argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Income Equality and Sustainability — House of Lords, 2020-05-06
Topic: Housing
Diana Mary Warwick (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I join others in wishing the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York a happy and very well-deserved retirement. I declare an interest as chair of the National Housing Federation, the voice of affordable housing in England People need good, affordable homes to sustain greater income equality. The ONS has shown that income inequality is increasing. A significant factor is the cost of living, along with income instability and insecurity. Housing costs are a substantial proportion of living costs, sometimes more than 50% of monthly income if you rent in the private sector Even prior to the crisis, many individuals and families across the UK had always struggled to meet everyday living costs. With thousands of people losing their jobs as a result of the pandemic, this situation will get worse. The Government have introduced a job retention scheme and increases to universal credit to provide much-needed support, and I welcome these, but some gaps remain in helping people meet their housing costs. The uplift in universal credit or the local housing allowance will have no effect on some families already claiming benefits, because they are caught by the house- hold benefit cap. It is an arbitrary cap that further undermines families who are already struggling, with schools closed and no childcare to allow them to start work. Parents—particularly single parents—are struggling to get jobs. Will the Minister consider the need to suspend the housing benefit cap? Can he tell us what monitoring the Government are doing and how families affected by the cap are coping during this crisis As we rebuild from this pandemic, investment in affordable and social housing would not only reduce the cost of living for many more families in low-paid and unstable work but enable the Government to move away from subsidising unaffordable rents with the welfare system The ability of many families to bounce back quickly from this crisis will depend on the changes we make now to reduce the amount people spend on one of life’s basic necessities: somewhere safe and secure to live. Can the Government say whether they will take the first step by significantly investing in affordable housing?
Arrangement of Business — House of Lords, 2020-05-06
Topic: Other
Ruth Henig (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, Virtual Proceedings on the debate in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, will now commence. This is a time-limited debate, and I know that Members will strictly observe the three-minute time limit. I will first call the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, in the usual way, the question will then be put, and I will then call each speaker on the list in turn. Each speaker’s microphone will be unmuted prior to speaking and returned to mute once their speech has finished.
Windrush Compensation Scheme — House of Lords, 2020-05-06
Topic: Civil Rights
Doreen Lawrence (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the scandal surrounding the Windrush generation, leading to the subsequent report by Wendy Williams, and the unlawful removal of British residents to countries that they might have left as children, was first highlighted by the Guardian in 2017 and came to a head in 2018. The scandal saw the deportation of individuals to Caribbean countries, including many to Jamaica I was part of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and we took evidence from individuals affected by the scandal. Some were remanded in detention centres, awaiting deportation. They talked about the effect of that on their mental health and about the separation from their families. All had lost their jobs and homes. The lack of documents affected all those who found themselves in this position. Many of these individuals arrived in this country as children, on a parent’s passport, and would not have had documents, or they travelled on a British passport before the country of origin gained independence The Government need to remember that the Windrush generation were invited here, after World War II, to rebuild the country. The jobs that were vacant were on the buses and railways, and in hospitals. People from the Caribbean who answered that invitation faced discrimination and racism from the start The scandal of the Windrush generation has been going on since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Many people who travelled to Jamaica, either on holiday or for the funeral of a family member, found themselves stopped at the airport and unable to return to the UK. Many died without having their cases looked at. The report also listed five cases, all giving different stories of their experiences, which I found upsetting to read. I can only imagine the distress that these individuals have gone through. We should do everything that we can to amend the mistake made against them. Wendy Williams’s report said that "institutional amnesia and inadequate practice denied them their liberty. It denied them their freedom of movement. It denied them a normal life." In conclusion, Wendy Williams’s report made 30 recommendations. Will they all be accepted? Also, how can the Government avoid discriminating when making compensation payments to individuals while waiting for Royal Assent? Individual officers are still being asked to assess status, burden of proof and the amount that each recipient should receive. How can we monitor this and ensure that mistakes do not again cause the same distress which these individuals have gone through? In future, the Government should make sure that these concerns are heard as part of the lessons learned so that people’s rights cannot be taken away from them.
Windrush Compensation Scheme — House of Lords, 2020-05-06
Topic: Housing
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I first thank the Government for tabling this Motion today, enabling a wide group of Members to take part in the debate on the Windrush scandal compensation scheme. Having only three minutes means that it is difficult, if not impossible, to get across all the points I want to make. I have agreed with the contributions made by noble Lords so far and am certain I will agree with those made during the rest of the debate I have a number of questions to ask the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, and I hope she can respond to them when she replies to the debate. If not, I look forward to receiving a written response copied to all Members of the House speaking in the debate Can the Minister set out the terms of the compensation offered to victims? By that, I mean the framework. Is this a full and final settlement? Can it be revisited? It would also be helpful if the Minister confirmed to the House that, if people have been deported, all the costs associated with their return to the UK will be borne by the Government without any question, and that this does not form any part of the compensation package itself Moving on to jobs that have been lost due to the actions of the Government, is the compensation received seeking to address that in all relevant cases, and will there be any action by the Government to help people find re-employment? Where people have lost their homes, they could have lost their tenancy. What action will the Government take to get victims back to the position they enjoyed in respect of their housing before they suffered this injustice? Finally, what are the oversight proposals to ensure that victims are treated properly and fairly and do not suffer further injustice?
Windrush Compensation Scheme — House of Lords, 2020-05-06
Topic: Immigration
Deborah Wilcox (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, before beginning my contribution today, I would like the House to note my entries on the register of interests Many years ago, at the start of my teaching career, I was employed by the Inner London Education Authority in several schools in the London Borough of Lambeth—Stockwell Manor, Beaufoy boys’ school and finally Priory Park School—now all amalgamated and changed. I did not realise that I would meet a chair of governors of Priory Park School many years later on these Benches: my noble friend Lord Boateng Each school had a multi-ethnic intake of pupils, mainly from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds; it was a wonderful experience for a Welsh valleys girl to engage with this wide variety of cultures. I was living in Brixton at the time, and this was indeed the heart of the Caribbean community in south London. Little did I realise then what problems would arise almost four decades later for the parents of those pupils and indeed for some of those youngsters themselves The compensation scheme has fallen short of expectations. British citizens have been wrongfully detained and deported, lost jobs and been prevented from returning home from abroad. By the Government’s own admission, they are continuing to fail the Windrush victims. The scheme is not well publicised. Many are frightened to claim the compensation through fear of the "hostile environment", and I believe that, to date, only a very small percentage of claimants have received compensation The Government should provide funding for voluntary groups to assist claimants to apply for compensation. The investigative nature of the documentation requires a great deal of form filling, and it is not often possible by individuals as it involves HMRC, medical records and council records. So people are caught between situations as they try to find appropriate evidence and to avoid contact with the authorities for fear of being deported or detained. This fear has led to great problems in finding enough documentary evidence to support claims More than 12,000 people who were wrongly classified by the Home Office as illegal immigrants have now been given citizenship or some other form of documentation proving that they have, and always had, the right to live in the UK, but there are more than 3,700 outstanding cases with the Windrush taskforce. Those people who still await an outcome, in some cases for more than a year, have been left with great anxiety at a time when the Government should be doing everything they can to speed up and support the applications. Will the Minister say whether people will be able to appeal a compensation decision? Why is legal aid not being made available to pursue claims?
Windrush Compensation Scheme — House of Lords, 2020-05-06
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Mann (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I have two points to make in my contribution. They are to do with the isolation of part of the Windrush community in some parts of the country. I recall that, during the coal miners’ strike of 1984-85, I was asked to look after the only black miner out of 2,500 miners working at Manton colliery in Worksop. When the union asked whether I would take him under my wing, assist him and look after him during the strike, I asked why. The answer was "For his safety." In those coal-mining communities and in similar rural and semi-rural communities, there are scattered around many individuals who are from the Windrush generation and who are potentially eligible for compensation, but in my experience they tend to be less well connected to others of that generation and therefore more isolated in terms of information. There is one very straightforward thing that does not appear to have happened, so I propose to the Minister that she should write to local newspapers, such as the Worksop Guardian, the Mansfield Chad, the Retford Times and the Doncaster Free Press, spelling out in simple terms who is eligible and why and what they can do about it. That will open it up to those individuals, some of whom I assisted in my former representative role to apply and win the compensation they were due My second point echoes that made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. My experience of coal miners’ claims for industrial injury is that solicitors and claims handlers took one-quarter, sometimes more, of the settlement, and people will not come forward in the same numbers. Citizens advice bureaux ought to be empowered and given a modest degree of funding to promote the case and give advice to individuals, whatever kind of community they live in. Then those in areas such as Nottinghamshire who are due compensation will have the opportunity to get it.
Windrush Compensation Scheme — House of Lords, 2020-05-06
Topic: Immigration
Alicia Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, given the time limit we have today, I want to make three specific points. First, the Windrush scandal has touched every part of Britain. In Lewisham Deptford where I live, my local Member of Parliament, Vicky Foxcroft, recently noted that she is now handling cases for 22 people who are part of the Windrush scandal. I pay tribute to her and her team and to the excellent but underfunded Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network, which works with local people on these issues. Sadly, in one of the cases, a constituent’s father died while awaiting a decision on his Windrush application. I want therefore to ask the Minister: where an applicant dies before a decision on their application is made, would a relative still be eligible to claim under the deceased person’s estate claim? It seems that parental status needs to be settled before an application can be considered Secondly, community confidence in the scheme is low. It is deeply disappointing that the scheme has paid out so little to so few. An independent system managed outside the Home Office has, sadly, been ruled out by the Government, yet some of the recommendations from Wendy Williams’s review are about changing the culture in the Home Office. For example, she states that staff should learn about, "the history of inward and outward migration and the history of black Britons." Have the staff working on Windrush taskforce and scheme gone through this type of learning? If not, why not, and will they Finally, we need to learn from decisions already taken continually to improve the scheme. The latest figures show that fewer than one in 20 Windrush claimants have received compensation. Knowing the reasons given for negative outcomes would allow for an assessment of whether any part of the process, such as the need to gather a large amount of evidence, are barriers to successful claims. Will the Minister commit to a review of negative outcomes to inform our understanding of the scheme and how it works in practice?
Windrush Compensation Scheme — House of Lords, 2020-05-06
Topic: Civil Rights
George Foulkes (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, for giving us this opportunity to discuss what was indeed a failure of British law, politics and bureaucracy. Tens of thousands of people’s lives were damaged or destroyed as a result. It is an even greater scandal because, as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said, these are the people contributing so greatly to dealing with the coronavirus epidemic at the moment. Indeed, they are more likely to catch the virus themselves, so they are putting their lives at risk. These are people who helped to build up our country after the Second World War and who are clearly British. They were put through a terrible time and it was exacerbated by the fact that Ministers in the Government had this policy of a hostile environment. That sadly did not help. I hope that the Minister will give us an assurance that this will never happen again A related matter that I want to mention is the freedom of the press. I did a report on this for the Council of Europe recently. It is so vital in our democracy. The Guardian needs to be commended for the way it highlighted this. One wonders what might have happened if there had not been such concentration on this by the media and the revelations that highlighted it I want to ask the Minister three things in relation to the scheme, which I hope she will deal with in her reply. First, the compensation payments seem to be calculated on the financial impact—loss of income, loss of access to housing and other things that people suffered. Can we have an assurance that there will be some compensation for the grief and the psychological effects? They can be assessed, so some assessment should be made and that must be included as well Secondly, the Minister said that there was no cap on the expenditure, but at the moment only £20 million to £30 million is allocated. Some 15,000 people have applied, but the Office for National Statistics thinks that six times as many could be eligible. Can we get an assurance that the money in the budget will be increased to take account of that Finally, can we get an assurance that any knock-on effect on the younger generation will be taken account of, to support the sons and grandsons of this generation and to make sure that this sort of thing does not happen again? We have a duty to learn from this and make sure that we, and future British Governments, never let this kind of thing happen again. I hope the Minister will give us some assurances in her reply.
Windrush Compensation Scheme — House of Lords, 2020-05-06
Topic: Immigration
Anthony Gueterbock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving us the opportunity to debate again this very sad issue. Many noble Lords have spoken of the problems and the history of this massive unfairness; it is a real human disaster. I suspect that it goes back to what I have seen for many years as the institutional racism of the Home Office My noble friend Lord Foulkes talked about the work that the Guardian has done in reporting on about 1,000 wrongful immigration offence reviews not being started for two years, and a backlog of 3,720 since the scandal was uncovered. Has the Home Office really changed its spots, as the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, suggested I recall that an early draft of the Williams report called the Home Office institutionally racist, and reckless in developing a defensive culture around immigration policy. Of course, you do not often get away with criticising the spoon that feeds you, as I found with my HS2 report. Has the Home Office really changed its spots I recall the immigration Bill, which I think has now been withdrawn. Like the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, I have to question how our hospitals would survive without immigrants. How would the academic world survive without the movement of world-beating academics? The hospitality sector is in very serious trouble, as I spoke about last week. Then, of course, there are the fruit and vegetable pickers; we now have to fly them in from Bulgaria, forgetting all about social distancing, which seems not to matter. We are in a worse state than Germany, where the chairman of the German fruit growers’ association was reported as saying that Germans are the wrong shape for picking fruit and do not like bending down. I think that applies to the UK as well The Home Office needs to change its spots and get rid of this dogmatic and unfair approach, which will do nothing to help our economy recover. Will the Home Office reflect fully on the Williams report and its recommendations? Will the Minister support the excellent suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, of an independent review? That is a great idea, but it must be truly independent, and preferably not led by the Home Office.
Covid-19: Government Response — House of Lords, 2020-05-06
Topic: Other
Jill Pitkeathley (Labour, Centre-left): Good evening, my Lords. The Virtual Proceeding on the repeat of the Urgent Question will now commence. I will call the Minister, who will repeat the Statement in the usual way. There will then be 10 minutes for questions, led by the Opposition Front Bench. The Minister will respond to each question in turn. I will call each Back-Bench Member on the speakers’ list to ask a supplementary question and the Minister will answer. I ask noble Lords to ask brief questions and give brief answers. Each speaker’s microphone will be unmuted prior to them asking a supplementary question and returned to mute once their question has finished.
Covid-19: Government Response — House of Lords, 2020-05-06
Topic: Mixed Topics
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating this Statement. I point out that the Commons took an hour to receive and discuss this update; we are getting 10 minutes. It is almost two weeks since I saw the Minister across this virtual Dispatch Box, which seems a long time in a pandemic. When we went into lockdown in March, he seemed to indicate his enthusiasm for being accountable to the House in lockdown. I regret to say that I do not believe that he or his colleagues have matched that aspiration. I place on record that it is shocking that noble Lords across the House are reduced to submitting vital questions about Covid to a lottery—a ballot of topical questions. That is not serious accountability. Unprecedented times need unprecedented procedures I have two questions. First, will the Minister support a proposal that he and his colleagues should come to the House every day and have a Covid-related Question Time, morning or evening, which would discuss the contents of the daily press conference and other urgent matters? Secondly, how does the Minister intend to fulfil his promise to the House that there would be an eight-week review of the Covid emergency legislation? By my reckoning, those eight weeks will be up in two weeks’ time.
Death of a Former Member: Lord Wright of Richmond — House of Lords, 2020-03-09
Topic: Other
John McFall (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, on 6 March. On behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the noble Lord’s family and friends.
Coronavirus — House of Lords, 2020-03-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I shall ask three questions as quickly as I can so that as many people as possible can get in to speak My first question concerns vulnerable people in residential homes and the learning disabled who may be being supported, either by charities or at home by their parents. We need to include these people in the planning. I do not expect the Minister to respond to the point, but I will put it on the table. There are lots of people who have not been mentioned but need to be taken into account The 111 service is clearly under incredible pressure, given that it apparently took 120,000 calls in the first week of March. I want to ask the noble Lord about the training that 111 staff are receiving. If 700 new people have been taken on, how is their training being accelerated and is it being properly funded Finally, when the Select Committee saw Professor Whitty last week, he explained that half of all coronavirus cases in the UK are most likely to occur in just a three-week period. Based on recent trends, have the Government estimated when that peak might begin, and is the noble Lord sure that hospitals have enough bed spaces so that they are able to cope?