argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Committee of Selection — House of Lords, 2016-05-19
Topic: Government Operations
William Laming (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): That in accordance with Standing Order 63 a Committee of Selection be appointed to select and propose to the House the names of the members to form each select committee of the House (except the Committee of Selection itself and any committee otherwise provided for by statute or by order of the House) or any other body not being a select committee referred to it by the Chairman of Committees, and the panel of Deputy Chairmen of Committees; and that the following members together with the Chairman of Committees be appointed to the Committee: L Bassam of Brighton, L Craig of Radley, L Faulkner of Worcester, L Hope of Craighead, L Newby, B Smith of Basildon, B Stowell of Beeston, L Taylor of Holbeach, V Ullswater, L Wallace of Tankerness.
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-10-31
Topic: Government Operations
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): I do not wish to anticipate any major contribution that I may have to make on my own amendment on the word "normally" later on, but I do not believe that the Minister has really answered the question from my colleague the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, who asked whether the Parliament of the United Kingdom could legislate for a referendum on the future of the National Assembly without the consent of the Assembly. It seems to me that if we are legislating, as we are in the Bill, for the convention relating to the legislative consent Motions to be part of Welsh law and devolution law, then surely, in a situation where the future of the Assembly were subject to a referendum, consent should be sought. Or is the Minister allowing a little room for the removal of the Assembly without the consent of its Members?
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-10-31
Topic: Government Operations
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and I am confident that the Minister, whom I have known in another place—if I can call the Welsh Assembly that—at the other end of the line, is not someone who digs his heels in. He successfully danced a fine tune to move his party, the Welsh Conservatives, into a stance on devolution which brings us to where we are today I come to the amendments in my name, which I am pleased to share with my noble friend, Lord Wigley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, my sister in the Assembly. Amendment 9 attempts to define "devolved matters". This is another issue that was addressed by the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee in the National Assembly. The Minister will no doubt say that "normally" occurs in the Scotland Act and that the Welsh devolution settlement does not require any definition of "devolved matters". I am not very enamoured of the argument that empowering the National Assembly to be able to legislate for devolved matters is somehow an overruling of parliamentary sovereignty, as if the traditional constitution of the United Kingdom, of Parliament assembled in these two Houses, could somehow be undermined or be in any sense overruled by legislative activity in Cardiff.
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-15
Topic: Agriculture
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I support this amendment from my noble friend Lady Morgan. It is in line with a more general issue that I raised earlier about the relationship between the executive competence of Welsh Ministers and the parallel competence, where it currently applies, of UK Ministers, and the competence of the Assembly itself and its ability to legislate and scrutinise. This is a fundamental issue and flaw in the Bill that we are now discussing. It is particularly reprehensible in the case of fishing I had the proud duty of trying to represent the northern part of Cardigan Bay. This will be well known to the Minister because he was based in the middle of Cardigan Bay for a very long time and, as far as I know, may still have a bolthole somewhere in the region—I will not pursue that in this debate. He also had a role further south-west in Milford Haven and so will know well the nature of the Welsh fishing industry and how it has been denuded over the years as a result of the reduction in the number of vessels and, more recently, the activity undertaken by the Welsh fisheries association with strong support from the Welsh Government in restoring and developing inshore fishing in order to ensure that we have product to promote Welsh fisheries as part of the Welsh food and drink initiative, which is currently the flagship policy of the Welsh Government. Therefore, I ask the Minister to take a further look at this It is essential, in my view, that we should be able to have direct oversight of our natural resources and not be in a situation where the oversight of the natural resources of Wales—in this case, the increasingly important marine resources—is located elsewhere.
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-15
Topic: Government Operations
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): I am excited not just by the environmental and political aspects of this but by the constitutional implications. Can the Minister help us by indicating whether establishing a protocol in relation to powers between the Assembly and this Parliament, and indeed between the Welsh Government and the UK Government, is something that he would consider in other areas of policy in the Bill?
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-15
Topic: Technology
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, as we have heard, we currently have substantial change in the structure of broadcasting. The BBC is going through major changes. The BBC Trust is moving out as a way of managing the BBC; personally, I welcome that. Ofcom is now playing a far stronger role in the whole question of content at the BBC. As part of the BBC structure, there will be from now on not only a director for Wales but also a member of the BBC board. So we have a new system of devolution internally inside the BBC. I was there at the time of the discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and we were surprised at what we were offered by the then Government, which was the model of a traditional broadcasting authority. I have never believed that that was what was really required, and I still believe that we need to look at some stage at the governance of digital platforms in Wales and the rest of the UK, as well as internationally. We need to look at these issues in a new way I am anticipating what the Minister is going to say. Far be it from me to disagree with my noble friend on this issue, with his experience as someone who was a member of the S4C board, but now is not the time to disrupt relationships; now is the time to strengthen them—and to strengthen the relationship practically between S4C as a production body and BBC Wales and the other platforms active in digital production in Wales.
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-23
Topic: Government Operations
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): May I extend to the noble Lord the courtesy of responding to his question relating to the amendment standing in my name? In the absence of an effective form of co-legislating between this House and the National Assembly for Wales, what I have sought to do in the process of Committee is to present to this House under my name—because there was no other way of doing it—a series of amendments which have been debated within the work of the constitutional affairs committee. They emanate from the Presiding Officer and in some cases I have even borrowed wording from the Welsh Government, with their permission, and wording from within the committee itself. We are thereby offering the Minister, as he sits before me, a whole choice—a menu—of alternatives to deal with the issues that he has created for himself. I hope that he will be able to take some of them up and that that answers the question.
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-23
Topic: Government Operations
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): I do not think that it does. There is a difference between a legislature which is developing new legislation within the framework previously laid down by this Parliament because there is no other legislative framework, and making provision—which therefore distinguishes itself from the rest of the United Kingdom—and what a United Kingdom Parliament might seek to do, and for what reason, to intervene in the legislative process of what might be regarded as a subordinate legislature. Those are the differences, and that is where the concerns come from.
Air Quality — House of Lords, 2016-11-03
Topic: Environment
Christopher Smith (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, while action on diesel, however feeble, is welcome, and while five cities is a start—although nowhere good enough—if the Government are serious about improving air quality, how on earth can they have taken such a confident decision about the expansion of Heathrow, where nitrogen oxides are already in serious breach of health limits?
National Citizen Service Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-12-07
Topic: Transportation
Andrew Adonis (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, as a former Secretary of State for Transport, I have to say that until this debate took place this evening I was not even aware that this legal restriction was in place. I am sure that if there was a free vote in the House or indeed in the other place, there would be an overwhelming desire to see this situation change and be subject to proper regulation and health and safety requirements so that young people have the opportunity to volunteer and play their full part in these activities. I cannot think of anything more likely to engage the enthusiasm and wholehearted activity of young people, which is not often so easy to engage, particularly with boys, than not only railways but steam railways, which still hold a particular fascination. I am much more in favour of modern railways and high-speed ones but my noble friend is doing valiant work in keeping our heritage going strong. Of course, these heritage railways are present in all parts of the country. They are among the most exciting and well-visited tourist attractions and play a big part in local communities. This seems a thoroughly absurd and outdated constraint, which, with the wit of parliamentary draftsmen, I am sure it must be possible to find a way through.
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-07
Topic: Government Operations
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I will take up the Minister’s offer of a meeting, not that I want to add to his diary which is obviously very busy during the passage of the Bill. I know that he understands my concern about the general failure of the Bill to move us forward and provide a stronger basis for both the functions of Ministers and the operation of the National Assembly itself. I will not pursue that, because I am leading on the next amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-07
Topic: Government Operations
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): We come to a further elaboration of the relationship between ministerial functions and those of the Assembly. This is a basic constitutional issue which we have failed to address throughout the years of the pursuit of the holy grail which United Kingdom Governments of both parties and one coalition keep calling a "settlement" of Welsh devolution. I think I have said in this House—I have certainly said it in the Assembly—that there is no such thing as a settlement of democracy or politics: it always evolves. If we are looking for something akin to what is available in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which is what I would look for in the context of the United Kingdom, then this Bill does not deliver it, particularly in the area of the relationship between the definitions of ministerial functions and the competence of the Assembly. In her evidence in July, the chief legal adviser to the National Assembly, Elizabeth Jones, referred the constitutional committee—to which, I am happy to announce, I have recently been re-elected following my change of description—to the position, put forward by the former Presiding Officer, that, "the situation in Wales should be equivalent with Scotland; that is that all ministerial functions, functions of Ministers of the Crown, exercisable within devolved areas … should lie with Welsh Ministers. From a constitutional law point of view, that would be a very logical situation and would also increase the clarity of the settlement very considerably" I must pursue this. Perhaps I could discuss it with the Minister at the same meeting he gave me the option of having earlier when we discussed the royal prerogative. It seems to me that the aligning of executive functions of Welsh Ministers with the legislative competence of the National Assembly would address some of the complexity that will arise in relation to the Minister of the Crown consent in the current regime. If there was such an alignment, then UK government consent would not be needed before the National Assembly could affect UK Ministers’ functions in devolved areas because those functions would already have been transferred to Welsh Ministers. These are the issues that I am trying to pursue in this series of amendments. The Minister will, no doubt, be aware of and have read the report of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee of the National Assembly, whose work in this area is equivalent only to the work of the Constitution Committee of this House. We have been so exercised by the attempt to make sense of the devolution structure with which we have to work that I do hope it will be possible for the Minister to consider whether a move towards the alignment of legislative and executive competence would not clarify the devolution structure much more effectively. I beg to move.
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-07
Topic: Environment
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister yet again for his generosity in responding to the arguments. We await his further consideration and, no doubt, will have further discussions with him. As the former Member of Parliament and now the Assembly Member for a particular length of the River Dee, I certainly would not want to deprive customers anywhere on either side of the Marches of Wales of their water supply. It is a bit rich, when we revert to this exceptional issue, to suggest to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, that because the rivers in Scotland apparently flow into the sea rather than into England, the situation in Scotland is somehow different. We need weightier arguments on that issue than we have had However, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have participated in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, emphasised the need for clarity and accountability. That is exactly the clarity that all of us who have tried to build and rebuild the devolution settlement in Wales seek. I was particularly grateful, as always, to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, for his incisive questioning, and, of course, to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Ely, whom I affectionately earlier called the red baroness. I hope that did not cause her offence. Perhaps I called her that in the Assembly; I keep confusing the Assembly and this Parliament. I will withdraw the amendment but I give way to the noble Lord.
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-07
Topic: Government Operations
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, my amendments in this group are all focused on attempting to ensure that the legislative competence of the Assembly is not reduced by the movement from conferred powers with exceptions, to reserved matters with even more exceptions I was always concerned about this matter when I had responsibility for presiding over the Assembly because I had to make decisions about the competence of legislation. I often found it difficult to assure myself that there was clarity about the boundaries, although I was advised by excellent lawyers. The current Presiding Officer of the Llywydd has published a series of amendments to enable us to study the question of the constitutional propriety of where we are heading. What particularly troubles me—I am sure the Minister will understand this—is that the UK Government seem to have no intention of publishing an explanation or rationale, if there is such a thing, across the whole 200 or so reservations that would help us to understand the constitutional principles at work here Although we were promised by a previous Secretary of State that the pause in the Bill would give an opportunity for these matters to be considered, and there would be a response, this does not seem to have happened. My amendments would restore or maintain the current competence of the Assembly by enabling it to legislate in an ancillary way in relation to reserved matters. I know the Minister will say that ancillary matters are a minority interest but they are of great constitutional import. In my view, this is a clear example of how the move from the current form of legislative powers to the new form is narrowing the Assembly’s competence.
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-07
Topic: Government Operations
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): I am, of course, disappointed by the Minister’s response, but I should be disappointed at least once in a debate in this Parliament. I am grateful for the support from the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Gale, and for the interventions by the noble Lords, Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Crickhowell The consolidation of the law is about the intelligibility of the law and the transparency of political activity. I will continue to pursue this with greater vigour and will call upon my distinguished academic colleagues throughout the Principality and beyond to get on and do it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
National Funding Formulae for Schools and High Needs — House of Lords, 2016-12-14
Topic: Education
Andrew Adonis (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I have wrestled with the school funding issue myself in the past, particularly in 1997, when we inherited significant overfunding of grant-maintained schools relative to other schools. The decision we took after extensive consultation with schools was that it would not be appropriate for schools to have their budgets cut. Part of the reason for that is that there is only a certain amount of energy in the system to raise standards, and it was clear from the discussions that I and my colleagues had that that would lead to a massive draining of energy from the system, because every school to lose from its budget would blame every problem it faced, every failure to raise standards, and every controversy in which it was engaged on the Government having cut its budget That involved a very small number of schools. The Minister and his colleagues are being extremely courageous in proposing to cut the budget of 46% of schools. All I can predict with any certainty is that there will be massive controversy in the sector; that will distract from the challenge which he and I would agree is the most important one facing the education system—the relentless one of raising standards, particularly in poorer areas, where standards are still too low and too many schools are still underperforming There is a very simple remedy—the one suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Storey—which is that no school suffers a cut in its budget. It would take longer for the new funding formula to take effect, but it would ensure that no school has to sack teachers or is given the excuse of a reduction in its budget to take its eye off the most essential challenge that we face, which is raising standards, tackling disadvantage and ensuring that every pupil in every part of the country has an opportunity to succeed at school.
Wales Bill — House of Lords, 2016-12-14
Topic: Government Operations
Dafydd Elis-Thomas (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): May I pursue the point that the Minister just made about the non-statutory proposal for this commission between the legislatures and the Governments of the United Kingdom and Wales? Would he like to reflect further on the nature of that proposal? When we come to Third Reading, he might be able to tell us a little more. Does he intend to publish a report from the working group in time for us to be able to discuss it further at that stage?
Retirement of a Member: Lord Jenkin of Roding — House of Lords, 2015-01-06
Topic: Other
Frances D'Souza (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I should like to notify the House of the retirement, with effect from today, of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, pursuant to Section 1 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. On behalf of the House, I should like to thank the noble Lord for his much-valued service to the House.
Death of a Member: Lord Brittan of Spennithorne — House of Lords, 2015-01-23
Topic: Other
Frances D'Souza (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble Lord, Lord Brittan of Spennithorne, on 21 January. On behalf of the House, I extend our deep condolences to the noble Lord’s family and friends.
Death of a Member: Lord Mackie of Benshie — House of Lords, 2015-02-23
Topic: Other
Frances D'Souza (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, on 17 February. On behalf of the House I extend our condolences to the noble Lord’s family and friends.
Death of a Member: Lord Molyneaux of Killead — House of Lords, 2015-03-09
Topic: Other
John Sewel (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death earlier today of the noble Lord, Lord Molyneaux of Killead. On behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the noble Lord’s family and friends.
Retirement of a Member: Lord Eden of Winton — House of Lords, 2015-06-11
Topic: Other
Frances D'Souza (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I should like to notify the House of the retirement, with effect from today, of the noble Lord, Lord Eden of Winton, pursuant to Section 1 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. On behalf of the House, I thank the noble Lord for his much-valued service.
Death of a Member: Lord Gavron — House of Lords, 2015-02-09
Topic: Other
Frances D'Souza (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble Lord, Lord Gavron, on 7 February. On behalf of the House, I extend our deepest condolences to the noble Lord’s family and friends.
Death of a Member: Lord Griffiths — House of Lords, 2015-06-02
Topic: Other
Frances D'Souza (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Griffiths, on 30 May. On behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the noble and learned Lord’s family and friends.
Deaths of Members — House of Lords, 2015-05-19
Topic: Other
Frances D'Souza (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the deaths of the noble Lord, Lord Sheppard of Didgemere, on 25 March, the noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley, on 19 April, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mustill, on 24 April, and the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell of Babergh, on 2 May. On behalf of the House, I extend our deepest condolences to the noble Lords’ families and friends.