argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Anne Margaret Main (Conservative, Centre-right): For decades, EU trawlers have plundered our waters and fished in ways that have caused damage to our marine environment. It seems that the Scottish Government are prepared to accept that situation in perpetuity—[Interruption.] Indeed, we have heard comments that they do not trust the EU for a year; I am afraid I have not trusted the EU in its negotiation strategies over the fisheries policy for a very long time. Can the Secretary of State confirm that we will have greater control not only of our fisheries, but of our fishing processes, which have been so damaging to the marine environment and which a lot of us would be very glad to see an end of?
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes two very important points. Yes, it is not just the case that the fishing industry benefits by being outside the CFP; our marine environment also benefits. She also makes a very important point about the Scottish Government. They want to keep us in the common fisheries policy and deny Scottish fishermen the opportunities of leaving the CFP. In that position, their protestations ring hollow this afternoon.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): A number of very important points were raised in that question. First, yes, previous Fisheries Ministers in this Government—in particular, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon)—have done an outstanding job on improving the common fisheries policy and in making a bad situation better. Secondly, the hon. Lady is absolutely right that in the 25-year environment plan, there is an absolute commitment to ensuring that we follow the science, so that we have the best approach towards making sure that fish stocks are healthy and sustainable in future On the broader point about the precautionary principle, it is clear that during the time that we have been in the European Union, although a number of things have worked against the environmental interests of this country and our marine environment, the precautionary principle properly applied can be a very powerful tool to ensure that our environment is protected and enhanced. We will be saying more in due course about the environmental principles that have evolved during our time in the EU and the means by which we will hold the Government to account to keep in line with those principles.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
David James Duguid (Conservative, Centre-right): I will keep this short. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we owe a debt to our fishing communities and that we must not guarantee to the EU, at the end of this implementation period, any level of access in favour of a longer-term trade deal?
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): It is St Cuthbert’s day, and I believe that on this day, St Cuthbert was given a gift of fish to sustain him, so it is a day that is resonant for a number of reasons. One thing I would say is that it is a Conservative Government who have been investing in the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, the Marine Management Organisation and all the steps required to ensure that we can take advantage of the opportunities that arise when we leave the CFP. It is also a Conservative Government who have been investing in fisheries protection vessels to ensure that the hon. Lady’s constituents and others are properly protected when their fishing interests are engaged.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): As the British fishing industry has been hammered over decades with our membership of the common fisheries policy, the Secretary of State has now given a guarantee that we will be leaving towards the end of the implementation period. Will he use his good offices to ensure that we find imaginative ways to support the fishing industry as we embark into this new era?
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right and, indeed, that point was made very well by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas). We will be saying more with the publication of the fisheries White Paper about additional steps that we want to take to support the fishing industry in preparing for life after the transition period.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Ross Thomson (Conservative, Centre-right): I share the disappointment of north-east fishermen that the transition deal falls short of what they had hoped for. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that on 1 January 2021, we will leave the common fisheries policy, take back control of our waters and set our own fisheries management policies and our quotas? Will he look at including that in the fisheries Bill, and does he share the concern that I and the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation have that the Scottish National party Scottish Government would keep us in the common fisheries policy in perpetuity and that that would sell Scotland’s fishermen out in perpetuity?
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely every right in every particular. It was instructive that when the chief executive of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation was interviewed on the radio earlier today, he made it clear how disappointed he was by the Scottish Government’s determination to keep us in the common fisheries policy.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady asks a very direct question. That absolutely was the case. We had an immensely hard-working team of officials who negotiated incredibly hard on our behalf. They were in constant touch with Ministers every step of the way, and they encountered intransigence on the part of the EU, which was disappointing—I make no bones about it—but one thing that cannot be faulted is the hard work, mastery of detail and determination of the civil servants in DExEU and DEFRA to get the very best deal for Britain, and I will not hear a word said against them.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right to stress that one of the great prizes of Britain leaving the European Union is taking back control of our territorial waters. That is why we must maintain our eyes on that great prize at the end of this process.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady makes a very good point. I have had productive talks with representatives of fish processing organisations, and we absolutely appreciate that they have specific demands on both access to other markets and labour. We respect their demands and will do everything possible to help them achieve them.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): I can give an absolute guarantee that under no circumstances will I ever adopt the craven and abject surrender that the Scottish Government would offer the EU by accepting that the CFP should persist ad infinitum.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: International Affairs
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): If during the implementation period, the EU cannot cut our quota, what is to stop it increasing its quota? That said, those of us who are bitterly disappointed at this outcome will take no lectures from those who never want to take back control.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): I entirely understand my hon. Friend’s position. I explained earlier the good faith provisions and the other guarantees that are there. The outcome is not what we wanted, but it does afford our fishermen protection during the implementation period.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Environment
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): The discards ban is necessary to ensure responsible management of all species, but we are working on how to apply it in a way that ensures that the legitimate concerns the hon. Gentleman raises on behalf of his constituents are properly addressed.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Stephen Daniel Double (Conservative, Centre-right): The Secretary of State will not be surprised to learn that fishermen in mid-Cornwall feel very disappointed, and in some cases angry, at yesterday’s announcement. When he visits Devon, will he come that little bit further and meet the fishermen of Cornwall as well, and in doing so will he lay out very clearly that the implementation period will affect only one year’s quota negotiations, that their quotas will be protected during that time and that at the end of the transition period we will take back control of our fishing waters?
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): It is the case that important questions need to be resolved, but the one thing the SNP is promising is that we will never leave the CFP. It is instructive that in so many of their questions SNP Members talk about Ruth Davidson but never about a single fisherman, species or community; they only attack the leader of the Scottish Conservatives. Why? They’re feart.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Foreign Trade
Jeremy John Elton Lefroy (Conservative, Centre-right): Will my right hon. Friend confirm that under yesterday’s transition agreement we can continue to market fish and fish products seamlessly and frictionlessly into the EU, and that that is his aim for the time after the transition period has ended?
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): I appreciate the issues the hon. Gentleman raises, and I will do everything possible to address the concerns of fishermen not just on the Ards peninsula but in Kilkeel and elsewhere. I look forward to working with him and colleagues across the political divide in Northern Ireland to provide that reassurance.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): I hope that my hon. Friend will be reassured to know that in 2020 the UK will be negotiating as an independent coastal state. [Interruption.] The negotiations in 2019 will take place on the basis that we will be consulted and that our science will be part of the process by which arrangements are reached, and of course the good faith provisions and other arrangements and guarantees I discussed earlier will be there to safeguard UK interests for that limited 12-month period.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend reasserts the vital point that were the EU for any reason in 2019 to behave contrary to our long-term interests, it would also be contrary to its long-term interests. I agree that the opportunities available to us after the transition deal are critical and that we must secure them. That has meant accepting a sub-optimal outcome in the deal, but it is only for an additional 12 months, and we must keep our eyes on the prize.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): Again, I note that questions from the Scottish nationalist Benches have contained more mentions of the Scottish Tory leader and bad puns than adherence to either science or economics. The SNP will have to do better than name calling and joke making if it is ever to be taken seriously as a defender of the interests of Scottish fishermen.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): It was the promise the SNP made to keep us in the CFP and the EU that was comprehensively rejected at the ballot box by the votes of people in north-east Scotland and in fishing communities. I am afraid that Scotland faces a simple choice: does it remain within the EU and CFP under the SNP, or will it be liberated, as will be the case if this Government have their way? On that choice so much hangs, including the future of the SNP.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): Both sides—both the UK and the EU—made it clear that fisheries would have to be handled separately from many of the other issues that would be addressed during the implementation period, and it was always clear that we would have to have specific arrangements. One of the things that are different about fisheries is that even before the implementation period ends, we will be operating independently outside the constraints of the European Union. It is also the case that, having secured the capacity to operate independently in December 2020, we will be in a position to secure the larger prize of life outside the common fisheries policy, a prize that the SNP rejects.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): My admiration for the hon. Gentleman knows almost no bounds. He is right: the common fisheries policy has been bad not just for Britain, but for fish throughout the European Union. My only hope is that he will not only have an opportunity to see our shared ambition for a Britain outside the European Union fulfilled, but will be able to persuade socialist and progressive colleagues across the European continent to reform their own governance in a way that is genuinely liberating, as he has long advocated.
Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): Listening to yet another Scottish National party spokesman denying the reality of the SNP’s adherence to the common fisheries policy and attempting to cover it up with a weak pun, I felt that I was witnessing yet another audition for someone to appear on Alex Salmond’s rt.com talk show. It is the combination of bad taste and poor humour that has been exhibited by so many on those Benches.
Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Government Operations
Karen Anne Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady and I have discussed this matter in the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and in the House. As I have said, the Bill agrees the money that has already been spent in respect of the Hart inquiry. That inquiry was set up by the Executive, so it is quite right that the Bill agrees that the money that has already been spent has been properly and lawfully spent On the treatment of the victims of historical abuse, the hon. Lady will know that we all want those victims to get the justice that they so rightly deserve. She will also know that the inquiry was set up by the Executive, so the recommendations should rightly be dealt with by the Executive. It is a great shame that we do not have an Executive to deal with these things, but it would be constitutionally inappropriate for this House to determine the actions that should be taken in respect of those recommendations, because this House did not set up the inquiry; it was set up by the Executive, which is the right place for the recommendations to be considered and for the decisions about those recommendations to be taken. I am well aware of the hon. Lady’s point, though, and we will continue to discuss it Ordinarily, the Bill would have been taken through the Assembly. As such, there are a series of adaptations in clause 7 that ensure that, once the Bill is approved by both Houses in Westminster, it will be treated as though it were an Assembly budget Act, enabling Northern Ireland public finances to continue to function, notwithstanding the absence of an Executive Alongside the Bill itself, I have laid before the House as a Command Paper a set of supplementary estimates for the Departments and bodies covered by the budget Bill. The estimates, which have been prepared by the Northern Ireland Department of Finance, set out the breakdown of the resource allocation in greater detail. As hon. and right hon. Members may note, the process is different from that which we might ordinarily see for estimates at Westminster, where the estimates document precedes the formal Budget legislation and is separately approved. That would also be the case at the Assembly, but as was the case in November, the Bill provides that the laying of the Command Paper takes the place of an estimates document laid and approved before the Assembly—again, to enable public finances to flow smoothly.
Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Robert Alexander Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): Assuming an Executive is reconstituted at some stage during the year—perhaps, say, in six months’ time—would members of that Executive have any ability to fiddle, change or adjust the budget that my right hon. Friend is proposing, or is it set for the year?
Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Karen Anne Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. and gallant Friend is correct that members of the Executive would have the power to change the allocations set out in the budget and to change the decisions that have been taken. He will know that, as I set out in my statement last week, what I did was the bare minimum required to allow the NICS to continue to function and deliver public services. Of course, there are many political decisions that it would not be appropriate to take in this place because we do not have the executive power to do that. The Executive would have that power, so I urge Members of the Assembly to do what they can to come back to Stormont so that they can take Executive decision-making powers there I hope hon. and right hon. Members will agree that this is very much a technical step that we are taking as we approach the end of the financial year. It looks backwards rather than forwards, although it does avoid the use of emergency powers for the forthcoming financial year.
Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: International Affairs
Karen Anne Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): I had the privilege of meeting Mitchell Reiss when I was in the United States last week, and I think several Opposition Members may also have had the chance to meet him. I expect the Independent Reporting Commission to report its interim findings shortly. Its members will be visiting Northern Ireland shortly, at which point I expect to have a meeting with them. I am well aware of the point that the hon. Lady mentions—it was something I discussed with Mr Reiss in the United States.
Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew William Murrison (Conservative, Centre-right): Funding that is apparently destined for the implementation of the recommendations of the Hart report is quite correctly covered in schedule 2, but it is also covered in schedule 3, which seems to conflict slightly with the point made earlier. Will my right hon. Friend clarify the situation? Schedule 3 appears to anticipate spend on the Hart inquiry, which we would all welcome, but she has not said this explicitly.
Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Karen Anne Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee for that point. As I said earlier, the forward-looking expenditure is merely to approve, in the way we would do in the normal Budget process in this House, 45% of spending. We have done exactly the same allocations as in the previous year to enable the moneys to be spent, but the Bill does not give decision-making power to say how the money should be spent; it merely gives approval for money to be spent by those Departments so that they can continue to function. I appreciate that it is not an entirely satisfactory situation, but it is what is required to enable the Departments to continue to function and provide public services. In summer we will of course come through with the full budget process, which I hope will be done by a restored Executive at Stormont. If not, it will have to be done in this House.
Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Law and Crime
Karen Anne Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman’s comments indicate to the House that there is perhaps not universal support for every recommendation from the Hart inquiry. That is why it is important that we have a restored Executive in Stormont that can make the decisions about those recommendations and enable justice to be delivered.
Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Karen Anne Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The statement sets out the departmental allocations; the Bill gives parliamentary approval for Departments to start to spend that money. That is what is required to enable that spending to start at the start of the financial year, but it does not set the final allocations; it merely gives approval such that Departments can start to spend. In effect, Parliament is saying that the money can now be spent so that public services can be delivered. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the £410 million from the confidence and supply agreement that is allocated for 2018-19 is in the allocations set out in the written ministerial statement, and the Departments can work on the basis that they can start to spend that money The Bill provides a secure legal footing for the Northern Ireland civil service. It is on that platform that my budget statement last week sought to build. That statement will need to be the subject of formal legislation in the summer as a further Northern Ireland budget Bill. As I have already said, that is a Bill that I sincerely hope will be taken forward by a restored Executive. If required, though, that is something that we as the UK Government would be prepared to progress with, as we uphold our responsibilities to the people of Northern Ireland. In the meantime, it is those allocations that provide the basis for the NICS to plan and prepare to take decisions for the year ahead.