argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Transportation
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which proves either that she does not listen or that the Transport Secretary does not understand the meaning of spending money. It actually resulted in an out-of-court settlement of £33 million, in legal fees—we still have to hear how much—in further risk to the Government and in the due diligence costs. That seems to be quite a hefty expenditure loosely related to the Seaborne contract.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: International Affairs
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for trying once more. The EU referendum was in June 2016, and as I have said, the Government are supposed to have been doing no-deal planning for over two years. So why did this suddenly become an emergency issue? At what point did the Transport Secretary go, "Oh shoot! We might have a no-deal Brexit! We need to put in some plans to deal with that." So again I rebut the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. By the way, it is also a fact that the Transport Secretary did not even bother to visit the port of Dover until October 2018, even though it was supposed to be so critical. Why did it take him so long to go and see those operations in person?
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I cannot confirm that. The right hon. Gentleman is quite comfortable with his legacy there, so I will leave that to him; what he said is on the record. No one else seems to appreciate his legacy, including the current Justice Minister, who is trying to deal with the mess.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Gavin Andrew Stuart Newlands (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I cannot believe that the Transport Secretary stood up and defended his probation service reforms. I serve on the Select Committee on Justice, and the Ministers who replaced him and his team at the Ministry of Justice have said time and again that the service is a shambles. I am absolutely amazed that he stood up to defend it. Does my hon. Friend agree?
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Transportation
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I agree wholeheartedly. To be fair to the current Transport Secretary, he allowed VTEC, the Virgin-Stagecoach consortium, to walk away owing the taxpayer £2 billion and said that that was not a bail-out. If I let somebody off from owing me £2 billion, it would seem that I had bailed them out. As I touched on earlier, he also has a lot of culpability in the Southern rail franchise and in how the model was set up, and he has been unwilling to get involved in industrial disputes. In fact, in a way he wanted the disputes to continue because of his views on the unions. We had the Northern rail timetable fiasco, where the Government again tried to argue that the taxpayer was not liable, but when Network Rail pays compensation to a franchise holder, that money comes from the taxpayer. All that is in addition to the £800,000 on due diligence and the out-of-court settlement with Eurotunnel. It has been a farce from start to end, but the Transport Secretary is not willing to accept accountability.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Government Operations
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): When hearing these lists about how the opposite of the Midas touch has affected so many aspects of public policy, we should not forget the introduction of English votes for English laws, which was undertaken when the Transport Secretary was the Leader of the House. EVEL turns the House into a shambolic laughing stock whenever we try to use it.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Transportation
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I will take your guidance, Mr Speaker, and perhaps spare the Transport Secretary any more of his litany of failures. The right hon. Gentleman has already survived what was effectively a vote of no confidence, but I have several times called for him to be sacked, as has the shadow Transport Secretary, and he should do the right thing and step aside. It is abundantly clear that his handling of this shambles has been truly shameful. I will be interested to hear what he says at the Dispatch Box, but I have no confidence in his handling of this matter and he really should think about walking.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is at least an apparent conflict between the reported out-of-court settlement of £33 million and the Secretary of State’s claim that the £33 million is to pay for "improved security", and that we ought to be trying to get to the bottom of whether that is accurate?
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Transportation
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I tried to intervene on the Transport Secretary on this point. Was the hon. Gentleman as surprised as I was that only after an out-of-court settlement with Eurotunnel had been agreed was this suddenly all about medicines? We had all the other urgent questions and medicines were never mentioned, yet we come to the Eurotunnel settlement and suddenly this is a health-led initiative. Does he share my surprise?
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Transportation
Neil Charles Gray (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I understand that the hon. Gentleman is about to turn to some of the questions he would like the Secretary of State to answer, but does he agree that one of them should be about the due diligence process that was carried out? The company that carried out that due diligence says that it could not ask the normal questions of Seaborne Freight because it was such a new entity. So how could the Government be in any way confident in their risk aversion in awarding that contract to Seaborne in the first place?
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Government Operations
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman clearly has a lot more experience than I do in matters of collective responsibility. Let us take the previous intervention at its word. If a Secretary of State is clear that the collective responsibility of the Government is preventing him or her from doing the job properly, is not the only honourable course of action for that Secretary of State to resign? So what the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) has done by speaking in his defence is say that the Secretary of State should not resign now, as he should have resigned months ago.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Macroeconomics
Alison Emily Thewliss (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is making a really good point, but my constituents are also very cross about the sheer waste of money in all this, and at a time when we are told that we do not have any money for anything else.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Transportation
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s congratulations on securing this emergency debate, which suggests that he agrees that it is needed because the Government are not answering questions properly. He is making a point about contingency planning; I respect the fact that he is talking about planning ahead two years ago and about no-regret spending. Does he know any more than other hon. Members present about what security improvements are coming after the £33 million settlement with Eurotunnel? The Transport Secretary certainly has not explained them.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I take it from his non-answer that the hon. Gentleman has not bothered to read that document. What the Scottish Government put forward over two years ago showed a willingness to make a significant compromise. They would have been willing to consider a deal that kept us in a single market and customs union if it allowed Scotland—and, indeed, Northern Ireland—to have the wishes of our people respected. It is a pity that he clearly has not bothered to read that document. Although his Government have completely ignored it, I would still recommend it to him because it might yet show us a way out of the shambles that they are creating.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: International Affairs
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am grateful to be able to speak in this debate. I want to start by dealing with the red herring we frequently hear from Conservative Members that this debate is about impugning the Government’s responsibility to prepare for a no-deal Brexit. It is not about that. It is about their ability to make those preparations competently and without squandering taxpayers’ money Of course, the Government have to prepare for no deal because they are insistent on keeping no deal on the table, and last week they voted against the SNP amendment that would have taken it off the table. As some Conservative Members have generously accepted, no deal could be taken off the table by a number of routes, including an extension of article 50 or the option of revoking it—the lifeline thrown to the British Government by a number of Scottish politicians, including myself. In that respect, I declare an interest, with the backing of the Good Law Project Let us get that red herring off the table. This is not about the Opposition querying whether the Government should prepare for a no-deal or Brexit. This is about the Opposition doing their job and holding the Government to account for making those preparations in a shambolic, chaotic fashion that is wasteful of public money Last week, the Government settled out of court litigation brought against them by Eurotunnel for the legal reasons laid out by the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood). They paid more than £33 million to buy off the risk of losing the action and having to pay more, and the action was brought because they had failed to put three contracts—not just Seaborne Freight, so far as I am aware, but all three contracts—out to competitive tender. That £33 million was in lieu of a larger sum that would have had to be paid out in damages if the court case had gone ahead and the Government had lost That is why I, as a lawyer, am so puzzled by the insistence of the Secretary of State for Transport and the Secretary of State for Health that this £33 million will somehow pay for increased security at the ports. In my long experience of 30 years—20-odd years at the Bar and a number of years as a solicitor—I have never heard of such a stipulation in an out-of-court settlement in this type of case. That is why I was so puzzled, and perhaps expressed my puzzlement in terms that were unparliamentary I want to know. The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), is looking at his phone and is not interested in what SNP Members have to say, as usual, but this is not going to go away because I am going to pursue it with Eurotunnel and others. I want to know—[Interruption.] Well, perhaps he could just listen and be quiet while he is listening. I want to know whether Eurotunnel—
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Transportation
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I will finish the chronology, and then I will give way That was on 9 January. Later, I put in a written question: "To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what unforeseeable events led his Department to award contracts for additional shipping freight capacity under Regulation 32 of The Public Contracts Regulations 2015." I received the reply: "A negotiated procurement procedure without prior publication was concluded…to ensure that capacity can be in place in time for a No Deal exit whilst at the same time securing value for money for the taxpayer." There was no mention of the need to secure the urgent supply of medicines in the event of no deal, but there was a mention of value for money for taxpayers. Do the Government still think they have provided value for money for taxpayers, given what we have heard this afternoon? I very much doubt it On 31 January, I asked the Attorney General about this matter. I asked him whether he was concerned that the Government could face legal action in respect of their failure to put these contracts out to competitive tender, whether he had been asked to advise on the matter and whether any money had been put aside for the contingency of such court action. He fell back on the Law Officers’ convention not to answer that question, but he certainly did not mention that the reason why these contracts had been awarded as a matter of urgency and non-competitively was the need to secure the supply of medicines On 11 February, I raised this matter with the Secretary of State for Transport. I asked: "Will he state clearly for the record, as I have asked this question of him and other Ministers five times now: what were the reasons of extreme urgency and the unforeseeable events that justified his Department proceeding without competitive tendering" He said it was "a change to the assumptions on the levels and length of disruption that might arise in a no-deal Brexit scenario."—[Official Report, 11 February 2019; Vol. 654, c. 624.] Perhaps the junior Minister could take a note that I want to know from the Secretary of State for Transport why he said on 11 February that the explanation was a change to the assumptions on the levels and length of disruption that might arise, and why he is now saying that it was a decision back in the autumn to secure the supply of medicines in the event of no deal.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Government Operations
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that, because he actually reinforces the point that I sought to make. The National Audit Office has that information, and the House of Commons has had it today and yesterday, but my point is that on repeated occasions when I asked a number of Ministers from different Departments what the explanation was for this urgent need to tender non-competitively, not once did any of them mention what we are told was a collective decision to do it for a particular purpose. I therefore question whether that explanation has been invented after the fact.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: International Affairs
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): That is the bottom line. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right I am going to draw to a conclusion, because I know that others want to speak. The history of this whole event, which the Government now say that they all knew about as it was a collective decision, has been one of evasion and obfuscation. I and others are left with the inevitable conclusion that they are trying to cover up a monumental error of staggering negligence in their preparations for a no-deal Brexit, which is costing the British taxpayer a lot of money. I would like to point out that Scottish taxpayers did not even vote for all this nonsense in the first place, and their representatives in this House have, apart from the Scottish Tories, done their best to try to get a no-deal Brexit off the table I came to the House this afternoon planning to ask for the resignation of the Secretary of State for Transport. That has been asked for by others already. But now that we know that this was a collective decision and that the Government are taking collective responsibility for it, let me say that in any normal, healthy and functioning democracy this scandal would bring the Government down.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Government Operations
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am grateful for the chance to speak in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) on securing it, and I thank you for approving it, Mr Speaker My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) could have conducted this debate on her own, because in the space of what I am reliably informed was about 10 minutes, she utterly dismantled any shred of credibility that the Secretary of State and the Government had left. She has made a succession of attempts to get a simple answer—I can vouch for that, because I was often either behind or beside her when she did so—but one has not been forthcoming. The charitable explanation of that is, as she suggested, that the Government made up the answer just a few days earlier. The less charitable, but, I fear, correct, answer is that they responded to every single question with a deliberate attempt to place obstacles in the way of Members of Parliament and prevent them from doing their job. This Parliament is supposed to be getting back sovereignty as a result of Brexit, but the Government’s first, and often only, response to proper parliamentary inquiry is to stonewall, swat away questions and often to insult the motivations of those asking the questions It was a bit rich for the Secretary of State to talk about how many times he has answered these questions. He has not answered them at all. He has responded to them, but has not yet given an answer. Although my right hon. Friend could not, within the terms of parliamentary order, say that he has not been telling the truth, it is fair to say that he has not been telling the whole truth. Although not telling the whole truth is not unparliamentary, it can sometimes have the same effect as telling a complete untruth. Although the explanation that the contract is about securing emergency medical supplies has apparently been talked about in Government circles since August or September last year, it has been used as an explanation for Members of Parliament only for the past few days. It simply does not wash.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Transportation
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making a fine point. Does he share my surprise that when the Government have effectively been shown to have broken a law of competitive tendering, the Transport Secretary’s defence is, "I am really disappointed that Eurotunnel took me to court."? He breaks a law, and then blames the company that was wronged in the first place.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Transportation
Andrew Egan Henderson Hendry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend, who, along with other colleagues here, has been at this since the beginning, has made the point that the Transport Secretary takes no responsibility. He is willing to accept none of the criticism. I would say that he is Teflon, but the public know that he is not, because all this sticks to him. However, he has not had his just deserts: either being sacked from his job, which should have happened, or resigning from it.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts — House of Commons, 2019-03-05
Topic: Transportation
Andrew Egan Henderson Hendry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I agree with the shadow Transport Secretary. It is indicative of the way in which the Transport Secretary has performed throughout his ministerial career, and, indeed, it is now indicative of the Government themselves The Government’s settlement with Eurotunnel confirms what everyone except, it seems, the Transport Secretary knew: that flouting EU law on the basis of so-called unforeseen events was a completely untenable position. The only development that was foreseeable was that he would make a hash of anything that he touched. He now even has his own website, tracking how much money he is costing the taxpayer. That becomes a great deal less humorous when we see the amount: £2.7 billion as of this morning, although—as we know from the Transport Secretary—that may have gone up while I have been speaking Before the Government’s settlement last week, Eurotunnel said: "It appears …that the secretary of state is seeking to maintain extensive claims to confidentiality in relation to large numbers of disclosed documents and appears to intend that large parts, if not all, of the trial should be held in private." Moreover, we have again seen a failure to disclose answers to the questions asked in the Chamber Let me end by asking some more questions. The Transport Secretary says that there has been a changed assumption. No, there has not; there has been complacency and arrogance. There was an urgent question about this issue yesterday, following a weekend of silence from the Transport Secretary. Why did he duck it, and send the Health Secretary to answer it in his place? Has he any shred of respect for the principle of ministerial accountability? The question remains why Eurotunnel was overlooked in this first place. As I have said, the secrecy is of real concern. How much documentation is still hidden from public view? If the no-deal contract is not invoked, how much money will still be paid to Eurotunnel? With engineering firm Bechtel set to sue the Government over the HS2 tender process, what other departmental procedural risks still exist? Is it not the case that any other individual working on a business deal would have been sacked by now for wasting the amount of money the Secretary of State has wasted to date? What message does that send to the public? The message it sends is that failure, waste, ignorance, complacency, arrogance and contempt for the public are to be rewarded by the Tories.