argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Bruce Joseph Grocott (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, a kind of fiction has prevailed over a very long period of election history that, somehow or other, the crucial electoral battleground is each individual constituency. It has long been recognised that there is a need for strict limits on expenditure by individual candidates in individual constituencies. On the other level, however, there is the national campaign, where limits on expenditure are so much looser I was very alarmed, as I had not heard it before, by the information from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard—he is usually reliable on these issues—that there is possibly a huge increase planned in the maximum expenditure allowed at the national level. This may not be a popular thing to say to candidates—I may be talking to myself—but it is clear to me that, although both levels of campaigning expenditure are clearly important, if you had to label the one that is the most important in determining the overall outcome of modern elections, it would be the national expenditure and national campaign. All candidates believe profoundly that it is what they do in their individual constituencies that is of crucial importance I have also noticed that all candidates—I have been one of them—tend to think that, when they win their local campaign, it is down to a particular level of skill and expertise in their campaign, and when they lose, it is generally someone else’s fault. The truth at general elections is that, for all the variance you can get in 650 different constituencies, the broad truth prevails: when the tide is out for your party, the tide is likely to be out everywhere, and vice versa. This whole issue of the balance between control over national expenditure and control over local expenditure is fundamental Of course, the irony is that, for years and years, there was control over local expenditure. It has long been recognised that there must be limits locally. However, it is relatively recently in our parliamentary history that we have seen the need for national limits; as we have said, they are so loose now as to be barely limits at all—certainly for one party in particular. This is a crucial area of debate and discussion but, most of all, the one headline I want to get out of this—perhaps the Minister will address it when he replies because he is on the inside track and we are not—is whether there really is a proposal that there should be a colossal increase in the level of expenditure allowed at the national level by political parties. If the Minister has any inside information on this, I would love him to share it with the Committee.
Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Bruce Joseph Grocott (Labour, Centre-left): I agree so much about the importance of the close connection between individual candidates and individual constituencies but I am sure that the noble Lord would agree with me that that is much weakened under a system of proportional representation.
Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Raymond Collins (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I come back to the comment I made on the earlier group of amendments: what is broken? What is this clause trying to put right, and does it solve it? I think we have heard from the debate on it that it does not really address the issue. Whatever happened in Thanet—and there may be other instances that were not subject to court cases—it has certainly gone through a proper legal process. As we have heard, both the Supreme Court and the Electoral Commission have addressed that issue I regret that we have moved away from the requirement that fundamental changes be subject to consent across all parties. That has been an important element of maintaining our democracy. Of course, the Trade Union Act was the first part of that attack by the Conservative Party on one party, which broke that consensus on funding. As I have said before, the Conservative Party likes a debate about spending limits— "We can have a limit here, and the national limit and so on"—but the real debate is not about spending but about income. When David Cameron was Prime Minister and we have had discussions about it, we have seen that it is the income side of our politics that brings it into disrepute. Very rarely is it the spending side. The income side is about who has given the money, how much they are giving and what they expect for it. Taking big money out of politics is the issue. I say to the Conservative Party that its time will come, because when it is in opposition there will be a strong focus on the income side of this debate, and it will not like the result. It will not be able to rely on a large number of very wealthy people; it will have to rely on a larger number of low-income people, because I strongly believe that caps on donations are far more important than limits on spending. That is a debate for another day, but it is important to set today’s debate in context.
Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Sue Hayman (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for his thorough response to this debate On the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Collins around increasing the threshold, I have a slight concern that, rather than necessarily increasing the threshold, we will be saying, "Other people can also pay for things—it’s not just the agent." Anybody who has been involved with an election and seen a poor agent trying to put the expenses together will know that if people are allowed to just start spending, it can get extremely complicated and sometimes quite worrying, because the agent needs really good control over the money during an election. I just put that into the debate. If this threshold could be reviewed as part of an ongoing review, that would be very a practical and helpful thing that we could all agree on I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for preferring my Amendment 25 to that of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, even though the Minister did not—it is nice to know that somebody felt I was going in the right direction. On the Minister’s response on the CSPL, I was trying to find out about the recommendations that are not included in the Bill—I am aware that some are in it. The Minister said that all the recommendations would be looked at; this House should have an idea of how the Government are taking this forward, whether these things may come forward as SIs in the future, and how they would be implemented I was also pleased to hear the Minister say that he believed that publication of new guidance should be both timely and part of the locked-in process of any implementation and that he wants to see the guidance produced as quickly as possible. I thank him very much for his response and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Raymond Collins (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, will speak in this debate, as Clause 19 sort of addresses some of the issues that he raised in the previous discussion. I am not as old as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, suggested, although I have to confess that I have been around for a very long time. I have had responsibility for the statutory adoption of electoral law, and as a trade union official I have been acutely aware of codes of practice and procedures and their statutory basis, particularly on employment law—but I will not go too much into that. With these amendments I am trying to probe the provisions in Clause 19 which says that we will amend electoral law. Again, that makes the point that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, made—we have a proliferation of electoral law and there should have been a much bigger piece of legislation to bring everything together so that people whose job it is to apply the law do not have to have this constant reference back to a whole series of requirements According to the Explanatory Notes, the clause says that "the Electoral Commission may prepare guidance on election expenses for candidates. The amendments are to make it clear that the guidance can cover the application of the rules in relation to expenses incurred. This is to ensure that the codes of practice are sufficiently broad and fully serve the purpose of explaining the rules on spending." One issue is that we go from codes to guidance. What is what? It is not altogether clear.
Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Raymond Collins (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for her comments. Of course, I am trying to get on record some political points here, so I am going to repeat them. I understand the statutory requirements for consultation by the Electoral Commission, but there is often a failure to consult beyond the political parties, and we need to ensure that that is properly addressed. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, made a very good point about transparency: if I wanted to look into a particular record, it is extremely difficult to do so, and there are ways to make it easier In later debates we will return to the issue of transparency, particularly when we get to Clauses 26 and beyond, but in the light of the Minister’s comments, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Wajid Khan (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for that comprehensive response. Just to reiterate, we will continue to have discussions around devolution, as it is affected by many parts of this Bill. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw.
Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Sue Hayman (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for her response. Like her, I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, asked an extremely interesting question that did not occur to me when I read through the Bill. It was a very thoughtful question to take forward. I am interested to see where that goes The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, made an important point about access to records and transparency of record-keeping. It is important that we all take that on board. The Minister gave a clear response on the reasoning behind this On my Amendment 31, which would delete the phrase "such period as the Commission think fit", it is interesting to note that this is consistent with what PPERA says. I was not aware of that, so I thank the Minister for that. I wonder whether there is any guidance as to what it means—I have no idea whether it is five or 50 years. It would be interesting to know a little more about that and what happens in practice, so that there will be more information in that area as we take this forward.
Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Raymond Collins (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the noble Lord for that response. We will return to this issue. I opened my remarks with the Russia report. The Government have said that they have responded to every recommendation, but one remaining issue is interference in our political system. We will have a future debate on donations but it is important to focus on this specific issue. We will see things in future that we have not seen before in terms of attempts to undermine our system, and we have to be prepared for that. I was very pleased that the legislation went through—I would like to have seen even stronger elements to it—but even in today’s Guardian, people are saying that many ways remain for oligarchs to get around transparency declarations, including not only offshore companies but "five close relatives", who can shift assets so that none of them reaches the 25% ownership level required. We know that people can try to get round these things, and we need to be absolutely vigilant I appreciate the Minister’s comments, and that he will come back and speak to me further; in the light of that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Shale Gas Production — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: Energy
Christopher Lennie (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the Government’s consideration of fracking is a potentially dangerous and risky policy that neither addresses the real concerns about future affordable energy supplies nor contributes to achieving our net-zero targets. Surely, a better way to proceed would be to reintroduce government support for onshore wind as a cheap and generally reliable fuel source—it was abandoned by the then Conservative Government in 2015. Will the Government now reconsider this damaging decision by reinstating their support for major onshore wind farm developments?
Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Wajid Khan (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 31B, 32 and 32A in this group in the names of my noble friends Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lord Collins of Highbury. Amendments 31B and 32 relate to Clause 22, which prohibits an entity registering as both a political party and a third party, which would allow them to access multiple spending limits. I cannot see any reason to oppose this, which would remove a loophole from the level playing field—those words which have been so often mentioned—and maintain the integrity of the existing system In the debate on this clause in the other House, a Minister explained that this change was necessary after an entity registered as both during the 2019 general election, therefore abusing the system. Can the Minister confirm which party this was Specifically, Amendment 31B intends to probe the application of this clause to minor parties. While we can assume that major political parties, which tend to have governance units, will be aware of these new changes and will be very unlikely to register in both classifications, we should consider whether the same can be said for minor parties. This brings me to Amendment 32, which is intended to probe how the Government will inform third parties of the impact of this section. On the first day in Committee my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock touched on the importance of consultation, and I ask the Minister what consultation there has been on informing third parties of the impact of this section. In particular, I ask about impact assessments on this section. Consultation is particularly important for this Bill. Many of the groups which fall within the definition of third parties can be considered minor organisations which also may not have the necessary structures. Amendment 32A touches on a similar subject of informing involved parties but relates instead to Clause 23. This clause deals with transitional provision for groups which appear on both registers and would permit them to spend only in one capacity I understand that the Minister has been very kind and has had discussions on these matters with my noble friends, but I really hope he can confirm what plans the Government have to involve, engage and inform the relevant parties, and we would really welcome further discussion on this matter. I beg to move.
Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Raymond Collins (Labour, Centre-left): Just out of interest, with the application for registration as a political party, was there an awareness of the other application as a third party? Did that not get questioned, and could not the existing rules have addressed the issue? Were the two registrations just allowed to take place?
Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-15
Topic: International Affairs
Sue Hayman (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for his response to these amendments and other noble Lords for their contributions to the debate. I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for forgetting to say that her name was with mine on the notice of our intention to oppose Clause 24 standing part of the Bill, and I thank her for her contribution The debate has raised some important issues that we will come back to, not just next week but further on in the debate. The Minister explained that Clause 24 is intended to bear down on foreign interests, and that only people with legitimate interests to influence UK elections should be able to contribute. I do not imagine that anyone would disagree with that aim, but there are still concerns about it. I am sure that we will revisit issues around foreign donations when we reach the clauses on overseas electors Regarding my inability to find the £700 in the RPA, if the Minister has a moment, or if one of his officials could send me the link so that I can see it with my own eyes, that would be marvellous. One concern here is the effect of the combination of Clauses 24 and 25 together; there is a bigger concern around that. I am sure we will revisit these concerns about Clauses 24 and 25, because they are so interconnected. I am sure that other noble Lords, as well as myself, would very much welcome further discussion with the Minister on this area, because there are very genuine concerns, particularly among a number of other organisations, including charities. For now, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Janet Alison Whitaker (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group and will just say a few words in support of Amendment 168. In the absence of a written constitution, we need a much more explicit statement of the values we hold dear, with which we must acquaint our children. This amendment would fulfil that educational obligation, as set out magisterially by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth. It includes acknowledgment of our diversity, as well as the elements which bind us together. It also signals the environmental pressures of our time. It could, with great advantage, be the basis of the content of those lessons which are offered to pupils who opt out of worship. My only rider is that open and continual class discussion is an essential part of the teaching of these values, and this perhaps could have been made explicit also. In the words of the inspirational thinker Amartya Sen, public discourse is a vital part of democracy.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Christine Blower (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I rise briefly to support the speech made by my noble friend Lady Morris—and in no way to demur from anything she said about appropriate access to curriculum materials for parents—but also to reinforce the point made by my noble friend Lord Hunt that we are not talking about a veto. We have strayed into some extremely difficult areas. It is important, therefore, to stress that we are talking about partnership between schools, parents and students, and looking at curriculum content in a collaborative way. This is not saying that a group of parents, or indeed one parent, should be able to turn up and say, "I would like to look at this and, by the way, my child is not having it"—and expect that somehow the writ of that will run throughout the school. That was clearly not the intention of anyone who has spoken in the debate For example, in previous debates we have talked about parent councils, originally introduced by my noble friend Lord Knight under a different kind of Government. We have to be in that place throughout this; it is not just about access to curriculum materials. We need to be saying that the work of a school is a partnership between the parent body, the students, the wider community and the teaching and other staff. This is not in any sense to demur from the notion of access, but it is perhaps to draw the balance. This should not be about a veto but about developing a relationship so that parents understand what is going on in schools. They may feel that they can and should influence that in some small way, and that may be welcomed by the school. However, there is a very big difference between that and vetoing. That is all I wanted to say.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
James Philip Knight (Labour, Centre-left): While we are at it, I declare my interest that I work with a company called EVERFI, which does some of this work, but it liaises with money-making commercial organisations to provide resources at no charge for teachers. Some of those, for example, relate to careers, which is part of this group of amendments. There are excellent science employers or computer gaming companies, for example, which are trying to help create the learning that will mean that people from all sorts of backgrounds are more inclined, readier and more confident to think that they could work in those industries. I would not want anything that the noble Baroness is saying to curtail that sort of important learning resource.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Estelle Morris (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this is an incredibly disappointing reply. My worry is that I do not know whether the Minister has offered all she is going to offer. This is not about using Oak National Academy resources rather than those of an outside organisation. It is not about how to communicate with parents. The amendment has nothing to do with that. I am quite sure that the Government have a lot of good ideas on advising schools about how to communicate with parents. This was very specifically about schools using materials from outside bodies, which save them work and having to rewrite the curriculum in line with what the Government want them to do—but, by law, they are not permitted to show parents these materials. I hope the Minister will forgive me if she was about to address that point, but I do not want her to sit down before doing so and I am a little worried by the tone of the response so far.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Estelle Morris (Labour, Centre-left): The department and the head teachers the Minister has spoken to have chosen to go down a dangerous avenue on this. If the issue is to stop parents being vexatious and demanding too much of schools in asking for materials, they can do that now with almost all the curriculum materials that are taught in schools and they do not. The only ones they cannot see are these in the most contentious areas of the curriculum. I am not worried about parents being vexatious and asking for all the curriculum materials; that is not what happens at the moment. I am not sure how there can be any justification for the one area where, by law, you cannot see the teaching materials happening to be the area where parents would have most concern about curriculum content.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-20
Topic: Education
Janet Alison Whitaker (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, in supporting all these amendments I add my support for Amendment 171R, which my noble friend Lady Wilcox will speak to from the Labour Front Bench at the end of the debate This is a very good means to rescue the missing third of children. This is the large number of children who are capable of further education but never get to the starting point for a variety of reasons. Prejudice and discrimination play a part, for instance in the case of Gypsies, Travellers, Roma, boat workers and the children of showmen. It is really important that schools get ahead with this kind of arrangement.