argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Customs Legislation and Amendments: Impact Analysis — House of Lords, 2019-10-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
Bryan Davies (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for repeating the Statement. We have had a significant debate on Brexit under a number of headings this afternoon, and perhaps this one, the most precise of the lot, is likely to cause the most pessimism. This is HMRC indicating what will be the costs to business, and it has made it quite clear that the costs will be very significant. Large companies importing and exporting in high volumes will face a cost of £28 for filling in the forms for each load imported, and this will take an employee on average one hour and 45 minutes. If the work is outsourced, HMRC estimates that the cost will rise to £56 for each consignment, based on the average charges of freight forwarders. This is HMRC getting down to nuts and bolts and being as accurate as it can—and it can only fill all involved in the health of our economy with considerable anxiety This of course is based on a no-deal Brexit. However, from the tenor of the discussions this afternoon in the House, it seems that there is a growing opinion that we are heading somewhat remorselessly towards no deal—or, to put it more accurately, none of us can see that any progress is being made towards an agreement with the European Union Left out of the analysis was any reference to the financial services industry. We cannot overestimate the significance of that industry to the overall health of our economy. So, although this is parlous as far as industrial goods and manufactures are concerned, we do not know the picture for a very significant part of our economy—and can only, therefore, I am afraid, be anxious about it What we are witnessing now is a process that reflects the failure of the Government, ever since they established their notorious red lines and made up their mind that they were going to set objectives that the European Union was unlikely to meet There is one additional feature on which the noble Lord did not make any comment. I do not blame him for that, because it is not directly related. Another aspect of a no-deal Brexit is that it is estimated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that government debt will rise to its highest level for half a century. Bearing in mind that this takes into account the inevitable debt we ran into during the financial crash of 2008 to 2010, if this will be worse as a consequence of no deal, we can only yet again, I am afraid, tremble at the prospect, and at the same time redouble our efforts to ensure that the Government, even at this very late stage, strike a deal that is better than no deal.
Football: Racism — House of Lords, 2019-10-15
Topic: International Affairs
Leslie John Griffiths (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful for that response. What contrasting images, on two successive days, between typhoon-struck Japan on the rugby field and these disgraceful exhibitions of racism on the football field in Sofia. Of course, the vocabulary available to us for condemning this must be used properly and powerfully. I wonder whether it is not the outbreak of something that lurks beneath the surface and is therefore much more widely worrying than simply what happens on the football field. That gives a sense of urgency to our need to respond. I note that the Bulgarian Prime Minister has spoken out and that, subsequently, the president of the Bulgarian Football Union has resigned. Clearly, within Bulgaria there is feeling about this too. Perhaps we should try to keep our diplomatic channels open and our arms outreached to embrace the positive side of Bulgarian society, as well as being critical of the damning and damnable incidents that we have all been witness to.
Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2019-10-15
Topic: International Affairs
Donald Anderson (Labour, Centre-left): If I may correct my noble friend on one thing, Sir Anthony Meyer was my former boss in the Foreign Office and a former Conservative MP for Eton and Slough. My noble friend means Sir Christopher Meyer.
Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2019-10-15
Topic: International Affairs
Alan William John West (Labour, Centre-left): Does the noble Lord agree that to have a robust foreign policy—I agree with everything he says on those issues—we need to have some hard power? Unfortunately, successive Governments have put us in a position where we are probably unable to put blood where our mouth is or to put in sufficient power as a permanent member of the Security Council. We need to have that if we are to fulfil our proper role.
Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2019-10-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Roger John Liddle (Labour, Centre-left): The Battle of Britain was clearly important in keeping Britain in the war and keeping the flame of democracy alive. But I said that what won the war was not the Battle of Britain but the alliance with the United States and the power of the Red Army, and I think that that is true The power of positive thinking is very important to Mr Johnson and it leads to a kind of hubris that will inevitably lead to nemesis. We see that in the Queen’s Speech because three elements of the government strategy do not add up. The first is that we will transform Britain’s economic performance through a programme of deregulation, as my noble friend Lady Hayter put it. He says that we will tear away the bureaucratic red tape and release talent, innovation and chutzpah. Let us hear more about how that will be done. The fact is that the most innovative parts of our economy—the digital economy and the pharmaceutical companies—are desperate to stay in the framework of the single market. They do not want to be liberated from it: they want to be part of a common regulatory zone. The more that the Government present this unappealing vision to our European partners of a Singapore on the Thames, the more difficult it will be to secure preferential access to the single market. We can already see that in the negotiations presently taking place in Brussels The second contradiction is that Mr Johnson believes that he can sustain political support for this programme of deregulation through what he calls one-nation policies—addressing the people’s priorities of health, education, social care, crime and so forth. He will have great difficulty in doing that because, as the IFS pointed out this week, the forecast for the public sector deficit this year is already some £50 billion. Such policies might be achieved by combining them with increases in taxation, but Mr Johnson wants to slash taxes as well. The one-nation approach that he puts forward is not at all sustainable or likely to last The third contradiction is that the Prime Minister strongly believes that Britain can play this world role as a soft superpower, detached from the European Union. But if we are to do that, we need to recognise the Brexit headwinds that we will face. Every serious piece of economic analysis has shown that the kind of deal that Mr Johnson envisages will result in a loss of potential of something of the order of 7.5% of GDP. On that basis, you cannot build many of my noble friend Lord West’s frigates or play a leading role in world institutions, and we will find that we cannot pursue a strong foreign policy. If we go down this "global Britain" road, we face a future of great insecurity and uncertainty, and I hope that we can stop this madness before we are locked into it.
Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2019-10-15
Topic: Foreign Trade
Meghnad Desai (Labour, Centre-left): Yes. I believe that people are mistaken if they promise or think that setting up a free trade agreement is an absolutely simple act: you pick up the phone and call somebody and say, "Hey, let’s have a free trade agreement". Free trade treaties actually take five years to negotiate—and they should take that long because there are very serious issues at stake. Our negotiations with the European Union might take slightly less time than that, but with America, or even with the Commonwealth, it will take a long time. Nobody should assume that the Commonwealth is panting at the other end for our attention. I have good reason to believe, having talked to people in India, that they are more interested in the EU than they are in the UK, because they know which market is bigger. They are not stupid. As someone said, they do not really have as benign an opinion of the Empire as we have—cricket or no cricket. We should not believe our own fake news I am sorry that that was such a long answer. But, as the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, said—and I said before him—once the uncertainty of Brexit is over and people know the nature of the beast, the British economy is so resilient and innovative that it will recover, perhaps within six or eight quarters, and resume its prosperous path.
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-09-05
Topic: International Affairs
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this is actually a simple and quite straightforward Bill, but that does not make it unimportant. What it seeks to prevent—a no-deal crash-out on the simple say-so of the Prime Minister—has major implications Like other noble Lords, I spent August in France where, at a birthday party, I met Monsieur Serge Ratel, born in Normandy soon after the war. Learning that I was British, he fixed me with a steady but rather sad eye and—I hope I have translated this properly, because my French is not perfect—said, "You Brits have done so much for us. You rescued us during the war and then, in the way that you engineered the post-war reconstruction, you enabled us to recover in a way that made possible the European Union. Since you have been in, you have helped steer our whole continent and helped us remain at peace with ourselves and with each other". He went on to say that while, as strong allies, the EU could survive without us, as it had done in its early years, our leaving without a deal would harm not just the UK but the EU itself That is what the Bill is about. It is not about whether we leave but about the method of our going—whether we depart as friends, neighbours and allies, with agreement between us and in a way that best supports our economy, security and the people across the continent. It matters for them, but how we leave also matters for our democracy. It must not happen without the consent of the Commons We rehearsed the economic and security risks of no deal in your Lordships’ House on Tuesday. This Bill is about something else. It does not say that we could never leave without a deal. It says that that could happen only provided the Commons agrees. We have already in your Lordships’ House helped write into the withdrawal Act that any deal on which we leave must have the consent of the Commons, so this Bill simply extends that to include leaving without a deal. To ensure that that is the case, it requires the Prime Minister to seek an extension to the Article 50 negotiating period, either to provide time for that deal or to allow the Commons to concur with a no-deal exit, if that is what the Prime Minister is to recommend So the Bill is actually quite simple, it is democratic and we will support it from these Benches.
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-09-05
Topic: International Affairs
Bruce Joseph Grocott (Labour, Centre-left): The noble Baroness talked about the coalition of people who have grouped together to propose the Bill, which essentially delays Brexit for a minimum of three months. Can she tell us what that coalition of people intend to do with those three months?
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-09-05
Topic: International Affairs
Roger John Liddle (Labour, Centre-left): This is a very interesting historical debate, but I add to it to the point that one reason why Franco-German reconciliation occurred was because of the construction of the Federal Republic of Germany —in which Britain, in the post-war Labour Government, in particular its Foreign Secretary, Ernie Bevin, played an absolutely central role—and its being one of the most successful states in Europe since the Second World War. That has been an essential underpinning of European union and peace.
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-09-05
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Mandelson (Labour, Centre-left): Nor am I. I am not so sure that we should just push them all to one side as though they have absolutely no potential whatever. That is not my view. My view is that they are not realisable in the foreseeable future and that, in the meantime, we would put the Good Friday agreement and the peace process in Northern Ireland in great jeopardy in a way that would be unjustified and unforgivable. There is a very interesting discussion to be had about the future. It depends on certain modalities, technology and related approaches that have potential—I fully accept that—but they are not for now; in my view, they are for the future There is not only the obvious economic, business and commercial argument to be had concerning people’s jobs and livelihoods that are at stake; in my view, there is also a very strong democratic argument to which we should attach great importance in our consideration of this Bill. Quite simply, it is that there was no mandate from the 2016 referendum for a no-deal Brexit. I know that people will say that it was not explicitly ruled out, but to all intents and purposes it was ruled out by the fact that nobody referred to it, nobody explained it, nobody justified it and nobody set out the arguments for it. Not one of the advocates of the leave campaign ever entertained the idea that this would be the outcome of our leaving the European Union Such a possibility was almost literally airbrushed out of the picture by the promises that were made by the advocates of the leave campaign—that getting a deal would be "the easiest in history". Plus, there was a later guarantee—I remember that "guarantee" was the word used by No. 10 in repeating what the then Brexit Secretary, David Davis, had said. The precise words used were that we would have the "exact same trade benefits" after we left the European Union. Not only has that promise of the easiest trade deal in history turned out to be wrong and unfulfillable but the exact same trade benefits will, as we know, be nothing of the kind. They cannot be anything of the kind. We will sustain frictionless trade that is exactly the same as the trade benefits that we have at the moment only if, at the very least, we stay in a customs union with the European Union and fully in the single market. That is the only way in which those promises that were made—that guarantee put forward by No. 10 —could possibly be redeemed, yet it is firmly, consistently and explicitly excluded by the Government.
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-09-05
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Mandelson (Labour, Centre-left): Perhaps my recollection is at fault, but I do not remember a huge amount of debate about the respective merits of a soft and hard Brexit, let alone a no-deal Brexit In conclusion, I do not think that you can arrive at a clear choice about how we leave the European Union by means of a general election in which so many issues, subjects and personalities are at play. We should look to a clear-choice referendum where the options are properly explained and a full debate is had. The public can give their final say one way or the other about how—and, if the how on offer is unsatisfactory, if—we eventually leave the European Union It may be that the Government want one of these options to be a no deal. If so, it is up to the Government to put forward a no-deal option in a clear, final-say referendum. If they want to do that, so be it. If they have exhausted all the alternative negotiating possibilities, let that be put fairly and squarely to the public in a referendum. It must be a clear alternative—a clear choice—that the public are asked to make. Without it, I am afraid we are never going to find a way of resolving what is a most acute conundrum.
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-09-05
Topic: International Affairs
Frank Ashcroft Judd (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. Does she accept that perhaps the major tragedy of this whole saga is that our political community has never grasped the reality of the fact that when the Coal and Steel Community and the Common Market were set up, while they were certainly about rational and necessary economic arrangements, right from the beginning they were a means to an end? Right from the beginning the purpose was political: to build a stable and peaceful Europe. When she describes the uncertainty in Europe at the moment, which is true, surely this is the time for us to be there, determined to build, together with others, the fortress that will keep Europe stable and peaceful. Why does she take this defeatist attitude?
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-09-05
Topic: International Affairs
David Edward Lea (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, just over a week ago, Ministers started to backtrack on an important announcement made by the Prime Minister two weeks previously that he would respond to Angela Merkel on his alternative way of dealing with matters raised by the necessity of the backstop. That necessity is that there needs to be some way of continuing the internal market and customs union in the context of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. A week today, when we will not be here, will be the red-letter day for the reply that the Prime Minister has promised to give Angela Merkel. Does the Minister still expect such a reply to be given, or is this another of those commitments that disappears into thin air after a few days of media? What could the Prime Minister have said, or could still say? It is logical, and in line with the provisions of the Bill, which I think will undoubtedly be enacted, that another way of looking at the backstop question should be seriously considered. It is as follows: that in order that we have no border on the island of Ireland, therefore, on both sides of that border, there is common membership of the single market and the customs union. Some people in Northern Ireland then say, "But there could be a dotted-line boundary in the Irish Sea", to which the answer is that the whole of the British Isles needs to stay in the internal market and the customs union. By the way, that was very near to being adopted by the House of Commons, but at the time there was competition between two or three similar alternatives. People say with a degree of vehemence, "Of course, there is no consensus in the House of Commons for anything remotely like that", but that has not actually been tested in the House of Commons recently That would also deal with the key question posed on many doorsteps in this country along the lines of, "What have the Romans ever done for us?". We in the trade union movement—I was heavily involved in this in the TUC—know that with an internal market, it is essential that you have a way to deal with undercutting by anyone competing with us who is a member of the internal market. The answer to that, given by Jacques Delors in 1988, was collective bargaining at a higher level, so there is an understanding, an undertaking, by qualified majority voting if necessary, on the baker’s dozen of important rights for part-time workers, and so on—I will not enumerate them now. None of that will be possible without the guarantees which can alone be given by staying in the internal market That is one of the things that the Romans have done for us, and I ask the Minister to confirm what he has said previously in a slightly different context: "Yes, we will give those guarantees", but how can we believe government guarantees? Therefore, we need the whole of the British Isles to stay in the customs union and the internal market.
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-09-05
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Hain (Labour, Centre-left): Will the Minister agree with his government colleague the Cabinet Minister Nicky Morgan, who indicated on BBC Radio 4’s "World at One" at lunchtime that if the Prime Minister gets his way, there is a mid-October election and he wins it, he will repeal the Bill or activate the clause within it to ensure that no deal occurs?
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-09-05
Topic: International Affairs
Clive Brooke (Labour, Centre-left): The noble Lord said that there is no incentive for Europe. All the incentives are there for Europe to negotiate a deal with us and it has made an offer to which we have not responded, unless the Minister tells us that we have.
European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-09-05
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Goldsmith (Labour, Centre-left): I am just thinking through the implications of what the noble Lord has been saying. I have been hearing and reading that the Prime Minister has said he is negotiating and that the negotiations are going very well. I took that to mean that something was being discussed that he thought might be acceptable, not just the existing withdrawal agreement, and he jumped at the idea put to him by Angela Merkel of coming up with alternatives in 30 days. Is he now telling us that if the Bill passes, the Prime Minister will decline to negotiate any further? Is that the Government’s position?