argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Leveson Inquiry Update — House of Lords, 2018-03-01
Topic: Other
Michael Berkeley (Crossbench, Unknown): Can the Minister comment on a line from the Statement? It says: "Sir Brian, who I thank for his service"— I concur with that— "agrees that the inquiry should not proceed on the current terms of reference but believes that it should continue in an amended form" Does the Minister believe that what he has set out constitutes that amended form?
Windrush Generation: Immigration Status — House of Lords, 2018-04-16
Topic: Immigration
Helene Valerie Hayman (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I too welcome the Statement, and the apology contained within it. I much regret the confusion and insensitivity that has led to it needing to be made. I was born and raised in Wolverhampton. In 1972, I was selected to fight Enoch Powell in the forthcoming general election and to fight his poisonous views on immigration. I am mortified that children who were brought up in that town and performed huge and valuable services to this country should have had their immigration status—their right to be citizens of this country—put in doubt in this way. I will ask the Minister one question. The Statement dealt with immigration status, but issues around access to healthcare, some of which are urgent, have also been raised in some cases. Can he give us some information about putting those right as well?
Taylor Review — House of Lords, 2018-02-07
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Alexander Carlile (Crossbench, Unknown): As welcome as the Taylor report is, will the noble Lord, as a fellow member of the legal profession, bear in mind that in that profession and in a number of others there are a large number of very successful limited liability partnerships, the members of which are self-employed and treated as self-employed by the Revenue? Those arrangements are often to the distinct advantage of the professional people concerned—men and women. Will the Government ensure that beneficial limited liability partnerships, which bring a great deal of money into the economy, are not affected by these proposals?
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-07
Topic: Mixed Topics
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): I did not quite understand what the noble Lord was saying in his attempts to reassure us about Euratom’s observatory. As I understand it, the observatory was an important part of smoothing out problems when there were supply issues around radioactive isotopes. Is he saying that the observatory will continue for all those who have the benefit of being in Euratom but those who leave will not have any equivalent benefits and it is impossible for the UK to achieve such access to those benefits?
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-07
Topic: Mixed Topics
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): I do not think that that answers the point. The noble Lord is saying that they will go on helping to smooth out the supply to EU countries, but the UK will be left over here somewhere, unable to benefit from that if there is a world shortage of radioactive isotopes. That seems to me to be what he is saying: will he just confirm that that is what he is saying?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Immigration
Hugh Dykes (Crossbench, Unknown): The noble Lord is making an extremely good speech with which I agree, so I am sorry to break in. He referred to being a citizen of the UK. Under Maastricht, he is also a citizen of the EU. Is he aware that the ECJ is beginning to receive many messages from British citizens, both here and living in other EU countries, asking for the ECJ to consider giving protection to them even post-Brexit if necessary?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Fleming (Crossbench, Unknown): I will stay away from the law on this, but when it comes to travel and so on to the EU, is there not a discussion to be had, the likelihood being that most people—unless they are going to work there—will be able to move around Europe without a visa? If I may say so, it is therefore not quite as disastrous as the noble Earl suggests.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Fleming (Crossbench, Unknown): I am very puzzled as to how any of this is relevant to the Bill we are discussing. Does the noble Baroness not understand that this kind of stuff, which is being repeated time and again, is actually doing more harm than good? It is raising issues for people who do not face them. It is quite clear that the maximum is being done to help people qualify for residence in the UK. We could not do more than we have done. Frankly, this is just making trouble.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Immigration
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): I have listened with great care to what the noble and learned Lord has said but I cannot look into the future. I do not know what is going to happen as a result. We just have to look at the present situation. There are two factors to bear in mind. As far as the UK is concerned, for people looking to come here, an immense amount of citizens’ rights are guaranteed already under the regulations which implement directives. We ought not to lose sight of that. Secondly, problems of interpretation because of conflicts between the wording of the directive and our transposition of it, give rise to some doubt. Under the existing position, there is an obligation to refer which will not be present after exit day. This is a different situation with which I believe our courts will be able to cope perfectly well.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Civil Rights
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): With great respect, I would not put it in that way. It has given me an opportunity to bring forward an example which I am hoping the Minister will be able to comment on. The noble Lord has raised an important point. We all care about citizens’ rights. I hope I have drawn attention to the context in which one looks at the amendment. It is a well-crafted amendment to which the Minister may have an answer along the lines I have suggested.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Civil Rights
Frances D'Souza (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, if there is to be a commitment to the highest standards of protection of citizens’ rights—I go back to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Haskel—this would presumably include the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. But the Bill suggests that we omit that charter, so can the Minister say what would be the mechanism by which those charter rights would be guaranteed for EU citizens who remain resident in the UK?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Mixed Topics
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): Not at all. It is curing the curate’s egg and producing an acceptable piece of guidance which has the best bits of both, which is what we need to look for. I am not cherry-picking; I am analysing.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Mixed Topics
David Pannick (Crossbench, Unknown): I am very grateful to the Minister for that encouraging response, and I am grateful to the noble Lords and noble and learned Lords who have spoken in this debate On a matter of detail, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, asked about new subsection (2B) in Amendment 56, giving guidance to the judges to look to the relevance of an EU agreement. The noble Lord asked how that would work. I shall give him an example. If the judge is seeking to interpret a provision of retained EU law, relating to, say, medicinal products; if the Court of Justice after exit day pronounces on a regulation which has become part of retained EU law, and if the withdrawal agreement has said that there will be close regulatory alignment between the EU and the United Kingdom in that particular area, then the judge would be encouraged to pay close regard to what the Court of Justice had said about the meaning of the regulation. Our court would still be in control but it would pay particular regard—that is the whole point of new subsection (2B) There is widespread agreement around the House that the wording of Clause 6(2) is unsatisfactory and that Parliament needs to give as much guidance as possible to judges in this context to protect them from being seen to be required to take policy decisions, which would undermine confidence in the rule of law. The Government and Parliament would be very unwise to reject, in particular, the concerns expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury. It is much more difficult to identify precisely what should be put in place of Clause 6(2). I am encouraged by what the Minister said—that the Government are listening and considering this matter. I am sure that all noble Lords who have spoken would be happy to contribute to the discussions that will take place before Report. I hope that, on Report, the Government will bring forward amendments to Clause 6(2).
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Krebs (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 58, in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and my noble friend Lady Brown of Cambridge. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, has already mentioned, her Amendment 59 has a similar intent to Amendment 58 and therefore I support it The purpose of this amendment is very simple: it is to ensure that recitals and preambles to EU laws are given a clear legal status by the Bill. Why is that important? The recitals and preambles explain the background to, and objectives of, legislation and are therefore essential to understanding the legislation that follows. While in UK law the purpose of any piece of legislation will be clear as a result of the process leading up to the legislation—for instance, a Green Paper, a White Paper and a parliamentary debate—with EU-derived law there is no equivalent process. Therefore, the recitals and preambles are essential for placing the legislation in context. If they are not given a clear legal status they may be forgotten or ignored by decision-makers and the courts. As has already been mentioned, although the great repeal Bill White Paper, in footnotes 17 and 24, recognised the importance of recitals and preambles, this does not provide the legal certainty that is needed.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Other
John Krebs (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I rise to move Amendments 112 and 113, which are in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Byford, and my noble friend Lady Brown of Cambridge.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Mixed Topics
Julia King (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support Amendments 66, 108, 112, 113 and 317, but noble Lords will be glad to hear that I will not speak to them. However, I would like to speak to Amendment 186 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to which I have added my name. This amendment is something of a change of subject as it is about the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and seeks to keep the UK in the EU ETS. The clean growth strategy says that the Government are considering the UK’s future participation in the EU ETS post Brexit. It would certainly appear possible to stay in the EU ETS. Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway participate in it. For a range of reasons it certainly appears to be a good idea On Friday, the Prime Minister told us that she wants to secure, "broad energy co-operation with the EU", and to protect the single energy market on the island of Ireland and the UK’s participation in the EU internal energy market. This will be easier if we are in the EU ETS. The clean growth plan anticipates increases in electricity imports from Europe via interconnectors. This will be easier and fairer on UK generators if we are in the EU ETS The global direction of travel is one of growth in global carbon markets. The larger they are, the more efficient at delivering decarbonisation at least cost. The EU ETS and the Chinese market are the two biggest global markets, so I suggest that we might want to stay in the EU ETS. If the UK continues to make good progress in reducing emissions compared with our European neighbours, which I sincerely hope it will, we will have credits to sell in the EU ETS as the carbon price rises, bringing income to the Exchequer. That is another good reason to stay in the EU ETS. The accounting for our current carbon budgets is based on the fact that we are members of the EU ETS, so to retain the same level of ambition in emissions reduction, we would need to reset the levels of the fourth and fifth carbon budgets in legislation. It is not a huge challenge to redo the accounting but I think it would just make it slightly easier if we stayed in the EU ETS. I would like to ask the Minister to tell us more about the Government’s intentions. Should we not stay in the EU ETS?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Civil Rights
Colin MacKenzie Low (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, if the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, does not want to respond to the question from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, perhaps I might have a go. If I heard him and remember correctly, the noble and learned Lord asked what the relationship to this amendment would be if the Government were to introduce their own right to equality. If that is the question, the answer is quite straightforward. If the Government were to bring in their own freestanding right to equality, they would essentially have accepted the amendment and there would be no need for it because they would have introduced it into primary legislation of their own motion.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Mixed Topics
Richard Thomas James Wilson (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, in moving Amendment 71, I will also speak to Amendments 116, 253 and 257, which are in my name and the names of my noble friend Lord Lisvane and the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith. My noble friend Lord Lisvane has asked me to convey his apologies for not being here to move the amendment himself, but he has to be absent to speak at a memorial service in Cardiff for an old friend. I am sure the Committee will understand that reason I feel we are now coming to the heart of the Bill. I confess that, while listening to the debates, I have found myself thinking of the Bill as creating a Frankenstein’s monster. It is sewing together 40 years of EU law, snipped around to fit with this country’s law. Clause 7 gives a Minister of the Crown the power to snip away at EU law and British law to try to get them to fit together. It is a task on a huge scale, and I do not believe anyone, wherever they are working, can quite get their mind round it at the moment or round what the consequences will be These amendments would tighten, in two ways, the threshold which the Minister of the Crown has to reach in order to be able to exercise the powers. They would tighten it by providing, first, that the powers could be used only where it was "necessary" to use them, not where it was considered "appropriate". Secondly, they would give an objective test for whether the use of the powers was necessary, rather than the subjective test of whether the Minister considered it appropriate I believe that such changes are needed and would be justified by three things. First, there is the sheer scale of the task being undertaken. Of course, there are limits to the power—it can only be used to correct deficiencies in EU retained law which arise from withdrawal from the European Union and do so in areas which are not excluded by Clause 7(7)—which are important. But there are still huge swathes of law which could be amended under the powers. From listening to a sample of the debates that the Committee has had over the last days, those include human rights, the environment, the welfare of animals—there is very little in the legislation we are dealing with that does not affect most aspects of people’s lives in this country The power itself is very broad: to make law which has the status of an Act of Parliament. An extraordinary subsection, Clause 7(5), says: "Regulations under subsection (1) may make any provision that could be made by an Act of Parliament" We are talking about the power to make Acts of Parliament without going through the processes of Parliament, which I find breath-taking.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Mixed Topics
Karan Bilimoria (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, if I may just follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Lang, I often say that this House’s role is to be the guardian of the nation. To build on what the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, said, when we go back to the beginning of all this—the referendum—it was all about taking back control and sovereignty and not bypassing Parliament. What happened with Article 50? The Government tried to bypass Parliament. Now we have this withdrawal Bill, giving powers to make and amend law. As the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, said, there are over 100 Ministers, and it can be delegated to government departments—once again trying to bypass Parliament Under an earlier amendment, I quoted Dominic Grieve, a former Attorney-General, who recently said: "Having just spent four months considering the EU (Withdrawal) Bill … I don’t think I have ever seen a piece of legislation that conferred such power on the executive to change the law of the land by statutory instrument … and where the entire structure was so closely interwoven that the same end could often be achieved by different routes" That is a former Attorney-General from the government party Then there was the Strathclyde review. Let us not forget what happened in 2015 when this House was criticised for flexing its political muscle. The review said that we should, "understand better the expectations of both Houses when it comes to secondary legislation and, in particular, whether the House of Lords should retain its veto" We were openly bullied and told, "Don’t you dare challenge a statutory instrument again". In fact, I remember in that debate, the Government went so far as to say, "You are threatening the very existence of this House if you threaten us any more". Now we have the potential for thousands and thousands of statutory instruments. Are we going to challenge every one of them and threaten our very existence every day? Do Henry VIII clauses give Governments the power of royal despots?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Mixed Topics
Karan Bilimoria (Crossbench, Unknown): I thank the noble Viscount for that intervention. At the moment, the courts very rarely intervene. They had to intervene with Article 50 being put through Parliament; that was fundamental. This House defeated the Government twice by almost 100 votes each time in two of the biggest votes in the history of our Parliament—614 of us voted in one and 634 in the other. Do we want a situation where this Parliament or the Government are continually challenged by the courts? We do not want to go there, and this is why these amendments are important I conclude that the power to amend all EU-derived primary and secondary legislation by the Government without sufficient scrutiny, checks and control, bypassing Parliament, goes against the ultimate supremacy of Parliament itself.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Other
Richard Thomas James Wilson (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I thank the 13 noble Lords who spoke on the amendment, all of whom were unanimous in their support of the need to change Clause 7(1). There was a lot of support for the substitution of "necessary" for "appropriate". I am not going to go through what was said because, first, I agreed with everything; and secondly, it was said so eloquently that it would be otiose for me to add to it at this hour of night The Minister has clearly heard the voices of so many noble Lords in favour of some change to Clause 7(1). I say respectfully that he seemed to be speaking with two voices. One was a clear, fierce defence of "appropriate". I have to confess that I found some of it surprising. I would have thought, faced with EU retained law expressed in the euro, that that would be a deficiency that one needed to correct and that it would be necessary to correct it. However, I will study what the Minister said with interest. On the one hand he spoke with a fierce voice defending the present drafting. On the other, he referred three or four times to the need to discuss before Report. At one point, he said that he was sure that a mutually agreeable position would be found. We need to study exactly what he said. Against that background, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-04-23
Topic: Civil Rights
Ruth Deech (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, there are good legal reasons to oppose this group of amendments. I will be brief. I shall not go into equivalence; for example, we already have child protection in English law First, we never intended to adopt the charter and did our best to opt out. It has never been analysed, debated or adopted by this House or indeed the other place. It entered our law only in 2013 after being rejected as unnecessary and confusing. It is badly drafted with its references to principles and other rights. Article 3, which refers to the prohibition of eugenic practices and the selection of persons, whatever that means, could be used by those who oppose embryo and stem cell research to block our leadership in that field. The wording in that article is more suitable for the much more conservative, unregulated and, indeed, backward European practices. The articles relating to dignity and scientific research are vague and woolly. Its scope and application are uncertain and meant for European institutions, not individual rights. Interpretation of the charter, if retained, would be a bonanza for lawyers involved in litigation. I can see decades of lucrative litigation stretching ahead, and I point out that I am not a practising lawyer Secondly, it offends against the rule of law and parliamentary sovereignty, in that it would allow our judges to invalidate British law, not just to declare it incompatible with human rights or to treat other laws as having priority but to set it aside and nullify it. If you believe in parliamentary sovereignty now and its full recovery after Brexit, if you believe that this House should make and unmake laws, while judges interpret and apply them, then the power to set aside our laws is unacceptable. It is in Article 51(1) of the charter and has been used on at least one occasion—with unfortunate results, as my noble and learned friend Lord Brown has just pointed out. The charter’s continuance would elevate judicial policy views over the elected Parliament and give judges the very contentious interpretation powers that they have indicated they do not wish to have in relation to EU law. This is the reason for opposing the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. Although one can understand where he is coming from, the interpretation of scope would be a nightmare, and cherry picking, as both amendments do, is surely not allowed in European areas.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-04-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
Ruth Deech (Crossbench, Unknown): Would the noble and learned Lord agree that what is special about this is that the judges of the ECJ, whatever sort of court he estimates that to be, will keep interpreting those rather vague principles on and on, decade after decade, and that all those interpretations will have to be brought back here, unforeseeable and maybe irrelevant as they are? That is what is different about it.