argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Occupied Palestinian Territories — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew Francis Slaughter (Labour, Centre-left): I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests The overnight announcement from the United States of the largest cut in aid for Palestinian refugees for 70 years follows the Israeli Government’s ban on 20 international organisations entering Israel, including three from the UK. Does that concern the Government, and what do they intend to do about it?
Occupied Palestinian Territories — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: International Affairs
Daniel Joseph Carden (Labour, Centre-left): The US President’s threat this week to withdraw tens of millions of dollars from UNRWA for Palestinian refugees is an act of cruelty towards some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the world. It attacks the long-established principle that development and aid cannot await a peace deal. What is the Minister doing to strengthen the resolve of the United Nations and our European counterparts to maintain vital humanitarian work in the region?
Yemen: Humanitarian Aid — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: International Affairs
Richard Haines Burden (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister will be aware that the 30-day relaxation of the blockade on Hodeidah port expires at the end of this week, and even while it has been in place, a combination of its temporary nature and the action of intermediaries has pushed up prices so many people have not been able to afford the food, fuel and medicines that have been able to come in. So what can the international community do to ensure that supplies continue to reach people in Yemen and they are able to stave off the famine that still affects over 8 million people?
Yemen: Humanitarian Aid — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Twigg (Labour, Centre-left): UNICEF’s report this week highlights the appalling impact on children of the conflict in Yemen. Will the Minister examine the proposal from War Child that at least 1% of humanitarian funding should be devoted to mental health and psycho-social support?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Labor
Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Centre-left): The Government must take responsibility for their role in the mess now left by Carillion. Thousands of staff face unemployment, and small and medium-sized suppliers face going bust, but I am concerned for the 1,400 Carillion apprentices, some of whom I have met locally. It is not good enough to pass the back to CITB—the Construction Industry Training Board—so will the Prime Minister guarantee today that every one of those apprentices will be able to complete their training and will be paid?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: What better way to start the Year of Engineering than by seeing manufacturing output at its highest level in a decade and productivity on the up? May I invite my right hon. Friend to commit her Government to securing and supporting UK manufacturing and the important exports it delivers?
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (Labour, Centre-left): Well, they clearly were not looking very well. Carillion went into liquidation with debts that we now understand to be £1.29 billion and a pension deficit of £600 million. At the same time, the company was paying out ever-increasing shareholder dividends and wildly excessive bonuses to directors. From today, 8,000 Carillion workers on private sector contracts will no longer be paid, but the chief executive will be paid for another 10 months—one rule for the super-rich, another for everybody else. Will the Prime Minister assure the House today that not a single penny more will go to the chief executive or the directors of this company?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Government Operations
Questions: What better way to start the Year of Engineering than by seeing manufacturing output at its highest level in a decade and productivity on the up? May I invite my right hon. Friend to commit her Government to securing and supporting UK manufacturing and the important exports it delivers?
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (Labour, Centre-left): It is a bit late for one subcontractor. Flora-tec, which was owed £800,000 by Carillion, has already had to make some of its staff redundant because of the collapse. This is not one isolated case of Government negligence and corporate failure; it is a broken system. Under this Government, Virgin and Stagecoach can spectacularly mismanage the east coast main line and be let off a £2 billion payment, Capita and Atos can continue to wreck lives through damaging disability assessments of many people with disabilities and win more taxpayer-funded contracts, and G4S can promise to provide security for the Olympics but fail to do so, and the Army had to step in to save the day. These corporations need to be shown the door. We need our public services to be provided by public employees with a public service ethos and a strong public oversight. As the ruins of Carillion lie around her, will the Prime Minister act to end this costly racket of the relationship between Government and some of these companies?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Labor
Melanie Onn (Labour, Centre-left): Is it not the case that workers’ rights have no privileged status under the Bill? Once the Bill becomes an Act, those rights can be picked off by secondary legislation. If the Government wish to prevent workers from receiving proper holiday pay or to cap awards for discrimination, they will be easily able to do so.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Labor
Melanie Onn (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous with his time. There are many cases, such as Marshalls Clay Products Ltd v. Caulfield and Gibson v. East Riding of Yorkshire Council, in which domestic courts have reached incorrect decisions on workers’ rights. If the European Court of Justice will no longer be the adjudicator after the transitional period, what will?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Law and Crime
Matthew Thomas Pennycook (Labour, Centre-left): After the transitional period, the ECJ would not be the adjudicator. That would be dealt with as a matter of retained law. My hon. Friend has reinforced a point that I made earlier. We need a level of enhanced protection and the courts need clarity on how to interpret this new category of law, because if they do not have that clarity and certainty, they will be more vulnerable.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: International Affairs
Geraint Richard Davies (Labour, Centre-left): Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), does my hon. Friend agree that either the institutions and agencies that currently enforce EU rights, privileges and protections should be maintained as EU agencies, or a transitional arrangement should involve agencies and institutions that will protect people’s rights in respect of, for instance, work, the environment and consumer issues?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: International Affairs
Matthew Thomas Pennycook (Labour, Centre-left): I certainly believe that, when it is appropriate and when the country will derive benefit, we should continue to participate in EU agencies. The important point, however, is that when the functions and powers of EU agencies are transferred to either an existing or a new body, the purpose, scope and effect of the rights and protections that flow from those agencies should continue. That is one of the issues that clause 7 fails to address Returning to my earlier train of thought, all of this was why the Prime Minister’s Florence speech of last year was so welcome. It made it clear that Government policy was to seek, semantics about implementation versus transition aside, a time-limited period in which the UK and the EU would continue to have access to one another’s markets on current terms, and with Britain continuing to take part in existing security measures Crucially, the Prime Minister made it clear that this bridging arrangement would take place on the basis of "the existing structure of EU rules and regulations." That quite clearly implied the acceptance of the jurisdiction of the ECJ, as confirmed by the Prime Minister in an answer to the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) in the weeks following the speech, when she stated: "that may mean that we start off with the ECJ still governing the rules we are part of". —[Official Report, 9 October 2017; Vol. 629, c. 53.] It is also set out in black and white in the phase 1 agreement.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: International Affairs
Chuka Harrison Umunna (Labour, Centre-left): With regard to the issue of transition or implementation, as the Government call it, does my hon. Friend agree that while it is of course necessary in particular to give time for our businesses to prepare, transition or implementation is no safe harbour if this Government are determined to pursue the extreme break from our relationship with the EU which have set out with their red lines? That is no safe harbour to jumping off a cliff; it just delays it, in fact.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: International Affairs
Matthew Thomas Pennycook (Labour, Centre-left): I absolutely agree; and the unpicking of, or wheeling back from, some of the progress we felt had been made in the Florence speech is one of our concerns. The Bill before us was drafted before the Florence speech, but rather than amend the Bill to reflect the evolution of Government policy outlined by the Prime Minister in that speech, the Government chose instead to fashion a legislative straitjacket for themselves in the form of enshrining "exit day" for all purposes in the Bill as 11 pm on 29 March 2019. Let us be clear: bringing forward amendments to stipulate that exit day for all purposes of the Bill had nothing to do with leaving the EU. The article 50 notification made our departure from the EU on 29 March 2019 a legal certainty, so, for the purposes of the Bill, exit day could be left in the hands of Parliament.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: International Affairs
Matthew Thomas Pennycook (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman tempts me down an avenue that has nothing to do with the point I am making, which is that it remains unclear why the Government tabled three exit day amendments to their own Bill which have sown further confusion. We do not know why they did that—whether it was driven by Tory party management considerations or some other reason. The effect of those Government amendments would have been to end the jurisdiction of the ECJ on 29 March 2019, thereby preventing agreement on a transitional period on current terms The Government clearly soon realised their mistake and to save face enlisted the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), who is not in his place, to table amendments to loosen the legislative straitjacket they themselves had created. But his amendments, which the Government have accepted, only provide a limited form of flexibility. Ministers may now amend the definition of exit day in clause 14 for the purposes of the Bill if the date when the treaties cease to apply to the UK is different from 29 March 2019. However, there is good reason to argue that that power might not be sufficient to facilitate transitional arrangements after 29 March 2019 on the same basic terms as now. If it is not—this might end up being the most bizarre aspect of the Bill’s curious parliamentary process—the Government will find themselves in the ludicrous position of having to amend this Bill when they bring forward the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill later this year.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: International Affairs
Matthew Thomas Pennycook (Labour, Centre-left): I agree, but what I would say—and why I would urge Members to support this amendment—is that it need not require the amendment of this Bill to allow the facilitation of transitional arrangements on the same terms in addition to the provisions that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to say will be needed in that further Act of Parliament. We still believe that it should be Parliament, not Ministers, that decides exit day for the various purposes in the Bill. Our amendment 1 helpfully bolsters the position set out by the Prime Minister in the Florence speech by ensuring that this Bill can facilitate transitional arrangements on the same terms as now Given that this is, of course, Government policy, it is a wonder that the Government did not bring forward such an amendment themselves. They did not do so because they cannot agree on what the transition means. There can be no clearer evidence for that than the recent appointment of the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) to the Department for Exiting the European Union team, given her past form in seeking to actively undermine the policy position set out in the Florence speech by encouraging her colleagues to sign a European Research Group letter to the Prime Minister objecting to crucial aspects of it. It is ironic that those Tory MPs who voted for amendment 7 back in December are viewed by many as having betrayed the Government, while those who actively undermine stated Government policy appear to get promoted in quick succession Amendment 1 is simply an attempt to restore some common sense to the question of exit day for the purposes of this Bill. It would ensure that this Bill can facilitate any transitional arrangements agreed as part of the article 50 negotiations and that we avoid the ludicrous situation of potentially having to come back to amend this Bill in order to do so. It is in line with stated Government policy, and we therefore look forward to the Government not only accepting it, but welcoming it The Opposition have made it clear from the outset that a Bill of this kind is necessary to disentangle ourselves from the European Union’s legal structures and to ensure that we have a functioning statute book on the day we leave. But as we argued on Second Reading in September last year, this Bill is a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation. Sadly, despite the small number of welcome concessions, and the implications for the legislation of the defeat the Government suffered at the hands of amendment 7 and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) on 12 December, it remains a fundamentally flawed Bill. Those flaws still need to be addressed either by this House today or in the other place, and on that basis I urge all hon. Members to support new clause 1 and amendments 2 and 1.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Foreign Trade
Stephen John Doughty (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I wonder, given that he is talking about the impact on the economy, whether he has heard the remarks by Christophe Bondy, the legal counsel to the Canadian Government during the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement negotiations. He has described Brexit as being like trying to "blow up a bridge without bankrupting yourself" at the same time. He has also said that the Canadian deal and our coming out of the single market and customs union are very different.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Foreign Trade
Geraint Richard Davies (Labour, Centre-left): Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that we are less likely to catch up with the Germans on penetrating the Chinese market if we are out of the EU? We will have our back to the wall, facing tariffs, if we are not in the EU, and the Chinese will be able to bargain harder against a small player with few resources and little trade.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): Don’t say "Hear, hear" in that way New clause 5 addresses a massive topic. It simply says, almost in the words of the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, that after we have left the EU, we should have the exact same benefits for the service industries in our country—including financial, legal and professional services—as we have now. The service sector accounts for some 80% of the British economy. During our consideration of the Bill, we have not yet really debated the implications for the service sector. It is often easier to talk about the trade in goods, because goods are tangible—they are physical, and we can imagine them crossing borders, going through ports and so forth—but in many ways we excel in our service sector, so new clause 5 would simply put into the Bill the commitment that Ministers have previously given that they would seek the exact same benefits.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Hilary James Benn (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that on the question of services, never mind goods, this is probably going to be the first negotiation in human history in which a Government have gone into the process knowing that they will come out with a worse deal than the one currently enjoyed? The reason for that is the red lines that the Government have set for themselves. Does not that demonstrate what a profound error this has been, especially when we now know that the decisions on those red lines were taken without any assessment at all of their economic impact?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Foreign Trade
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): Absolutely; I could not have put it better myself. We currently have, in the shape of the single market, one of the finest free trade agreements available to any country anywhere in the world. It is frictionless and tariff-free and, of course, it offers great opportunities for those in the UK service sector to sell their services to 500 million customers. There was nothing about departing from the single market on the referendum ballot paper, so this is a ridiculous red line that the Government should not have put in place. I take this opportunity to gently ask my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench please not to acquiesce to the red lines. The fact that the Government have set them does not necessarily mean that they are correct. I want the Labour party to fight for permanent access to and membership of the single market, and I will not stop making that point New clause 2 might look a bit lengthy, but it sets out what we should hope to expect to see in the withdrawal agreement that is currently being negotiated by the Prime Minister and the European Commission. I think that a lot of people expected, having passed phase 1, that this was going to be the moment to talk about trade and the sort of deal we were going to get. That is not where we are in the negotiation. We have entered a period of talks about talks—that is simply where we are in this phase 2 arrangement. The article 50 process specifies that, after we have buttoned down a transition arrangement—I shall come to that in a minute—we can perhaps hope to get a framework for our future relationship. That could easily be a single side of A4 with very warm words saying, "Let’s all work together," and we would then be supposed to depart on our one-way journey without knowing for sure where we were heading.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): That is absolutely right, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman neatly and helpfully moves me on to my new clause 3, which deals with the question of the Irish hard border. I think that many people read the phase 1 agreement in an optimistic light. In many ways, those words were all things to all people. The can was kicked down the road, but there will have to be a translation into some sort of legal text by the time we get to the withdrawal agreement. Heaven help us when the two sides to the negotiations have to start talking in specific terms The Prime Minister had a slightly different view from the Republic of Ireland of what the phase 1 agreement meant. She reported back to the House that it was simply to be restricted to the issues listed in the Belfast agreement, which does not, of course, include trade in goods, to mention just one small policy area. There are massive questions about the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. People in that area share reciprocal healthcare, as well as environmental factors such as rivers, streams and lakes. They have a shared energy market and shared fisheries, food and plant arrangements. All those are shared because of the very geography of what are two distinct countries, so trying to fudge the issue just will not work, particularly if the UK is a third party.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Foreign Trade
Ian Murray (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has spoken about the island of Ireland on many occasions during our scrutiny of the Bill. Could not this complicated issue be easily resolved, and does not the resolution lie in the customs union and the single market?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): That is indeed the case, but the Prime Minister said, "Oh no, that’s a red line." The difficulty is that Prime Ministers can get into stubborn positions. Are they going to have to back down? How do they deal with these things? It would be a measure of the Prime Minister’s status and stature were she to say, "On reflection, I have looked at this issue and it cannot be solved." I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), will be encouraging the Prime Minister to do that, because she has that way about her. The Prime Minister should change her mind and say, "Things have changed."
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Government Operations
Elizabeth Louise Kendall (Labour, Centre-left): On that point in particular, does my hon. Friend agree that all the new clauses and amendments are about trying to get greater openness and honesty about the pros, cons and trade-offs of the choices we face as a country? It is vital that that information is available not just to this House, but to the public. It is our job as Members of Parliament to put it before the country, because these huge decisions have big consequences, but we have had to drag the Government every step of the way towards putting such information before the country.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-17
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. It is important that our constituents know that nothing is inevitable. One parliamentary decision cannot bind a successor Parliament, because Parliament has the capability to do a number of things. Although the article 50 notice signalling the Government’s intention has been sent in, it is not a binding commitment.