argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership — House of Commons, 2015-12-10
Topic: Foreign Trade
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I am sure there will be some collaboration on the issue between Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in the near future. Those areas of public service delivery are the competencies of those Administrations. They might have a different agenda from the UK Government, and devolved Administrations should be fully consulted on and fully involved in any ratification of TTIP by the UK Government I am grateful to groups such as Global Justice Now and the Council of Canadians as well as Unison for bringing to my attention CETA, the comprehensive economic and trade agreement between the EU and Canada, often referred to as TTIP’s little brother. Although there is much public awareness of the TTIP negotiations, CETA is on the verge of being ratified but is not receiving the scrutiny or attention it deserves. CETA includes the most controversial part of TTIP, investor -state dispute settlement. Many US firms have Canadian subsidiaries, thereby allowing US firms to operate in the EU market. Public services are vulnerable because CETA locks in current levels of liberalisation, meaning that future Governments will find it extremely difficult to stop Canadian companies delivering public services in the EU. CETA is due to be fully ratified in mid-2016, and I urge the UK Government, the Welsh Government and the public to reject this deal unless the safeguards that I have outlined in relation to TTIP are put in place The public and politicians should also be aware of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is little known over here. Again, the criticisms of this proposed deal bear the hallmarks of TTIP and CETA—secrecy, and the fact that large corporations will exert undue influence over public policy through shadow legal systems In conclusion, I am still optimistic that a trade deal aimed at further reducing tariffs in order to secure a level playing field can be achieved, and I believe it would benefit Welsh exporters and our economy as a whole. Many of the environmental standards that the EU requires from its producers and manufacturers should not be compromised. They are already above and beyond those required in the US, placing us at an advantage without the potential social costs that would result from the proposals that are the areas of major concern. In order for any trade deal to have my support and that of Plaid Cymru and the wider public, it must unquestionably drop any proposals for a shadow corporate legal system and ensure that the EU’s existing environmental and social safeguards are maintained.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): The hon. Gentleman is completely right to say that this is purely a gimmick by the Government. There is no need for a legislative vehicle to enact this policy; the announcement could be made in a Budget statement or an autumn statement, as appropriate. Does he agree that, if the Government were serious about helping working people, and people on low incomes in particular, they would increase the threshold at which national insurance contributions kick in to the level of personal allowances for income tax, rather than implementing the pure gimmick of this Bill?
Aerospace Industry — House of Commons, 2015-11-10
Topic: Technology
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): Discussions move ahead on the UK’s first space port. Does the Minister agree that safety, especially that of the general public, is of primary importance in considering the location of such a space port? Do not a coastal location and extensive airspace unhampered by commercial flying, such as are available at Llanbedr in my constituency, make a crucial contribution to any safety assessment?
Trade Union Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-10
Topic: Labor
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): As the Minister will be aware, this Bill does not apply to Northern Ireland because these issues are devolved. Is he aware of the comments by Dr Stephen Farry, the Minister in Northern Ireland? He said: "I do not believe that there is a case for winding back the clock in terms of trade union reform or that such regression would also be supported by the Executive and the Assembly." Is it seriously a surprise to the Minister that that Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales agree with those points?
Feed-in Tariff — House of Commons, 2015-09-17
Topic: Energy
Questions: What assessment her Department has made of the effect of the proposed changes to the feed-in tariff on the numbers of jobs in the solar power industry.
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): While the world embraces solar power, here the Government change feed-in tariffs, thus costing jobs—20,000 in the United Kingdom, as we heard earlier, and 25 from BayWa r.e. in Machynlleth. That may not sound much, but the vast majority of those who are employed in Machynlleth earn less than the official living wage. Will the Secretary of State agree to table, on behalf of the Government, a prayer in the names of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and me to annul the Feed-in Tariffs (Amendment) Order 2015, which amends the preliminary accreditation arrangements, so that Members can debate the issue rather than rushing into economically damaging implementation?
Iran: Nuclear Deal — House of Commons, 2015-07-15
Topic: International Affairs
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): The Secretary of State said the deal would help the alignment of western and Iranian foreign policy in the middle east. What does he think the implications of this deal will be for western foreign policy in respect of the conflict in Syria?
English Votes for English Laws — House of Commons, 2015-07-15
Topic: Government Operations
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): May I take my hon. Friend back to the Barnett consequentials issue, as that is our key concern, which the revised Standing Orders unfortunately fail to address? This is not so much about the annual financial estimates. The real issue arises when a substantial policy change in devolved areas impacts on funding—the block grants. If Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish MPs lose the ability to vote on them, they lose the ability to influence their own block grants. That is the key issue that needs to be addressed.
Concessionary Television Licences — House of Commons, 2015-07-06
Topic: Technology
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): When fully implemented, this will effectively be a cut of around 18% in the BBC’s disposable budget, based on the value of today’s licence fee, with liabilities increasing as a result of an ageing population. What guarantees can he give to S4C that its budget will not face a similar cut in future?
Greece — House of Commons, 2015-07-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): In 1934, following the great depression, most of Europe’s Governments had a significant amount of their liabilities written off for good. In the case of the United Kingdom, that was about 25% of its debt. We have already heard about the London debt agreement of 1953 in relation to Germany. Is it not the case that, as The Daily Telegraph reported in February, debt write-offs are not unusual at times of crisis, and does that not indicate that crippling austerity is not the only way forward for Greece?
Access to Justice — House of Commons, 2015-11-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): I take this opportunity to extend our sympathies to every nation that has suffered at the hands of IS in recent days, and to express concern at the news of the explosion in south Wales. I understand that the Ministry of Justice has closed its consultation on the court and tribunal estate in England and Wales, which proposes the closure of 11 courts in Wales, including Dolgellau in my constituency, and that is without undertaking a Welsh language impact assessment, as required by law and under the Welsh language scheme. Will the Secretary of State ensure that a Wales-wide assessment is undertaken and that its recommendations are implemented before any decisions are reached on court closures?
Rebalancing the Economy — House of Commons, 2015-11-18
Topic: Macroeconomics
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): Provisional results from the annual survey of hours and earnings by the Office for National Statistics show that Wales is at the bottom of the pay table and is the only part of the British state where earnings have gone down. Does that not indicate that the Welsh Government need to be empowered with a wide portfolio of fiscal powers—the Secretary of State has supported that for Scotland—as direct control from Westminster is clearly failing?
Draft Wales Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-18
Topic: Government Operations
Questions: What progress he has made on consulting civic society in Wales on the likely effects of the provisions of the draft Wales Bill; and if he will make a statement.
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. There was a substantial deliberation on our country’s constitutional future, led by a distinguished former Officer of the House, Sir Paul Silk. However, the Secretary of State has so far chosen to include very few of the recommendations of the Silk commission in the draft Wales Bill. Will the final version of the Wales Bill give his final vision of our country’s constitutional future? Is this it for the foreseeable future?
The Economy — House of Commons, 2015-11-18
Topic: Macroeconomics
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): The Chancellor is known for being a very political operator. Economic historians will pay tribute to the manner in which, following the 2010 election, he successfully framed the economic debate by focusing on the deficit. This enabled the Conservative party to challenge the economic competence of its predecessors while also allowing it the political space to pursue its ideological obsession with reducing the size of the state. The Chancellor has endeavoured to portray the economic recovery as one made in No. 11 Downing street. This ignores the fact that the last recession was the longest in economic history and was most certainly exacerbated by the deep contraction in public spending at the beginning of the last Parliament What is often conveniently ignored in debates such as this is the role of monetary policy. As I have said in the past, the UK economy continues to be on the life support of ultra-loose monetary policy. Central bank interest rates continue to be at an historically low level of 0.5% and the economy has been kept afloat with £375 billion-worth of quantitative easing. One of the perverse side-effects of QE has been to increase wealth inequalities as assets increase in value, a theme I will return to later. Monetary policy by the central bank filled the void left by the Treasury’s fiscal cuts, but it has led to a greater imbalance in the UK economy, where economic performance is now even more reliant on consumer spending, as opposed to public investment, exports and business investment. According to the House of Commons Library, household consumption now accounts for over 60% of the UK economy, and it should be an urgent Treasury priority to rebalance and boost business investment and exports The Bank for International Settlements—or, to give it its other name, the central bank of central banks—has warned that the danger with the current ultra-loose monetary policy is that the western economies will become hooked on low interest rates and that any normalisation will lead to significant economic headwinds. In other words, there is a danger that the abnormal in monetary policy will become the new norm. The obvious consequence, if there is no normalisation of monetary policy, is that the central bank will be impotent when the next downturn comes. Let us remember that, since the second world war, the average economic cycle has lasted between seven and 10 years, which means that we might be due another downturn very soon.
Further Education — House of Commons, 2015-11-18
Topic: Education
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): Will the hon. Lady join me in condemning the Labour Welsh Government’s 6% cuts in this year’s 2015-16 Welsh FE budgets— I speak as a former director of an FE college—and the likely loss of 1,000 jobs, which is leading to industrial action this week in Wales? This is no way to run a whelk stall, let alone a country.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): Surely the answer to the first question from the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) is that tax credits must ensure a decent, reasonable standard of living. Such standards have been defined over many years by large numbers of people in research institutions—I will not trouble the House with those matters now, but they are well understood.
Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy — House of Commons, 2015-07-20
Topic: International Affairs
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): Plaid Cymru MPs opposed the bombing of Daesh in Iraq, as it was inevitable that operations would have to be extended into Syria, drawing the UK into an intractable civil war. In the light of the proliferation of Daesh and its affiliates throughout the middle east and north Africa, will the Secretary of State concede that the rationale of current UK foreign policy could lead to UK involvement in a war without end across the whole region?
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-20
Topic: Social Welfare
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): I speak on behalf of Plaid Cymru So, we have another round of cuts to social protection and a Government unrestrained by the alleged compromises of coalition. I note that the new leader of the Liberal Democrats has already left us. The Government are unrestrained in slashing the social safety net, shrinking the state and allegedly balancing the books, and doing this, they say, to put the public finances in order—indeed, claiming that it is in the interest of working people. They no longer talk about "hard-working families"; it is just "working families". The election is over; the election is won; now it is the Government’s turn to be hard Government supporters say, "Aha! We have introduced the national living wage." We saw the jubilation of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions when that was announced—his ugly triumphalism at having got one over on the poor old Labour party—except it is not a living wage at all, and when combined with cuts to tax credits and a host of freezes and other cuts, people will be worse off overall, as respected bodies such as the IFS and the Resolution Foundation have made clear. I welcome any rise in the minimum wage, but a genuine living wage would provide a decent living and bring down the in-work benefits bill. What we are getting is the rebranding of the higher minimum wage, while a large chunk of tax credits is cut out—giving with one hand and taking much, much more with the other Look at the Government’s appropriation of the term "living wage". They steal the language of social justice and talk about full employment, but there is a crisis of under-employment, low wages, insecure employment and precarious self-employment. Without proper measures to tackle those problems and boost the UK’s woeful productivity, the foundation is not firm and a dip in the global economy could swiftly push up unemployment again here and especially in Wales. Outside the headline figures, large areas of the UK still suffer from persistently high unemployment and levels of economic inactivity—areas on the so-called periphery. I live in Caernarfon, which is in no way peripheral to the people who live there, so what does peripheral refer to? It is areas out of the sight and out of the mind of the economic and governing elites. In my constituency of Arfon, the economic inactivity rate is 23.5%—almost a quarter of all people of working age are economically inactive The restriction of child tax credits to only two children seems to answer the question so often posed by Government Members: why should parents get support for more than two children when others cannot afford to have more children? However, it fails to answer a more fundamental question: why should any child be denied support through no fault of its own? It is a perverse logic that ignores a child’s inability to control their parents’ reproductive abilities, then punishes them none the less.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Commons, 2015-07-20
Topic: Labor
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): I will not. The hon. Lady should have been here from the start That is the reasoning of the tyrant, from one-child China to Ceausescu’s Romania. Most grim of all are the tortuous complexities involved in demonstrating that the third child is the result of rape We sorely need a system that pays a fair wage for a fair day’s work, and a top-up when the Government’s minimum wage policy fails to provide an adequate living for families with children.
Promotion of British Food and Drink — House of Commons, 2015-09-10
Topic: Agriculture
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): New Zealand lamb producers are in direct competition with Welsh and British farmers in this season. New Zealand lamb is sold as fresh alongside Welsh lamb in supermarkets, despite undergoing a 17,000-mile sea voyage in refrigerated containers, which means that the meat can take up to three months to reach the supermarket shelf. What steps are the Government taking to allow consumers to make an informed choice about the freshness of lamb meat, at a time when Welsh sheep farmers are selling their animals at market at a loss?
Trade Union Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-14
Topic: Labor
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): I rise to oppose the Bill in the strongest terms on behalf of Plaid Cymru. As the son of a retired trade union shop steward and the representative of an area steeped in coal-mining history, I value the role the trade union movement has played in advancing the lives of working people since it was legalised in 1871. It should be remembered that a royal commission in 1867 advocated the legalisation of unions as it would benefit both employees and, crucially, employers. My party believes that instead of pursuing further draconian measures aimed at restricting trade union activity, a speedy inquiry on industrial relations and employee rights should be convened to look into the role trade unions should play in a modern economy and the challenges faced by working people, such as zero-hours contracts, low pay and the increasing lack of workplace rights If we are serious about creating a more socially just society, trade unions have a vital role to play. Instead of reducing their influence, I would like to see Government action to increase workplace democracy. In Germany, for instance, in an economy that has outperformed the UK’s over many decades and is more balanced both in terms of industrial sectors and geographical wealth, trade unions play a key economic role in formulating industrial strategy. In the German legal framework of co-determination, representatives also sit on company boards, giving workers a direct say on company strategy and the hiring of management. I would also add that Germany’s decentralist federal governance system has also greatly helped to distribute its economic success more evenly geographically, unlike in the UK The Bill has been labelled the biggest attack on trade union activity for 30 years and follows a long line of anti-trade union laws brought in by Conservative Governments, most of which were not overturned by Labour Governments between 1997 and 2010.
Trade Union Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-14
Topic: Labor
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): I am grateful for that well-made point. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his excellent speech as the spokesman for the SNP By my counting, there were 10 Acts between 1980 and 1996 that attacked the trade unions. The coalition Government, much to their shame, tied in a further assault on trade unions with the issue of trust in politics in the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014. The Bill aims to make it more difficult to take industrial action by forcing unions to give further notice before striking, introducing even higher thresholds for successful strike ballots and further restricting the right to picket. I note from elsewhere—this is critical to how the Bill will work—that the Government are minded to allow employers to bring in agency workers in the event of a strike. They are consulting on that currently. The Bill will undermine facility time, which will reduce the ability of union officials to represent their members at work The UK has some of the most restrictive trade union laws in the western world. It is a shame that an early priority for the new Government is to bring in another Bill at rapid speed, less than a week after three separate consultations on some of the measures in the Bill were completed. That raises the question of whether the consultations were valid exercises The Bill applies to Wales, Scotland and England. It does not apply to Northern Ireland, where employment law is a devolved issue. Regressive measures such as those in the Bill should make progressive politicians and individuals in Wales consider whether the responsibility for these issues should be devolved, instead of being held here in Westminster. I note that the Scottish Government are keen to press ahead with the devolution of employment rights. If these issues were devolved to Wales under a future Plaid Cymru Government, I suggest that there would be an alternative scenario to the one that we are faced with here today with this Bill—a scenario where the role of trade unions in the workplace and public life is enhanced, helping to shape economic and industrial strategy; one where trade unions play a pivotal role in the management structures of the public and private sectors; and one where the pay and conditions of employees are strengthened to resemble European norms.
Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-10-14
Topic: Government Operations
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): In Wales, we suffer from referendum fatigue. Whenever significant powers are to be devolved to Wales, there is always a referendum. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that there should be a referendum before legislative powers are handed down to the London Assembly?
European Council — House of Commons, 2015-10-19
Topic: International Affairs
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): On the action plan with Turkey, what discussions did the Prime Minister have on the contribution that an internal peace settlement in Turkey, as proposed by the Kurdish HDP party, would provide on the refugee issue?
Humanitarian Crisis in the Mediterranean and Europe — House of Commons, 2015-09-09
Topic: Labor
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): Will the right hon. Lady tell the House how the Government arrived at the figure of 20,000? Other European Union countries are using a formula that is broadly based on GDP, population, the unemployment rate and the number of applications already processed, which seems a reasonable way of proceeding.
Humanitarian Crisis in the Mediterranean and Europe — House of Commons, 2015-09-09
Topic: Government Operations
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): If it is a bidding war, how did the Government reach a figure of 20,000, rather than 20,001 or 19,999? I did ask the Secretary of State that precise question earlier—I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was in his place then—and she was unable to give me a proper answer.