argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Leaving the EU — House of Commons, 2018-11-26
Topic: International Affairs
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): The Prime Minister has been unequivocal in denying the people a people’s vote on her deal, but time and again in this House she has refused to concede that her deal makes this country poorer, compared with being a member of the European Union. If she is insistent on making my constituents and those of everyone in this House poorer, should they not be asked if no Brexit is as good as a bad Brexit?
Leaving the EU — House of Commons, 2018-11-26
Topic: International Affairs
Paul John Sweeney (Labour, Centre-left): The man who wrote article 50, Lord Kerr, has said today that the characterisation of a choice between the Prime Minister’s deal and defaulting to a no-deal situation—or going back to square one—is a false choice. Who is correct, the man who wrote article 50 or the Prime Minister?
Leaving the EU — House of Commons, 2018-11-26
Topic: International Affairs
Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Centre-left): Many constituents have contacted me about this issue over the past week. Why does the Prime Minister think that the overwhelming majority, whether they voted to leave or remain, are urging me to vote against her deal?
Leaving the EU — House of Commons, 2018-11-26
Topic: Labor
Hugh Lawrence Gaffney (Labour, Centre-left): Looking at the people behind the Prime Minister—there were many more of them earlier—it is obvious why she wants to hit the road and get out of this place. If she has not yet booked her ticket, I am happy to provide a one-way ticket. Can she confirm where and when she will meet the leaders of Britain’s trade unions, the representatives of the working people across the United Kingdom? They might be able to give her some tips on negotiation.
College of West Anglia and Worksop Football Academy — House of Commons, 2018-11-26
Topic: Education
John Mann (Labour, Centre-left): I commend the Minister for her work and her approach throughout this unhappy episode. Safeguarding does not protect the young people who are put in the position of training four or five-year-olds without having the competence or accreditation to do so. I am pleased to inform her that Nottinghamshire County Council has agreed that a gold-plated qualification on top of all existing requirements is now the aim for anyone who does sports coaching in schools in Nottinghamshire. Is that not a great step forward?
Mobile Phone Coverage — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Technology
Christopher Philip James Elmore (Labour, Centre-left): It is good to hear the Secretary of State say that there is more work to do because there really is. My constituency runs along the M4 corridor. Some villages just two or three miles from the M4 simply have no coverage—not just no 3G or 4G. Will the Secretary of State set out what additional investment he will provide to ensure not just that there is 4G, but that there is basic mobile phone coverage for many of the villages in my constituency?
Mobile Phone Coverage — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Technology
Liam Dominic Byrne (Labour, Centre-left): We have some of the worst networks in the advanced world. We heard yesterday that download speeds in Gloucestershire, for example, are 2,000 times slower than they are in Birmingham. Frankly, it adds insult to injury for those struggling to get on to universal credit, which is of course a digital-only benefit. The National Infrastructure Commission and Ofcom think that it is going to cost something like £11 billion to bring our networks into the 21st century, so will the Secretary of State assure the House that that is the full sum that he is seeking from Her Majesty’s Treasury?
Public Libraries — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Education
Dennis Edward Skinner (Labour, Centre-left): Will the Minister take a trip up to Matlock, where the county offices are for Derbyshire? The Tory-controlled council there has recently announced the closure of 20 libraries and a reduction in the hours of every librarian in the whole county. Something needs to be done urgently. Get up there to Derbyshire and sort it out.
Broadband: Advertising — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Technology
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister for that answer, but a High Court case has been raised today to try to overturn the Advertising Standards Authority’s decision to allow broadband to be advertised as fibre when large parts of it are of copper. Given that Edinburgh, where my constituency is, has just become a fibre city and that the Minister herself has called this advertising "misleading", what can the Government do to ensure that when fibre broadband is advertised, it is indeed fibre end to end and does not have copper?
Free Television Licences — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Social Welfare
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer, because that popular initiative was introduced by the Labour Government in 2000, in recognition of the fact that that TV is a lifeline for many elderly people, and to give them something back for their contribution to this country. Does the consultation so far indicate that the cost of administering a new system that might include means-testing would far outweigh the savings that the BBC seeks to make?
Free Television Licences — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Social Welfare
Tom Watson (Labour, Centre-left): As the Secretary of State does not know the answer I will tell him, because I think he needs to know: 6,060 households in his area could lose their free TV licence if it is means-tested. Many thousands of people in Kenilworth will lose their TV licence despite a Tory manifesto, on which the Minister stood for election, promising that a Tory Government would maintain all pensioner benefits, including free TV licences for everyone over 75. The Government may have devolved welfare cuts to the BBC, but the Secretary of State will not be able to devolve responsibility for this impending policy disaster. Will he now admit, on the record to this House, that the Government have broken a manifesto pledge and he has broken his promise to all those people in his constituency?
Contempt of Court — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Law and Crime
Lyn Carol Brown (Labour, Centre-left): Contempt of court proceedings are very important to ensuring fair trials and the rule of law. Contempt of Parliament proceedings have been crucial in enabling the House to have the information to which it was entitled. Is the Attorney General not ashamed that his Ministers were found to be in contempt?
Contempt of Court — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds (Labour, Centre-left): On the subject of contempt, the Attorney General was meant to disclose the full and final legal advice on the withdrawal agreement. What was actually disclosed was a letter to the Prime Minister dated 13 November exclusively on the legal effect of the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland. Is the Attorney General seriously saying he did not advise on the remainder of the withdrawal agreement?
Contempt of Court — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds (Labour, Centre-left): The letter refers simply to the legal effect of the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland, but let me then ask the Attorney General this: the Prime Minister said last night on the steps of Downing Street that she is seeking "legal and political changes" to the withdrawal agreement and the backstop, so as a matter of honour if nothing else, if the Attorney General advises on any changes or additions that the Prime Minister brings back, will he disclose that advice to this House?
Legal Advice: Public Disclosure — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Law and Crime
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): I think we all understand what the Attorney General’s preferences are in this matter. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), he said that the advice in his letter to the Prime Minister was full and final. It is credible that it is the final legal advice, but it is not credible that it is the full legal advice. Is that seriously what the Attorney General wants us to believe?
Royal Albert Hall — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Government Operations
Sharon Hodgson (Labour, Centre-left): The Attorney General promised that he would make a decision on this matter by the end of the autumn. I am sure we are now in winter, so that decision is overdue. The majority of the Royal Albert Hall’s ruling body own a quarter of all the seats. Those seats are valued at up to £25 million, and they are allowed to sell tickets for the seats on the secondary market, making huge profits. Does the Attorney General not consider that a conflict of interest, and will he allow the Charity Commission to refer it to the tribunal?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Social Welfare
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): At the time of the Budget, the Local Government Association, of which I am pleased to be a vice-president, welcomed the £650 million extra for social care, but contrasted it very clearly with the funding gap in adult and children’s services of £2.6 billion. That, it said, would lead to more than 1 million people not getting the care they need and, in the LGA’s own words, "threaten other services our communities rely on"— such as libraries, street cleaning and parks. Will the Secretary of State confirm that, for the majority of councils, there is no additional funding in this statement over and above the amounts announced in the Budget, which the LGA described as "inadequate", and that, for the next financial year, this will mean further cuts and more austerity still being the order of the day for most local councils?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Government Operations
Maria Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): Liverpool City Council and Knowsley Borough Council cover my constituency of Garston and Halewood. Both have been severely hard hit, with more than 60% of their Government grant removed. Will the Secretary of State explain how his announcement will help Liverpool City Council to meet the enormous gaps that have been created as a result of his Government’s policies?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Government Operations
John Eugene Joseph Dromey (Labour, Centre-left): Birmingham is reeling from the biggest cuts in local government history—£690 million, with another £86 million to come. Children’s centres are closing, and there have been cuts to school transport for disabled kids and to advice for poor people. The consequences are ever more serious, yet the Secretary of State seems to favour low-need, leafy shires at the expense of the great city of Birmingham. Does he not recognise that this is not a fair deal but a bad deal for the city, and that Birmingham has simply had enough?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Government Operations
Catharine Letitia Hoey (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Secretary of State understand that there is a limit to back-office efficiency savings and the new income that councils can get? Since 2010, Lambeth has seen some of the biggest cuts of any council in the country. There is a rising demand in inner-city areas that we can do nothing about. Just how does the Secretary of State think that councils can continue to deal with this rising demand with the level of funding that they are receiving?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Social Welfare
Alexander Gordon Martin (Labour, Centre-left): In my previous role, I warned Suffolk County Council that reducing services in children’s centres would lead to increased numbers of children being taken into care. Does the Secretary of State accept that increase in demand for children’s social care is at least partially caused by cuts in preventive services such as children’s centres, and will his Department assess the correlation between children’s centre cuts and an increase in the number of children taken into care?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Social Welfare
Karin Marguerite Smyth (Labour, Centre-left): It is the season of goodwill, and I indicated to the diligent Parliamentary Private Secretary that I would like a copy of the hand-out questions, but I have had to make up my own Last week, I met the nursery heads and children’s centre leaders in south Bristol. We know that these centres are the greatest, most efficient driver of social mobility in the country. May I therefore invite the Secretary of State to south Bristol to meet those nursery school heads and children’s centre leaders to explain how, if they are not part of his assessment on sustainability for local authorities, they fit into the Government’s policies on social mobility and increasing skills for our country?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: International Affairs
Luciana Clare Goldsmith (Berger) (Labour, Centre-left): Unfortunately, Liverpool City Council is not very happy with today’s news. I listened very closely to the Secretary of State, but he did not mention anything about replacing European funds that will be lost if the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement passes—whenever that may be. Liverpool City Council has secured £110 million from Europe for various projects over the next few years that is going to be vital in the face of £440 million of cuts since 2010—a 64% cut in real terms that has seen devastating consequences. Will he today commit to replacing those moneys if it turns out that they will be lost?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Social Welfare
Liam Dominic Byrne (Labour, Centre-left): The battering of Birmingham has been remorseless. In the food banks where I work, demand is up by a third on the past year. In the soup kitchen where I worked on Sunday night, demand was up by 50% on the past year. The rough sleepers I helped to count sleeping on our pavements a couple of weeks ago were up by 50% on the past year. Yet our council has been forced to table proposals to cut council tax support for the poorest in our community because the Secretary of State has ruled out access to our reserves. Birmingham MPs wrote to him on 25 November to ask to discuss this. We have not yet had the courtesy of a reply. When will he meet us to discuss when the battering of Birmingham will stop?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Social Welfare
Sarah Deborah Champion (Labour, Centre-left): Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council has had to make £170 million of cuts and savings since 2010, yet this year alone we have had a 40% increase in the number of looked-after children, which was unplanned because they have come from the National Crime Agency’s historical child sexual exploitation investigation. The £84 million that the Secretary of State cites is actually Department for Education money for innovation, not frontline social work. So exactly how is Rotherham Council meant to look after children on a day-to-day basis?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Macroeconomics
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): The National Audit Office says that local government funding will be cut by 56% between 2010 and 2020. My local authority’s funding has been cut by 63%. Last night, there were 948 households in temporary accommodation in Greenwich, and 21,000 children went to sleep in households in poverty. Is that not the reality of Tory austerity, and are those people not paying the price of the consistent cuts that this Government have made to local government funding?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Government Operations
Chinyelu Susan Onwurah (Labour, Centre-left): By 2022, Newcastle City Council will have had to save £327 million due to slashed Government funding and rising demand. We see that in the increased litter on our streets, the reduced library opening hours, reduced support for the most vulnerable among us and the terrible choices that Newcastle councillors and council officials have to make. The council is currently consulting on yet further cuts. Will the Secretary of State respond to that consultation and explain why slashed services should be further slashed, now that austerity is supposedly over?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Macroeconomics
Gareth Craig Snell (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Secretary of State for allowing Stoke and Staffordshire to be in the business rates pilot. It is late—it should have been last year—but it is welcome. However, I remain confused. When I wrote to the Conservative leadership at Stoke-on-Trent City Council last February about their increase in revenue support grant, they told me that it was an ineffective measure of their spending ability and that they will still have to make severe cuts in their budget. Who is right—the Conservatives at the council who tell me their budget is still being squeezed, or the Conservatives in Parliament who tell me that spending has never been greater?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Social Welfare
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), the £84 million for children’s services is over five years, which means it is only £16 million a year. The £410 million is to be shared between adults, the NHS and children’s services, yet in County Durham the number of children looked after has risen by 300 to more than 800, which means an extra £7 million a year. Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that his increases are inadequate, and that he needs to go back to the Treasury to ask for more?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Government Operations
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): Further to the point raised by the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers)—my hon. Friend in this respect—will the Secretary of State, given the reputed back-office and other savings produced by the move to unitary authorities, look at setting up a fund to encourage the remaining parts of the country at least to consider doing so as the way forward in really making local government work in those areas?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Social Welfare
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): In the Secretary of State’s statement, he said that he has been "listening carefully to councils of all shapes and sizes across the country and responding." May I therefore ask him how exactly the £650 million for adult and children’s services, and apparently for the NHS as well, will deal with the national funding crisis now—I repeat, now—in adult social care and children’s services, which is currently estimated to be about £3 billion?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Macroeconomics
Jeffrey Smith (Labour, Centre-left): For the past eight years, the Government have in effect outsourced the hardest decisions on the most severe cuts to the most deprived local authorities. It is just not fair on a city such as Manchester, where, in the eight years to 2020, we will see a £600 per household cut in funding. Is it not true that austerity will never be over until we have not only the sticking plaster that the Government are implementing in relation to these cuts, but some proper funding restored to the most deprived authorities in this country?
Local Government Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Government Operations
Christian John Patrick Matheson (Labour, Centre-left): The modus operandi of this Government—whether we are talking about the police, fire services or, as today, local government—is to smash financial support for public authorities and, when they are unable to deliver services, to attack them for such an inability; or, if they are forced to increase the council tax to make up the shortfall, to attack them politically for increasing the council tax. Since most of the additional spending power the Secretary of State is announcing today will come from the local authorities themselves, does he plan to use the same tactic in this funding round?
Police Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Law and Crime
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister has rightly talked about the increasing pressures on policing, as the Home Affairs Committee set out in our report, and we look forward to scrutinising the detail of the figures that he set out. Will he confirm what I think he just said—that once we take account of inflation, the increased pension costs and funding, there is not a real increase in Government funding for police forces? Will he also say what he thinks the impact of the funding will be, given that arrests have halved in the last 10 years, and even in the last three years we have seen an increase of about one third in the level of recorded crime, but a drop of one quarter in the number of charges and summons? Does he think that arrests, charges and summons will go up as a result of these figures?
Police Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Law and Crime
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): Yet another tragic case of knife crime in my constituency led to a death within the last 48 hours. Ten years ago, there were 31,000 police officers in London, and the Mayor of London is now warning that that is going to drop to below 27,000. Back then, I had six police officers per ward in my constituency, and I am now struggling to get two. The Government were warned about the dangers of cutting the police so severely and now we are suffering the consequences. What will this announcement do to address the severe cuts that we have seen over the last eight years?
Police Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Law and Crime
Liam Dominic Byrne (Labour, Centre-left): Last year, West Midlands police took 40,000 extra 999 calls and recorded 27,000 more crimes and 3,000 more violent crimes, yet it has 2,000 fewer officers. Law and order in our city is now resting on the heroism of officers such as Matt Crowley, who led a major operation against the dealers of violence this week. The Minister knows that we needed £25.5 million extra for 500 extra officers to keep our city safe. At best, can he confirm that we have only half that money and that once more, West Midlands police will be sent forward with one arm tied behind its back?
Police Funding Settlement — House of Commons, 2018-12-13
Topic: Law and Crime
Luciana Clare Goldsmith (Berger) (Labour, Centre-left): On Merseyside, we have seen a cut of more than 1,000 police officers since 2010, which is a 24% decrease. Despite the very best efforts of our police, they simply cannot provide the same level of service. Levels of certain crimes are going up and our police are under incredible pressure, as we have seen in the increase in the number of 999 calls I listened closely to the Minister. Will he categorically confirm that, of the £161 million increase in grants to the police, almost all—£152 million—will be eaten up by higher pensions? That will mean that inflation and pay increase costs will have to be met by council tax payers—it is about £24 a year, which we are not guaranteed to raise. That means that Merseyside police will just stand still. How on earth is that an acceptable state of affairs?