argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Angela Rayner (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right on that, which leads me to my second simple question for the House today. Two weeks ago, the Government led Conservative Members through the Lobby for a stitch-up and a cover-up. Many of those Members have publicly and privately expressed their regret at voting in favour of that motion, and I have no doubt that their regret is sincere. They surely must now look with fresh eyes at those who led them through the Lobby. The Prime Minister brought shame on our democracy and on this House. That vote undermined trust in our democracy and the integrity of public office. So today I say to right hon. and hon. Members opposite: learn the lesson; do not vote for another cover-up The first step in restoring trust is publishing these documents today. Taxpayers’ money must be treated with respect, not handed out in backhand deals to companies that pay Conservative MPs to lobby on their behalf. Randox is just the tip of the iceberg in this scandal. Just yesterday, we finally found out the list of the favoured suppliers referred to—the so-called VIP lane for PPE procurement. This is the information that Ministers have failed to release of their own accord, despite a ruling from the Information Commissioner; we found out only because of a leak. No wonder they did not want to publish it. We already knew that those companies that got to the VIP lane were 10 times more likely to win a contract than anyone else. As Ministers have belatedly admitted, many of these did not go through the so-called "eight-stage process" of diligence. We now know how these companies got into the VIP lane in the first place. Not a single one of them had been referred by a politician of any political party other than the Conservative party. Of the 47 successful companies revealed yesterday, the original source of referral was a Conservative politician or adviser in 19 cases. The then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Cabinet member who oversaw the entire emergency procurement programme, fast-tracked a bid from one of his own personal friends and donors, who went on to win hundreds of millions of pounds of public money.
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Angela Rayner (Labour, Centre-left): And £3.5 billion of contracts have been handed out by this Government to their political donors and Ministers’ mates. Almost £3 billion more has been wasted on unusable PPE, which is costing British taxpayers £1 million a day just to store. So, yes, we need an investigation into that, too. We need an investigation into every pound and penny that has been handed out, and to learn the lessons so that public money is not wasted again. But the question before the House today is very simple: do we choose to clean up or to cover up?
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Angela Rayner (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes an important point. The general public are also asking these questions. That is why the question is: do we clean up or cover up? Are we going to have the transparency that the public deserve and that Members from all parties deserve I know that Members throughout this House care about our democracy. Although we disagree on many things, I hope we can agree on the importance of trust in our politics and the values of honesty and integrity in public office. A vote for our motion today is simply a vote for the truth, to tackle the dodgy lobbying that has brought shame on this House. The Prime Minister has created a corruption scandal that has engulfed his Government and his party. I have to say that voting for another cover-up today would send a very clear message to the electorate: that the Prime Minister cares more about covering up dodgy lobbying than putting things right—that he cares more about his self-interest than the public interest. After the last two weeks, that cannot be the message that Government Members want to send. I hope they are listening; let us end the cover-up and begin the clean-up.
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Dawn Petula Butler (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can you make it absolutely clear—and I have been in government— that regardless of whether we are in a pandemic, there is an agenda for ministerial meetings and a civil servant present? A pandemic is not an excuse for not recording minutes of meetings.
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Angela Rayner (Labour, Centre-left): I welcome the Minister’s comments and hope that that transparency comes forward, but may I just remind her that part of the reason we tabled this motion was that the process was not followed, and there are questions about the process and how Ministers were able to fast-track through a VIP lane.
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): That is very kind. I have a lot of time for the Minister, as do other Opposition Members. Like her, I was a procurement professional. I would not have been allowing this sort of behaviour—the actions of Lord Bethell, in particular—in the organisation for which I used to work, and I am sure that she would not have done so. This is a systemic problem in Government. A Department that I was dealing with, totally unrelated to the pandemic—I will not say who the Minister was—insisted on a meeting without any other representation and then insisted on texting me the information. The Minister should be aware that there is a problem at the heart of Government.
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher Philip James Elmore (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister is being very generous with her time. She has listed with great vigour all the things the Government have done to try to be transparent and all the things they will do to try to be transparent, so will she confirm to the House which way the Government will be voting on our motion?
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): I tried to intervene on the Minister but she did not give way, so I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The issue about Lord Bethell is not just about his mobile phone. During the period between 1 April and 6 April 2020, he held several meetings with companies that went on to win millions of pounds-worth of covid contracts from the Government, and they were not even in his diary, let alone minuted.
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Anthony Joseph Lloyd (Labour, Centre-left): I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), because I think he has tried to play this whole situation with a degree of integrity. The problem for us all is that it simply is not obvious whether that level of integrity has been followed all the way through Corruption does matter. The Prime Minister was very interesting at Question Time today when he used the defence of telling the House—and, through the House, the country—that we should not be talking about corruption because that lets our nation down vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The Prime Minister is absolutely wrong: when there is a whiff of corruption, it is vital that we talk about it and vital that we are seen to be working to uncover it. That is the problem we face I have no confidence, this House has no confidence, and nor even do Government Members. Government Back Benchers are not here in any numbers. [Interruption.] Many Conservative Back Benchers were not in for the opening speeches—the Opposition Benches were full—because many of them are concerned about this whiff of corruption. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) may want to ask me to give way, rather than chuntering away from a sedentary position. I am sure what he was saying was very interesting, but it was inaudible and therefore irrelevant.
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Anthony Joseph Lloyd (Labour, Centre-left): This is a convenient time for me to intervene because that is the point I want to put to the right hon. Gentleman. As he knows, ministerial meetings are always minuted, but if documents are missing, what will the public believe if they find out that meetings have not been minuted? Even if it turns out in reality—in God’s time—that nothing bad happened, the public will, rightly, still believe that somebody is trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Put simply, that is part of the distrust in politicians and in Government. We have to clear it up and ensure that we re-establish our reputation.
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Anneliese Jane Dodds (Labour, Centre-left): This is a vital moment for everyone who cares about democracy, transparency, stemming the waste and abuse of public money and improving the way that our country responds to future crises. I find it extraordinary that, on a matter of such national significance, there was not a single Conservative Member on the list to speak during this debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) damningly stated, this was the worst such situation that he had seen since he came into Parliament in 1979, when I was at the very tender age of just one year old Let us recall the reasons why we are here today. Randox paid Owen Paterson over £8,000 a month to lobby on its behalf. Mr Paterson then sat in on a call between Randox and Lord Bethell, the Health Minister responsible for handing out Government contracts, and Randox landed Government contracts worth more than half a billion pounds without any kind of proper tender process. There was no competition, just deals done behind closed doors, with discussions between a Government Minister, a Conservative MP and the company paying him handsomely to hawk its wares around the corridors of power. That tells us everything we need to know about how this Conservative Government go about their business But the situation with Randox is even more disturbing because of what happened next, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) set out very ably. After pocketing £133 million of public money to carry out covid testing, Randox failed to deliver, so in the middle of an unprecedented national crisis, we witnessed an unedifying spectacle: the Health Secretary sending the begging bowl around our universities asking to borrow equipment, just so Randox could deliver what it promised I echo what so many Opposition Members have said: the Minister has a very positive reputation on this side of the House, but my word, she has been given a hospital pass today. I regret that the hole in which she was placed has become larger, rather than smaller, during this debate.
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Anthony Joseph Lloyd (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. One of the real questions relates to the fact that the Minister told us that those involved in procurement were not constrained whatever by Government and Ministers’ actions. I know not whether that is absolutely accurate or not—we have to find out—but, in any case, did not the procurement process fail at precisely the point at which there was no examination of Randox’s capacity to deliver what it said it would? That is not clever procurement.
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Anneliese Jane Dodds (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister is obviously doing her very best, but yet again, I am afraid that this is not an edifying spectacle. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the recommendation led to companies receiving enormously expensive contracts. It is risible to suggest anything less. It is also risible to suggest that in those cases the Government followed their own emergency procurement guidance: "Contracting authorities should maintain documentation on how they have considered and managed potential conflicts of interest in the procurement process…Particular attention should be taken to ensure…decisions are being made on the basis of relevant considerations and"— wait for it— "not personal recommendations." There was nothing inevitable about this. I know how things ran in Labour-run Wales, and they did not run like this We have seen that companies with links to the Conservative party were 10 times more likely to secure a contract than others. Public money was doled out based not on a company’s abilities but on its contacts book. When it comes to spending taxpayers’ money on testing and PPE equipment that can save lives, one would hope that the Government would take things more seriously, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle) said, the switch into an emergency process provides no justification for the ransacking of public money we have seen. As the hon. Member for Amber Valley said, an emergency situation was not a reason for having no process at all. In practice, there should have been more sensitivity around the process, not less Because of the Government’s approach, British businesses that did not have Tory MPs on speed dial missed out.
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Anneliese Jane Dodds (Labour, Centre-left): I hoped that the Minister might say at this stage, "Yes, absolutely—we will follow what Labour has called for. We will make sure that those documents are published; we will make sure that the minutes of meetings are set out." Instead, she seems to have muddied the waters. I do not mean to be unfair to her, but that is what her response has done for me.
Randox Covid Contracts — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Anneliese Jane Dodds (Labour, Centre-left): Of course, the way to guarantee that the scope will have the breadth that is required would be to have the binding vote in the House of Commons for which Labour is calling right now As the Minister knows, we have been here before, with promises being made about what the Government will be transparent about and what, in practice, they are willing to deliver, which far too often is far, far less. We have the chance now to move beyond that cover-up, and instead have the clean-up to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne referred. We have the chance to make amends. The Government have the chance. They can also immediately accept all outstanding freedom of information requests in relation to all PPE and testing contracts, and they can publish all documents and correspondence relating to the £3.5 billion-worth of contracts that have gone to Tory donors and Tory-linked companies Let us make that choice now: let us clear this up once and for all.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): I beg to move, That this House: (1) endorses the 2018 recommendation from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that Members should be banned from any paid work to provide services as a Parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant; (2) instructs the Committee on Standards to draw up proposals to implement this and to report by 31 January 2022; and (3) orders that on the expiry of fifteen sitting days from the date on which the Committee makes its report to the House, if no debate has been held on a substantive motion relating to recommendations in that report, the Speaker shall give precedence to a substantive motion on the recommendations in that report tabled thereafter by any Member At the risk of repeating myself—unfortunately, it seems I must—standards in public life are fundamental to our democracy. I have reminded the Leader of the House several times over the past few weeks what those standards are, and I will do so again, just to make sure that he and his colleagues have taken them in. They are, of course, the Nolan principles of public life, and there are seven of them: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. We should all aspire to them and cherish them, as I said yesterday I urge all hon. Members on both sides of the House to consider those principles when they make their decision on which Division Lobby to walk through later this afternoon, because those values must underpin all that we do in this House and on behalf of our constituents outside this House. It is our constituents and the country that we serve, not private interests. We are not paid MPs for hire Over the past two weeks, I am afraid to say—it gives me no pleasure—that we have seen some of the very worst of some on the Government Benches. That has included refusing to deal with one of their own MPs found guilty of sexual harassment and then trying to change the rules on standards to protect one of their mates who had broken the rules. That leaves the reputation of Parliament and our precious democracy in danger of disrepute. The Prime Minister had to publicly decree last week that the UK is not a "corrupt country".
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman, but I must say the difference between this party and the Government party is that we are trying to do something about this. We have the proposals to do something about it. When we were in Government, as I will come on to in my remarks, we did a great deal to try to reform the House of Lords, and we made a lot of progress. On corruption and sleaze, we in the Opposition are the ones trying to change the system for the better.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Dawn Petula Butler (Labour, Centre-left): While we are talking about corruption and sleaze, and Ministers and standards, does my hon. Friend, like me, find it rather strange that the Prime Minister is in charge of the ministerial code and gets to decide whether somebody has broken it?
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): Yes; I am glad that my hon. Friend brought that up, because the Opposition have a problem with that. We have a problem with the fact that it is up to the Prime Minister to decide whether or not the ministerial code is investigated. That is a problem. As I said yesterday, the Government rejected the report put forward by the independent Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Committee on Standards—a report that followed a very thorough investigation, undertaken entirely properly, with due consideration for the circumstances of the former Member for North Shropshire. That was wrong The Government then tried to overthrow the entire standards system, ripping up a 30-year consensus on how we enforce standards in this place, just to prevent sanctions on an "egregious case"—not my words, but those of the entire Committee on Standards—of paid lobbying. That was wrong. Cabinet Ministers then suggested that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards should resign. That was wrong. They tried to set up a sham committee with a named chair, notably on the Government side, and a majority of members from the Government side, to rig the standards procedure. That was wrong Okay, the Government are now belatedly trying to right those wrongs. The commissioner finally got an apology from the Business Secretary on Monday for his shameful comments.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: International Affairs
Rupa Asha Huq (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that this latest inconsistency, along with the eastern leg of HS2, Northern Powerhouse Rail, no rise in national insurance, no border down the Irish sea, oven-ready deals and the 0.7% commitment to overseas aid, shows that the Government must be wearing out their clutch and gearstick with the amount of U-turns they make—making us all dizzy?
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman seems to have read the 2019 Labour manifesto. If he read it carefully, he would know that is not exactly what it said. It had a clear set of principles, and what my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition announced yesterday is that there should be an underlying principle of second jobs not being allowed but that there could be some exceptions. I do not think anyone in this place thinks it is wrong that doctors should serve to keep up their licence and help the NHS. Does anyone think it is wrong that Army reservists should continue to be Army reservists? No, of course they do not Yesterday the Leader of the Opposition proposed strong changes so that MPs do not have a second job without very good reason. At the moment, I do not see the Government coming up with anything strong. All they have done is try to gut our motion, which would put in train the recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, made three years ago—the Government could have enacted it any time—that no MP should take money for being a political strategist, an assistant or some sort of corporate adviser. That should not happen. If Conservative Members want to make sure those jobs go, they should vote with us to get rid of them. It is our motion that does that.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): We learn something new every day. I was not aware of that, but I am on record as having been steadfast in my consistent criticism of what the Government have done over the past two weeks and in previous weeks and months. It is unfortunate that the Government, who should be lawmakers or at least law observers, are led by someone who has already been found by the courts of this land to have broken the law when he illegally prorogued Parliament. That is a bad example for a lawmaker to set, and it is problematic. It rather illustrates what my hon. Friend mentioned.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Government Operations
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): The point about those standards is that they were set not by me or by the Leader of the House but by Lord Nolan three or four decades ago in response to a previous Tory sleaze scandal. The reason we have those standards is to make sure that we can be held to them. The reason we have a standards process is to make sure we are properly held to account. And the reason we were asked to vote on the standards motion two weeks ago was to sanction a Member who had been properly investigated and found to have committed egregious acts of paid lobbying. If Conservative Members had just voted for the standards motion, rather than trying to mangle it, we probably would not be here today.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life — House of Commons, 2021-11-17
Topic: Labor
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): For goodness’ sake. The hon. Gentleman said it himself: there is no direct payment to Members there. I am absolutely sure that the Conservative party accepts donations to its campaign costs. The trade union movement is the founding father of the Labour party and it does not buy influence. What it does is support our campaigning, and this is properly investigated and reported.