argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Christopher Philip James Elmore (Labour, Centre-left): Does my right hon. Friend not agree that it is the invasion of privacy that so many Members take umbrage at? Family members of Members are not elected and nor are they public servants. They have a right to privacy. A Member can do their job in any other circumstance, so why should family members be exposed by the idea that their health is somehow in the public interest? It simply is not. That is what so many Members across the House find so disingenuous about what the Leader of the House and the Government are doing. They are putting families in the public eye and they do not deserve that. In fact, they deserve a lot better than that.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is right. We have a very difficult job to do anyway. As I said to the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) and her Committee, some people like to say what they had for breakfast on Instagram, but some people do not want to do that. Some people do not want to say anything about their lives. We are forced to do it sometimes. We are forced to tweet and do various other things that do not come naturally to many of us—I can’t do it, actually. But he is absolutely right that this is a privacy issue. Hon. Members have to decide what they say in the public sphere Madam Deputy Speaker, you know that when our right hon. and hon. Friends were pregnant and having wonderful babies—something so natural—they were trolled. They were trolled for doing what they needed to be doing, which was to be at home with their children when they had just given birth. I remember being in the House during the debates in which they had to explain that they were not the laziest MP in the world but were actually looking after their new-born. That was the most terrible thing and it was clarified only as a result of the debates in this House, which is why this is such an important venue This is the most important venue: people look to the Chamber to hear about what is going on. Unfortunately, sometimes we talk rubbish, and I am the biggest person to do that—[Hon. Members: "No!"] It is pantomime season! Sometimes we do, but the Official Reporters have to write down every word, and we sound wonderful when we read it back—when we dare to.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): I absolutely agree with the Chair of the Procedure Committee. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay had the courtesy to email me before the start of this debate. He told me about the difficulty; I shall not repeat it, but it is safe to say that he is not able to be here today That great intervention from the Chair of the Procedure Committee gives me an opportunity to raise the incredible work done by her and members of her Committee, who are scattered all around the House—[Interruption.] She is pointing to them and I am trying to find them.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
John Francis Spellar (Labour, Centre-left): Does my right hon. Friend, like me, wonder a little at the paradox that we have here today? The Leader of the House has often waxed lyrical about the need for Members of Parliament to be here to debate, yet he pulled a fast one to pull two of the debates that we wanted to have.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I still do not have an answer to that. I hope that I will get an answer, partly because the normal courtesies of the House were not applied and I was not even informed—I was waiting to come in to speak and the motions were just not moved. That is not the right way to do business.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is one of them and I shall give way in a moment. That is why this is so important: the amendment that has been tabled is an equalising amendment that will mean everybody is treated the same.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): I do. At the moment, as Members of Parliament we are not treated equally and we are not dealt with equally The Leader of the House says that he likes interventions and wants us here in the Chamber, so I am quite happy to take as many interventions as possible, whether people want to speak later or not.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Jeffrey Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I suspect that I did not quite make the curfew, so I may need to intervene again. Further to the point made by my colleague from the Scottish National party, the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), he is absolutely right about the behaviour of the Leader of the House today. The Leader of the House has appeared in the Chamber on many occasions championing Parliament and the rights of Members to participate in parliamentary debates and represent their constituents. Does my right hon. Friend share my sense of irony that in the motion the Leader of the House is doing his utmost to restrict Members’ ability to represent their constituents in Parliament? Does she wonder, like me, how he manages to look at himself in the mirror in the morning?
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Fleur Anderson (Labour, Centre-left): Does my right hon. Friend share my bafflement that, as soon as there was a health need, the Prime Minister was allowed to participate remotely, yet he was not immediately clinically vulnerable? Other Members, however, are not allowed to speak. Does she share my view that all constituents are equal in electing us and should be equally represented? [Interruption.]
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): I do not know whether my hon. Friend wants to intervene on me again. Perhaps she would want her question to be heard properly—there was a fair bit of heckling—so does she want to ask it again?
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Fleur Anderson (Labour, Centre-left): I hope that I can now be heard. Does my right hon. Friend share my bafflement that the Prime Minister could speak under arrangements for virtual proceedings, although he does not have a clinically vulnerable condition that we know of? It is quite right that we should not know any of the ins and outs—
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for clarifying that. I think my hon. Friend was trying to say—and I know that Mr Speaker has made a ruling on this—that both the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister should be here on equal terms, just as Ministers are here on equal terms. Mr Speaker has made it very clear that he wants Ministers here, which is why we are all here—he wants shadow Ministers and Ministers. It is about equality between the two parties, and the two parties being treated the same. We saw what happened with the Prime Minister. We do not know what happens behind the scenes, and we do not know who is helping under the lectern and so on. The fact is that he is here to answer questions asked on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition—
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Francis Spellar (Labour, Centre-left): Is it not utterly disrespectful for the Leader of the House and the Cabinet to disregard the House’s Committees, whose members are elected by both parties and whose Chairs are elected by the whole House? Is that not utterly contemptuous of the House and its Members?
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): As I was saying, I think Members were slightly alarmed by a group of people walking with a purpose. It is usually the Whips who do that, as John Major used to say I will get back to the debate at hand, the Procedure Committee report and what my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) said about the participation of all hon. Members. I still have not finished with this idea of clinical vulnerability to a disease. I think, and I said at the time, that it is an unnecessary, bureaucratic way of saying that hon. Members can or cannot be here. It is in some ways quite humiliating for hon. Members to have to go to their GP and say, "Please could I have a note to say that I am clinically vulnerable so that I can take part in a debate?"
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Nicholas Desmond John Smith (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am a bit perplexed about the voting rights of Members tonight. I would be ever so grateful if you could confirm whether the Chair needs 100 Members to go through the Aye Lobby for any closure motion to be agreed.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): That is absolutely right. The Prime Minister did say that— "work from home wherever possible."—[Official Report, 23 November 2020; Vol. 684, c. 601.] We can work from home, we have worked from home as Members of Parliament, and other Members of Parliament want to continue to work from home, and that is being denied. We are exposing hon. Members’ families, and the hon. Members, who are travelling backwards and forwards I take umbrage slightly with the Leader of the House. He thinks that if we are doing something remotely, we are not working. I have talked to many hon. Members. Zoom is horrible—whatever anyone says, it is awful. You have to concentrate, you have to stare—it is just absolutely terrible. What makes people really nervous about the whole thing is worrying about being late—suppose you have not logged in on time? Who is walking around in the background? Have you got the right background? It is terrible. Are you dressed properly? We would rather be here, of course we would, but we cannot be.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Could you not confirm that, as the hon. Gentleman just said that there is the perfect and the good on offer, if he votes for the amendment he gets the perfect and he does not discard the good at all?
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): That was a point of clarification. Perhaps we can include those in the procedure in future. Let me deal with the point that the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) made. The point is that hon. Members cannot take part in the most important part of what we do, which is debate. We are excluding a whole group of hon. Members from taking part in a debate, and to take part in a debate is what they want. The fact is we had this process and we had this procedure and it worked.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Jeffrey Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful, once again, to my right hon. Friend for giving way. She is being very generous. She is making an important point about the improvements in the technology. The House of Lords has very capably been able to facilitate its debates. We rarely have problems in this Chamber. I have heard the Leader of the House say many times that the technology does not work, that it has faults, and that we cannot introduce it for debates because of those occasional faults. In asserting that position, is he not, in the words of his colleague, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), making the perfect the enemy of the good?
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): I agree. We did have the good and we did have the perfect, and for some reason we cannot have that any more—although we might because the amendment may get passed. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), who is not in his place at the minute, said that it is the Opposition, but it is not—this is cross-party. If he looks at the amendment, it is signed by the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and the Procedure Committee has agreed—all sides, all parties.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
John Francis Spellar (Labour, Centre-left): Is my right hon. Friend as surprised as I am that, given the huge success of our excellent technical operators, a Government Minister has not used the expression "world beating"? In this case it is justified, but it is often a slightly overblown expression; it is normally used by the Secretary of State for Health and the Prime Minister.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): It is world beating, but we do not use the term in the same way as they use it, because all their world-beating test and trace and everything else do not appear to be world beating.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Nicholas Desmond John Smith (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my right hon. Friend for her contribution. She is doing a brilliant job, taking on board colleagues’ points on both sides of the House. She is taking the issue forward really well. Does she agree that colleagues across Parliament are starting to use Teams and Zoom proficiently now?
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): They do, but we do not necessarily like them—especially when they break down and we are not linking in the right place The point about broadcasting is important because we have got to the stage where, on Zoom, people can put their hands up, so that could be a form of intervention. People have been able to undertake debates—I think this was mentioned at business questions—and, in some European Parliaments, they have been able to take interventions. If that is the key thing that seems to be stopping the Leader of the House from going to the next stage—making that giant leap—interventions can be done. However, we know that hon and right hon. Members can take part in debate, because we did it before. The plea that we all make is that they want to do so on an equal basis, without having to tell anyone that they are incapacitated in some way, or that they are shielding other people in their family in some way.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): I think that is a really important intervention. Perhaps the hon. Members would go to their public sector workers, look them in the eye and say, "Sorry, we couldn’t find any money for you to have a pay rise, but we"—[Interruption.] Well, I think it was an important intervention Let us go back to the broadcasters.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can I just say this? When I was talking about the difficulties that our hon. Friends and right hon. Friends have taking part in debate, I just heard some sniggering from the Back Benches. Normally, I would just ignore it, but this is such an important debate, and I did not know what it was about.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): Joke? I was talking about broadcasting. We were talking about the public sector workers who are not going to get a pay rise apparently, but maybe the Chancellor will change his mind when he has heard this debate But let us go back to exactly what is happening here with this motion. It is discriminatory. How can we possibly carry on in this way when we have these two tiers of hon. Members? It is not fair, it is not right and it is not the way that we do things here. We need to treat every single Member equally. There is absolutely no justification.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Member is absolutely right. When the Government want EVEL, they have it; when they do not want it, they do not have it, even though SNP Members have made the arguments frequently. We are now getting to the point where this is discriminatory.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Fleur Anderson (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful for the opportunity to mention discrimination. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is a double discrimination—that not only are some people barred from being here and speaking, but they also cannot speak on behalf of their constituents? All the people who Members have been sent here to represent are discriminated against, as well as the Members themselves, so it is doubly hard.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): It is doubly hard for everyone not being able to take part in what we do in this House, which is to debate legislation. To debate—that is what the Leader of the House has said we should do, but hon. Members cannot take part.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): Yes. Hon. Members will also know the emails that we all get about particular pieces of legislation when they pass through the House. Whether it is here, in Westminster Hall or on petitions, Members cannot say how they voted or why they voted in a certain way, or talk about what the policy is. I do not know what hon. Members who cannot take part in debates say to their constituents; maybe I need to ask an hon. Member who is not here and cannot take part.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): Yes, with the greatest of respect, I think that the hon. Gentleman has misunderstood. He will know that unless a Member certifies that they are clinically vulnerable, they will not be able to take part in a debate under virtual proceedings. That is where the difficulty lies, because there will be two different sets of hon. Members: those who will have to certify and those who cannot certify. For example, take the hon. Gentleman’s colleague, the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay, who has co-signed the amendment. It is not he who is clinically vulnerable; it is possibly another person who is, and he wants to protect them. Therefore, he cannot take part in the debate, and he should be able to. Why can he not take part in the debate without having to expose whichever person it is, who he would expose to the disease if he came here physically? That is the point, and that is why I say that this is a cross-party matter. It has nothing to do with politics or with anyone here. The only politics is that the Government seem hellbent on ensuring that people cannot take part in debates.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): I think it has gone out of the window with this motion; my right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is not just about privacy for hon. Members—apparently we can take it because we have thick skins, although I am not sure that we all do; some of us have thin skins. It is about protecting the families, who do not necessarily ask to be exposed in this way. They are not the ones who are tweeting or who are on Facebook. We are exposing them. I know of many such cases. A friend in the SNP is protecting members of her family, and she has said so publicly, but why should she be prevented from participating?
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is right, and that is why we have these debates. He is absolutely right—I am sure they will come to that in the end, but hopefully not. Let us return to the discriminatory nature of this motion.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): That is extremely contradictory. As a result of the Prime Minister being exposed to sniffles and coughs, he shielded and was given the ability to do his work in a different way. That is all that right hon. and hon. Members are asking for Let me give two examples of people who are very vociferous and active, including in the Chamber. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) is an amazing Member of Parliament, but she is finding that she has not got a voice any more. My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) constantly badgers the Leader of the House during business questions, but he is now not able to do that. The Chair of the Education Committee, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) loves coming into the Chamber—I have seen him—but he is not able to.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): No, I was not suggesting that at all, but as hon. Members know, no matter what happens, things get out. I gave the example of pregnant women or mothers who were not on the voting record because they were not here. That has now all changed, and that is what it took, which is why this debate is so important. We have stopped saying that people must be in the Chamber and voting, hence proxy voting, but it took the Procedure Committee and many debates to get that. That is why we are saying that we must treat people equally so that people outside cannot see any difference and everybody can take part in every piece of work done by the House.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): Will the right hon. Lady join me in thanking the staff and the Clerks, who from those early days have done some tremendous work to make the system the best that we can? Without that work, we could not have achieved what we have done so far.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Mary Elizabeth Twist (Labour, Centre-left): Speaking of Bill Committees, does the right hon. Lady recall that some of us took part in a trial running of a Bill Committee, including interventions and a full debate, which worked perfectly well? That might have been another way of ensuring that Government business was able to move forward.
Virtual Participation in Debate — House of Commons, 2020-11-24
Topic: Other
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I just want to make it absolutely clear that I would love the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) to be able to take part in debates fully. I have spoken to her several times this year and I know how painful she has found this. None of us is seeking to prevent that happening. All of us who have tabled the amendment and support the amendment simply want a few more people to be able to participate in exactly the same way as she is. If the Leader of the House would stand up now and say that he will accept the amendment, we could all go home and get on with more important business.