argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Afghanistan: British Special Forces — House of Lords, 2022-07-14
Topic: Law and Crime
Annabel Goldie (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my noble friend. I am sure the House will have paid close attention to his authority in relation to these matters I reassure the House that the RMP is a professional, competent and well-trained investigative authority, and it has proven itself in that effectiveness on numerous occasions. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, it engages with the civilian police force to make sure that it is absolutely abreast of all the procedures and processes of modern technology My noble friend is quite right: if there is anything wrong, if anything criminal has happened and the evidence can be produced to substantiate that, of course it is in the interests of the MoD and the great majority of law-abiding, upstanding and honourable members of the military that these matters be investigated. I reassure him again that if we are made aware of any new evidence that supports the assertions made in the programme then, yes, they will be investigated.
Afghanistan: British Special Forces — House of Lords, 2022-07-14
Topic: Law and Crime
Annabel Goldie (Conservative, Centre-right): I say to the noble Lord that, as he will understand from his own background, we need evidence. That is why the RMP has asked the BBC for the evidence. Where is the substance of the information on which it based this programme? That is what we are waiting to see. As I remarked in the Statement, the BBC wants to seek the RMP’s legal authority for seeking this information, which seems to be the most perverse way of approaching everyone’s interests in trying to find the truth and establish justice. Still, there is engagement between the RMP and the BBC and the noble Lord is correct: if there is evidence to support these very serious allegations, and it is new evidence, it will be investigated.
Afghanistan: British Special Forces — House of Lords, 2022-07-14
Topic: Law and Crime
Annabel Goldie (Conservative, Centre-right): My understanding is that the Royal Military Police are free to seek advice. As I said earlier, they may seek advice from the civilian police force. If confronted with legal issues, they may want to seek legal authority, and the Attorney-General may well be the appropriate destination to seek that advice from.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Government Operations
Patrick Cormack (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I had no intention of following the noble Baroness until she began to speak. I do not always agree with her, but she has spoken a lot of very good sense this afternoon As I sat here during Question Time, I felt increasingly that we are in a vacuum. We have a discredited Prime Minister who is still occupying No. 10 Downing Street. It will be an absolute scandal if he is still there after the House rises for the Summer Recess. You cannot have a Government in suspended animation. You must have a Government in which people can have a degree of trust. My solution, which I made plain in a letter to the Times last week, is that we bring our election of the leader of the Conservative Party to a conclusion in the House of Commons next week. It is utterly ludicrous that we should spend four, five or six weeks traipsing around the country appealing to an infinitesimal proportion of people—about 200,000 in England, Wales and Scotland—who then possibly choose the second person, so you begin with a Prime Minister who does not enjoy the confidence of the majority of the Members of the House of Commons. I beg all my noble friends, if they believe that there is some substance to this argument, which has also been advanced by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, to speak out, and speak inwards as well. To have a Government in office but not in power is, to quote a famous speech by my noble friend Lord Lamont many years ago, doing the nation a great disservice. We all need a Government who have the opportunity to develop new ideas, and to present policies to the country, to your Lordships’ House, and to the other place The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, was absolutely right that this Bill is, in effect, already discredited. The brilliant forensic activities of my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking have shown just how many holes there are in it. We know that a great number of clauses will be withdrawn. Therefore, we have that worst of all combinations, a ragbag and a Christmas tree, to quote the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. Is that really any way to proceed? It is not. We should drop the Bill, we should move quickly towards the instatement of a Prime Minister who enjoys the confidence of a majority in the House of Commons, and we should begin to rebuild trust in our Government, a trust that has been squandered and besmirched by a man who has defiled everything that he has touched. That is the true background against which we debate this afternoon The Opposition should have no part of this. They should say, "We are not going to debate this Bill. It’s got to be sorted out." We need to put the Government of this country on an honourable and honest footing, as soon as we possibly can.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Government Operations
Richard Balfe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I commend my noble friend Lord Cormack for his courage. I probably would not have got up first but I now get up to support him. We really are in a terrible mess. We have a Prime Minister who has the confidence of virtually no one. I have been trying now for three or four days to get either a Private Notice Question or a Question to the Government because I understand that the Prime Minister, before he leaves office, intends to create a number of Peers. That is totally wrong. The Prime Minister is now a caretaker. When he leaves office, he will have a Resignation Honours List and that is quite appropriate It has proved impossible to get anything on to the Order Paper of this House. It really shows us up as being a rather ineffectual House if we cannot even get a Question to ask the Government to make a Statement as to whether they consider it appropriate that a caretaker Prime Minister should now be about to appoint another group of Conservative Peers. This is the time to make this speech, not when there are names on the table and it appears that we are attacking individuals. I have no knowledge whatever of who may be on that list but I believe that it would be completely improper for an acting Prime Minister to issue a list of Conservative Peers when he can issue his own Resignation Honours List I have a solution; the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has one. We have a Deputy Prime Minister who is not a candidate, as I understand it, and my answer is quite simple. The Deputy Prime Minister should take over and we should run the Government how it is run during a general election: in other words, no new policies, a caretaker, and we look after problems as they emerge but do not seek to shape legislation or anything else I fully support my noble friend Lord Cormack and ask the Opposition to consider their position because frankly, if they went on strike I would join their picket line—I have been on lots of picket lines—because now, and in this way, is not the time for us to be passing legislation. We are turning ourselves into something that we will soon come to regret.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Kenneth Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I support what my noble friend Lord Cormack said about this Bill. We are in the most extraordinary situation where, in the course of the day, we are going to gut the Bill by removing the first 18 clauses and removing its real intention. The rest are really issues that can be brought up in another Bill We are going to be asked to pass this Bill to Third Reading but this House has never been asked in the past to pass a Bill the guts of which have taken out. We have no idea what is going to be placed into the Bill later in the House of Commons. This has simply not happened in our history and it is not the right way to behave I believe therefore that we should consider not giving this Bill a Third Reading when it comes to it, because it is a gutless Bill. I am not critical at all of the Minister; in fact, I have the highest praise for her because she did not resign and is now the best Minister in the whole department. She knows about it. The other cronies appointed by the Prime Minister have no idea about what happens in education; he just wanted to give them extra pay for five months and the possibility of a consolation retirement. This is how cronies work and they will have no influence on this Bill whatever. The new Government will have to decide how this Bill should continue, or whether it should continue and in what form The issues that they will have to decide are very serious. We are told that the regulation of schools is the bit that is going to come back to us, and that concerns us very seriously indeed. If the Government are going to change the rules on regulating schools, there must be a consultation period; it cannot just be foisted on us at the end of a parliamentary Session I invite the major parties of this House, the Liberals and the Labour Party, to consider whether it would be sensible to give this Bill a Third Reading. I do not think it would be. It should be left to the new Government to decide, and it is highly unlikely that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will return to being the Education Secretary; we will have a new Education Secretary on 5 September. That person, with a new team of Ministers—I hope he gets rid of them all, apart from my noble friend—will have to consider very carefully the steps forward in the regulation of schools and MATs. I hope that the idea of not giving this a Third Reading now takes aflame in this House and that we agree not to do it.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Nathanael Ming-Yan Wei (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I support both propositions of delay, particularly not giving the Bill a Third Reading. Not only are there legislative problems with the Bill now not being a Bill in any substance, as originally intended; many measures in it give a future Education Minister the power to provide guidance and put in place statutory instruments—but we do not even know who that Education Minister is going to be To be implemented, the Bill will be passed from this House to the other side over next year and the year after, but we have no idea who will be leading on this, how long they will have been in the job or how good their guidance will be. Will it simply be left to the civil servants—for whom I have great respect, but obviously government must lead? We need people in post who know what they are doing and who, ideally, know about education. Over the passage of this Bill, that, sadly, has not always been the case, even with the present team, as much as I respect them. How can we have any confidence that it will be the case with the very fresh team coming in in the autumn?
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I shall try to address very briefly the points raised by the noble Baroness and other Members of the House, but I do not want to pre-empt the wider debate that the House is about to have on the Bill As I said in my letter to your Lordships, the Government will accept the amendments to remove the first 18 clauses of the Bill and will engage extensively with your Lordships and the sector about what replaces them. I feel very concerned at the tone of some of your Lordships’ remarks about the rest of the Bill, which brings in very important measures in relation to children not in school and illegal schools. I remind your Lordships that those parts of the Bill have been extensively consulted on. I do not think it is appropriate to describe them in the terms that they were referred to in today My noble friend the Chief Whip has had constructive discussions with the usual channels—I thank the Opposition Chief Whip for his remarks—about how such replacement clauses will receive proper scrutiny in the House and has agreed to relax the rules of debate on ping-pong for these clauses and to allow sufficient time for the first round of ping-pong. I am sure my noble friend the Chief Whip would be happy to speak to any of your Lordships about that in more detail. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for the tone of his remarks.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord. With the leave of the House, I hope it will be helpful to your Lordships if I briefly explain the context for the Government’s position, as set out in my letter of 30 June. I have taken on board the concerns raised by your Lordships and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform and Constitution Committees about Clauses 1 to 18, which is why the Government will be supporting amendments at this stage to remove them from the Bill. We will use the regulation and commissioning review to work closely with the sector to develop revised clauses to address the concerns raised and will bring them back in the other place. I confirm that we will not be bringing back the delegated power in Clause 3 On the clauses relating to the academy standards, we will develop an approach that is more tightly defined so that we can provide Parliament and the sector with clarity on the scope of our plans to set standards for academy trusts. The Government believe that our approach to the intervention provisions is broadly right, but we intend to address the issues of proportionality and the right to representation raised in this House. Our policy intention behind these clauses is to move to a statutory framework fit for a fully trust-led system, which clearly defines the scope of the academy standards and enables a ladder of proportionate intervention at trust level I know your Lordships will rightly expect the opportunity to scrutinise the revised clauses thoroughly. First, a full day will be allowed for the first round of ping-pong when the Bill returns from the Commons. Secondly, the Companion to the Standing Orders has a process in place to allow the House to use Committee-stage rules of debate during ping-pong on the replacements to Clauses 1 to 18, allowing greater freedom of debate and more conversation about the amendments. Following that, the House will revert to normal ping-pong rules for the rest of the Bill.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Kenneth Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): Following what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, as I understand it, the Minister has said that if the Bill goes forward under the new Government, it will come back to us for one day of ping-pong. Is it just one day for ping-pong? It might have 10, 20 or 30 clauses, and that cannot be done in one day. Will we have longer than that to have a look at the clauses? Clearly the clauses are going to be very important She has set up a committee composed of basically the managers of multi-academy trusts, which has only one school head on it, which apparently is going to try to establish the relationship that should exist between the Department for Education and multi-academy trusts. I do not object to that because they are very important bodies, but there are lots of other issues affecting multi-academy trusts. For example, how is the voice of the individual school in a multi-academy trust to be heard? What is the role of the independent governing body of individual schools in a multi-academy trust? How will they be listened to? What rights do they have and what position can they hold against the authority of a multi-academy trust? Will these issues be covered by her committee, which will now be working in the remnants of this Government Secondly, the Minister has issued a document about regulating schools. Do I take it that some of the amendments likely to be tabled will cover that as well? If the Government are going to change the rules and regulations between schools and the department, that requires a long period of consultation in which schools, local authorities and educational experts must be listened to. Are we going to get that period of consultation on any of these fundamental changes? They must not be smuggled into this Bill on the understanding that "These are just a few clauses that we want".
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): If I may, I would like to respond to my noble friend’s other points. It is extremely important, given that our debate is a matter of public record in Hansard, that assertions that are made in the House are accurate. With the greatest respect to my noble friend, I am very happy to share with him—and it is on GOV. UK—the list of people who are on the expert panel. I am very happy to talk about—and will be in a few moments, I hope—the extremely extensive engagement that we plan for over the summer. I do not think it is helpful to assert things that are not accurate about how the Government are approaching this Bill in continuing to get it to a good place. I will take any time with any Member of the House to make sure that there is no confusion about how we are approaching this. On the regulation of schools, these standards are about the regulation of trusts; they are trust standards, not school standards.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Kenneth Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): I very much support what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said. As the Convenor of the Cross Benches and one of the most distinguished former Lord Chief Justices in this House, he has had a great impact on its feelings in our debates, and I hope that the usual channels will take notice of what he said. This is such an unusual procedure; it has not happened constitutionally in the history of this House. It is remarkable that we have been given the opportunity to make such a fundamental change to any Bill. It was a bad, bad Bill to begin with, and we managed to show that. Frankly, had it come from the Commons, we would not have got anywhere near as far; we would have just been told, "That is the wish of the Commons, with the Conservative majority of 80" I seriously hope that the usual channels will consider my noble friend Lord Cormack’s proposal about Third Reading. It would be very unusual to pass a Bill of this sort to a Third Reading. But the Minister rightly said that some other parts of the Bill are very good—I certainly agree some of them, such as those on home learning—but these could be taken out, put into a separate Bill very quickly and passed in both Houses with no trouble in a few months The other issues are much more important, because the Government are struggling now that local authorities no longer have any real control over education. In fact, they are debarred from the committee that the Minister has set up. Am I right in saying that, as far as I can see, there is no representative from local authorities on the committee?
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Kenneth Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): When I looked through the list of committee members, I could not see anyone representing local authorities. The Minister might well discuss this with them, but it would be helpful if she could send us all the terms of what they are expected to cover. If it is just about multi-academy trusts and the controls that the Government have held to regulate them, I would go along with her. If it goes further than that, I have reservations. The involvement of local communities and local views has inspired English education since the great Act of 1870. Quite frankly, however, there is none of that in this Bill; nowhere are the views of local people to be found. A school is not just an education institution; it is part of a local and social community. This has always been the tradition, and these views must somehow be reflected in any proposal that the Minister brings to us I am very grateful for the support of various Peers, particularly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, on the question of the Government’s power. This Bill increases the powers of both the Secretary of State and the department in a way that has never been known since 1870. I do not believe that the Minister had any hand in drafting the Bill. When I was Secretary of State, I always found that there was an element in the department which wanted these controls from the word go. Although these people have never run a school, some of them always want to run all the schools—thank heavens we managed to stop that. I do not think this will come back in any of the amendments we get after the new Government take over This is really strange procedure but it is utterly unsatisfactory to be offered only one day for debate. The clauses will be important and a way must be found—and a guarantee given by the Government before we pass Third Reading—for us to have plenty more time to discuss it in this House, should we pass Third Reading. This Bill started in this House and can be improved again in this House.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
John Nash (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of a multi-academy trust, Future Academies, and a trustee of the Education Policy Institute. I am no expert on parliamentary procedure and will not comment on the discussions on it so far, but I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on listening to the concerns expressed across your Lordships’ House and by the sector, and on her approach. I will reserve judgment on any clauses that come back in whatever way until I see them, but I am delighted that my noble friend and her department will now engage widely with the sector and others. I also endorse her and my noble friend Lord Baker’s point that there are other very important parts of this Bill; for instance, on children missing from education, home education and illegal settings, which are long overdue for legislation.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Government Operations
Theodore Agnew (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I too thank my noble friend the Minister for listening, I think she has had a torrid time over the last six weeks, and has done it with great courtesy and patience. I am delighted that she is leading on the removal of these first 18 clauses. I am anxious for the Minister to reassure us, as many other Peers have said, that we will see properly the outcome of the regulatory review that has just been kicked off, because that always was putting the cart before the horse. We need to understand exactly what the Government have in mind, and to make sure that it is proportional and specific.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Alastair Cooke (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, may I just point out that Mr Johnson and his colleagues sought no mandate for the substantial reform of academies in the 2019 election manifesto? There is one page devoted to education in the Tory 2019 election manifesto, and it contains no sentence on or reference at all to academies.