argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Karen Anne Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): May I start by referring to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests? I congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing this debate and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) on the fantastic contributions that he has made to this debate over many, many years. I have to confess that I was not expecting a full seven minutes. I have three points to make, although I will pad them out slightly more than I might have done in the three minutes that I was expecting My first point is about the way in which we conduct foreign policy in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, referred to this issue earlier. If the UK wants to have a policy-based foreign policy that is led by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which is now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, it needs to include within that the trade policy and defence policy. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office was a very good policy Department; it was excellent at policy. The old Department for International Development was an excellent delivery Department, as are the Department for International Trade and the Ministry of Defence I can well understand why a Prime Minister would wish to restructure our approach to foreign policy; having a Foreign Secretary who is responsible for all areas of foreign policy makes an enormous amount of sense. But government works by having Ministers with different responsibilities and having tension between those Ministers. A Minister—particularly a Minister at Cabinet—responsible for international development focuses their efforts on that, and the Foreign Secretary could consider the whole range of foreign policy with the Secretary of State for Defence, the Secretary of State for International Trade and that Secretary of State for International Development. Not having that seat at the Cabinet table, not having that dedicated Department and not even having a dedicated Minister within the Department is a mistake from the point of view of the United Kingdom, because that political tension makes for better decision making.
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Karen Anne Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): I absolutely agree; that is my point. If our ambassadors are responsible merely for diplomatic relations, that is one thing, but if they are to be responsible for making decisions around international development, they should also be responsible for decisions around defence and trade, because it is all part of one policy area. It is actually much healthier for government—[Interruption.] The Minister looks like he wants me to give way. Does he wish me to sit down? I will.
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Karen Anne Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. This is not an either/or. Money spent there will save money upstream. I know that the Treasury scorecard is very difficult to comprehend and that this is not necessarily how it works, but that relatively small amount of money will save enormous amounts of money at home and will make the world a better place for all of us My final point is on the British Council. I am disappointed by the situation that we have arrived at. I know that the Government have put an enormous amount of money into the British Council. The British Council is normally pretty much self-sustaining. Its language schools and language business mean that it pays for about 85% of its costs in normal times—but, as I have said, we are not in normal times. Like so many other organisations, the British Council has not been able to deliver the services that it would have delivered and therefore make the income that can and needs to make. We are talking about money for two years so that it can get back on its feet. The price that we will pay for not meeting that request by the British Council is that we will see the closure of offices around the world, including in the US, Afghanistan and other places I said in respect of international aid that other countries will move in; there can be no doubt about the significance of the British Council and its offices, and about the idea of another power moving into those offices where the British Council has been. Yes, the British Council sells language services to the public, but the service it provides to the United Kingdom is about far more than just language services. The British Council is about Britain’s place in the world and is perhaps the most visible part of our soft power that anyone sees in any country they have visited. I was able to travel the world as a Minister at many levels and as a Select Committee member, and the British Council was always present, promoting Britain, British values and British interests. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister: please try to find a way to support the British Council so that we do not have to see the closure of posts. Once we have moved out and those relationships are lost, they will never be regained; someone else will move in and we will be a poorer country for it.
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Tobias Martin Ellwood (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend says that comments about Dover are not applicable to this debate, but I argue that they absolutely are. We do not explain to the British people how this money can be spent and that it does affect them directly. If we did, we would have more support for confirming the 0.7% commitment, rather than old-fashioned views about where the money has been spent—and I agree that some of it has been spent badly in the past. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to focus on this issue, because when international development money is spent correctly, it will be supported by the British people.
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sure that is right. I accept that if we took an opinion poll in the Gainsborough constituency, a majority—perhaps even a strong majority— would be in favour of these cuts. I accept that, but if for a moment the Government explained what the money is spent on, they would find that the British people are kind and humanitarian. People in Lincolnshire often say to me, "Why are we giving money to India? They have aircraft carriers and a space programme." I shall leave aside the utter poverty of hundreds of millions of people in Uttar Pradesh; why are we living through this horrible lockdown? Why are we spying on Ministers with cameras and having a complete moral void? Because of the delta variant, which has come from where? India. Whether it is the pandemic or migrants, we cannot insulate ourselves from the world. That is why we have an overseas aid programme.
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Karen Anne Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): A point that I wanted to make—I ran out of time despite the fact that I had more than three minutes—is that actually, for many people 0.5% is the wrong percentage as well; the amount of aid that they wish to be spent is zero. So actually the Government, by going from 0.7% to 0.5%, are not achieving anything in terms of popularity.
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): That is precisely the point that I wanted to make By the way, I am proud of the work that we did on the Public Accounts Committee to get an estimates day debate that actually discusses estimates. In the past, before our successful campaign, the one thing we were not allowed to discuss was estimates. Indeed when one of my colleagues, the then MP for Southport, stood up and tried to discuss estimates he was ruled out of order by your predecessor, Mr Deputy Speaker. So we are talking today about money, and this is precisely the point I want to come to I am No. 39 on the call list. I could devote my entire speech to the humanitarian arguments, but I have listened to previous speeches and I associate myself with them entirely. I just cannot for a moment understand why we are cutting aid to Yemen by 50%. The scenes there were appalling. The Chancellor very kindly paid me in the summer to go to Doddington Hall and have a very nice meal with my family under Eat Out to Help Out. Was that money well spent? Then I look at what is happening in Yemen, where some poor boy goes out and his leg is blown off, or the father goes out and he is never seen again. This is dire poverty, war, deprivation. Leaving aside whether this problem washes up on our shores or not, do we not have a duty to these people I so well remember talking to a woman in northern Iraq. That very thing had happened to her—one day her husband had gone out and he was never seen again. So of course we have very serious problems in Lincolnshire, but not compared to what is happening in Yemen. We just cannot turn our back; we cannot walk down the other side of the road.
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is very kind. I suppose being the last Thatcherite is better than being the last Majorite Actually, funnily enough, according to the latest opinion polls, opinion is changing, because people are waking up to the fact that in the middle of a global pandemic it is probably not a very good time to cut aid—all these problems are now coming back to bite us.
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): The UK does have a role, and I fully accept the point about the Commonwealth. We have heard that we should prioritise the Commonwealth, but as we have also heard, where are these cuts falling? On the Commonwealth. But we cannot just direct our aid to the Commonwealth; we have to direct it where it is most needed On the Thatcherite point—and this is not the humanitarian point, because many people have made the humanitarian point, which I associate myself with—I remember, in my first Parliament, listening to Enoch Powell. He sat over there on the Opposition Back Bench. In fact, my first rebellion was to force the Government into requiring workplace trade unions to hold postal ballots, while the Minister defended workplace ballots; but I leave that to one side Now, what would Enoch Powell have said on this subject? He would not have liked the 0.7%, but he would have said it was ridiculous to have an arbitrary limit of 0.7%, to reduce it to another arbitrary limit of 0.5% and then to promise to increase it back to 0.7%. As he would have said—I cannot do the Birmingham accent, unlike my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield—"It is a logical absurdity. It is a nonsense built on stilts. It makes no sense" that all these civil servants, in the middle of a global pandemic, are running around cutting all these programmes, and next year, if we believe the Government—and of course the Government would never tell an untruth to the House, would they, so this is only a temporary cut—all these programmes, after this pandemic, are going to be restored. [Interruption.] The Minister is shaking his head. So are they not going to be restored?
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): When, we ask—what does "temporary" mean? Surely temporary only means temporary Being helpful, I want to give the Government a way out. We have the Budget coming up before the end of the year. Why cannot the Chancellor of the Exchequer address this issue and explain how he is going to restore the 0.7%? We live in a parliamentary democracy. I will leave aside the point about the manifesto. I know that circumstances change, and I know that we are strapped for cash, but I follow the point that this is a relatively small amount of the total budget. However, the Minister has now confirmed that we are going to return to 0.7% Here is one way out—I am trying to help the Prime Minister. When it comes to vaccines or tropical medicine, where there is a real problem, he could, week by week or month by month, release more money for a particular programme in addition to the 0.5%. He would get enormous public credit, there would be good publicity for him, and gradually we could restore what is being cut The Chancellor of the Exchequer could then announce, in the Budget, "We have now come out of the pandemic, the country is fully vaccinated, the economy is growing very well again, and I can now increase this back to 0.7%." Or he could do the honest thing, if that is not his view, and say, "I believe this 0.7% target in a year is arbitrary; I think it should be phased in over three years," or "I believe that we should preserve it in real terms." He can make any argument he wants and we will listen to it, and then we should have a vote on it and either approve what he suggests or deny him Surely, what is completely unacceptable in a parliamentary democracy is for a Government to make a manifesto commitment, to make a cut and say it is temporary, but to avoid any vote—to prevaricate—just because they think they might lose the vote and, worse, just because they think it is popular. Is it so popular? Is it the right thing to do, or should we not do the right thing?
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Tobias Martin Ellwood (Conservative, Centre-right): The Government would have us believe that the backdrop to this debate is the impact of covid, with the knock-on financial pressures requiring departmental budgets to be cut or correspondingly slimmed. There are indeed unprecedented financial pressures, but the overseas aid budget has a built-in mechanism to cater for any financial challenge, as we all know, because it reflects the GNI of the day. Yet here we are, the only G7 country to cut its aid budget, with dire consequences for programmes across the world and, as a P5 nation, a huge hit to our soft power credentials. We will be leaving vacuums to be filled by nations with very different agendas, or indeed by extremist groups exploiting the lack of governance The messaging has already been touched on, but I will just repeat the point that the Government should lead the narrative, not follow a populist and dated view of ODA spending. Let us explain to the British people what this is all about. This is what we are good at—we excel at it—and when we do well, other nations follow.
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Christian Wakeford (Conservative, Centre-right): Part of the problem with judging by a poll is the language used. If it asks, "Do you want a cut in international aid?", people will say yes. However, if it asks, "Do you want to feed the world’s hungriest and support those most in need?", I am sure that, being a generous and kind country, we would also say yes.
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Tobias Martin Ellwood (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I congratulate him on the work that he is doing. There is a great example of where British leadership can be seen on the international stage. Yemen requires leadership. We have been there for some time and have not utilised our relationship with the Saudis to prevent them from doing what they have been doing. We could have better harnessed our friendships and capabilities in order to bring a conclusion to that particular challenge I worked as a Minister in both the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as it then was—I was Minister for the Middle East and North Africa—and the Ministry of Defence, and I can confirm how siloed our Whitehall Departments still are. I concede that things are definitely getting better, but if global Britain is to have meaning, exhibiting increased resolve to play a role on the international stage, it will require greater cohesion between our internationalist-facing Departments, which even today remain too siloed I would go further than the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and introduce the role of a Deputy Prime Minister, with the arc of responsibility to co-ordinate the MOD, DFID, FCO and trade initiatives, so that we can develop grand strategies to tackle some of the global hotspots that we are engaged in. We do need to expand our Whitehall bandwidth.
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
James Philip Duddridge (Conservative, Centre-right): I will look over that document carefully. Clearly, I am not writing it myself. I always find the annual report to be very fulsome and would intend that it is fulsome, if not more fulsome, given the transition of the two Departments. I am very open to that We should also remember the numbers. A couple of Members referred to £4.5 billion as a rounding error. I understand the point they are making in relation to the deficit of £300 billion that we are running. It is a smaller number, but it is a massively significant number. There have been a number of comments on polling. We are not led by polling. I was unaware of some of the polling that Members have talked about. Governments should not be led by polling, but I am conscious that as Members of Parliament we should be in touch with our constituents. A number of Members have said unpopular things on both sides of the argument, although surprisingly one said we should not be populist. I thought that was rather electorally successful, but people on both sides of the argument described their points of view as being populist. We are ahead of the US, Japan, Canada and Italy, so we should hold our head high, although I appreciate that most speakers in the House want us to do even more As Minister for Africa, I am glad to say we will be spending over half our bilateral aid budget in the African continent, focusing on key issues. Rather than going to just Africa, I thought it would be useful to explain the process the Foreign Secretary and his Ministers took. The Foreign Secretary outlined seven priorities to the House on 26 November. Underlying all of them—or overarching them—is the aim of reducing poverty. First, there is a focus on climate and biodiversity, particularly because of COP26. There was a focus on a flagship target of £11.6 billion of international aid on international climate finance. Our second priority is global health security, for obvious reasons, given the pandemic. A lot of our programmes have been repurposed towards covid, although we focus on a number of other areas, preventable deaths of mothers, newborn babies and children—
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
James Philip Duddridge (Conservative, Centre-right): The early announcements were part of existing ODA—they are repurposing. The 100 million doses are classified as ODA and will be in addition to the £10 billion ODA point that we had. So the most recent money is additionality, although my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) made the strong point that there are a lot of areas that we do not count, partly because of the rules My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) talked of girls’ education, and we are increasing our pledge to the Global Partnership for Education by 15%, to £430 million, which is our largest pledge ever. Our G7 partners promised £2.7 billion to this cause, and the Prime Minister is hosting the global education summit with Kenyatta here in the UK in July Our fourth priority is humanitarian preparedness and response, where we will spend more than £900 million, although my opposite number, the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) rightly raises concerns about places such as Ethiopia and working out where we spend the money. Yes, we should get humanitarian access and we need to deliver that access—I made reference to that in an earlier debate in this place —but bringing peace and security to that country is the most critical thing, which helps the fusion with diplomacy.
Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): As a former member of the International Development Committee, may I say that it was some of the most valuable work that I have done over my 29 years as a Member of Parliament? I have really enjoyed the debate this evening We will have the Dispatch Boxes cleaned during the Adjournment debate to save a bit of time. I know the Minister will not touch the Dispatch Box until then Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54).
Outer London driving charges — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: Transportation
Gareth Alan Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to be able to present a petition on behalf of my constituents at Stonehill Woods Park, a park home site in my constituency of Dartford, who will be profoundly impacted on should the London congestion charge move to Outer London The petition states: The petition of residents of the United Kingdom, Declares that consideration should be given to stopping the Mayor of London imposing charges for driving in Outer London; notes that if the Mayor of London imposes these charges, residents of the constituency of Dartford will be forced to pay a £3.50 fee each time they drive in Outer London The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to consider stopping the Mayor of London from imposing charges on driving in Outer London And the petitioners remain, etc [P002670]
Image-based Abuse — House of Commons, 2021-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
Alexander John Gervase Chalk (Conservative, Centre-right): We recognise and share public concern over abuses of new technology to harm victims, and we are taking action. Today, new provisions on threatening to share private sexual images come into force, and we are going further. We have asked the Law Commission to review the law on image abuse to ensure that victims are properly protected. The commission will publish recommendations in spring next year, and we will consider them very carefully.
Image-based Abuse — House of Commons, 2021-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
Alexander John Gervase Chalk (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that harrowing case. He is absolutely right to do so. We recognise that the law needs to keep pace with those who would use technology to perpetrate dreadful abuse. We have asked the Law Commission to act, as he indicated. It is doing so at pace, and we will be looking very carefully with a view to extending the law where it is appropriate to do so.
Court Capacity — House of Commons, 2021-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
Chris Ian Brian Mynott Philp (Conservative, Centre-right): The pandemic has affected courts, like it has affected so many other areas of life. The Government have responded energetically and comprehensively, for example by opening 60 new Nightingale courtrooms, hiring an extra 1,600 Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service staff, injecting hundreds of millions of pounds extra into the system, and making sure that around 20,000 hearings a week can now be conducted online. These measures are designed to enable court recovery, and I can assure the House that these efforts will continue.