argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Data Protection Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-05-14
Topic: Technology
Valerian Bernard Freyberg (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support Amendment 53A, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell. In doing so, I wish to make two specific points that follow on from his speech today. First, the amendment crucially recognises the importance of measuring what we as a nation are doing with data of significance before we take important, industrially strategic decisions on how we make the most of this vital national resource The noble Lord and others have made the analogy of data as the new oil. That analogy works particularly well for personal data as, like oil, it is potentially as toxic as it is valuable, and it must be carefully handled and not allowed to be released into the environment without due care. If we are to best manage, protect and distil it, we must first learn where and how it is being moved, used and commercialised. Can we as a nation easily answer the question that we are asking of Facebook or the former Cambridge Analytica: how much data are we commercialising at home and abroad, and to whom? If not, why not? Progressive and young, emerging nations are reviewing how they use their national data for national advantage, and we must make a concerted effort to do the same My second point is how the amendment therefore recognises that this measurement should be done centrally, not burdening already stretched government departments with developing their own approaches. While these departments must remain involved to provide domain insight into certain data types—for example, health and social care—the National Audit Office or other bodies should take charge of a cross-departmental process for measuring and tracking these flows of significant and valuable data. In this way we should be able to develop a consistent, coherent view of how we are handling our data reserves, which will give us the best possible evidence upon which to base our decisions on a secure approach to maximising their impact for our future national good. I therefore hope the Minister will be able to shed some light today on how this process is being thought through.
Data Protection Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-05-14
Topic: Law and Crime
Simon Denis Brown (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I too respectfully resist this amendment. I will touch on one point: the suggestion that Leveson 2 was promised and the Government are now brazenly breaking that promise. I suggest that that is not so. Were the public inquiry required by this amendment to go ahead, it would be a very different inquiry from that which was originally contemplated and promised by way of a further stage of Leveson. Consider the differences between Amendment 142 that this House originally passed, confined as that was to news publishers, and extending as it did to regional and local newspapers. That is totally different from the amendment now suggested, which is almost the same as the one that was rejected by the other place last week Consider the differences in the legal landscape—IPSO, about which much has been said. I should perhaps declare that I was one of the body of five who appointed IPSO, but that is hardly the point. Lord Justice Moses was a colleague of mine, as was Lord Justice Leveson, and both are of equal seniority and equally high reputation Consider all that has been learned from the series of cases since Leveson 1. While certainly not agreeing to the abandonment of any further inquiry, Leveson himself recognised changes in the legal landscape in the letter that has been referred to, referring on page 5 to how, "the guidance from the College of Policing regarding Media Relations represents significant change", and recognised the fact that work is currently under way on a digital charter. This inquiry would also require investigation into issues which, frankly, have nothing very obviously to do with this Bill on data protection. It would require an investigation into whether suspects should be named before charge or conviction. That is a difficult, important and interesting question, but it is not something that obviously arises now Inquiries are sometimes compellingly necessary, but it is no good pretending that they are invariably the panacea that they are cracked up to be. Note some of the difficulties in, for example, the historical sex abuse inquiry, the inquiry into undercover policing and so on. I respectfully suggest that a further inquiry is not required here My noble friend Lord Pannick is not always right. You have only to read his column in last week’s Times which extolled your Lordships decision to maintain the European Charter of Fundamental Rights despite Brexit to realise that he is not always right. But right he is on this issue, and I suggest that your Lordships do not pass this amendment.
Data Protection Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-05-14
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Kerslake (Crossbench, Unknown): I want to put a question to the Minister. Does he not accept that families experiencing this level of trauma and distress are simply not in a position to make formal complaints to IPSO? It is a failed and incorrect test of the extent of the issue.
Data Protection Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-05-14
Topic: Law and Crime
David Pannick (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I welcome Commons Amendment 188 on the confidentiality of legal advice. As the Minister knows, a concern has been raised, long after the 11th hour, about the position of arbitrators. The concern is that the Bill addresses the data protection obligations of judges and lawyers but does not address the data protection position of arbitrators. Arbitration is of course an important legal service, in which this country leads and provides services to the world. All I can do at this stage is to ask the Minister and the Bill team whether they will reflect on this concern, which has been raised not just with me but with him. If he thinks that there is any basis for concern, will he consider using the very extensive powers conferred under the Bill to bring forward regulations to address the issue?
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Education
John Bird (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I apologise for not speaking at Second Reading—please forgive me. I have to declare an interest, and here I address my remarks to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I was a child who was excluded from school, which meant that I had an incredibly impoverished education. When I brought up my own children, I started by putting them through the system where they failed and fell because they had inherited many of the problems I had. Poverty and crime and all these things can be passed on to many generations. They do not just fall off the map because you change your postal code I say to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis: my problem is that we fail 37% of our children in schools. When the noble Lord was the Schools Minister, he was a part of that failure in the same way as Justine Greening was, who reminded me that the failure rate is not 30% but 37%. Let us not do what I think is being done today, which is to bring together two considerations. The first is this. I have home schooled my children. If you meet them, you will find that they are the most socialised people I know. My grandchildren have also been home schooled, and I can swear on the lives of them all that their dignity, their citizenship and their quality of life have been increased incredibly by the beautiful opportunity we have to give parents and children a choice I am in love with that system, but I am aware that we cannot leave it to become a free for all. I have spoken to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, about this. However, I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, please not to bring two things together here. Social exclusion from school is a killer. I must have been one of the first pupils whose headmaster said, "You don’t have to come to school, Tony Bird. We will tick you off". He did not call it home education; he sent me out shoplifting. It was a good Catholic school just down the road in Sloane Square—a lovely and beautiful school. They do not do that now The point I am trying to make is that we should not conflate these issues. The Bill drafted by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, is interesting because what it means is this: let us make sure that there are no perversities. However, school exclusion is a separate argument. I will be 100% with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, as an example of a person who was violated by an education system created after the Second World War. They set up an underclass through the secondary modern school system, where all we were was being lined up to do jobs that had disappeared in the 1930s. That is one of the problems My problem is that I do not agree with the pedagogy in the school system today. It is preparing our children for 1972 while we have the fourth industrial revolution coming down the road. We should be preparing them for that, but I will leave that issue for another debate.
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Education
Lucius Cary (Crossbench, Unknown): Absolutely. The connection, which may upset people, is that I think the Bill is total nonsense in the way it is being followed through. I do not think that the teachers of this nation, most of whom are very dedicated people, are meeting the requirements—which they could do if they "get real", to use the phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, again. My daughter, through what she does, has put around 100 young people into a new frame of mind, having lost all their instincts for violent reaction and such things. That is the way forward.
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Lucius Cary (Crossbench, Unknown): I take the noble Baroness’s hint. I shall wind up my discourse by saying this. If we are to see in children of the background that I have described a change in their behaviour, their mood and, one hopes, their enjoyment of life, the best way to bring it about is to get people such as my daughter who are volunteers to do the work in the home, because the parents will not be any good at doing it. As is often the case in this country, the voluntary sector needs to be involved. I have much more faith in the voluntary sector than in the teaching profession and education generally. On that rather contentious note, I will now allow the House, with apologies, to continue in its normal vein.
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Education
John Bird (Crossbench, Unknown): Please can we stop bringing things into the debate, as the noble Baroness said? Why do we need to deface the brilliant dedication of our teachers? This is not an anti-teacher movement. I am sorry that I missed the Second Reading. I could probably have said some brilliant things then, so I will try to do so now. Please, let us concentrate on the very sensible Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, which is about making sure that we do not send our children into a hinterland of non-education.
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Education
David John Ramsbotham (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I declare an interest as patron of an organisation called SkillForce, which is probably doing more than any other organisation in the country to help those excluded. It had its genesis when a Territorial regiment in Northumberland was declared redundant. The commanding officer went to the local head of education and asked, "Can you use my NCOs in any way helpful?" He said, "They would be most valuable going round the difficult schools in the north Tyne area and persuading the potential excludees to come back into the school system". It started under the MoD and it is now an independent charity. It uses ex-military to go into schools to persuade people not to be excluded. When I went into a school in Slough which was at the bottom of the pack, I was told by the headmistress that SkillForce had been responsible for turning her school round, not least because it had persuaded some potential excludees to join the right way One reason for my supporting the amendment is the register, because what SkillForce has to do might well benefit some of those being home educated. At the moment, there is no way of connecting the two. I also support my noble friend Lord Falkland, whose daughter’s films I have had the privilege of seeing. They are a remarkable tribute.
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Education
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): I hesitate to stop progress and I apologise for not speaking at Second Reading because I was otherwise detained then. As the Minister knows, for some time my concern has been—I think this was a concern of previous Ministers in the department—the overlap between home education used inappropriately, unregistered schools and unregulated madrassas. I am normally an enthusiast for definitions in legislation because they introduce clarity. On this, I am a bit less certain. I am not clear—I would very much welcome the views of the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Soley, here—about whether this set of amendments, excluding Amendment 28, would make it easier for someone who had a child who was flitting between home education, an unregistered school and a madrassa to use this definition to carry on doing that, because they did not meet the requirement of the length for "home education". I wonder whether there would be an escape route for people doing that if we accepted this precise definition, but I would very much welcome the views of the noble Lords on that issue.
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Education
John Bird (Crossbench, Unknown): I think it is really interesting that we are talking about the legitimacy of home education. The way I see it is that schools and individual parents who are choosing that route should be going in the same direction. It is about the child, and that is really wonderful. My own children, who, like me, have problems around dyslexia, have used a wonderful system on the computer called Easyread. I would like that to be available to all our children, especially those who have dyslexia. Unfortunately, the chap has to pay for it. I would love it if our schools could get together on this because it is a brilliant method. It took my son from a very low reading age to a very high one in the space of a year.
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I strongly oppose the amendment. I do so because the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seems to be arguing that because we cannot have the perfect system, we should not take a few steps along the road towards such a system. There have been long-standing problems in the whole area of vulnerable children, which the Children’s Commissioner has identified, which would be helped a great deal if the Government could press on with a common identifier for children. The Minister has heard me banging on about this from time to time—I never miss an opportunity to bang on about it—but there is an issue of how the state joins up information about children who may be vulnerable in a number of ways Anyone who has been involved in public policy and seen the growth in the number of children claiming to be home educated would be worried whether there was abuse in that system. The sheer growth in numbers and its rapidity should make you anxious as a public policy person, whatever your politics, whoever the Government in power are. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, is trying to address that issue. He may not be solving all the problems of childkind, if I may put it that way, but he is trying in a practical way to tackle one element of the area of vulnerable children. We should not handcuff him in that effort by supporting the amendment.
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): Can I just explain my position on this? I speak as someone who spent six years as a director of social services safeguarding children, and I came to an eternal truth at the end of that. The more that children are outside any kind of supervision, the more vulnerable they are to abuse. It is actually a truth that has been validated in many hundreds if not thousands of cases. We know nothing about the children who are in home education, but the fact is that those numbers have grown very rapidly over the last few years. I am not making any kind of allegation that children who are home schooled are being abused, but in those circumstances, we need to get a better fix on this subject —not just for educational reasons but, I would suggest, for safeguarding reasons as well. That is not the purpose of the Bill, but it is an assistance in the safeguarding area as well. That is why it ought to be a very clear statutory requirement to register home education, which the Bill as drafted provides for.
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Education
John Bird (Crossbench, Unknown): Maybe this is not the place to broaden the discussion about home education, but it is so interesting. The late Tony Benn put his children through a wonderful school called Holland Park comprehensive, and the moment they left school they were then ferried to extra maths, extra history and extra this and that, and were taken to their grandfather’s at the weekend to read all his books. There is a concept that we are all involved in the home education of our children, if we follow Tony Benn—and we have a duty. I am a bit worried that we are narrowing down home education to just this period, and I would like it to be broadened out. As far as I am concerned, when you are a parent, you are an educator, and you should be given the chance to create as many opportunities as possible The noble Lord talked about what happens when children are let outside of control, but the problem is that sometimes when they are in control they are abused—they are not developed properly. One reason why people like me back home education is that it gives you the chance to bring out of your children things that would never come out, even in the best school in the country.
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Education
John Bird (Crossbench, Unknown): I add to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that there are many ways to skin a rabbit or a fish, or whatever. It is about how we use education, and I welcome the idea that we do not tie it all down. We have a load of educational experts in the country: teachers. Other people are educational philosophers and developers. In Brazil, for instance, you can go to a school where they do not teach you anything at the age of seven except how to make a bike. In the course of the first term, the children come together to make a bike, in the process learning teamwork and other things. Whether you are dyslexic or not is entirely secondary, and it brings everybody together. I therefore believe it would be very wrong to tie home education down to a system chosen by practitioners. Practitioners have to get on with practising their art, which is teaching, and the philosophers, educationalists and psychologists have to look at where we will take our education in 10 or 20 years’ time. That is not the job of a practitioner.
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Education
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I strongly support Amendments 16A and 19A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. We cannot ignore the risks associated with this, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, which is why Amendment 16A is important. It is also important that, if there is evidence that a child is going to an unregistered school, someone should be notified of that so that action can be taken.
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-04-27
Topic: Education
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): Perhaps I may clarify that. Amendment 16A refers to "other adults"; it does not say "the parent". I gently suggest to the noble Lord that if you leave your child unsupervised with a childminder for a number of hours in the day, the sensible thing is to check whether the childminder has been safeguard-checked. I suggest to the noble Lord that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, is simply saying that, if in home education you find another adult who does some teaching, probably in an unsupervised way either in the home or elsewhere, they should be safeguard-checked. That seems a sensible arrangement that many thousands of parents go through all the time when their children are looked after by somebody else.
Civil Liability Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-06-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Godfrey Bewicke-Copley (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I invite the Minister to join me in wishing the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, a very happy birthday today. That pleasurable duty discharged, I have to say that I disagree with his amendment. I found very helpful his explanation of the constraints that surround it; none the less, the purpose of the clause, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, alluded to, is surely as a safety valve for unforeseen circumstances. I accept, and said in an earlier debate, that courts have seldom, if ever, been able to exercise such a power, but we would be well advised at least to keep that option available, should any court be brave enough to do so at some point. For that reason, I feel that we should not support this amendment.
Civil Liability Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-06-27
Topic: Law and Crime
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am very grateful to all those who have taken part in this short debate. I am grateful in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for his suggestion that this might be considered a little further when the Bill moves to the other place. It is a very difficult issue and, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, has indicated, it is very hard to find another form of words which can address it I am concerned about putting into the Bill something which raises false hopes. The circular from the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers indicates that it was trying to find something in the wording which is not really what the Minister was talking about. We are not dealing with cases of exceptional injury within the domestic system, which is what the association was talking about. I take it from the Minister’s reply that he would not encourage people to have a go at changing the discount rate between reviews, which would be contrary to the idea of laying down certain rules for application while the reviews subsist It is a very tight issue as to whether there is a point in this provision at all. But having heard what has been said, and with particular thanks to the Minister for his reply today and for the way in which he has listened to me on two occasions, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-16
Topic: Law and Crime
David Pannick (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, we are dealing here with a very sensitive subject: that of authorising court and tribunal staff to exercise judicial functions. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, emphasised that the question may well be the scope of the Clause 3(2) power to make consequential provision. I am still puzzled as to why the Minister says that it is a power only to amend subordinate legislation, because it is not what it says. It states: "The Secretary of State or Lord Chancellor may, by regulations made by statutory instrument, make consequential … provision"— that is the part that concerns me— "in relation to the Schedule" I understand the Minister seeking to reassure the House, as he sought to reassure the Committee, that the power may be validly used only to amend subordinate legislation, but I would welcome an explanation as to why that is so.