argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Government Operations
Kevin Paul Hollinrake (Conservative, Centre-right): I represent a constituency in north Yorkshire, an area with eight local authorities. There are eight chief executives, eight economic development officers, and eight directors of finance. That cannot be right; we need to remove tiers of bureaucracy and reduce costs in order to maximise the use of our resources.
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Social Welfare
Kevin Paul Hollinrake (Conservative, Centre-right): The Chair of the Select Committee spoke earlier about a long-term solution for adult social care. He and I went to Germany to look at the care system there, and we were both impressed by how it had achieved cross-party consensus on a future solution for adult social care. Would he advocate our looking at this on a long-term, cross-party basis?
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kevin Paul Hollinrake (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware that the industrial strategy White Paper refers to having regard to per capita spending throughout the country, rather than spending being concentrated in London and other regions that are getting the lion’s share at the moment.
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Agriculture
Neil Quentin Gordon Parish (Conservative, Centre-right): There are definitely winners and losers from the business rates review, but many farm tourism businesses—farm cottages, riding stables and others—are being given a much greater value and their rates are going up 60%, 70% or 80%. That is just too much for those businesses, and we need the Government to help them in some way.
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Government Operations
Derek Gordon Thomas (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome that intervention. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) often refers to the fact that the Liberal Democrats talked about fairer funding for many years, but that it is only since 2015, when Cornwall elected all Conservative MPs, that we have really seen progress.
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
Derek Gordon Thomas (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome that intervention, if only to say that that has been covered in the previous two and a half hours of debate If we were able to achieve fairer funding for schools, police and health and fairer support for local government, and for that to be in permanent legislation, that would be a significant result that south-west MPs could celebrate. For many, many years that was unobtainable I will bring my speech to an end by asking the Minister to look at the Isles of Scilly immediately. The pressures are there now and we need to do what we can to help. It is not right that older people face having to move off the islands to receive residential care. Please look at the situation in St Ives and Penzance, where supermarkets seem to be benefiting from the new arrangement. High street shops are the backbone of our local economy. They drive our economy across Cornwall, yet they seem to be the unintended victims.
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Social Welfare
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend agree that, just as there is a duty to co-operate between local authorities in planning, it would be helpful if there were a duty to co-operate between our social service providers at local government level and clinical commissioning groups? That would be enormously helpful in bridging the gap.
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Government Operations
Robert James MacGillivray Neill (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman is right. He and I both experienced that approach when we were Ministers in the same Government. What he has suggested is precisely the objective that we should work towards, but we need a steer from the top Let me make two more brief points. The first is about the fair funding review, which I also welcome, but it will need to be bold and comprehensive. When I was a local government Minister, we had to go through about 275 bits of regression analysis to establish the formula, but we had knocked it down from about 400. Such material is not comprehensible; it is extremely opaque, and it produces consequences that are often difficult to reconcile with what any of us in local government see on the ground May I make a plea for one particular factor to be taken into account? I understand that, inevitably, there will be a "needs versus resource" matrix, but thus far it has proved almost impossible to build into the system a proper weighting for historically efficient authorities. A local authority that has historically been efficient and run its services well at low cost receives no credit for that. If anything, such authorities tend to be penalised. Bromley, for example, is a comparatively low council tax authority, the second lowest in outer London, but it is also the lowest in terms of the cost per head—the unit costs—of its service delivery. The system has never taken account of that, and we ought to incentivise it within the system.
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Government Operations
Stephen Daniel Double (Conservative, Centre-right): I am delighted to contribute to this important debate. I welcome the presence of the single representative of the Liberal Democrats, the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb); they were late to the party today, but it is very good to have them here eventually. They tell us so often in Cornwall how important they think local government is, but that has not been reflected in today’s debate, sadly Local government is on the frontline of delivering services to our residents. I know that from my time as a Cornwall councillor and from the sheer weight of correspondence I get in my office about things that are actually delivered by our local council, whether it is picking up the dog mess, cutting the grass and filling the potholes, or more important issues such as adult social care. We must value local government, therefore, and see it as a central part of delivering services It is also clearly right that local government is going through a period of dramatic reform. We need to bring it into the modern age, drive out the inefficiencies and the waste so often found in local government, and make sure that it is fit for purpose and as well-run as possible.
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Government Operations
Stephen Daniel Double (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman might have been reading the notes of my speech, because that will be my main point We undoubtedly need to reform local government, and I broadly welcome the changes the Department are introducing to the way local government is financed, making it much more directly accountable for raising and spending its own finance and far less dependent on central Government. I also welcome the renewed interest in the Rural Fair Share campaign to address the imbalance that has existed for far too long between the levels of funding received by rural councils as opposed to predominantly urban councils.
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Government Operations
Stephen Daniel Double (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not take any further interventions, as time is short Local government spending still accounts for a large proportion of central Government spending, and it is understandable that we have had to make savings and cuts while we have been dealing with the legacy of the huge and record deficit we inherited from the previous Labour Government. We have had to find those savings across government, including local government. That is the context in which we must see the current situation However, I welcome the Minister’s confirmation that a fair funding formula for rural councils, based on the cost of delivery and need, will be brought forward. My concern is about the timing of bringing the review forward. I remember standing on this very spot in last year’s debate, and at the last minute the then Secretary of State provided some transitional funding to ease the huge cuts that rural councils faced, to make sure that the funding gap between rural and urban councils was not further extended On that basis, I supported the Government position last year, with the promise that this would be looked at. It is disappointing that we are here again 12 months later and so little progress has been made in addressing the issue. I welcome the fact that some transitional funding is still available for this year, but that will run out next year and there will be no cushion to ease the impact on the rural councils and the widening of that gap We must urgently bring forward this review and address this issue. As I said to the Secretary of State earlier, if we do not deal with it now, the unfairness and the lack of funding for rural councils will be baked into the system when we go to 100% retention of business rates. So it is important that the review is brought forward. We can no longer live with what we in Cornwall would call a "dreckly" approach. For the uneducated, that describes something that will happen at some undetermined point in the future. It is a bit like mañana, but not quite so urgent. It feels as though that is the approach that has been taken with the fair funding review, but we need to get on with it. We need to stop talking about it and actually deliver this for our rural councils as a matter of urgency I am happy to say that, based on the fact that last year’s funding agreement was a four-year agreement and the fact that the majority of councils have now set their council tax, I will support the motion and the Government’s position tonight. I will do so with a heavy heart, because I am disappointed at the lack of progress that has been made, but I take the Minister and the Secretary of State at their word when they say that these issues will be addressed. I will continue to make this case as strongly as I possibly can and to work with colleagues to ensure that the unfairness that has existed for far too long is addressed so that our rural councils will be much more fairly funded in the future.
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Government Operations
Kevin Paul Hollinrake (Conservative, Centre-right): It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). I shall keep my comments very brief, because I have been told to do so by the Whips and by Mr Deputy Speaker when he was in the Chair earlier. My comments are simple ones. I understand that the Secretary of State has a lot on his plate at the moment, but he is sitting on a golden opportunity—a once-in-a-parliamentary-generation opportunity, perhaps—to fix two fundamental problems in the system. The first relates to fairness in the rating system. The second involves fairer funding for local authorities. In relation to rates, I must refer Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in that we have quite a lot of shops around the UK that are subject to the rating system. I believe that a fairer system would be a sales tax. It would disadvantage my network, but it would nevertheless be much fairer My principal comments relate to fairer funding for local authorities. I have heard many comments from Members across the House about how this issue affects rural areas in comparison with metropolitan areas. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), knows what I am going to say about this. The biggest iniquity by far is the way in which London is treated in comparison with the rest of the country. That is the reality. I am grateful to Leicestershire County Council for producing a report, which I urge Members to download, in which it has collapsed all district and county councils into one, pooled their resources and divided the sum by the number of people in those areas to give the spending power per local authority. The reality is that nine of the 10 local authorities with the highest spending power are in London, yet nine of the 10 authorities with the lowest council tax are also in London. That is simply unfair. It would be perfectly appropriate as long as the need drivers were taken into account. Let us take Harrow as an example plucked out of thin air. Harrow has £80 a year more spending power than North Yorkshire, yet it has a richer and younger population. How can that be right? [Interruption.] That cannot be the explanation, surely.
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Government Operations
Kevin Paul Hollinrake (Conservative, Centre-right): That is the central point of my remarks In 2016-17, 13 London boroughs either froze or lowered their council tax. That is not possible in areas such as North Yorkshire. To show that I am not just plugging rural areas, let us look at the lowest spending local authorities. We have York with £615 per head, Trafford with £639, Kirklees with £673 and Leeds with £696, and yet we have Westminster with £1,100 a head and Kensington and Chelsea with £1,168 a head. This simply cannot be right This is happening, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) said, because the system is based on what happened before. Einstein once said: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." We created the problems and we need new thinking. The simple solution must be to use cost drivers. Cost drivers can be only two things: need and the cost of delivery. It is as simple as that. The simpler the formula that we use and the more understandable it is, the more we will all buy into the system The fair funding review commissioned by the Secretary of State is critical. I support that method, but we need a blank canvas and a new approach to the problem. The clear opportunity is that more money is going into the system. Whatever the Opposition may say, between £11 billion and £13 billion will be going into the system by 2020 because of the retention of business rates, and there must be a quid pro quo for that. Ultimately, more money is going into the system, and it is said that a rising tide will lift all boats. It is difficult to rebalance a system when no new money is going in, but more money is going in. Spending rounds are clearly tight, and the Secretary of State will have to be careful about where that money goes to ensure that he gets bang for his buck, but this is an opportunity. However long it takes—be it five or 10 years—if we set off on the right path, we can turn a system that is fundamentally unfair into one that is fair and equitable, and that delivers fair resources to my local authorities and to those in the rest of the country, including London.
Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Macroeconomics
Marcus Charles Jones (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank hon. Members for their contributions to this debate, which it is my pleasure to close. The settlement comes at an important time of reform for local government finance. It provides a sustainable path to the reforms that will be introduced by the end of this Parliament, through which 100% of business rates will be devolved to local government, giving councils control of an additional £12.5 billion to spend on local services The reforms are being made through the Local Government Finance Bill, which was introduced to the House last month. The Bill will enshrine in law our commitment to provide funding certainty by establishing a legal framework for multi-year settlements, which is a key feature of this settlement and something that has been called for by local government for decades. By putting the framework in place now, we can continue to work with local government over the coming months on the detail of the reforms, much of which will be set out in secondary legislation. Many local authorities welcome that approach Thanks to this Government’s action, 600,000 businesses are being lifted out of business rates altogether. A revaluation is overdue, and most businesses—three quarters of them, in fact—will end up paying either the same or reduced rates. Although three quarters of businesses will benefit or see no change, I am all too aware of the impact on the quarter that will see their bills rise. We are looking closely at what can be done to help the hardest hit.
Reserve Centres — House of Commons, 2017-07-10
Topic: International Affairs
Mark Lancaster (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for his warm words. As his former Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department for International Development, I know only too well of his contribution to the comprehensive approach during his tenure there. It is rare as a Minister to be appointed to a Department one actually knows something about. On that basis, I am delighted to be here. It is great to be in this position and I hope to use any experience I have.
Reserve Centres — House of Commons, 2017-07-10
Topic: Agriculture
Mark Lancaster (Conservative, Centre-right): I am quite confident that at the end of the reserves Refine process, the footprint will still be substantial across the United Kingdom. We are not considering major closures across the UK, and I would hate to imply that that is the correct impression. Indeed, today I announced the creation of two new reserve units. I think that, as we continue to increase the size of our reserves, the story is a positive one.
NATO: Estonia and Poland — House of Commons, 2017-07-10
Topic: International Affairs
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): These deployments are certainly defensive, as the Secretary of State stated, but they will be represented as offensive by the Russians. What measures are the Government taking to keep open a line of communication with the Russians, to make it absolutely clear to them that this would not be happening but for their own conduct in Ukraine and elsewhere?
Former Military Personnel: Depression and Suicide — House of Commons, 2017-07-10
Topic: Social Welfare
John Luther Mercer (Conservative, Centre-right): LIBOR funding has been a real lifeline for many charities across the UK, including in Plymouth, where we recently secured £80,000 for a veterans care navigation service. Beyond 2018 that LIBOR funding dries up, however; what thought has the Minister given to getting veterans care on to a sustainable model, so that we can do our duty by those who serve?
Common Defence and Security Policy — House of Commons, 2017-07-10
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: What discussions he has had with his European counterparts on the effect of the UK leaving the EU on the UK’s participation in the Common Defence and Security Policy.
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): While still an EU member, we will maintain our contributions to CSDP missions and operations. The Prime Minister has made it clear that after Brexit we want a deep and special partnership with the European Union that encompasses economic and security co-operation. Europe remains our continent, and we will continue to play our part in its security, through NATO, through our bilateral relationships and through collaboration on defence and research programmes.
Service Accommodation — House of Commons, 2017-07-10
Topic: Government Operations
Tobias Martin Ellwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his place and to the Dispatch Box. He is right to raise that issue. I have just inherited this brief, and there has been concern about standards, in which the Secretary of State has taken a personal interest. We are ensuring that performance levels are up to par, and there will be an opportunity to renegotiate the contract in 2021.
Armed Forces: Life Satisfaction — House of Commons, 2017-07-10
Topic: Education
William James Quince (Conservative, Centre-right): A key part of improving service life satisfaction is ensuring that soldiers can get their children into a good school that understands military life. Will the Minister join me in congratulating Montgomery Infant School and Nursery and Montgomery Junior School, which are celebrating having served the military community in Colchester for 50 years?
Armed Forces: Life Satisfaction — House of Commons, 2017-07-10
Topic: Education
Tobias Martin Ellwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome my hon. Friend to his place. Those are two schools out of almost 500 around the country that are located near garrisons and that provide support for the children of armed forces personnel. It is important that that continues. The service pupil premium is important for making sure that we look after those pupils, particularly as they end up moving around because of their parents’ careers.
Defence Suppliers: Innovation — House of Commons, 2017-07-10
Topic: Technology
Harriett Mary Morison Baldwin (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight this issue. It is one of the things that we weight when we consider awards through the innovation fund to ensure that the projects with the highest risks but the biggest potential pay-off are the ones that are invested in.
G20 — House of Commons, 2017-07-10
Topic: International Affairs
Theresa Mary May (Conservative, Centre-right): On the issue of terrorist financing, I say to the right hon. Gentleman that it is in fact the United Kingdom that has not only been developing approaches within the UK, working with our financial sector, but is taking this internationally and, as I have said, has raised this at the G20 and has agreement from countries sitting around the G20 table that we are going to take this forward together. I think what was important was that we had a separate communiqué on counter-terrorism, which specifically identifies issues such as working with the financial sector to identify suspicious small flows of funding. This is what the UK has led on, it was the UK’s proposal and it was in the communiqué of the G20 The right hon. Gentleman talks about global tax avoidance. It is the UK that has led on the issues of global tax avoidance. Global tax avoidance is on the agenda of these international meetings only because my predecessor, the right hon. David Cameron, put it there. It is the UK that has been leading on that The right hon. Gentleman talks about trade deals. I am very happy to tell him that we are already working with the Americans on what a trade deal might look like. We already have a working group with the Australians, and we have a working group with India as well. We are out there. He says that what Britain needs is somebody actually standing up and speaking about these things; what we need is somebody doing these things, and that is exactly what we are doing On the issue of climate change, this country has a proud record on climate change. We secured the first truly global, legally binding agreement on climate change in the Paris agreement. We are the third best country in the world for tackling climate change. We were at the leading edge in putting through our own legislation in relation to emissions, and this country will continue to lead on this issue The right hon. Gentleman refers to the question of the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia. I welcome the High Court judgment today—my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary will make a statement on this later this afternoon—but I think it shows that we in this country do indeed operate one of the most robust export control regimes in the world The right hon. Gentleman started off by talking about the issue of the Government’s agenda. This Government have an ambitious agenda to change this country. There are many issues—[Interruption.]