argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Education
Questions: Sabden, one of my beautiful villages, has a population of about 1,500. It has just had its bus service withdrawn by the operator. That service was part-subsidised by Lancashire County Council, but the council now refuses to subsidise even a skeleton service, which means that the elderly and the young have been set adrift: they cannot get into work or go to the doctor. Will the Secretary of State consider top-slicing the necessary money from the county council and giving it to the districts so that local people can get the service they deserve?; The Minister will be aware that the average council tax increase in England has been 3.1%, whereas it has been 3.6% in Wales. Does that not clearly demonstrate that Conservative policies are delivering better services at a better price than anything that Labour can achieve?; When I bought my first home in Luton in 1969, house prices were three times average earnings. The same house in Luton would now cost at least 12 times average earnings. Unsurprisingly, home ownership as a tenure has been falling. Is it not utterly cynical of the Government to pretend that everyone can become homeowners when what millions of families need, and what many say they want, is a decent council house?; South Hayling Island’s coastal community team was awarded a £10,000 grant last year to help the local economy by improving local signage. Will the Minister congratulate Rosemary Satchwell and the whole team on their hard work in promoting local businesses?; During a glorious bank holiday weekend in Salisbury, the city council hosted an international market as part of the Love Your Local Market campaign. Does he Minister agree that thriving high streets and local markets are good not only for the local economy but for a city’s sense of community?; Empty homes are a blight on our local communities, with some becoming derelict and dangerous, meaning that not only are local people deprived of somewhere to live, but entire areas can appear run down or unkempt. What is the Minister’s assessment of the number of empty homes and what is his Department doing to improve the situation?; Thanks to the Conservatives in government, community groups now have the right to protect facilities and other much loved buildings or land by listing them as assets of community value. How many of these assets have been listed in such a way and, more importantly, what support is available to local communities to take up this exciting opportunity?
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Secretary of State agree that children’s services and child protection are a crucial part of local government, for which he is responsible? Has he talked to his colleagues in the Department for Education about this? Has he seen the evidence showing that as the departmental influence on education and schools continues, the ability to get children with special educational needs into good schools becomes more and more difficult?
Removal of Foreign National Offenders and EU Prisoners — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
Keith Anthony Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): Time and again, the Home Affairs Committee has warned successive Governments—not just this Government, but way back to the last Labour Government—about the need to remove foreign national offenders. Credit should be given to the Home Secretary. She has relentlessly pursued people such as Abu Qatada out of the country; in fact, I was surprised that she did not pilot the plane that took him back to Jordan at the end of that saga. The fact remains, however, that eight of the top 10 countries are either Commonwealth or EU countries, and there is, frankly, no excuse for friendly countries and key allies not to take back citizens of theirs who have committed serious offences. Eighteen months ago we made a very sensible and simple suggestion, namely that the passports of foreign national offenders should be taken away from them at the time of sentencing. Has that now been implemented?
Removal of Foreign National Offenders and EU Prisoners — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): Is the Secretary of State aware of how thankful I am for the work that she and her Department have done to educate me over recent months, as I campaigned to bring back, through extradition, people accused of foul crimes against constituents of mine in Huddersfield and other people in the UK? She educated me about how complex that is, and about how, without the European Union and the help of our fellow EU members, we would never have got those people back to face justice in this country.
Removal of Foreign National Offenders and EU Prisoners — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael John Gapes (Labour, Centre-left): The Home Secretary mentioned the European arrest warrant. If we voted to leave the European Union, what would happen to the implementation of the European arrest warrant system, and would it make it more difficult or easier to get people back from other countries when we want to imprison them in this country for crimes committed here?
BHS — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Labor
Frank Field (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for her statement, and use my response to it to express the anger on both sides of the House at the threat to 11,000 jobs and 20,000 pensions. When the Minister goes back to her Department, will she consider blowing a whistle on the break-up of this great empire? Is she satisfied that a company that could be sold for a quid should now be broken up because somebody could not meet a timetable for £100 million-worth of working capital? Is she satisfied that the firm entrusted with dealing with the break-up will actually behave in the best interests of the whole network rather than perhaps sell off some assets rather cheaply to known figures in this terribly sorry saga?
BHS — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Labor
Angela Rayner (Labour, Centre-left): We must never forget that pensions are deferred wages for people who have worked hard all their lives. The Pension Protection Fund was set up under a Labour Government, and it plays a vital role in protecting workers and pensioners when an employer goes out of business. Will the Minister join me in sending a clear message from this House that the pensions regulator has our full support in being as robust as possible on this matter? We must also look to the proposed pensions Bill to close any loopholes and deal with any scapegoats that exist as a result of the current regulations. We need to make those regulations much firmer so that people can no longer get away with any wrongdoing when it comes to wages.
BHS — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Labor
John Derek Twigg (Labour, Centre-left): It would have been useful to have heard from the Minister how long the investigations will take to conclude, because people will be worried about their jobs and pensions in the meantime. Referring back to the question of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), when did the Minister last meet the administrators? What discussions has she had with them about what stores could be saved as going businesses? For example, at the weekend I was talking to an employee of the BHS store in my constituency, who believed that the store was doing well, so there are clearly businesses within the business that were faring well. What discussions is the Minister having about keeping jobs rather than losing them and getting Jobcentre Plus to help?
BHS — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Labor
Andrew John Gwynne (Labour, Centre-left): Given that 11,000 direct jobs and many other indirect, supply chain jobs are at risk, I find it very difficult to understand why the Minister has not had a meeting with the administrator. Given that the Denton store, in my constituency, and the Stockport store, which also covers part of my constituency, tell me that they are profitable parts of the BHS business, the Minister has to have a discussion with the administrator about what parts of that business can be saved, in another guise or as part of BHS reinvented. The fact that she has not had any time to meet the administrator is shocking and a travesty, given those 11,000 jobs.
BHS — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Labor
James McMahon (Labour, Centre-left): This really is not good enough. It is not good enough that the Minister has not met the administrators to talk about the people who are affected. It is not good enough that 11,000 people face redundancy and an uncertain pension while the millionaires cream tens of millions of pounds off the top to pay for brand-new yachts. The people in my constituency, where the store is likely to close, will not see justice in their view until somebody is in the dock, facing trial. Does the Minister agree with me that Sir Philip is not fit to lick the boots of those people, let alone be a knight of this realm? Will she support me in having that revoked?
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Labor
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): I actually said that that issue was being pressed for by Labour and the SNP—I think that is accurate—but of course I accept that in Committee, and outside, there has been constructive engagement by the Government. The Minister was quick to indicate a willingness to consider this issue, and discussions have been ongoing. It is important to have clarity so that legitimate trade union activities are protected. Our new clause is now broader than the one we considered in Committee because it goes to national security as well as economic wellbeing. It therefore covers trade union activities in this country, and not just acts outside the British Isles, as would be the case if it was just about economic wellbeing. Such constructive engagement has pushed the Bill forward As I said a moment ago, we have made significant demands—I do not hide that—and the Government have moved significantly in response to those demands. This is not a list of victories, scalps, concessions or U-turns; our demands were significant and we stuck by them, and in fairness the Government have responded in the right spirit—that is for those demands that we know about, although we will come to others during the debate.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister—that was what the Opposition pressed for There have been differences of approach to the test for judicial commissioners. On the one hand, colleagues on both sides of the House have made a powerful argument that the judicial commissioners should retake the decision. On the other hand, others have argued that the decision should be reviewed. The amendment strikes a third route, which is to apply a review test but to confine it to the stricter end of the judicial review principles As hon. Members know, I have been a lawyer for many years and have dealt with many public law cases, as other hon. Members have. The difference between strict scrutiny and long-arm judicial review is very real —it is a material difference. That is why the manuscript amendment is highly significant.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
George Edward Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for giving way again. If the recommendation should be a judicial one and if, as I think I understood him to say, the Prime Minister would not have the ability to overturn it, I fail to understand what the point would be of involving the Prime Minister at all.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Government Operations
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): The answer to that is twofold, although I should say that if the decision was on the recommendation of the Lord Chief Justice and so on, it would not be open to the Prime Minister not to follow that recommendation. We need a slight reality check. At the moment under clause 194, if the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales—or, I am sure, the equivalent in Scotland—was consulted and made his or her views clear, it would be highly unlikely that any Prime Minister would act in a way that was contrary to the advice they were receiving from the senior judge in those jurisdictions, but our amendment would bind the Prime Minister. The question is: what is the point of involving the Prime Minister? The answer to that—to some extent this is to the Minister—is that there is the question of accountability for making the appointment There is also the point, as the Lord Chief Justice has pointed out, that he—or she, as the case may be—is not in the business of making judicial appointments as such, and will therefore be reluctant to have that power. The Minister might want to confirm that, because he has been having those discussions, not me. I think the Lord Chief Justice and others are reasonably happy to help with the deployment exercise, but not with the business of appointing judges.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Government Operations
Harriet Ruth Harman (Labour, Centre-left): It might well be useful for commissioners to have experience of both functions, but not at the same time and not using the same team of staff. I think ours is a relatively modest but important proposal. I am sure the hon. Lady can see that the arrangement could be clarified to create some sort of Chinese wall between the two functions. We are not suggesting that the functions be performed by separate organisations, but the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West may be about to persuade us all that separate organisations are needed.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): My mistake; I did hear the Solicitor General say that he was meeting those bodies this week. It is a little disappointing—I am not making a petty point—as we wish we could have made more progress before this debate. As the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said, this is extremely important, and our debates would be improved if there had been more progress in this area. Nevertheless, it is clear that this is firmly on the Solicitor General’s radar, and the excellent points made by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) show that there is concern in all parts of the House about moving further to get this right. In the absence of acceptable Government amendments, amendments 139 to 141 tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham are a step in the right direction. If amendments were forthcoming from the Government, we would certainly support them.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): I do not know whether that was a compliment, but I will take it as such. The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. To be fair to the Government, there has been movement on thematic warrants: if an MP or a journalist was to be added to a thematic warrant, there would be a judicial oversight process. The right hon. Gentleman mentions taking that principle even further and relating it to bulk data. I think that David Anderson would need to consider how practically possible that would be, but the right hon. Gentleman’s point needs to be considered. Labour amendment 262 relates to trade unions and would amend clause 18 to ensure, in statute, that undertaking legitimate trade union activities is never in future a reason for the security services or police using investigatory powers. In recent times, we have been shining a light on this country’s past and learning more about how we have been governed and policed. Revelations about Bloody Sunday, Hillsborough, phone hacking, child sexual exploitation and other matters have all in different ways shaken people’s faith in the institutions that are there to protect us. They raise profound questions about the relationship between the state and the individual. Confronted with those uncomfortable truths about abuses of power, this House needs to provide a proper response and legislate to prevent them in the future. We need to redress the balance in favour of ordinary people and away from the Executive.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Labor
Steve Rotheram (Labour, Centre-left): Will my right hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to Unite, the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians and the GMB, which fought a long campaign to raise the scandal of the illegal blacklisting and secret vetting of construction workers? Can he assure the House that such a gross injustice could not be perpetrated against innocent workers again, and that his amendment would provide an absolute guarantee that legitimate trade union activities would be excluded from monitoring by the security services and the police?
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): That is certainly one way of addressing the concerns that I am putting on record tonight, but another would be to have a separate inquiry into blacklisting per se. Not only was it outrageous, but it is still largely not known about. Most people outside trade union circles do not know that it happened. That is why, by one means or another, there needs to be a process of inquiry about it We would not know about the practice were it not for the outstanding work of the Blacklist Support Group and individuals such as Dave Smith who have exposed how much of the information held on individuals appeared to emanate from police sources. For instance, the files hold detailed descriptions of the movements of a number of people at the June 1999 demonstration "Carnival Against Capital". As a Guardian article by Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain pointed out, it seems highly unlikely that that intelligence was the product of a site manager who just happened to be passing through London on that day The Blacklist Support Group referred the matter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission in 2012. I want to put on record what it found, because it is pretty shocking. Having looked into the concerns, the IPCC wrote in a letter to the Blacklist Support Group: "The scoping also identified that it was likely that all Special Branches were involved in providing information about potential employees who were suspected of being involved in subversive activity." All special branches were likely to have given information that was used to compile the blacklist.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
Steve Rotheram (Labour, Centre-left): May I expand on the point that my right hon. Friend is making? Perhaps some people outside the Chamber will not understand what subversive activities were. In those days, subversive activities included complaining about health and safety because a person was dying on a building site every single day. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is hardly subversive activity?
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
George Edward Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is making a very powerful case. I do not know whether he is aware of this, but when the issue first arose during the last Parliament, I took it up with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to ask whether there was any involvement on the part of the Metropolitan police. I got a letter back not from the commissioner himself, but from a senior member of his staff, who now works for one of the agencies, flatly denying that there was any such involvement. Something was happening, as the excerpt my right hon. Friend has read out shows, yet even as recently as three or four years ago, the Metropolitan police utterly denied it.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
David Julian Winnick (Labour, Centre-left): What my right hon. and learned Friend says sums up the position. The Opposition Front-Bench team has managed to negotiate concessions from the Government. I accept their good intentions—the Opposition Front Bench—but the fact is that the powers that the Bill will give the security authorities are unacceptable despite all the concessions, which is a good reason for voting against Third Reading.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
Harriet Ruth Harman (Labour, Centre-left): No, I think the Speaker would have to know the basis of the application if they wanted to; otherwise, how could they go before the judicial commissioner and say it was unacceptable? If people say, "Goodness me! That would be telling the Speaker information that would be useful in the hands of Daesh or al-Shabaab," we would be in trouble anyway if the Speaker were the wrong sort of person to have it. I take a slightly different approach from the hon. Member for Gainsborough. He postulated the issue as politics, which is the Government and the Prime Minister, versus non-politics, which is the Speaker. It is not politics versus non-politics; it is the legislature versus the Executive. That is how we should think about it.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Law and Crime
Harriet Ruth Harman (Labour, Centre-left): The point is that the system has accountability for the Home Secretary for issuing the warrant through the judicial commissioner. We are talking about additional protection by way of the Speaker. The Speaker would not be supporting an application; the Speaker would simply be notified, and if they had no objection, it would go through and they would have nothing to do with it—but the Speaker would have knowledge. That is true: the Speaker would have knowledge of it In a difficult situation, how do we make sure that we do not put all our rights as a legislature into the hands of the Executive? I appreciate that the Government have tried to work out ways to strengthen the safeguards, but the issue is not just the strength of the safeguards; it is the appropriateness of them. The Prime Minister is not an appropriate safeguard to protect the rights of us in this House to hold him to account. I simply ask the Government to look again I congratulate the Government, the Labour and SNP Front Benchers and Back Benchers for working constructively on this. Ultimately, we all want the same thing: we want to be able to walk the streets safely and sleep safely in our beds, but not have the Executive tempted to abuse their power.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Labor
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister’s comments at the Dispatch Box will have given hope to thousands of trade unionists in this country. Their legitimate role has been properly recognised by him at the Dispatch Box—long may that spirit continue from the Government Benches!
Infrastructure Investment — House of Commons, 2016-10-19
Topic: Transportation
Questions: May I first associate myself with the right hon. Gentleman’s appropriate remarks concerning Aberfan? I am pleased to hear the emphasis on infrastructure interconnectivity. The Minister will know that the excellent north Wales growth bid—supported by business, cross-party politicians and local authorities in north Wales—needs financial support from the UK Government. Will the UK Government give financial support to the growth bid?; As my right hon. Friend knows, train passengers from and to my constituency use part of the Great Western railway line. When will the new intercity express trains for the Great Western rail line be operational?
Susan Elan Jones (Labour, Centre-left): Roads are critical in infrastructural investment—roads on both sides of the border. What conversations has the right hon. Gentleman had with the Welsh Government about the A5/A483, which goes from Oswestry towards the Wrexham area, given the particular road safety problems in the community of Chirk?