argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Restriction on the Preparation of Adoption Reports (Amendment) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-05-23
Topic: Social Welfare
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am most grateful to noble Lords for the comments and questions on the regulations. The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, raises important points about adoption. We are very focused on ensuring that adoption times are reduced as much as possible. We have seen a reduction in the last couple of years—of six months from the peak of 2012-13—but of course we are not complacent. I also take on board the noble Baroness’s comments about regional adoption agencies. That process is ongoing: we now have nine regional adoption agencies that have gone live, which cover 44 local authorities, and 16 other projects are in development. We hope that we will not have to use legislative power to coerce, but it is there as a final option if we need to consider it I thank the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for his gracious response. He certainly holds me to account on a regular basis, but I am pleased that there are no more issues to be raised. We wanted to ensure that the changes were flagged up to noble Lords with time to consider them. I therefore commend these regulations to the House.
Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole (Structural Changes) Order 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-05-23
Topic: Government Operations
George Young (Conservative, Centre-right): We made it quite clear that where an area wants to move from where it is now two-tier to unitary, we want to look at the proposal as a whole, and we do not believe it is right for any one component to have a veto. That is different from where two local authorities, as we are about to debate in a moment, want to get together and merge. We think that where they are going to merge—in other words, there is not going to be a wholesale reorganisation—it would be wrong to compel people to merge if they do not want to So, locally led proposals for district council mergers are to be assessed against criteria which we announced to Parliament on 7 November 2017, which include both the criterion that to be implemented a proposal should command a good deal of local support in the area and the criterion that the merger is proposed by all the councils to be merged. Locally led proposals for unitarisation are to be assessed against different criteria, announced to the Commons on 28 February 2017, which include the criterion that to be implemented a proposal for an area should, when judged in the round, be assessed as commanding a good deal of local support in the area Unlike in the case of mergers, unitarising an area does not need to be proposed by all the councils involved, since that area necessarily includes two tiers of councils, so that even if some councils in the area do not support the proposal, the area of those that do may cover the whole area. I may not have convinced the noble Lord—in fact, I can see that I have not convinced him—but he asked me what the criteria were and I have explained them.
Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole (Structural Changes) Order 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-05-23
Topic: Government Operations
George Young (Conservative, Centre-right): That would have involved a much wider proposal. Basically, what we are interested in are locally led proposals. I am not aware that Hampshire or the other authorities were party to that proposition, whereas the proposition before the House this afternoon is supported by the area as a whole, with a notable exception. Had Hampshire and Christchurch come to us with a proposition which commanded general support, we would of course have looked at it. But they did not.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: International Affairs
Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the noble Lord, but he places too great an emphasis on my legal abilities. I prefaced my remarks by saying that I am not an EU practising lawyer—although we do have a number of EU practising lawyers in this place. I would argue that no, our membership of the EEA will not explicitly lapse when we leave the European Union. This is a conundrum in which we find ourselves—or it could be the saving of us.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew Robathan (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with my noble friend entirely about putting the country before party. He mentioned that nobody had said that we must leave the customs union and single market, but I recall very well that David Cameron—who I rate enormously—George Osborne and Michael Gove, from different sides, said that we must leave not only the single market but the customs union if we voted to leave.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: International Affairs
Douglas Hogg (Conservative, Centre-right): It is the business of Parliament to form a judgment. We will come to other debates fairly soon—in the next group of amendments—that intend to give Parliament the decisive say. That is our function and we must not shelter behind constitutional niceties in order to refrain from doing our duty. I will certainly do whatever I can to ensure that we remain as close as possible to the customs union—and if I could, I would also frustrate the policy of Brexit.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Foreign Trade
Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate but since it seems that no one else is going to speak up for the option of leaving the customs union, I thought that in the interests of attempted balance, at least, I should make a brief contribution I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, spoke with great passion—not, to me, entirely persuasively—and his sincerity was palpable. But some of the phrases he used do not really correspond with the reality of the situation as I see it. He talked about breaking our ties. It is not the Government’s intention that we should break our economic ties with the single market. He talked about this being an absolutist solution. No one is pursuing something out of dogma. We are trying to make an assessment of what we think is in the best interests of the country. I agree with the words that my noble friend Lord Hailsham used: we ought to be considering what is in the national interest. Noble Lords opposite may find it difficult to believe but that is actually what the Government are trying to do and what people on this side of the Committee are trying to do: come to a set of arrangements, once this decision has been made, that will maximise the welfare and interests of the country The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, was not comparing leaving the customs union with what the Government are trying to achieve. The Government are trying to achieve a free trade agreement with Europe. That is what you ought to compare the customs union with. In what respect would having a free trade agreement leave the country worse off than it is now? He was talking about a customs union. He did not make it clear but he said he was not disputing the decision to leave so he must have been talking about a customs union while being outside the EU. That is very different from being inside the customs union as a member of the EU. That is putting yourself precisely in the position of Turkey, which is inside the customs union and suffers all sorts of disadvantages, as I shall try to demonstrate.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Foreign Trade
Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont (Conservative, Centre-right): Noble Lords jeer but are they really going to say that a piece of paper with a statistic somehow analyses the problem? I put it to the noble Baroness that if you have a free trade agreement you have access to the market. What is the disadvantage? The disadvantage, which I will come to, is that you have to trade against that the inconvenience of rules of origin. That is what it comes down to: balancing the advantages of free trade against the costs of rules of origin Nobody has said that there are any advantages to leaving the customs union and I would like to make a few points. First, obviously, the customs union that we are members of—on certain goods, not all—has quite high tariffs on goods that particularly affect the lower paid, especially food, clothing and footwear. That is not an inconsiderable factor. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, being inside the customs union would make it impossible for us to sign free trade agreements with other countries. He was pooh-poohing that and thinks we will not be able to do it. But I put it to him if he looks at the record of quite small countries such as Singapore or Chile or a medium-sized country such as Korea, he will find that when you add up the GDP of the countries they have signed free trade agreements with, it is very much in excess of the added-up GDP of the countries that the EU has signed free trade agreements with. That is to say: these small countries, precisely because they negotiate on their own and do not have to take into account the arguments of 27 other partners, have been very effective at signing free trade agreements. Switzerland, for example, has a free trade agreement with China but the noble Lord thinks it will be impossible for us to have one with it.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Foreign Trade
Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not know whether the noble Lord misheard me, whether I misspoke or whether he misunderstood. I was not talking about having a free trade agreement with Korea but about the free trade agreements that Korea has signed with other countries across the globe Another point about a customs union is that it is not just a question of collecting tariffs. A lot of regulations go with it and there is a vast range of non-tariff controls on goods—you obviously have to have definitions. We would not be able to divert from these at all if we remain members of a customs union, or even to depart from them in our own domestic market. If we did that, the goods that were allowed in which had circulated in the other countries of the customs union would be in contravention of them. Again, I put it that there are some advantages which have to be put into the balance of the argument for leaving the customs union One mystery about this amendment is that if you are in the customs union, there is the collection of the tariff revenue where the individual countries are allowed to retain only 20% of the revenue. The rest of it goes to the EU, so would we be outside the EU and paying 80% of the revenue on the external tariff to the EU? That does not seem to make a lot of sense It is also possible to be outside the customs union and to have a free trade agreement with the EU. That is precisely what Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein do but of course, to come to the noble Baroness’s point, if that is regarded as a cost you have to offset against it the fact that you have rules of origin. People have pooh-poohed the technology argument but is that really going to be such an insurmountable thing to do? Switzerland exports per capita five times as much to the EU as we do, and it has to operate rules of origin on many sectors when it sells goods to the EU. That does not seem to have had any inhibiting effect.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Foreign Trade
Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont (Conservative, Centre-right): I would like to make a little more progress, as this is taking rather a long time. The rules of origin are one of the points for consideration. I know that a lot of British industry is worried about this but I noticed what Mr Azevedo, the Secretary-General of the World Trade Organization, said in a newspaper interview that he gave the other day. He pointed out that a large part of Britain’s trade, because we have a bigger percentage of trade with the rest of the world than some other European countries, already has to observe these requirements of documentation and rules of origin. He did not see that there would be a big problem in switching the rest of our trade to a similar regime I have also met representatives of some of the companies that run ports in this country, some of which operate on a WTO basis and some of which obviously operate on an EU basis. But when I talked to the management—I do not want to name them because they would not want to be too involved in political controversy—I was told that they did not see a huge difficulty in moving from one administrative system to another. Whether people agree with that or not, I put it to your Lordships that that is what the argument is all about: a trade-off between that and a free trade agreement with access to the market. It is not clear that the advantage is all one way.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Agriculture
Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my noble friend not agree with me and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, on animal hygiene? Given the high levels that the Secretary of State has insisted our farmers will meet on leaving the European Union, how can we physically check the animals coming into this country when we leave if we have no customs controls at UK borders? It cannot be done by technology.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Foreign Trade
Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont (Conservative, Centre-right): Even in Northern Ireland, we have some checks already. There will have to be checks, as there are checks throughout the European Union. I would be in favour of checks, but this is not an overwhelming argument against leaving a customs union I have one final point on the customs union. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, seemed to be advocating being inside the customs union but outside the EU. That is the consequence of the amendment. That really gives us the worst of all worlds. Consider the position of Turkey. It has to agree to whatever free trade agreements the rest of the EU signs up to and has to have goods under those agreements circulating within its economy, even if it is totally opposed to that, because it has no say in negotiating free trade agreements between—
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Foreign Trade
Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont (Conservative, Centre-right): I would like to finish a sentence without being interrupted. The EU negotiates free trade agreements but does not take into account what Turkey wants, and Turkey has no say. I will give way one last time; then I will make one other point about the single market; and then, the House will be relieved to know, I shall shut up.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Foreign Trade
Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont (Conservative, Centre-right): As the noble Lord knows very well, Turkey aspires—that aspiration may now be fading—to join the European Union, so being in the customs union was for many a halfway house to joining the EU, just as for noble Lords who tabled this amendment it is a halfway house to rejoining the EU. That is what their amendment is really about. Lastly and briefly on the single market, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, was exhorting us all to go to the Treasury, look at the papers, draw the curtains and see the forecasts that have been made. Of course those documents should be taken into account, but there are many other studies made outside Whitehall that take a very different view. I refer him to the research by the academic Michael Burrage, who was at the LSE and at Harvard. He has done an in-depth analysis, which is published on the Civitas website, of the effect of the single market on the British economy and British exports. He has come to the conclusion that there is no correlation between the single market and the growth of trade between the UK and the EU Furthermore, he has pointed out something that people have acknowledged in these debates before—namely, that many non-members of the single market, countries outside the continent of Europe, have increased their exports to the single market much faster than Britain has increased its exports to the single market. So the idea that this great liberalising force has had a huge impact on the British economy is absolutely not proven. I make these points simply because the debate so far has been very unbalanced and, as my noble friend Lord Hailsham said, we ought to be considering, in a sober, balanced way, what is in the interests of our own economy now that the decision has irrevocably been made.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Foreign Trade
Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sure the noble Lord is not intentionally misleading the House when he talks about the arguments that I made so compellingly and eloquently in the 1970s. If he has been studying my maiden speech in the House of Commons, I shall be astonished. The reason why I supported the customs union in the 1960s was that we then lived in a world of very high tariffs, and the EEC was a liberalising influence in the 1950s and 1960s. It was only after the American Administration started cutting tariffs in the mid-1960s that the relevance of the EEC in tariff negotiations became much less significant Since the noble Lord wanted me to get my feet again, I will say that my attitude towards the customs union is very different from his. I remember a debate in which he spoke about not being in the single market. He explained how he had been to a German car manufacturer which had explained to him—I could not believe my ears—how Germany was manipulating car standards in order to keep out goods from other countries. The noble Lord thought that was admirable and we were very stupid not to be part of this racket. Well, I do not want to be part of it.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: International Affairs
Nicholas True (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I had intended to intervene after an hour to don a Wigan shirt against the Manchester City team arrayed in this Chamber. But then my noble friend Lord Lamont rose and scored the goal in a very interesting speech, which went to the core of the matter. I apologise, like my noble friend Lord Hailsham, for having been unable to be present at Second Reading, but I assure your Lordships that I intend to be present for however many days it takes to achieve what my noble friend said he would wish to frustrate, with the result that Brexit will go through as the British people requested The noble Lord, Lord Davies, took exception to the word "instruction". As a democrat, I am not quite sure from whom our Parliament should take its instructions except from the British people. I quote the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, who said after the referendum that, "when the British people have spoken, you do what they command" What powerful words and instruction. Another gentleman said—
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: International Affairs
Nicholas True (Conservative, Centre-right): I was honouring an engagement. It was not a social engagement: I was teaching medieval Greek culture on a university course in Italy, which I hope disqualifies me from being either a Little Englander or stupid, as some Brexit people have been described. I am not making a Second Reading speech but I was going to say that I rather thought that we were hearing a Second Reading debate again. Like everybody else, I read the debate. Looking at the groupings list for today, every one of the lead amendments seeks either to reverse Brexit or to delay its implementation. They are not about implementation or about progressing the matter but about obfuscation and delaying matters. I believe that there is a very important question that we need to address on the customs union.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Foreign Trade
Nicholas True (Conservative, Centre-right): If I may, I will continue. The noble Lord has asked me not to talk too much. Let us have a debate on the customs union—a specific debate, not on a wide-ranging group. Let us hear the arguments. Maybe we will hear what the Labour Party’s policy is. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, says that it is one thing and other people say it is another. We will then have a short debate, or maybe a long debate, and we will take a decision on the matter. That is the way to proceed. However, in a debate that has already lasted an hour and three-quarters, we have heard about ID cards, chickens, Ireland, animals and all sorts of things, and we are not even going to have a vote on the matter. We have nine other groups to go through. We are repeating the Second Reading but it is not me who is doing that; it is many of your Lordships The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, who made an interesting and impressive speech raising important points, should decide on Report which of those elements he wishes to put to a vote and we will then decide. For now, we ought to get on. This Bill has gone through the elected Chamber and it comes to us from there. That elected Chamber is entirely satisfied with it.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew Robathan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, in 1997, I—together with other Members of this House, including, I recall, the noble Lord, Lord Davies—was returned as a Conservative MP to the House of Commons. I quickly learned what it was like to be in a minority. I fear that I also find myself in a minority in this House today. I may be in a minority in this House, but it comforts me to know that outside this House I am not in a minority However, I think I am in a majority in this House when I say that I am not in favour of referendums. I think they are a terrible idea: look where they have led us. But whatever we think, we have had one. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, talked about misleading the British people. I shall be brief about this, he will be pleased to know, because that is where we should start, and finish. During the referendum campaign the Prime Minister at the time, and also George Osborne and Michael Gove, specifically said that we would have to leave the single market. People may not have paid attention, but that is neither here nor there. I think that we will also find that they said we would have to leave the customs union. But people were not very interested As regards the customs union, may I draw attention to the fact that the Conservative Party general election manifesto said that we would leave the single market and the customs union?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Andrew Robathan (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord has a much better memory than me: no, I do not. But then I do not agree with everything people on my side say—or, indeed, people on the other side. On the Labour Party general election manifesto, perhaps someone on the Labour side can illuminate me. I do not know what it said, but I am pretty sure it was talking about leaving the single market—and what about the customs union This is where we stray in talking about misleading the British people. They are the people who have the say here, not people like ourselves, sitting round in this House, who are not elected—and in some cases have never been elected. We have heard about the curtain in 100 Parliament Street and all that sort of thing. Economic predictions are all well and good—and may, of course, be right. There is one out today by the Institute of Economic Affairs, which takes an entirely contrary view—and my noble friend Lord Lamont mentioned the Civitas review. Who knows, in 10 years’ time we may say, "Gosh, they were all wrong". However, let us not put too much faith in one review. I am not criticising civil servants, but that applies especially when the people writing these things are the same people who wrote that we would have a recession, half a million people unemployed, an emergency Budget and so on, if we voted to leave the EU—not if we left, but if we even voted to leave.