than the Government have yet begun to talk about?
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Law and Crime
Elizabeth Barker (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I have to disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. Mark Neary had to resort to the law, not to a code of practice, to get his son out of a place where he should never have been detained. We need to have further discussions about what needs to be in the Bill and the role of regulation and the code of practice. I think she has a fundamentally wrong take on this. This is about legal protection for very vulnerable people. That sometimes has to be in a brief outline in law. It has to be stated in the Bill that a person has to be spoken to face to face. We can then go on to put a load of stuff in the code of practice about how we do that To pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, I think this is a terrible Bill containing huge holes and some real problems. If the Government take the tack they took last time, we may be able to improve it substantially, but we are in danger of putting one bureaucracy in place of another bureaucracy, and the only difference between the two is that there are far fewer protections for the most vulnerable people. We would be somewhat negligent to go ahead on that basis. I cannot approach the Bill in that way.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Education
Judith Anne Jolly (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I would like to add a few more points on training. An awful lot of people in an awful lot of new roles will require training to get whatever system that we are going to end up with up and running at pace. Which organisation will be responsible for setting up the programmes for ensuring the delivery of good-quality training? Who has the responsibility to ensure that nothing is implemented until all the appropriate professionals have received their training? There is nothing worse than determining a date to fire the gun if you discover that all the people who are going to run the system are not yet trained. Can the Minister confirm that all this will start with plenty of time before the rollout of this new system? We expect that training should be effective and ongoing. Who will assess the trainers? What is the process for ensuring quality and a national standard? We may well be able to twist something that currently exists and make it work, but I do not have that knowledge. Can he also confirm that, as part of this training, the rights of the individual will be reinforced? Will the training clarify the role that each of these professionals within this new system is going to have in ensuring that an individual’s rights are observed and respected?
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Law and Crime
Elizabeth Barker (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): How many cases have been taken to the Court of Appeal on the basis of regulations not being observed, as opposed to something in an Act? I do not expect an answer now, but I would like to know.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Social Welfare
Elizabeth Barker (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the Minister for that explanation. Given that the Bill as drafted is essentially a "get out of jail free" card for bad care home owners, the Government must have a really good evidence base to have come forward with a proposal as sweeping as that. I wonder whether the Minister can share with us the evidence that has led to the Government putting this in the Bill. It really should be quite convincing, given that it has got to this stage. It would be helpful if he would let noble Lords see that evidence.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Social Welfare
Elizabeth Barker (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I want to make a couple of quick points. The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, is of course right that the whole issue of DoLS and the community is known to be a problem. However, the examples she gave seem to me to be examples of people not understanding the DoLS legislation and applying it wrongly, rather than the legislation necessarily being wrong. It is always important to make the case for the rights of families to reject undue intrusion, but I want to share with her the case of a young man with whom a learning disability organisation was working. The organisation achieved great results and he did really well. Prior to his involvement with the organisation, he would sit all day in a part of the living room that had been bricked off by his parents, with his own chair, his own television and being fed through a hatch. That was in a domestic setting. I need not tell the noble Baroness that we need to be quite careful when drawing up legislation It is a great shame that we have been presented yet again with a piece of legislation that came out of nowhere when we could have had a proper consultation. The people who are out working in the field at the moment having to administer DoLS understand many of the problems. They know that issues that arose partially from the application of the Cheshire West ruling and the High Court judgment have caused a problem. But amending a really bad Bill is not the way to deal with this problem.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Social Welfare
Judith Anne Jolly (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I want to make a couple of points, but I first draw the attention of noble Lords to my interests in the register relating to learning disability. It is interesting how to read this amendment. I looked at it and thought about individuals in domestic settings, and the charity that I chair does just that. We put four or five individuals into a domestic setting. A proportion of them will have a DoLS. If noble Lords go into the house, it looks just like an ordinary home. Each resident pays rent and would consider it very much their home. Carers offer 24-hour support and locks are well and truly in evidence. Over the weekend, I asked our director of operations what proportion of the people we support were subject to DoLS, and she said thousands. It is just the norm I understand that the noble Baroness’s intention was to take this into a family setting where there is mum, dad and a child who may well be an adult—certainly, we see parents in their 80s caring for their children with a learning disability who may be in their late 50s or late 60s, and the parents are at their wits’ end. All that fits with this amendment so, whatever its merits, the wording needs to change but it is certainly worth pursuing.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-22
Topic: Law and Crime
Elizabeth Barker (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am glad that the noble Baroness has given us this opportunity to discuss a really important matter, albeit that it is late at night. I noted what the Minister said at various times throughout the debate about reliance on the code of practice. He will know that, as we have been trying to make clear all the way through the debate on the Bill, if some rights are not statutory rights in the Bill, then compliance is question. I rather suspect that the Bill that was presented to us was not compliant. I do not see how a Bill which, on the face of it, would enable somebody to be detained without being met and assessed by a professional person could be compliant There are a number of key matters which the Government are, at the moment, talking about putting into the code of practice—perhaps, possibly on a good day, into regulations—but which need to go back into the Bill. If they do not, the responsible body will not have the statutory responsibility to see that they are carried out. They are: the basis for the detention and the necessary and proportionate test and when that test applies; the role of IMCAs and access to appropriate persons; professional qualifications and training for people undertaking those pre-authorisation reviews; where an AMCP referral should be made; and the obligation to provide information to the person and their family about authorisation. All those things are important I say from these Benches that if we do not have considerable movement towards putting those things into the Bill, however briefly, the Bill will still be in trouble when we come to Report.
Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill — House of Lords, 2018-06-13
Topic: Transportation
Jennifer Elizabeth Randerson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the Minister for that explanation. For the information of those listening, the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, and I attempted to lay an amendment to clarify the issue of service areas, or car parks as they might be called. However, according to the rules of the House that was not possible at Third Reading, so there is no amendment from us. But there is still a question in my mind: how do the Government envisage the strategy and policy, going forward? As I mentioned the last time we discussed this, if you go to a service area on a motorway you get your electric charging near the café—very often hundreds of feet from the fuel station—but that does not appear to be what is in the Government’s mind in relation to other service areas. I would like to know what the Government’s strategy is on this. I am sorry to be raising such a detail at Third Reading but we really only talked about this on Report. I still do not have a real understanding of why the Government are not considering having regulations in relation to the car parks associated with service areas, rather than just the fuel stations.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-07
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher Rennard (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has full support from these Benches. The principle is entirely right. It is very important that we improve the reputation of this House by ending what is considered to be a farcical process of continuing to conduct hereditary by-elections. The Burns report has been referred to several times already. The Bill would actually assist the process of bringing forward Burns, which will face some problems if we do not bring an end to the hereditary by-elections because of the issue that has been raised about having a higher proportion of hereditary Peers in the House, unless we do something to stop them There is nothing with which I disagree in the regret Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. I recall that in 2010 the then Labour Government, in their Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, brought forward the abolition of hereditary by-elections and received majority support in the House of Commons. One reason why the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, should be approved is to allow the Commons to vote on the issue; if we do not approve it, the Commons will not have that say. That being said, in my view the regret Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, adds nothing to the debate. There is nothing with which I disagree but it takes up precious time and encourages the perception that there is a filibuster trying to prevent the Bill being approved. The filibuster itself brings the House into disrepute. That is enough said; I urge Members of the House to say no more than necessary in order to move on with the business, approve the Bill and discard what I consider to be irrelevant regret Motions.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-07
Topic: International Affairs
Donald Thomas (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Does the noble Lord agree that there is therefore a lacuna in the Act of Union of 1542 which incorporated Wales into the United Kingdom? Would he accept that Henry VIII powers should be put into this Act to amend that particular lacuna?