argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Leaving the EU: Textile and Fashion Industry — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: What plans he has to secure export markets and inward investment for the UK textile and fashion industry after the UK leaves the EU. [R]
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): Unlike you, Mr Speaker, the Minister has never been to Huddersfield or visited the Textile Centre of Excellence. I keep inviting Ministers, but I think they are worried because Huddersfield, which is a great centre in the premier league for fashion, has many employers who are fearful about the future and the 90% drop in inward investment in our country. There is real worry about the penetration of European markets after Brexit.
Leaving the EU: Preferential Market Access — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Environment
Questions: What steps he is taking to ensure that the UK maintains preferential market access to those countries with which it currently has such access as a member of the EU after leaving the EU.
Alexander Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): The REACH—registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—regulations that govern production and other standards are critical to countless chemical companies in my Stockton North constituency and beyond for trade across the world. Will the Minister update the House on the progress to retain them when we leave the EU?
Leaving the EU: Preferential Market Access — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: What steps he is taking to ensure that the UK maintains preferential market access to those countries with which it currently has such access as a member of the EU after leaving the EU.
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): First, the Government said that they were simply rolling over these agreements on precisely the same terms. Then they admitted that they would have to amend the agreements with Norway, Turkey and Switzerland to avoid rolling over such things as the customs union or the four freedoms that they would rather avoid, but the Minister has still not explained what process this sovereign Parliament will undertake to ensure that these important new agreements are subjected to proper democratic scrutiny. When will he?
Domestic Abuse: Support for Women — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Law and Crime
Holly Jamie Walker-Lynch (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister for that response. However, in 2016, the Ministry of Justice closed the courts in Halifax, and I hear from West Yorkshire police that it is now routinely taking up to 12 months for domestic abuse victims to have their cases heard in the neighbouring courts in Leeds, Bradford and Huddersfield. How have we allowed that to happen? Victims are withdrawing from that process. What are we doing to put this right?
Building Regulations and Fire Safety — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Environment
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State is making the same sort of noises as were made after the Lakanal House fire. A date of 25 July takes us beyond the recess, and means that we will not get a statement about the end of the consultation until September at the earliest, or possibly October. Will he bring forward the end of his consultation so that we can hold his feet to the fire and ensure that we deal with this in a timely manner? The least we can expect is a ban on combustible materials as a testament to the people who died in that fire.
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Foreign Trade
Rachel Jane Reeves (Labour, Centre-left): We already export to countries outside the European Union. We are a success in that sector. We took huge amounts of evidence in the UK and in Brussels from small and big businesses, and not a single one pointed to any benefits of leaving the EU, or any opportunities we could seize that we do not have today.
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Foreign Trade
Rachel Jane Reeves (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Lady has made an important point about clarity, which I do not think I put across sufficiently in my statement. The industry representatives who gave evidence to our Committee said that they would need two to five years to prepare for any changes in the regime and the trading arrangements with the rest of the European Union, and of course we do not have those two to five years: we have just over a year and a half until the end of the transition period. That is of great concern to the hon. Lady’s constituents, and to patients and businesses across the UK.
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Technology
Rachel Jane Reeves (Labour, Centre-left): I am worried about those issues. My hon. Friend knows full well that we have benefited disproportionately from Horizon 2020: 13% of the funds have come to this country, reflecting our fantastic research base in Cardiff, in Leeds and across the UK. It is welcome that the Government have guaranteed those funds until 2020, but there have been no guarantees beyond that. As my hon. Friend knows, research does not work on two or three-year horizons; it works on 10 or 20-year horizons. We need clarity, and the certainty that we will receive that investment in key research on matters such as the HIV vaccine that my hon. Friend mentioned.
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: International Affairs
Rachel Jane Reeves (Labour, Centre-left): I absolutely agree. The Government need to get on with negotiating with the European Union, rather than negotiating with their Back Benchers and even within the Cabinet. We need certainty. We need certainty on our access to the single market, we need certainty on our membership of the customs union, and we need certainty on the regulatory framework that will apply after we leave the European Union. Without that, it is incredibly difficult for businesses to plan for the future, to secure the jobs and investment that we need in this country, and, in the case of medicines and pharmaceuticals, to ensure that patients have access—timely access—to the best drugs, and new drugs.
Private Members’ Bills: Money Resolutions — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Government Operations
Mohammed Afzal Khan (Labour, Centre-left): I seek leave to propose that the House should debate a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely the expectation that the Government table a money resolution to a private Member’s Bill that has received a Second Reading. Private Members’ Bills represent one of the few legislative powers that are open to Back Benchers, but the Government are making a mockery of the private Member’s Bill process. Refusing to bring forward a money resolution for my Bill amounts to an abuse of Parliament, and Members should urgently have the chance to debate it My private Member’s Bill passed its Second Reading unanimously. Through points of order, business questions and an urgent question last week, Members have made it clear that they wish the Bill to be debated and scrutinised in Committee. The Government’s actions are profoundly undemocratic. This is a minority Government who nevertheless seem willing to defy the will of the House The Government are running roughshod over parliamentary procedure. Money resolutions have historically been formalities, introduced as a matter of course after Second Reading. Indeed, in multiple representations to the Procedure Committee, the Government committed to this approach. Five months on from the Second Reading of my Bill, no resolution is in sight, however. Statements from Ministers suggest that one may never materialise. The Government have leapfrogged two Bills that were behind mine over it, and those have now been given money resolutions. The only logic here is that this is about what is in the Government’s interests. My Bill on constituency boundaries gets to the heart of the balance between Back Benchers and the Executive. Cutting the number of MPs without reducing the number of Ministers will increase the proportion of MPs on the payroll, making it more difficult for Back Benchers to challenge the Government I believe that the original decision to reduce the number of MPs was politically motivated. The Conservative party stands to win a greater proportion of the seats in a smaller Parliament. By refusing to allow my private Member’s Bill to progress, the Government are abusing their executive power for their own party’s electoral gain. Ministers all but confessed to this when they said they would wait until the Boundary Commission had reported before making a decision about my Bill The Government are defying the will of the House and overstretching their executive power in the service of their party’s electoral interests. Members deserve a chance to debate this issue and restore some integrity to the private Member’s Bill process.
Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Environment
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): I beg to move, That this House has considered the First and Second Reports of the Environmental Audit Committee, Plastic Bottles: Turning Back the Plastic Tide, HC 339, and Disposable Packaging: Coffee Cups, HC 657; and urges the Government to accept their recommendations as part of its Resources and Waste Strategy I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, the Liaison Committee and the Backbench Business Committee for granting time in the House to debate the Environmental Audit Committee reports. I thank my Committee colleagues, too, some of whom are present, for their work on our inquiry last year Today, I want to talk about the scale of the plastic pandemic, the solutions we proposed, the importance of the EU circular economy package and how we make producers responsible for their packaging. May I begin, however, by welcoming the announcement on Tuesday that Parliament will phase out most single-use plastics on our estate and introduce a 25p "latte levy"? I thank you, Mr Speaker, and the Chair of the Administration Committee for your support in making this happen. [Interruption.] Creagh’s law; very good We are in the middle of a global pandemic. Plastic is everywhere, from the top of Mount Everest to the depths of the ocean to the north pole. Plastic has been found in every species of animal in the Arctic, from plankton to polar bears. Research by Dr Erik van Sebille at Imperial College London shows that most of the UK’s marine plastic pollution ends up in the Arctic, so the UK has a particular responsibility to clean up our act and protect the Arctic In 2015, the UK signed up to the United Nations global goals for sustainable development, including goal 12, "sustainable consumption and production" and goal 14 on protecting our oceans. The UK led in the development of those goals, but unfortunately the Government sometimes seem to think they are something for other countries, not the UK Our planet has only one ocean, wrapped around it like a cloak, and plastic bottles make up one third of all plastic pollution in the sea. They break down into micro-plastics, which harm marine wildlife that eat them. After my Committee’s ground-breaking work on rinse-off microbeads, which led the Government to ban their manufacture and sale, we examined single-use plastics, focusing on plastic bottles and coffee cups Single-use plastics take five seconds to make, five minutes to use and 500 years to biodegrade, so when we throw them away there is no such place as "away."
Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Environment
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): I have seen evidence on oxo-biodegradable and I know there are a couple of possible additives to plastics. The research on how and how fast it breaks down is not conclusive. I know it can break down in proper professional composting machines, but the evidence on what happens out in the ocean is not that clear and we do not want an end-of-pipe solution to this problem; we want something at the beginning that is sustainable There is a live argument on this and it is going on at EU level between the plant-based plastics manufacturers of the south and those such as us in the north who have a more petrochemical-based approach. I am not a scientist, but I know the jury is out and that scientists have looked at this. It is important that we develop the correct policy and do not just look at what happens at the end of the pipe In the UK, we recycle just 57% of our plastic bottles overall; the figure for water bottles is higher. We estimate that 700,000 plastic bottles are littered every day. That litter spoils our streets, threatens our wildlife and ruins our beaches. We are paying for this clean-up through our council tax. Keep Britain Tidy estimates that English councils spend £1 billion a year cleaning up after fly-tippers and litterbugs. We recommended introducing a deposit return scheme to boost recycling rates and create a clear stream of recycled plastic for manufacturers. When the Environment Secretary gave evidence to my Committee in April, he told us that we would not see that product return scheme until 2020, but better late than never and we welcome his commitment. We must also create a market for that recovered plastic, which is why we recommended that Ministers set a target for 50% of recycled plastic to be present in new bottles. I am pleased that Coca-Cola has committed to do that We use 2.5 billion coffee cups a year, enough to stretch around the planet five and a half times. Before our inquiry, I—along with most other people—thought that coffee cups were recycled, but they are not. Their plastic coating, which is thinner than a human hair, means that most of them end up landfilled or incinerated. The coffee shop industry has told us that disposable coffee cups are recyclable, but "recyclable" does not mean "recycled". Paper mills do not want them, and plastics reprocessers do not want them. Just one in every 400 is recycled, which is just 0.25%. There are just three recycling plants in England that can recycle them. Moreover, if someone puts their coffee cup in a recycling bin, in a coffee shop or on the go, it will not be recycled and it could contaminate the other papers and plastics in the bin.
Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Environment
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): I emphatically agree. I remember the happy days of collecting those bottles. In doing that, we can create an army of litter pickers out in the streets. I was out in Norway with NATO last week, visiting the Arctic, and there is a full deposit return scheme there. One of the people we talked to told us that his son had made £580 in the holidays last summer by going on a little mission out on the streets every day. I also noticed, when I was at the airport disposing of my single-use plastic bottle in the throwaway scheme, that the deposit would be collected by the Red Cross in Norway. There is an opportunity here for charities to partner alongside the deposit return scheme and to find a valuable new income stream.
Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Environment
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with the hon. Lady. I know that Heathrow has introduced refill stations just the other side of the security gates, but the problem is that people are usually already in the queue for security before they remember that they have a full bottle of water. Most people cannot drink half a litre of water straight off. Airports could look at how to dispose of those liquids while encouraging people to keep the bottles. That would result in more reuse. That is a challenge for the airports and the transport industry to think about today Reducing and reusing are always better than recycling, and the 5p plastic bag charge reduced plastic bag sales by 83% in the first year, so we know that charges change consumer behaviour. My Committee recommended a 25p latte levy on disposable coffee cups to encourage people to bring their own cups. We want that levy to fund new "binfrastructure". That is terrible; I am trying not to murder the English language, but I think I have just stuck a nail in there. The Chancellor is consulting on a single-use plastics tax, and I look forward to reading the responses. The consultation closes tomorrow Industry is stepping up to this; it knows that it cannot go on with business as usual. Costa has introduced a recycling scheme that aims to recycle half a billion cups by 2020. Unfortunately, only 14 million cups were recycled last year, but that was a good start. Starbucks is trialling a 5p latte levy in 35 central London cafés, and reusable cup usage has more than doubled in the first six weeks, which is very encouraging. The truth is, however, that we need both. We need the latte levy and we need recycling schemes if we are to tackle this problem.
Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Environment
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution to the Committee, of which he is a fantastic, excellent and constructive member. He provides challenge as well as co-operation, which is how we get to a good place and find cross-party agreement I remember visiting Juba in South Sudan in 2012 and noticing that there was very little water there for people, and that all the aid workers and visitors were using plastic bottles. There was no waste infrastructure whatever. This is a really important problem, because we know that huge amounts of waste are thrown into rivers in Africa, India and the far east. We need to get that waste out of the rivers. How do we do that? We pay people to do it. It is not just kids in the UK who will collect 5p or 10p plastic bottles; people will do the right thing, but they need a cash incentive to do it. The United Nations has an opportunity to achieve that through the international climate fund. We all tend to think about that in relation to green energy and clean energy, but we need to look at how some of these climate funds are allocated and spent at supranational level, and at how our own UK aid budget could be used to help to set up systems to keep plastic out of the oceans. As I said earlier, there is only one ocean and we need to do more to protect it.
Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: International Affairs
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with the hon. Lady. She makes an excellent point. Bangladesh is absolutely at the forefront of climate change, and much of our aid budget is going there to make homes more resilient, but resilience in communities is also about giving people a good, clean, safe environment to live in and ensuring that the poor have decent incomes.
Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Environment
Rushanara Ali (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for all the work she does on environmental issues, both here at home and internationally. This is not just about beaches in Bangladesh. We have seen footage of beaches in Brighton, for example, being polluted by bottles. Does she agree that local authorities need more support? There is some excellent practice, but it is patchy. Perhaps the Government could consider introducing citizens grant schemes to encourage people to take part actively around the country and to work with local authorities and corporates to clean up our beaches as well as our streets.
Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Environment
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for her suggestion. We actually made that point in our report on marine protected areas and said that there should be a coastal communities fund to help to develop tourism and to enable communities to take ownership of the amazing nature that surrounds them. We do not have tropical rainforests in the UK, but we do have some of the world’s best breeding sites for birds and all sorts of Ramsar wetland sites. Bringing communities closer to nature where they live can only be a good thing. I also want to pay tribute to Sky Ocean Rescue for its work in bringing to a wider audience the good activities that are going on not only globally but locally, including those literally outside our own door to clean up the Thames We want the Government to send a clear message to industry that all single-use coffee cups should be recycled by 2023, and that if that does not happen, they should simply be banned and we should move to a system of reusable cups only. Consumers want to do the right thing, and they deserve to know that companies are doing it too We have also looked at the UK’s packaging system, which we think needs a fundamental redesign. Producers of packaging should ensure that their waste is dealt with according to the waste hierarchy: reduce, reuse, recycle. How do we make that happen? At the moment, businesses that produce or use packaging have to show that they have recycled it by purchasing a packaging recovery note—a PRN—from an accredited recycler or exporter. We have heard evidence, however, that that system is a blunt instrument that does not reward design for recyclability and that does not penalise the production of packaging that is difficult and costly to recycle. We therefore recommend that the Government should reform the PRN system. They should introduce a fee structure that reduces the cost of sustainable coffee cups and raises the cost of cups that are hard to recycle The landfill tax and the PRN system have been the twin pillars of UK recycling for the past 20 years. Most of our waste went to landfill 20 years ago, but we now recycle almost half of it. However, recycling rates are stalling, and recycling needs a shot in the arm to bring it back to life.
Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Environment
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is a wonderful advocate for recycling. Does she accept—if she does not, she should have a look at the parliamentary questions that I have asked—that the biggest problem is that recycling is flatlining because waste is being incinerated? That must be dangerous at a time of air pollution.
Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Environment
Stephen Pelham Pound (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has taken us a slight distance away from the subject at hand, but I must say that I am always willing to listen to any discussion about disposable Japanese chopsticks. On water fountains, when she looks around the Chamber, is she not as horrified as I am to see these carafes and glasses of water? Would it not be an excellent idea to have a water fountain adjacent to the Speaker’s Chair, and perhaps one opposite each of the Front Benches, with disposable, biodegradable cups? Let us start as we mean to go on and let this place be an example to the nation.
Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups — House of Commons, 2018-05-17
Topic: Environment
Susan Elan Jones (Labour, Centre-left): Glasses and glass carafes are very environmentally friendly, but my hon. Friend’s comments are of course very interesting, as ever I wish to make a serious plea. The hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) referred to the glass bottle scheme of the 1970s and 1980s, and how we all enjoyed collecting extra pennies by returning glass bottles. Around that time, probably in the 1970s, it was the Wombles generation and there was a great deal of interest in all these issues. It sometimes seems to me that we really have not gone a lot further down that road. I hope that we can redouble our efforts and look into more options, whether for plastic bottles or other things, because if we do not, as a society and as a world we will have far, far greater problems.