argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Trade Union Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-23
Topic: Government Operations
Jonathan Toby Harris (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we have already spent some time during the course of today’s Committee looking at the value of facility time and I do not intend to rehearse any of those arguments. However, when we were talking about the so-called transparency clause, the Minister told us that this is about a reserve power which she assumed or hoped would never be needed. So the question is this: why are we writing into this Bill now something for which there is so far a complete lack of an evidence base and a complete lack of clarity as regards its extent or how it would be applied? We have no information on how discerning it is. Will the Minister be sitting in her office, deciding whether the time-off arrangements for facility time in the Newcastle parks department should be this number of employees for this number of hours, as opposed to those working on social care in Newcastle, or those who might be doing similar functions in the London Borough of Haringey? How exactly is this supposed to be done? If it is not the Minister, in whom we have absolute faith, how can her officials make those discernment judgments between the different local authorities or organisations concerned?
Trade Union Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Jonathan Mendelsohn (Labour, Centre-left): I am just troubled by this notion of reasonable time. I have one particular question, although the Minister will probably not be in a position to answer at this stage and may have to go away and look at it. The Sentencing Council’s Health and Safety Offences, Corporate Manslaughter and Food Safety and Hygiene Offences Definitive Guideline establishes a very high level of fines for breaches of it, which apply to the public sector as well. Removing facility time which would remove any health and safety cover which currently exists would put any such offence into the high culpability level. That would engender fines for any organisation with a turnover of over £50 million up to a level of £6 million; for anything over £1 billion, it would be substantially more, now that we have had case law from the Supreme Court. By introducing this power over facility time, have the Government not considered that they are risking a huge amount for other public bodies, and even causing difficulties for Ministers themselves? By imposing restrictions on the health and safety cover or arrangements that have previously been available, are they not changing the terms here? Have the Government taken advice on how this will affect the application of these relatively new sentencing guidelines, and would she consider doing that if she has not already?
Trade Union Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-23
Topic: Government Operations
Jonathan Toby Harris (Labour, Centre-left): I thought that within the NHS there were all these bodies, such as Monitor, precisely to make sure that things like this work. Why is an additional power needed? While I am interrupting the Minister, why have this Government in a number of other areas said that it is not appropriate for Ministers to be able to intervene? I think, for example—it is the presence of the Government Chief Whip that makes me think of this—of police and crime commissioners, where the very suggestion that the Home Office could do anything to interfere with them was rejected on the basis that they were democratically accountable. Local authorities are democratically accountable, so why have a power in this very narrow area? In case she has forgotten this point, surely there are other bodies in the health service that can intervene, so this power is unnecessary.
Trade Union Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-23
Topic: Government Operations
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): Let us just get one thing straight: this is not a taxpayer subsidy. The taxpayer pays for holiday pay as well. Are we going to have a government Minister talking about that with regard to all those organisations, not just local government —we have already agreed that it may be charities or all sorts of other functions? They decide their own holiday pay, and the taxpayer pays for that, but facility time is somehow really different I shall not go through all the contributions, but I want to say three things. First, on the affirmative procedure, Parliament knows best—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord King, who mentioned that. But the problem is, as the Minister says, that this legislation went through the Commons without any difficulty, which is how an affirmative resolution would go through the Commons. When the legislation comes here, the only place where we can say stop, we have the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, saying that we must not overturn a statutory instrument—"I’ll do another report, we’ll clip your wings or we’ll put in another 100 Tory Peers". What was the other thing he was going to do? Oh yes, he might suspend us, give us a permanent holiday. The idea that our safeguard is that we can overturn a statutory instrument here is no safeguard The Minister has said that this is a provision of last resort, but she has still not explained the criteria on which that last resort could be taken. The example given by the noble Lord, Lord King, is really frightening —if one thing has gone bad in one place, which could be a care home, or something, we will have the Dangerous Dogs Act again. Because something is really bad in one place and the public have got to know about it, therefore we will have a Minister saying that we have to do something about it so let us have a statutory instrument quickly, and a whole category will be caught because of one example of something going wrong. The real issue is whether it is about, as the noble Lord, Lord King, says, one or two or three examples of where this is going wrong, or is it some other reason that we have not heard from the Minister? What criteria would bring in this power of last resort? This is a question for management and local authorities, or whoever the employer will be—Magnox, or all those other organisations that we have been through. It is really not for Ministers. We will return to this one, but in the mean time I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Patricia Hollis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, very briefly, I support the amendment in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham I am puzzled. When we considered the 2012 Welfare Reform Act, the Minister rightly commanded the respect of the entire Committee and allowed the proceedings to be lengthened from the original 10 or 11 days to 17 days, in the process of which he negotiated, discussed and shared information because he was determined that the introduction of universal credit would be, as far as was possible, evidence-based. That was something that we all responded to: we were not being motivated by the latest piece of journalism or an ideological twist; it was evidence-based What puzzles me about the Government’s position is not that they are seeking to get analysis of the impacts of poverty in terms of well-being measures, adult worklessness, child educational attainment at 16, and so on—it is perfectly sensible to have information about that. But this is not an either/or situation. We all know that we need to know about the income going into a family as well as about the impact of that lowered income on the outcomes that affect the family and the children, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said. This is not an either/or situation. We need both because, above all, government need to know where they can most effectively intervene to ensure that, as far as possible, children and their families have good, strong, decent and well-funded lives. We cannot know that unless we collect the information on both income and on what the Government believe to be the impact. It is not a question of which comes first, which drives one or the other, or which is the gateway. That does not matter—we need both. On the basis of that evidence, we, as a House and as Parliament, can come in behind government to see what levers are most effective in addressing the issues that that evidence has identified The Minister is an evidence-based Minister, which is why he has our respect. Therefore, in the light of that and all the work that he did on the 2012 Bill, I urge him not to sabotage it by ignoring crucial evidence of how best the Government should use the resources at their disposal. I hope that he will accept the right reverend Prelate’s amendment.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Patricia Hollis (Labour, Centre-left): Before the Minister goes on to his next point, I am puzzled. He is going through the individual indicators as though those are the exclusive and sole measurement of child poverty. That is precisely why the previous Government introduced a suite of measures. Each one captured some aspect and together they captured the broad range of issues that determine how we assess child poverty. So deconstructing and challenging each individual measure is not the point: it is the suite of measures that is being dumped, and it is that suite which caught what it means to be in poverty.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Government Operations
Margot Aline (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister says that the figures are independent. What if those producing them are under great financial pressure, and they look around and think, "What measures can we stop? What data can we stop collecting and statistics stop analysing?". They could say, "The Government show that they’re not interested in these statistics, so perhaps we should stop analysing them". Whatever the Minister says, without a statutory obligation we cannot be absolutely sure that those statistics will continue to be produced and analysed. That is one reason why we had a bit of a debate on this in Committee. The Minister said that he thought that the only real difference between us was the word "statutory". That is why we believe that statutory accountability is so important.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Patricia Hollis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I very much support the amendment of my noble friend Lady Lister, which was supported so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. I will be puzzled if the Government propose to resist the thrust of this amendment. The Government know perfectly well that, although the incidence or percentage of poverty among workless families is high, and higher than that among working families because the number of working families is so much greater than the number of workless families, as has been mentioned already, two-thirds of children who are in poverty live in a family where an adult is in work. Part of that might be that the parent, if a lone parent, has restricted hours, but we know that, with insecure contracts and the minimum wage and so on, the key lever to get that family out of poverty is not just to get the single adult into work but, where there are two adults, to get the second adult into work as well. We know that that is a function of the age of the youngest child and the size of the family. Child poverty might well be for a temporary period until the second earner—let us say, for this purpose, the mother—is able to go back into the labour market along with her husband or partner in order to amplify the family income. The need to support those children may be a temporary issue Given that the Minister today has put so much weight on the strain being carried by the new minimum wage and given that he will want to know, as we will all want to know, the interaction of that with the benefit bill, and the extent to which, therefore, that helps to address the levers of child poverty, above all of which is getting the second earner into part-time work, I do not understand why he would not want to track the information that my noble friend has called for. We all support the Government’s move to increase the national minimum wage. If he is right, this hopefully will have repercussions that we would all accept and support for the benefits system. But do we need to do more than that? We do not know. It may be about the size of sibling groups or the need for a second earner. We need to know what levers to pull. Unless the Government track that information, we will not know. I am sure that the Minister does want to know, so I hope that he will think very carefully about this amendment.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Patricia Hollis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, if the Minister will allow me to say this, he is misrepresenting the statistics. It may be a statement about children in poverty, but in particular the number of lone parents in that period who were in work went up from barely 50% to some 65%. Therefore, tax credits made work pay for them.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Margot Aline (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke in support of the amendment. I am grateful to the Minister, who at least went into more detail. As he expected, I was not convinced by his arguments, because I still have not really heard a convincing explanation of why there should be no accountability for what is happening. He said that we must focus on the things that matter, but surely what is happening to, for instance, the lady referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, matters? My noble friend Lady Sherlock talked about those who work such long hours that they do not see their children. We know from research at Bath University that children care about that. It talked about children and lone mothers in particular: they are glad when their mother gets paid work, but it affects them. They hardly see their mother. That time squeeze on such families is important. These things matter as well. I do not necessarily think that this is ideological, as the Minister said. At the beginning he said that it is not the level of poverty that matters, but what is likely to happen to the life chances of children—as if these were totally separate things. The whole point, as the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission and the driver analysis said, is that life chances are affected by income poverty. Therefore, we need to know what is happening to the life chances of children, regardless of the employment status of their parents. I will not go into the detail of the trends; it is pretty much what the Minister said in Committee. I do not think that that is the point; the point is that there should be government accountability about what is happening to those who, as the Minister likes to say, are "doing the right thing"—although I am not so sure it is always doing the right thing—and who are in paid work I am disappointed. What the Minister said at the end suggests, if we are focusing on what matters and we do not focus on the poverty of those whose parents are in paid work, that that therefore does not matter. That says volumes. I do not suppose that low-paid parents are sitting at home watching this debate—they are probably out there working—but if they read about it or hear about it, they would say, "Don’t we matter? Don’t the hours I am putting in for little pay matter? Don’t the Government want to report on what is happening to people like me? Doesn’t it matter?". I think that it matters enormously. However, I will not push our luck and test the opinion of the House, so, regretfully, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Social Welfare
William David McKenzie (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this amendment has been moved very comprehensively by my noble friend Lady Lister and spoken to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, to whom I should say that the closest I got to Oxford on Sunday night was watching "Endeavour" on television. This is a re-run of an amendment moved in Committee as part of a wider group covering life-chances strategies. The Minister’s response then, as reported in col. 1598 of Hansard on 9 December 2015, was clear on a commitment to publish a life-chances strategy, as well as the annual report as set out in the Clause 4 obligations, but there was no commitment to make this a statutory obligation. As my noble friend Lady Lister has argued, the concern which has been expressed about the commission is that, for the future, it has no obligation explicitly to promote the tackling of child poverty. Although there is a commitment to report on life-chances data, and a statement on the record that there will be a life-chances strategy, the role of the Social Mobility Commission seems somewhat removed from this As my noble friend Lady Lister pointed out in Committee, promoting social mobility is a narrower ambition than tackling poverty and promoting life chances: it is not a substitute. It is, of course, a not unreasonable ambition, but a commission focused on life chances would naturally encompass the prospects of social mobility. The reverse is not the case. We therefore support my noble friend’s amendment. It seems odd that the Government are keen to have a commission reporting on progress on improving social mobility but not on life chances.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Margot Aline (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lords who have spoken. I feel slightly embarrassed; I am supposed to be the sociologist but it was the right reverend Prelate who quoted Max Weber. I had better go back and read my old sociology textbooks. I still do not feel that the Minister has given a true explanation. He seems to be making a distinction: the way he and the Prime Minister see it, life chances are about children’s life chances, while social mobility is about everyone—children and adults. However, children become adults and I see life chances as being about the whole life course, from cradle to grave. If that is the case, and the distinction lies in the commission’s focus being more on what is happening to adults, that worries me even more. Let us remember that this started life as a child poverty commission. In the Welfare Reform Act 2012, it became the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission and some of us were a bit worried about that at the time. Were we not right to be worried? Now it is not just child poverty that has been dropped, but children, too. Apparently it is not now supposed to be interested in children at all. I am not so much puzzled now as quite worried about what this means for the commission, because the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has produced very valuable reports about what is happening to children in this country. The Government no longer have a statutory obligation to report on children in poverty, other than in relation to worklessness and educational attainment. We do not know what will happen to the Child Poverty Unit. It is as though children—and children in poverty—are just disappearing I am less puzzled than really upset about what has happened here. The complete shift of focus away from children in this commission is disgraceful. I am not going to push it now, for obvious reasons, but I hope there may be some other way that we can come back to this, though I do not know at what point this can happen or what scope there will be for the commission to try and expand its remit. I find what the Minister is saying quite extraordinary. As he himself has said, we want to focus on what matters: he is saying that children do not matter. I leave it there and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Jill Pitkeathley (Labour, Centre-left): I am always happy to spare the Minister more vituperation, as he pleaded for. I am of course delighted with what he said, with the recognition that the Government have given to the contribution which carers make and to their inability to mitigate the effect of the cap in other ways. Certainly, some carers combine paid work with caring but, as I have said, for many their caring responsibilities are too heavy for them to do that without enormous stress. I am very glad that the Minister has taken account of that, and that the Government have taken account of the very strong wording of the High Court judgment. The wording was extremely well put but extremely firm. It would have been very difficult to understand if the Government had not heeded the very strong words of that High Court judgment. At the time, it seemed that there was neither logic nor justice in the Government’s position. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Education
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): That this House regrets that the Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015, which change the existing student support arrangements so that new students starting full-time courses after 1 September 2016 will no longer qualify for a means-tested maintenance grant, will result in a significant decrease in participation in higher education by those in low-income groups, older students, female students, and students from ethnic minorities (SI 2015/1951) Relevant document: 18th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Education
Robert Maurice Lipson Winston (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. Could she clarify a point that is puzzling us on these Benches? It has been stated that students undertaking part-time studies can get their grant in full; that is the impression that has been given. Is that correct? I know that she has spent a lot of time discussing part-time students and their remuneration.
Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 — House of Lords, 2016-01-25
Topic: Education
Robert Maurice Lipson Winston (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I declare an interest as a paid employee of Imperial College London, which is a Russell Group university, and as chairman of the Royal College of Music and chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University in Yorkshire. I am sure that the noble Baroness understands that these are very different higher educational institutions and that they will all be seriously worried about this measure. One issue is that this seems to have been slipped under the wire without proper discussion in the House of Commons and has now come to be debated only as a result of my noble friend’s excellent Motion of regret. A key issue here is the debate on higher education altogether. I fervently hope that the Minister will do something to ensure that there is a proper debate about the Green Paper that is currently being processed, because a number of measures in there are very serious I will not detain the House for long, because I have not prepared a speech, and I do not intend to prepare speeches. But I must tell the Minister that I remember vividly a graduation ceremony at Sheffield Hallam University when a 55 year-old, rather ageing-looking man came up to me with tears running down his cheeks and told me, "This university has completely changed my life". This is not just an isolated example; it happens every day in Sheffield.