argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): The Joseph Rowntree report on relative poverty will always reflect changes—for example, in levels of pensions and levels of employment. If we see higher employment or higher levels of pensions, then an unfortunate side effect will be that relative poverty will increase. As I have said, there are now over 300,000 fewer people in absolute poverty, and that is the figure that is more important to them in their everyday lives as they are shopping for Christmas.
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Labor
Justin Paul Tomlinson (Conservative, Centre-right): As the new board is formed, one of the key areas of expertise we need is the ability to build on record employment as, for the first time ever, those entering work will continue to get support from their named job coach, helping to unlock their potential to keep their work, increase their hours, increase their pay, and progress within work. Can that be a real priority for a new board member?
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): There are a number of areas of experience and expertise that we will wish to see from the new board members. This is an opportunity to refresh the board. I look forward to an inspiring chair of the Social Mobility Commission to take forward the work that Alan Milburn has laid the foundations for.
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Education
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): Education is key to improving social mobility, so will the Minister ensure that the new commissioners who are appointed recognise the benefits of, and draw inspiration from, the fact that the proportion of pupils attending good or outstanding schools has increased from 66% in 2010 to 87% today?
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Education
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the best routes out of poverty—out of the trap that social mobility failures often put people in—is a good education. I am very pleased that we have more good school places than ever before, that more people from underprivileged backgrounds are going to university, and that more people than ever before are taking the other opportunities such as apprenticeships and training.
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): That is not the case. Social mobility is absolutely at the top of my priority list, as well as those of the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister. We are absolutely committed to delivering better social mobility in our country. The evidence that I have already given about progress in very many areas, including in university, is testament to that.
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Government Operations
Thomas Christopher John Pursglove (Conservative, Centre-right): Rather than appointing politicians as replacements to the board, is my right hon. Friend keen to consider leading community people who have ground-level experience? I can suggest to him a list of brilliant people who do incredible work in Corby and whom he might want to consider.
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, absolutely. I must make it clear that Alan Milburn was told that there would be an open process—in other words, that we were opening up the selection—and he said in his letter that he would not be applying. That is to put on record exactly what happened in that case. I hope that we will get a wide range of applicants, so that we can choose some of the very best and most able to help us in moulding our future policies to improve social mobility.
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): We have certainly not ignored the commissioners’ work, and the social mobility index has been a useful tool to help the Government to prioritise how they address the problem. The opportunity areas, some of which were announced in September and more of which will be announced in the new year, are precisely targeted at the areas identified by the Social Mobility Commission in its "cold spot" programme.
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Government Operations
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): The recruitment process will commence as soon as possible and will ensure that we get the best people to advise us and the House on the progress that we continue to make. As I say, the situation has improved since 2010, and we are ensuring that it continues to improve.
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): Our 30 hours’ free childcare offer is available to lone parents, who need to earn only about £6,500 a year to qualify. That is a great opportunity for lone parents to get into the workplace, to start putting some money into the family budget and to get themselves and their families out of the difficult financial situations in which they may find themselves.
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): As I have made clear, we need to refresh the board. The board have been very effective, but earlier in the year we had a recruitment round, at which we did not feel we had the right calibre of new people coming in. I think this is a great opportunity to get some new blood on to the commission and make sure that it carries on the work started by Alan and his board, so that we continue to identify the challenges of social mobility and the best ways of addressing them.
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Government Operations
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): I cannot speak for my right hon. Friend, but as I have said, we now have an opportunity to get some new people on to the board. A number of the existing members had been long-standing members of the board, and although I recognise the contribution they have made, a refresh that brings in new people will provide a good opportunity to increase the body’s diversity and experience.
Social Mobility Commission — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Social Welfare
Robert Goodwill (Conservative, Centre-right): The Secretary of State spoke to Alan Milburn on 22 November. I understand that the other members who have tendered their resignations have written letters; they have not made them public, which I think is interesting Certainly one of the challenges for local authorities is how they deliver good services for children, and having children’s centres is one way of doing so. If I may say so, when I was at the children’s centre in my constituency, the lady in charge looked out of the window and said, "Of course, the real problem is that the kids we need in this children’s centre aren’t here; they are stuck at home because their parents won’t bring them in." There are a number of initiatives around the country that will demonstrate better solutions for addressing social mobility issues for the most difficult to reach families.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Government Operations
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Member for New Forest West chunters from a sedentary position that it has not crossed his desk either. The question of what Ministers do in respect of briefing their own Members is not known to me, but I think I can say with complete confidence that this House will be briefed about this matter and will have an opportunity fully to question the relevant Minister, be it the Prime Minister or the Brexit Secretary, on it. I hope that Members will accept that on the basis that they do not have to look into the crystal ball when they can read the book. I say this, I hope, in no spirit of immodesty. I run statements in this place more fully than used to be done in the past, and I do that because I think that the priority is for Members of the House to have the opportunity to question and challenge the Executive, even if now and again the Executive find that irritating. That does not bother me at all. I always try to put the House first, so worry not. Everyone will get a chance to be heard.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Government Operations
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): I am following the hon. Lady’s speech carefully. I am also looking very carefully at her new clause, but I do not see how it would resolve the question of what would happen if we set up joint structures and there was disagreement about how they will work. It can, of course, be argued that the Parliament of the United Kingdom is ultimately sovereign, so I think that it is a matter of law that if there is a disagreement, the logjam would ultimately be resolved by this Parliament and the Government in Whitehall having primacy. The question the hon. Lady has to answer is whether the structure she is putting forward would be workable in practice, or if it would just lead to conflict.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Government Operations
David Ian Jones (Conservative, Centre-right): Pursuing the same point, does the hon. Lady not accept that new clause 64(3), having provided that there should be no new frameworks created without the agreement of the devolved Administrations, would be a recipe for chaos, on the basis that if there were no such agreement, it would be impossible to create the frameworks that she seems to acknowledge as so desirable?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: International Affairs
David Thomas Charles Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I first want to pick up on an earlier comment about what Mr Juncker has been saying. If one could get past the headlines of the biased BBC, the reality is that Mr Juncker actually said that enormous progress has been made in the talks. It might be worth listening to what he actually has to say for once instead of listening to all the usual commentators, who are doing their best to undermine the excellent work that has been done by my colleagues in Government The hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) delivered an interesting speech in which she made a couple of pointed, but very kind, remarks about the fact that the Conservative party had opposed devolution, and she is of course absolutely correct. We totally opposed devolution in Wales and in Scotland, too, but it is Wales that I will talk about. Indeed, I was one of the leaders of the anti-Welsh Assembly campaign in 1999. However, the hon. Lady forgot to mention something in her long speech, despite making several references to devolution, and it is rather an important point. After the referendum in 1999, when the Welsh Assembly was voted for by just over half of the half of the electorate that came out to vote, the Conservative party totally accepted the result of the referendum. On the very next day, we said that we did not like it and that we would not have chosen it ourselves, but we respected the voice of the people of Wales. We recognised that when people vote in a referendum, even if the result is far from overwhelming, we have to adhere to the result. That is a lesson that the hon. Lady and many of her colleagues have yet to learn properly.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: International Affairs
David Thomas Charles Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me return to the matter in hand for a minute, because the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) was also there for the underwhelming vote for devolution in 1999, and she will surely recall that the Conservative party did not call for a second referendum. We did not threaten to drag the whole thing through the courts to get the judges to overrule the will of the people of Wales. We were not going around pretending that people had changed their minds and saying that we needed to run the whole thing over again. We did not say that we were going to drag the whole thing out and do everything possible to undermine it. In actual fact, Nick Bourne, who was then the leader of the Welsh Conservatives and is now a Member of the other place, sat down with Members of all parties on the National Assembly advisory group and helped to draw up the Assembly’s Standing Orders, most of which are now in place. That is the difference between the Conservative party’s approach when we were on the losing side of a referendum and the approach of the Labour party, the SNP and many others now that they are on the losing side The reality is that the change will be called a power grab. I did not hear the phrase used today, but it will be described as a power grab. Of course it is a power grab, and what a wonderful power grab it is, too. We are grabbing powers from Brussels and bringing them back to London. Not only that, but over the next few years—[Interruption.] SNP Members can shout all they like; I am waiting for one of them to intervene.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: International Affairs
David Thomas Charles Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is for the Scots to decide, and they decided that, for the time being, ultimate sovereignty rests within a United Kingdom Parliament in which the Scots are heavily and well represented, if I may say so. I totally respect that, and I hope he does, too A few weeks ago, Scottish National party Members were telling us that we should all support and recognise the referendum result in Catalonia, where a nation decided that it wanted to break out of a union with Spain. I find it ironic that the SNP is saying that we have to recognise referendum results when it happens to agree with the policy but that we should completely ignore referendum results when it does not agree with the policy.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: International Affairs
David Thomas Charles Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman knows the difference between a local authority area and a parliamentary constituency, so he knows there is absolutely no way of telling what the Monmouth constituency did. He will be aware that it was quite close in the Monmouthshire local authority area. Indeed, there was a very small majority in favour of staying in the European Union. He will also be acutely aware, as I am sure is the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), that I represent 10,000 Labour-voting, traditionally working-class voters in Torfaen. I respect those voters, and they voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union. Some people say I should not listen to such people, but I tell the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) that those people mean as much to me as anyone living in Monmouth. I will represent their views, and they overwhelmingly voted to leave the European Union.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Charles Kerr (Conservative, Centre-right): Is not the key point about the referendum not which regions or nations within the United Kingdom family voted one way or another but that we voted as a United Kingdom on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: International Affairs
David Thomas Charles Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Of course, the Government’s whole purpose is to ensure there is a single market within the United Kingdom. We cannot have a situation where different nation states within the United Kingdom go off and do their own thing. If that were to happen, we would have exactly the problem that some Opposition Members complain will occur when we leave the European Union. That is what we are about today If one judges the Government by their actions, rather than on the words of Opposition Members, one can see that, actually, this Government and this Conservative party have, over and again, given extra powers to the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Welsh Assembly. Sometimes they have been rather more enthusiastic in doing that than I would choose, but we saw it happen in 2011 and we are about to see a huge tranche of extra powers being handed over to the Welsh Assembly on 1 April 2018. The Conservative party has shown it is very willing to give extra powers to the devolved Parliaments and, to some extent, I suppose I agree with that approach. I sometimes think it is happening a bit too quickly, but it will certainly happen again. So I completely support what the Government are doing here today. They are doing what all those on the other side of the House are calling for: bringing about Brexit in a stable and controlled fashion that allows us to move forward with certainty. It is inevitable that this will lead to further powers going to the devolved Parliaments—it may not happen straightaway, but it will happen. Not one single power is coming back to London as a result of these measures; there is not one single thing that can be done by the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly today that they will not be able to do once this Bill is passed.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: International Affairs
David Thomas Charles Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I can say to the hon. Lady that that is exactly what I am saying to her. May I remind her that in 2003 I had an election leaflet that had the headline "No more powers for the Welsh Assembly" and I was given one of the biggest majorities of anyone in Wales? That is something to think about. So "yes" is the answer to that question This Government are doing a superb job. All sorts of people and the commentators will once again be, in the newspapers tomorrow trying to find little reasons to undermine this process. It is quite a complicated process, but I say from the bottom of my heart that I think these Ministers are doing a superb job, and they are being supported not just by their Back Benchers or all those who voted to leave the European Union, but by a majority of people in Wales, who also voted to leave the EU and are not being respected by the Labour party, Plaid Cymru and whatever is left of the Liberal Democrats. More power to them, and I look forward to joining them in the Lobby tonight.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: International Affairs
John Robert Lamont (Conservative, Centre-right): The Secretary of State and the United Kingdom Government have made it absolutely clear that, after Brexit, the Scottish Parliament will be much more powerful than it is today. Despite that the right hon. Gentleman continues to stand and spout those views. That is just not the case. Our job is to protect Scotland’s place within the United Kingdom and within the internal market of the United Kingdom. Can he tell me the value to Scotland of the rest of the UK trade compared with the value to Scotland of trade with the EU?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: International Affairs
Douglas Gordon Ross (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman says that he wants to keep the powers where they are. Does he therefore accept that he is saying that the SNP wants powers to come back from Europe to Scotland, and for Scotland to become independent to shove those powers straight back to Europe again? Those are views that ensured that the people of Moray voted for a Conservative, rather than an SNP, representative this time.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: International Affairs
Lucy Claire Leigh (Frazer) (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman keeps saying that we are trampling on powers that Scotland has, and I just want to correct him. Regardless of what he thinks of the principle, the position—as a matter of law—is that these powers are now vested in the EU. The Supreme Court said in paragraph 130 of the article 50 case judgment: "The removal of the EU constraints on withdrawal from the EU Treaties will alter the competence of the devolved institutions unless new legislative constraints are introduced. In the absence of such…restraints, withdrawal from the EU will enhance the devolved competence." Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that the Supreme Court is wrong?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: International Affairs
David Gordon Mundell (Conservative, Centre-right): At the start of his remarks, the right hon. Gentleman sought to give us feedback from the meeting that I held with the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Scotland and the Minister responsible for exit. If the right hon. Gentleman had been party to those discussions, he would know that all 111 powers were subject to discussion between the two Governments, and the two Governments will bring forward their proposals in due course. This power grab talk and this naming one power—it is pantomime. What this Government are involved in is the reality of negotiating a way forward on this matter.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Agriculture
Paul Masterton (Conservative, Centre-right): Is the right hon. Gentleman not just demonstrating how out of the loop he is with his own party, given that the Brexit Minister, Mike Russell, knows full well what those discussions have been about? Secondly, is the position of the SNP at Westminster different from that in Holyrood, because the SNP there has said explicitly that it agrees that agriculture and fisheries are areas where UK frameworks will be needed?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-04
Topic: Government Operations
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): If I may say so, I have sympathy with the point that is being put across—that the way in which the Bill is drafted seems to be excessively stark and to fail to take account of the sensitivities of the devolution settlements. However, I am afraid I cannot join the right hon. Gentleman on the rhetoric, because, ultimately, as a United Kingdom, which is what we are, there has to be flexibility in reaching a sensible way forward in the light of a change in circumstance. If I may gently say so to him, because I participated actively in the debates on the devolution legislation of 1997, it was always acknowledged then that devolution was not just a one-way street; for it to work, we required that flexibility of dialogue between Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast and London to reach solutions and not just to get anchored on principles. While I am respectful of the point he is trying to make, I suggest to him that that might be a sensible way forward.