argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Universities: Financial Sustainability — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Education
Christopher James Skidmore (Conservative, Centre-right): Absolutely. If we began to return to a stage where universities are financed entirely by taxation it would not only put an increased burden of £12 billion on the taxpayer—an increase of about 2p to 3p on income tax rates—but mean that HE would have to compete with Government funding priorities on the NHS and welfare. Ultimately, we would return to student number caps and the situation we see in publicly funded universities in other countries where people struggle to find seats in lecture theatres. It is right that we have a sustainable financial system that protects students’ futures.
Universities: Financial Sustainability — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Technology
Christopher James Skidmore (Conservative, Centre-right): I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman on the value of research and development in the HE sector. The Government are committed to spending 2.4% of GDP on R&D. Some university grants relate to Horizon 2020 and the Government have made an underwrite guarantee extension to protect all currently allocated grants. We want to work with the sector to look at how we can increase money for R&D. The return on investment is fantastic. In the space sector, for every pound spent on R&D £10 is returned, so I could not agree more that we do need to do more as a Government. We have not done more in the past to bring ourselves up to the OECD average. Universities will be at the front and centre of that.
Universities: Financial Sustainability — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Education
Andrew James Bridgen (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the Minister recall that in 2010 the system we inherited for funding higher education was completely unsustainable? Does he agree that that was demonstrated by the fact that it was the previous Labour Government who commissioned the Browne review?
Universities: Financial Sustainability — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Education
Christopher James Skidmore (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Our inheritance from the previous Government meant that we had a cap on student numbers, low numbers of people from disadvantaged backgrounds going to university, and low numbers of women entering science and mathematics degrees. All those trends have been reversed by investing in access and participation plans, investment to ensure that universities can expand geographically and—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden) is chuntering from a sedentary position. [Interruption.] I do apologise. The hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) is chuntering from a sedentary position. I say again that turning back the clock to taxpayer-funded degrees would simply be a fee cut for the children of millionaires and I simply do not agree with that.
Universities: Financial Sustainability — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Education
Christopher James Skidmore (Conservative, Centre-right): I recently had a meeting with the Higher Education Commission, led by an all-party group in Parliament. I was keen to receive that report, and as I said, our international education strategy will be published in the spring. I look forward to that and to receiving all views while we consider what our policy proposals will be.
Universities: Financial Sustainability — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Education
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): At a time when Her Majesty’s Opposition are expressing concern about the stability and viability of university finances, does the Minister share my outrage at the sky-high salaries and rocketing salary increases of some of these vice-chancellors and other senior university officials, which are far beyond anything that they are worth and are particularly insensitive to students, who always have to manage on a tight budget?
Universities: Financial Sustainability — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Education
Christopher James Skidmore (Conservative, Centre-right): Universities receive significant amounts of public funding, so it is right that their senior staff pay arrangements both command public confidence and deliver value for money both to students and taxpayers. We want to see senior staff pay in universities that is fair and justifiable, and the process for setting pay must be transparent. We have asked the OfS to pay close attention to the elements of the regulatory framework that will deliver value for money, as well as conditions of registration relating to senior staff pay, which will improve transparency in this area. I note that tomorrow, the OfS is publishing the first of its new annual reports on provider senior staff pay.
Universities: Financial Sustainability — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Education
Christopher James Skidmore (Conservative, Centre-right): It is important to say, going back historically, that the hon. Gentleman is talking about the 1992 era. I was 11 at the time, and we need to move forward to the 21st century and have a unity of purpose that means we should ultimately want to do what is in the best interests of students. We should celebrate the fact that the a record level of students are now going to university—around 39%—but we also have to make sure that we get post-18 education right, so that we do not allow students to drop out if that course is not appropriate for them. I am delighted that the Minister with responsibility for further education—the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton) —is sitting here today. We work closely together to make sure that we have a unified position that will benefit all students. When it comes to Brexit and the issue of student numbers, recent figures show that the number of EU students applying to universities has not fallen. It has risen—figures were published last week—and I welcome the fact that we need to highlight the opportunities that will be available in our world-leading universities.
Universities: Financial Sustainability — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Education
Luke Anthony Hall (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the Minister agree that Labour’s policy to scrap tuition fees, even for the wealthiest people in our society, would put the whole sector in mortal peril and risk tens of thousands of students not being able to go to university at all?
Universities: Financial Sustainability — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Education
Christopher James Skidmore (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What I have seen, going around to universities, is institutions that have been able to develop scholarship opportunities and help some of the poorest students in society to access higher education in a way that they would only have dreamed of a decade ago, at the same time as investing in capital, buildings, research and making sure, above all, that they improve the student experience by ensuring that the buildings, facilities and accommodation are really top-quality. The investment that has gone in, as a direct result of making sure that we have the finance and capital available for universities, has been spent well by them, in contrast to returning to a dark-ages position of our simply having no ability for students to pay fees. This would mean that we would return to the bad old days of student-number caps.
Universities: Financial Sustainability — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Education
Christopher James Skidmore (Conservative, Centre-right): We have set out clearly in the Government guarantee, when it comes to EU students studying at UK institutions, that we want to put financial provision in place for those students up to 2020. There is obviously a separate issue, which I am working on, about exchanges when it comes to the Erasmus scheme. Ultimately, I say to Members that a lot of the exchanges that take place and a lot of the ability to create educational partnerships rely on a deal with the European Union. The Prime Minister’s deal set out clearly the opportunity to protect those education partnerships. If anyone has any concerns about making sure that those can continue, I urge them to vote for the deal.
Legislation against Female Genital Mutilation — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Helen Olivia Bicknell Whately (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome my hon. and learned Friend’s commitment to ensuring that the Bill will be given Government time, but will she give me an indication of when she expects this amendment to the Children Act to be presented to the House?
Legislation against Female Genital Mutilation — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Lucy Claire Leigh (Frazer) (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady cares deeply about protecting vulnerable people, and I am pleased to have met her to discuss a number of matters in the family justice sphere. She makes a number of important points It is essential to protect women and girls, and since 2015, the Government have introduced a number of measures to ensure that they are protected. As I have said, the Bill will be dealt with in Government time, but let me clarify what it does. It is not the case that without it, women and girls do not have protection; we introduced protections in 2015. What the Bill will do is enable a judge to make a care order during the same proceedings The hon. Lady makes another important point about the number of protection orders. She said that more than 200 had been issued since September. In fact, the number has gone up to 296; so just under 300 protection orders have been granted since their introduction at the end of September 2018 I want to make a final point because a number of Members rightly identified that not enough prosecutions are successful, and this is a very important point that we must tackle. We are tackling it in a number of ways, through funding for education and through the bringing of legislation, but these are very difficult cases to prosecute for a number of reasons: cultural taboos, lack of information from affected communities and the fact that the age of the vulnerable girls might prevent them from coming forward. The issue we have in this country is not isolated; there is a very low prosecution rate for these kinds of offences across Europe, but this Government are committed to doing whatever we can to protect these girls further from this terrible crime.
Legislation against Female Genital Mutilation — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Lucy Claire Leigh (Frazer) (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very pleased to hear of the measures being taken in Scotland, because of course this is not a domestic problem that affects any region in particular but is an international problem. The Home Office is working with all regions to deal with this issue, and I am very pleased that when we brought in the legislation in 2015, we extended the reach of extraterritorial offences to ensure we could help prosecute in relation to cases affecting the UK that were carried out elsewhere.
Legislation against Female Genital Mutilation — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Lucy Claire Leigh (Frazer) (Conservative, Centre-right): What we do know is that there are victims of female genital mutilation in the UK, where FGM is being carried out. In November 2018, the Department for International Development announced £50 million to target and prevent female genital mutilation in African countries, and that is part of a wider investment by DFID. So far, through its support, DFID has protected 3 million girls worldwide from FGM.
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my right hon. Friend agree that, although there can be no guarantee of a peaceful future for Iraq, interventions such as that by the coalition can indeed be successful if the fighting is done by local rather than foreign troops, if airstrikes are conducted according to the strictest rules of engagement, and if the military campaign is properly underpinned by a political process of reconciliation and reform that tackles some of the root causes of the insurgency?
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. He speaks of some very important issues The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that reconciliation has to be central. Sometimes that costs money. In this country, we can be proud of the fact that we have put £2.7 billion into that process, which has had a huge humanitarian impact.[Official Report, 14 February 2019, Vol. 654, c. 10MC.] But part of reconciliation in this case, which is a specific case different from the original Iraq war, is the need for justice against the perpetrators of the genocide that Daesh was responsible for. On 17 January, I had the privilege of meeting Nadia Murad, the Nobel prize-winning Yazidi campaigner against sexual violence in conflict. In her book, she talks about the perpetrators of sexual violence against her who have still not faced justice and are still in the region somewhere. She says that for someone like her, there will be no closure until those people face justice. Part of that process of closure is justice, but part of it is also for people like her to be able to go back to the villages near Mount Sinjar that they were driven out of, at a time when many of their family members had been murdered. That is beginning to happen. All these things matter I think we have learned a number of things, but probably the most significant has been the need to engage in cyberspace as well as with boots on the ground, because it was the dissemination of propaganda that probably allowed Daesh to grow much further than we anticipated in the early days.
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Crispin Jeremy Rupert Blunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s proper tribute to the fight of the Syrian Democratic Forces in our interests, noting that they have sacrificed 8,000 soldiers, including men and women, with 5,000 permanently disabled. The Foreign Secretary says that, having liberated all that territory from ISIS and then taken into custody thousands of foreigners, they are responsible for the investigation of those people. Surely the states from which those people come must bear the burden of investigating and prosecuting their own citizens who are being looked after. When will the Foreign Secretary instruct his officials to negotiate with the forces of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria the repatriation to the United Kingdom and the proper investigation and prosecution of British citizens who will range from the wholly innocent to the rather eccentric to the downright murderously dangerous, who need to be put in British custody as soon as reasonably practical?
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. First, in terms of the courage of people who have been fighting in Syria, there is one group that we have not mentioned so far, and that is the White Helmets, who did an extraordinary job in Syria—not so much in the particular conflict against Daesh, but we can be proud that this country has resettled 29 families of White Helmets and was instrumental in getting about 400 White Helmets out of Syria towards the end of last year.[Official Report, 14 February 2019, Vol. 654, c. 11MC.] The issue that my hon. Friend raises—I will not pretend to him; he speaks with huge knowledge of the region—is immensely complicated. The complicating factor is not that we do not want to take responsibility for these individuals, although frankly we would be happy if they never came back, because they have gone to fight for enemy forces who have been committing the most appalling atrocities. The issue we have is ensuring that they face justice, and sometimes that is not as easy as simply bringing them back here. That is why we are working through this as quickly as we can to try to find the right solution, to ensure that we can look the victims who have suffered in the face and say that we have brought the perpetrators of these atrocities to justice.
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the right hon. Gentleman for asking that question. He is right that unless we are able to demonstrate justice for these atrocities, we will not persuade people that as a world, we have sat up and taken notice of what has happened. The Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), recently met Karim Khan of UNITAD, which is the United Nations investigation body, and we are strongly supporting its work. The UK strongly supported the international, impartial and independent mechanism, to ensure that we have a proper mechanism for investigating these people, and we brought forward Security Council resolution 2379, which sets up an independent investigatory body. It is none the less not easy. Finding evidence that can be traced back to an individual perpetrator in whichever part of the world is extremely challenging, but that does not mean that we should leave any stone unturned in this process.
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Alexander Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): Having given evidence in war crimes trials, it is my understanding that people charged with genocide or crimes against humanity should be brought to book in the country in which they have carried out their crimes. Will those who have carried out genocide against the Yazidis be tried in Iraq, or will the International Criminal Court have some responsibility for dealing with that matter?
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right; our first intention is that they should be tried in Iraq if it is possible to get justice for them in Iraq, and there is no reason why it should not be, with the new Government in Iraq. Of course, there are cases in which it is not possible for people to get justice in the country where the atrocity happened. That is when the ICC has a role, and that is why we support the ICC. It has a very important role to play internationally, despite a number of challenges that it currently faces.
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): Absolutely. We have taken a number of measures to try to find out what is happening with that money and cut off access to it, including the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, the Criminal Finances Act 2017 and the Proceeds of Crime Act, which I think became law in 2010; I cannot remember which party was responsible for it. We can always go further, and for that we need to work with not only UK-based banks but Crown dependencies.
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Giacomo Lopresti (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend knows well that the Kurdistan region of Iraq and the valiant Peshmerga were essential allies in defeating Daesh on the battlefield. We all appreciate that the ideology of Daesh has not yet been defeated. Given the Kurdistan Regional Government’s vital and positive role in challenging continuing extremist ideologies and upholding security in the region, will he increase his efforts to strengthen the KRG in Iraq and help them achieve a full and fair political settlement with Baghdad?
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an important point. We are helping to train the Peshmerga at the moment. My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa was in Baghdad and Erbil just two weeks ago, and he met President Salih and Prime Minister Mahdi to talk about that important reconciliation and inclusion of the Kurds in the reconciliation process.
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Mark Andrew Pritchard (Conservative, Centre-right): The Foreign Secretary will know that the self-governing regime and the Arab-Christian coalition in the north-east of Syria are under huge pressure from the Assad regime. What is the Government’s latest thinking on the safe haven plan of President Erdoğan of Turkey?
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I completely share the frustration that the hon. Gentleman has expressed about the role of Russia. We were on track, with the potential for a political settlement that could have removed Assad and meant the people of Syria did not have to suffer from someone who was prepared to use chemical weapons against his own people to impose his bloody rule. However, the Russians then intervened in the process, and it now looks as though Assad is here to stay, to put it very bluntly, so I think the Russians have to take responsibility for the way in which they have changed the situation. Like us, they have a veto at the Security Council, and we cannot stop them exercising that veto. What we can do is to support the work of UN special envoy Geir Pedersen, who has just started and will I think do a very good job. We hope that he can find a way forward, but we do not underestimate the challenges.
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
James Morris (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement, and I particularly welcome the progress that has been made on degrading Daesh. Does he agree with me that the continued influence of Russia and Iran in Syria and across the middle east actually presents the biggest threat to the rules-based international order that we have seen for a long time and that Britain needs to redouble our efforts to try to rebuild that rules-based international order over the long term?
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I absolutely do agree with that. I think we have to be aware of the limits of our power and of the mistakes that we have made in our own foreign policy over the years in the middle east. As a new Foreign Secretary, I am very conscious that this is not an area of the world that someone can come to understand quickly, so we need some humility as we approach policy in this area. He is right, however, that one of the challenges we have is the involvement of Russia, which has become a more influential player in the region, and we should also say that about the activities of Iran. Taken together, these do present real risks to stability in the region of which we need to be aware.
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Commons, 2019-02-11
Topic: International Affairs
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): This was exactly the topic that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East talked about when he met President Salih and Prime Minister Mahdi on his recent visit to Iraq. I do not want to pretend that we have magically moved to a totally robust and stable democracy in Iraq. None the less, I think it is encouraging that the country is getting used to the process of elections and that the new Government are committed to reconciliation in the way that the previous Government were. However, it is a very fragile new democracy, so if we are going to do what Prime Minister Mahdi wants, we have to give him all the help we can.