argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Careers Education for Students — House of Lords, 2018-09-06
Topic: Education
John Kerr (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I want to intervene briefly, not to say something about language skills—I will not do that, as I agree with every word said by my noble friend Lady Coussins—and not just because I want to tell my grandchildren that I once carried a spear on a stage adorned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. I want to draw attention to a June report by the Economic Affairs Select Committee of your Lordships’ House, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. As a member of the committee, I draw noble Lords’ attention to two paragraphs of the report. The first deals with the problem of how to ensure parity of esteem among all forms of higher and further education—a problem on which the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, has spoken wisely and eloquently down the years Paragraph 254 of the Select Committee report says that: "The prioritisation of the undergraduate degree in schools, through the use of incentives and targets, has helped fuel perceptions that other routes are inferior. Schools must present all post-16 and post-18 options as equal. Incentives aimed at schools which encourage them to promote sixth form and university should be removed. Every pupil aged 16 should spend one day learning about apprenticeships and how to apply for them" Since I feel as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, does about apprenticeships, I do not think one day is nearly enough. I strongly support the thrust of the report Secondly, on the issue of how to help the young navigate a career, paragraph 260 of the report points out that: "There is a clear and well understood process for university applications which is not available for other forms of post-school education. The process for students considering routes other than university should be clearer and less complex. There is merit in a single, UCAS-style, portal for covering all forms of higher education, further education and apprenticeships. The Government should ask UCAS how such a portal could be designed and implemented" I strongly support that I am not quite as optimistic as some have been in this debate, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley. I see the glass as only half full but I think that it would be relatively easy to fill it and I would be very interested to know the Minister’s reaction to the two suggestions made by the Economic Affairs Select Committee.
Careers Education for Students — House of Lords, 2018-09-06
Topic: Education
Alastair Bruce (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, which I have found highly instructive and enlightening. I join the chorus of congratulations for the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who more than lived up to her star billing, and I look forward to many encores. I also thank the Minister for a typically thoughtful and comprehensive response to the debate. I was particularly delighted with the emphasis placed by several noble Lords on the importance of the arts and creative sectors—which is not to downplay the importance of STEM but to make sure that we do not forget that the arts and creative sectors are important, if not equally important I will not try to summarise the debate—I will be cut off in my prime if I do—but I ended up more encouraged than not. I am not quite sure whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, but I sense that it is beginning to fill up rather than empty out. I am amazed by and in awe of the stamina of the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, who has put her name down to speak in three of this afternoon’s debates and has evidently done all sorts of research into maiden speeches before this one I end by saying, as someone apparently did say in a maiden speech a long time ago, that what matters most now is that we move from promises—very encouraging promises from the Government in their careers strategy—to delivery. We need to focus now on delivering against the targets that the Government have set, while recognising the very important and valuable points that so many Lords have made. I beg to move.
NATO Brussels Summit 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-07-16
Topic: International Affairs
David Hugh Alexander Hannay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, does the noble Baroness not recognise that there was an extraordinary divergence between the NATO communiqué, from which the Statement is heavily drawn and which said all the right things about increased spending and taking a robust attitude towards Russia, and what the President of the United States said at the sessions and to the press afterwards, when he said all the wrong things about pretty well everything? Does she not also recognise that the way in which President Trump links his not terribly well-informed concerns about trade with European countries and about the energy balance, when he got confused between Germany’s imports of gas and its overall energy supplies, is extraordinarily unhelpful? It undermines the whole doctrine of NATO deterrence, which is based not on transactional attitudes, such as those of President Trump, and not on conditionality about trade but on the unconditional support of all NATO members for each other? Surely it would be better if we faced up to the fact that there is this contradiction. What can the noble Baroness say about that?
Salisbury Update — House of Lords, 2018-09-05
Topic: Law and Crime
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): The European arrest warrant can be executed effectively only if the individuals are present within one of the European states; if for the moment they are outside that jurisdiction, the arrest warrant is a precautionary measure. The other way of keeping an eye on this is through the activities of Europol and other institutions of that kind. Can the noble Baroness assure us that steps are being taken to maintain that channel of communication? The European arrest warrant will fall, I suspect, when we are no longer part of the European Union simply because it is dependent on being part of the structure which allows it to be enforced. If we are kept informed by Europe and other similar institutions, there are other ways of proceeding, by means of a request for extradition. That is very slow, I am afraid, but at least it is a step that could be taken if we know where they are.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Elaine Murphy (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 20, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and I give my strong support to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I pay tribute to the good sense that the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, has just brought to our debate A theme that will run through our discussions and will come up again when we come to advance decision-making is that we must have more respect for those who have been trusted by an individual to make decisions on their behalf. We must encourage people to make plans and to think about the future, and we must ensure that those who make the very wise decision to appoint a lasting power of attorney are respected. As we have already heard, we do so in other parts of the Bill, and we should not remove that when we come to the question of deprivation of liberty. We must incorporate it in the general scheme of things. It seems absolutely crucial that we respect decisions made by people who have power of attorney and by the court’s appointed deputies. I strongly support the amendment.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-05
Topic: Social Welfare
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for his reassurance, which is quite clear. There can be no doubt that the views of the holder of the lasting power of attorney or the court-appointed deputy must be taken into account and respected. Given that the principle behind this Bill is the importance of good care planning, I am glad to have that assurance. Of course, it is the person who has lasting power of attorney who will be in a good position to oversee the ongoing care of the person to detect whether things have improved or got worse and whether some restrictions could be lifted and things changed I can provide a word of reassurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and I hope that it is not misplaced. I have challenged the deans of medical schools, with my forum chairmanship hat on, on two occasions now. I have also rather sneakily gone in to different clinical consultations semi-incognito—it is difficult to be completely incognito—and I have been impressed by the changes that I have seen in the last couple of years, particularly in care of the elderly settings where there was respect for the need to empower someone’s decision-making. I hope that, if things were revisited, they would now see a difference We talk a lot about liberty protection safeguards. With the confusion between safeguarding and deprivation of liberty, I wonder whether that is the right word and whether we should be talking about "liberty protection assessments" or something else. I worry when we look at the domestic setting that safeguarding where there is a problem and the role of a liberty protection safeguard—which is to enhance the living of the person to live as well as they can within the restrictions of whatever has happened to them—more than overlap. They will always overlap a little, but they are becoming a little muddled in the system Having said all that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-05
Topic: Social Welfare
Elaine Murphy (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in his endeavour to raise this important issue about care homes. I know we will return to it. This is a very good example of where I had not really thought about the twin-track approach to raising the safeguarding issue. I understand completely how this came about as an attempt to try to improve on the monstrous bureaucracy of DoLS. This is a very good example of that, to which I think the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, alluded. We have a monstrous Bill at the moment. I remember discussions at the Law Commission with the Royal College of Psychiatrists as to how we might make it more streamlined and reduce costs, which in my view is pretty crucial if we are to target the right people. That led to the production of a process to involve care home managers which, on the face of it, looked as though it would cut bureaucracy.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-05
Topic: Social Welfare
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, to intervene fairly briefly, it is important that we remember that the current DoLS system has effectively fallen over. We have 108,000 people currently waiting to be assessed, so we have to do something. We cannot leave it running so there is an urgency to come up with some way forward. I remind the Committee that, whenever somebody is in a place of care such as a care home, the deprivation of liberty safeguards application—form 1—is a request for standard authorisation and has to be completed and sent in. That form asks about the purpose of the standard authorisation, and for a relevant care plan to be attached. It also asks why less restrictive options are not possible, and other things. So a degree of assessment is already going on at the care home and these forms are sent in. They are then sent to somebody to authorise them I worry that, in some of the briefings that we have had, it looks as though the care home manager will be able to authorise in totality, whereas, as I understand it—the Minister may correct me if I have this wrong—the care home manager will still be required to have the responsible body authorise. That responsible body will be able to look—and one would want them to look—at objections that may come forward from somebody. It is to be hoped they will go and visit if they feel there is a discrepancy between the care plan submitted and the original care and support plan that came from the local authority, which may have been involved in the pre-placement assessment that went on The idea behind these new approvals is that there is portability: the person may reside in one place, then be moved to hospital, go to outpatients, spend time in hospital and then come back to the care home. Within that portability, however, there is a requirement to review, if the circumstances change. We will come later to amendments that look at discrepancy between the care plan and the care and support plan as submitted. In other words, these are things that should trigger red flags in the mind of the authorising body, rather than the authorising body just being a rubber-stamping exercise, which is, I think, a misunderstanding that there may have been. If it is a rubber-stamping exercise, there are all kinds of dangers in that. Somehow, we have to filter out those people who really need an in-depth assessment and review from those people where the current processes are just burdensome, time-consuming and not contributing to improving their care. That filtering is really difficult. I offer that in the debate at this stage because it is worth looking at these forms, which I hope will be improved because there is not that much room to write on them.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support the principle behind Amendment 8 in particular. Perhaps this is something the Minister will want to view as going in the code of practice, as I am not sure that putting this on the face of the Bill is necessarily the right place for it—although I completely understand the sentiment, which is to avoid serious risk. We live in a risk-averse system, and it is serious risk that we must be concerned with A case that I heard about in the last few days came to mind. An elderly lady with dementia became extremely agitated when it snowed. Because of her tendency to wander, she was not going outside unescorted. A conversation with her son revealed that she had been a meteorologist, so her view was that when it snowed she had to go outside and measure the depth of the snow and telephone the Meteorological Office. What they did was simply wrap her up really well, let her go out and measure the depth of the snow, give her a telephone and let her make a mock phone call to the Meteorological Office. She was very calm and happy. You do not want her to go wandering because she is near a main road and a railway line and all the other risks, but it was not a serious risk to let her out in the garden, well-wrapped up when it was snowing. That illustrates the granularity of the need to take appropriate decisions focused around the individual person Other cases that do concern me are those people who will become sexually disinhibited when exposed to great temptation. That struck me about a case I came across in a home for people with a history of sexual offences. There had been a DoLS in place for somebody not to go unescorted through woodland because, if he came across a young girl on her own in woodland, his sexual drive would overcome his rational behaviour—exposure to porn sites would also overcome his rational behaviour. However, the rest of the time, he could live well. Sadly, that DoLS was apparently overturned by the Court of Protection and, within weeks, he offended and ended up being imprisoned for his offence, but he had been living well with an enormous degree of freedom prior to that point. I think that the serious risk to the cared-for person has to be considered, because there the risk to him was that he would offend and, sadly, that came true I hope that the Minister will look sympathetically on the sentiment behind this.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-05
Topic: Social Welfare
Sheila Clare Hollins (Crossbench, Unknown): It may be that a lot of the thinking has been done around elderly people and people with dementia as opposed to people with learning disabilities. In the learning disability world, there has been such encouragement towards supported living that they are often within the same organisation, even within the same setting. It seems very strange that you would have a manager who ends up being responsible for a care home, where they have the responsibility, and for supported living, where somebody else has the responsibility.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-05
Topic: Social Welfare
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): I hope the Minister will forgive me because we are now on an incredibly important part of the Bill. If we can get together and work through it, I wonder whether we need to look at a way that a specific person from the local authority—I gather that it happens in some parts of England and Wales but not everywhere—has a link to different care settings and gets to know them well. We are talking about the people we know about, but the people who are most vulnerable are those we do not know about, who have not been notified into the system. If that person knows a place and the quality of the care there, they may be inclined to have a lighter touch there than on places where there has perhaps been a turnover of staff, a change of management, and so on. They may feel that they want to do some face-to-face assessments to verify the quality of the care being provided—not in the CQC role, but in terms of the care delivered to the person who has impaired capacity I put that out there now because I am sure that this debate is being watched and monitored. It might be interesting to see whether we get any feedback on some of the points we have raised during the debate, because so many people have expressed concern and want to know what we are saying.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-05
Topic: Social Welfare
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, this is really integrally linked. I have been trying to look at what would send a red flag, an alert, to an authorising body that this assessment needed to be looked into in detail and gone through with a degree of rigour—possibly with more time being able to be spent on it than can be spent currently—and that, in commissioning care, the local authority will have a care and support plan that defines what it is commissioning. It should have done a needs assessment and should commission against that and what it expects to be provided. What comes back on those assessments should mirror that care and support plan. What I have tried to do with this amendment is to highlight that, if there is not an almost identikit fit, that should not be given a margin of error but should trigger the need to visit that person and to look in detail at the care plan and its delivery. That might be the first sign that all is not well It may be that someone from the local authority visits and finds that the care and support plan, as commissioned, has been altered slightly because the person’s needs or ability to undertake activity has changed. It may be, in the best of circumstances, that something has been put in place that has enhanced the person’s ability to express themselves. I would use the example of music, where it has been found that by providing people’s favourite playlists, some people with really severe dementia are almost "unlocked" by the music—they are able to move in time to the music and their mobility and communication are better. Some people who have been unable to speak, even for years, recover some phrases and then, from that, begin to communicate verbally as well. And of course, we all know of people who appear to not be able to communicate but will then sing along to their favourite song, with all the words coming back again The purpose of the amendment is to say that, if there is not a close fit, that should be enough for the local authority to say that it is going to look at that in detail. That was the motivation behind my amendment. I beg to move.
Arts: Impact of Brexit — House of Lords, 2018-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Karan Bilimoria (Crossbench, Unknown): I thank the noble Viscount for giving way. He said that the British people have voted to leave, but 96% of Creative Industries Federation members voted to remain. In the Northern Ireland debate earlier today, we heard that 56% of people there voted to remain. This is the tyranny of the majority.
Armed Forces (Terms of Service) (Amendments Relating to Flexible Working) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-10-10
Topic: Labor
David Brownrigg Craig (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I welcome the detail with which the noble Earl, Lord Howe, has gone into this, particularly the assurance that no individual will be required to undertake part-time service. That is a most important assurance, and I was glad to hear it from the noble Earl’s lips. He mentioned pensions and the abatement of pay. This seems but one part of a story, and each individual who will contemplate it must have the whole picture before he or she is able to make any decision about whether it is worth applying for. I therefore hope that in mentioning the pensions as coming forward, the noble Earl will be able to explain exactly when that is to be available; presumably it must be in the near future My only other point may be going into the detail, but perhaps I need a bit of education on the difference between the territorial extent of an application and the territorial application of it. It seems that, for example, in this and in the next regulation there are differences in how this is handled. Perhaps, in replying either to this or to the later debate the noble Earl, Lord Howe, will be able to explain the difference between those two things, because I for one do not quite follow it.
Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-09-04
Topic: International Affairs
David Hugh Alexander Hannay (Crossbench, Unknown): Since the noble Lord is moving on from the point about timing, could he answer the question as to whether the powers in the Bill have any practical applicability in the context of an agreement with the European Union which provides for a 20-month transition period, during which we will not be able to exercise any of these powers because we will still be following the decisions of the customs union and the single market? I accept that, if there is no deal, these powers will have applicability. Am I correct in thinking that the only circumstance in which they will have applicability before 1 January 2021 is if there is no deal?
Brexit: Negotiations and No-deal Contingency Planning — House of Lords, 2018-09-04
Topic: International Affairs
David Hugh Alexander Hannay (Crossbench, Unknown): Will the Minister go back to the issue of citizens’ rights? If I understand it rightly, he has replied to various questions by saying that the Government will make up their mind on the situation for European citizens here in a no-deal situation when that arose. Are the Government not giving any consideration to whether it might not be both humane and valuable for our negotiating position if they were to make it clear now, unilaterally, that they will apply the provisions in the December agreement, come what may, deal or no deal? Surely that would be better, and it would also be a better way of protecting the interests of our citizens in other member states.
Brexit: Negotiations and No-deal Contingency Planning — House of Lords, 2018-09-04
Topic: Foreign Trade
Merlin Hay (Crossbench, Unknown): If we were to stay in the EEA, would it be permitted and allowed under the rules to negotiate trade deals with the other countries which have about 7 or 8 billion people around the world, or would that be blocked?