argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Agricultural Transition Plan — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Agriculture
Luke Pollard (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of the statement, even if most of it was announced this morning in his online conference. For transparency, I remind hon. Members that my little sister is a sheep farmer in Cornwall The Secretary of State has majored on the green elements of the announcement, but this is about more than our environment. Of course Labour supports public money for public goods, but that is not what the statement is about. Strip away the green coating and the proposals are a full-throttle attack on English family farms. I say "English" because Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish farmers are going in a different direction because the devolved Governments are maintaining support for small farms for longer. Under the Government’s proposals, many small farmers will lose up to half their current support payments within just three years, leaving many financially unviable The public and farmers back high standards, but many farms will not be sustainable economically if the economic foundations of their business are undercut by food produced to lower standards abroad. British farmers remain at risk from future trade deals as the Government have chosen not to require food imports to meet the same standards that we hold our own farmers to Farmers themselves have not given today’s announcement a ringing endorsement. The panel that farmers convened to heap praise on the Secretary of State’s speech this morning described it as, "disappointing", "lacking detail" and, "an announcement about further announcements"—not a glowing endorsement I am concerned about the 5% cuts for all, the 50% cuts in three years and the new system not even starting until 2022. Why was no sustainable farming initiative announced for next year, just a 5% cut and no bridge to environmental funding? Why was there so little detail on that and why is there a gap? Given that we are both west country MPs, does the Secretary of State share my concern that many south-west farmers will be forced out of business because of the changes? Does he have regional figures on the expected farm bankruptcies? The estimates that I have heard are deeply worrying. With the Government’s new farm exit schemes, there are huge incentives for people to leave agriculture early. How many small farmers does the Secretary of State expect to take that exit scheme rather than go bust Labour has five simple tests for the effectiveness of the policy. Will there be more family farms in 2024 than there are now? I doubt it. Will there be more family farm bankruptcies under the proposals? I expect so. Will Britain produce more of its food here rather than importing it? Will we be more reliant on food from America and Australia in future? Will English farmers have a tougher time than farmers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with their mix of direct payments and environmental funding? Labour backs our British farmers. I am very concerned that the Secretary of State’s announcement today risks breaking English family farms.
Agricultural Transition Plan — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Agriculture
Andrew John Gwynne (Labour, Centre-left): I welcome the emphasis on ensuring that farm subsidies in the future encourage animal welfare, environmental sustainability and nature recovery. However, given that this new policy will see income for some farms fall by 50% over the next three years, what assessment has the Secretary of State made of the numbers that will be impacted by these changes, and what opportunity is there in the nature recovery initiative he has outlined for those with marginal farm holdings, often in the urban fringes, where the land now has more of a recreational and environmental benefit than an agricultural one?
Agricultural Transition Plan — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Agriculture
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State knows that I believe him to be an honourable man, but he is a member of a Government who are now notorious for their chumocracy and favours for friends. What he is ushering in today is a charter for City slickers, carpetbaggers and spivs to take over our farming sector, and to drive out the traditional smaller English farmers, who have been feeding our nation for so many years. Will he please think again before he eradicates the good English farmer?
Agricultural Transition Plan — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Agriculture
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): Food poverty in my Hull North constituency is already a huge issue. Will the Secretary of State guarantee that under the new agricultural transition policy we will not see higher food prices for working families who are only just managing?
Agricultural Transition Plan — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Agriculture
Christian John Patrick Matheson (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State is a farmer himself, so he will know that farms cannot simply be turned on or off, as local farmers around my constituency in Cheshire have pointed out to me. They have noticed that participants in the ELM scheme will be paid a "competitive" rate; when will they be given details of what that competitive rate is, so that they can start to plan for the future and know exactly when they can alter their long-term plans for the management of their farms to meet the requirements proposed in the White Paper?
Agricultural Transition Plan — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Agriculture
Michael Lee Amesbury (Labour, Centre-left): Cutting income payments by 50% over a period of three years, starting in January, is not evolutionary as the Secretary of State said, but revolutionary. In fact, some might argue—including me—that it is downright stupid. It needs to be rethought. On consultation, there are plenty of voices out there at the moment expressing real concern about the future of local farms in Weaver Vale and Cheshire.
Agricultural Transition Plan — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Agriculture
Antonia Louise Antoniazzi (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State continues to say that he has maintained the budget for the devolved nations. However, farmers in Wales will be £95 million short compared with if they were still in the EU, due to what would have been a crossover of the programme. I find it quite tedious that the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams) and the UK Government point the finger at the Welsh Government, who are rightly acting in accordance with the EU rules for agricultural funding until 2023, which the National Farmers Union of Wales confirmed with me just over an hour ago. Will the Secretary of State back up the promises that he has made to farmers and rural communities in my constituency of Gower and across Wales?
Agricultural Transition Plan — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Agriculture
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): Many farmers in my area of Warwick and Leamington and the villages around are really concerned. As far as they are concerned, they are in business—they have been farmers for generations to look after and steward the land, but also to look after their herds and to produce the grain and crops that we depend on. Their real concern is to do with livestock, where 80% of their income has come from the BPS—basic payment scheme—payments. They see the proposed changes as being all about preserving a landscape, not about preserving food resilience and their businesses.
Agricultural Transition Plan — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Environment
Anthony Joseph Lloyd (Labour, Centre-left): I very much welcome what the Minister has had to say about the restoration of peatlands, but can he go a little further in terms of the natural environment? Does he guarantee that there will be less use, for example, of phosphates and therefore less phosphate run-off? Does he guarantee that we will see no return to the use of the pernicious neonicotinoids that are so damaging to our pollinators, which are so necessary to our agriculture?
Patrick Finucane: Supreme Court Judgment — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Law and Crime
Anthony Joseph Lloyd (Labour, Centre-left): I very much regret the Secretary of State’s decision; it is the wrong one. I am sure that we will return to a public inquiry in the fullness of time. Does he accept the fact that the decision not to hold a public inquiry looks like the state still determined to protect the state? This was no failure by actors of the state; it was collusion by agents of the state. Of course, the reality is that we still need to find out how far that collusion went. Can the Secretary of State be specific: will the PSNI and ombudsman inquiry have access to the records of the security services? Without that, frankly, their own inquiries will not come to the conclusions that we need to be put into the public domain.
Patrick Finucane: Supreme Court Judgment — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Law and Crime
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour, Centre-left): In 2012, Sir Desmond de Silva QC’s review found that "a series of positive actions by employers of the State that actively furthered and facilitated his murder", yet even that review had serious shortcomings, as identified by the Supreme Court. At long last, the Government must hold a full public inquiry into the murder of lawyer Patrick Finucane, because in direct contravention of what the Secretary of State has just mentioned, the chief constable of the PSNI has said it is "our view that there are currently no new lines of inquiry. We now need to decide if a further review is merited given all the previous investigations into this case." Why is the Secretary of State procrastinating and adding to the heartache and pain of the Finucane family?
Telecommunications (Security) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Technology
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): In principle, I welcome the Bill. Its focus, however, is on kit, hardware and vendors, and that will go some way towards protecting our telecoms systems, but we are also still facing threats from hacking, so making sure we have basic good cyber-hygiene will be just as important as some of these measures we are discussing today.
Telecommunications (Security) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Technology
Joanna Meriel Stevens (Labour, Centre-left): I accept that it is not just an American issue, but it was the right thing for the wrong reasons, essentially. As I say, this political soap opera has been an unnecessary distraction when it comes to the serious matter of extracting high-risk vendors from the network, which has been slow and fragmented.
Telecommunications (Security) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Technology
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): It is worse than that. I know we had the panda-hugging days of Osborne and Cameron, but an ISC report in 2013 raised the issue of critical national infrastructure, with particular reference to Huawei, and nothing was done.
Telecommunications (Security) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Technology
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): Yes. If we were able to see it, at least we would be able to get access to the intelligence that informed it. The DCMS has its own Select Committee, but that Committee does not have the clearance, so I would suggest taking the approach the hon. Gentleman describes. There is a way of doing that. Under the Justice and Security Act 2013, the DCMS does not come under the Intelligence and Security Committee’s remit, but we could change the memorandum of understanding to include this issue. I think that is needed, and I said the same thing on the National Security and Investment Bill On diversity, we would love to have a large number of vendors, but there is a clear issue we have to recognise. People talk about market failure. There has been a market failure because, in terms of Huawei and the Chinese state, there has been a deliberate decision to buy in to a sector. There has also been a tendency among us all, as consumers of telecoms services, to make sure that the rates go down as low as possible. That has led the prices down, so there is no money in the infrastructure at all, which is why companies have got out of the sector There is an area where diversity can come in, and that is open RAN. If the investment goes into that, we could be a world leader, but let us not make the mistakes we have in the past, where we have been a world leader—for example, in fibre technology in the early 1990s—and then gave that lead away On the removal of Huawei from the 5G network, the 2027 deadline needs to be maintained. I am sorry, but I think the Secretary of State is wrong in what he is suggesting. If he does what he suggests, that will add further costs and slow our progress. The equipment that is there now has been through the cyber security centre. We are satisfied that there is no security risk from that equipment, so why rip it out before we have to do so? All that that will do is slow our system down and slow the economic advantages that can come from 5G We have concentrated a lot in the debate on the hardware. Will the Bill somehow make us completely immune from cyber-attack? No, it will not. The other side to this, which is just as important, is to ensure that we educate companies to ensure that they use their systems safely and that upgrades are done on security networks and other things. That is about the basic education of the people who use a mobile phone or any type of computer network. With those concerns, I welcome the Bill as a step forward. Let us see it not just as a way for us to somehow solve all our cyber-problems, because we will not. We still have to be vigilant, and we still have to make sure that our security services have the finance, ability and expertise to respond to the enemies who are attacking us.
Telecommunications (Security) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Technology
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I am not one for doing the Government’s job or supporting them, but I do not think we did that actually, in terms of the Huawei cyber-security evaluation centre. We were ahead of other countries that did not do that, including the United States, and let Huawei into their country networks without any checks whatever. But the issue has to be security. I know that the right hon. Gentleman has strong views about China trade, but security has to be at the heart of things, which I think is where we have been up to now.
Telecommunications (Security) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Technology
Chinyelu Susan Onwurah (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the right hon. Member for that intervention, and indeed for his contribution to the debate. I agree with him, although I think that is something we need to work out and probe in Committee, because currently there is no reference to that, or no plan to do that. I think we should certainly be taking into account and using our existing resources, and we all know that these kinds of resources and skills are both expensive and hard to find at the moment. The right hon. Member makes an important point On 14 July, the Secretary of State, who is not in his place, said in this House that he had "set out a clear and ambitious diversification strategy."—[Official Report, 14 July 2020; Vol. 678, c. 1377.] I asked him repeatedly over the summer when he would publish this clear strategy that he had already set out. Answer came there none, and I could only conclude that he had misspoken. However, I did think that today we would get that strategy, but unfortunately not. Yes, there is actually a diversification strategy, which has been published, but it is neither clear nor ambitious. It is far more concerned with bringing new vendors into the UK than with developing our sovereign technological capability. Indeed, as it diversifies opportunities for Nokia and Ericsson, we could call it an effective Scandinavian industrial strategy. Apart from a vague commitment to link the scale of home-grown suppliers to the Government’s broader growth and productivity agenda, there is no clear plan—no plan at all—to build UK sovereign capabilities, which the right hon. Members for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) and for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) emphasised as being important Just today, Mobile UK, the mobile operators industrial body, emphasised that the Bill and the 5G diversification strategy are intrinsically linked but not, it would appear, by the Government. The diversification strategy also does not refer to fibre, although the Bill applies to our fibre networks too and may impact the Government’s constantly shifting roll-out targets Network operators need to be confident in the maturity, performance, integration and security credentials of new vendors and technologies before they are deployed in their main networks. We agree with the Secretary of State that the Government can help accelerate that process, and in doing so there is potential to create opportunities for the UK to take the lead, as well as much-needed high-skilled jobs. The hon. Members for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Bracknell (James Sunderland) all agreed about the importance of diversification, but all the diversification strategy says about developing UK technology, jobs and capability is that it will be part of the industrial strategy, which we have yet to see. Clearly, we do not have a diversification strategy.
Telecommunications (Security) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Technology
Chinyelu Susan Onwurah (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He is absolutely right. The question of how the diversification strategy delivers home-grown capability and protects that as it grows and strengthens has been avoided As the shadow Secretary of State said, it is important that everyone can benefit from 5G, both in our technological capability and in using it. There is a digital divide in this country: 11 million adults lack one or more basic digital skills and 10% of households do not have internet access. 5G has the potential to increase digital inclusion, providing greater access to broadband. As the hon. Members for West Dorset (Chris Loder) and for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) highlighted, digital technology can be a great leveller, but we need to ensure that the infrastructure and skills base exist for everyone to take advantage of the opportunities it provides. Digital inclusion requires political will, urgent action and a Government who understand the importance of universal digital suffrage. Government interventions on that have been brief—not quite as brief as the intervention of the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) in the debate, but far less eloquent As a chartered engineer, I want to finish by celebrating the potential of 5G, which can truly transform our businesses, our industries and our daily lives. It will not only vastly improve our connectivity and browsing experience but support new enabling technologies, from the internet of things to artificial intelligence. If the first industrial revolution was powered by engines, the fourth will be powered by data. As hon. Members have observed, 5G is essential for innovations from driverless cars to smart cities, and to addressing the climate emergency through monitoring and improving our energy efficiency. Some estimates predict that 5G could mean productivity savings for the UK of up to £6 billion a year on top of energy and waste reductions that internet of things devices could enable We must get this right. As we all agree, our national security is priceless, but until we see a detailed plan, a proper impact assessment and an industrial strategy, the Opposition will remain deeply concerned that the Government are not prepared to make the interventions necessary to ensure that our national security is safeguarded.
Telecommunications (Security) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Technology
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister has introduced the September 2021 date after which no new Huawei or high- risk vendor equipment can go into the networks. What will happen to those companies that perhaps have stock of Huawei equipment or entered into contracts thinking that they could implement them before September 2021 and will now have to be told that they cannot? Would they actually lose a lot of money?
Transition Period: Business — House of Commons, 2020-12-16
Topic: International Affairs
Gerald Jones (Labour, Centre-left): The Government’s failure to get the Brexit deal that they promised means we still have no clue about the terms on which businesses will be trading from January, and we face the very real prospect of a no-deal exit, risking chaos at our ports and shortages of critical goods. As the CBI and others have said all year, businesses cannot be expected to prepare for a no deal Brexit in the middle of a pandemic, so what is the Secretary of State’s message to those Welsh businesses that now face a Brexit cliff edge in just a few days’ time?
Transition Period: Business — House of Commons, 2020-12-16
Topic: Foreign Trade
Anna Rhiannon McMorrin (Labour, Centre-left): I have been speaking to businesses across Cardiff North, and they are doing all they can to protect against the impact of a no deal, but they are deeply worried about supply chain delays, stockpiling and a tariff cliff edge. They are saying that they can put the sandbags down, but that’s it. So will the Secretary of State apologise to the many people in Cardiff North and across the whole country whose jobs and livelihoods he is willing to gamble and play politics with, and tell me whether his Government are preparing to fail or failing to prepare?
Shared Prosperity Fund — House of Commons, 2020-12-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Nia Rhiannon Griffith (Labour, Centre-left): I am not sure whether that is a conclusive answer, but we are now nearly four and a half years on from the referendum and the Government still cannot provide clear answers on funding, so let me ask the Minister about the criteria on which the funding will be allocated. As he knows, the Welsh Government and local councils have agreed a framework for regional investment in Wales, so can he confirm that his Government will support that framework and not ride roughshod over devolved agreements or make up the spending criteria as they go along?
Manufacturing — House of Commons, 2020-12-16
Topic: Macroeconomics
Geraint Richard Davies (Labour, Centre-left): The delays in the Brexit deal, alongside the pandemic, have meant that the Welsh steel industry has been hit hard, Airbus has lost 1,400 jobs, Grenadier cars will be produced in France instead of Wales, and even Brains brewery is up for sale. Will the Secretary of State now press the Chancellor for a sector-specific manufacturing strategy, in the knowledge that only UK Governments can borrow in the long term at low interest rates to secure long-term pre-pandemic production levels after the vaccine is deployed and after the deal is agreed?
Manufacturing — House of Commons, 2020-12-16
Topic: Energy
Mark Richard Tami (Labour, Centre-left): The Shotton steel plant produces some of the finest quality steel products in the world. The Prime Minister has said that UK steel producers will be "at the front of the queue"—[Official Report, 24 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 1311.] when it comes to future infrastructure projects, so will the Government now set targets on procurement? We need action rather than words—all we tend to get from this Government are warm words. Please, do not just blame Europe; can we have a proper answer?
Shared Prosperity Fund — House of Commons, 2020-12-16
Topic: International Affairs
Ruth Lorraine Jones (Labour, Centre-left): Nadolig llawen i chi, Mr Speaker We have heard a lot from the Minister about the shared prosperity fund this morning, but I am still none the wiser on the details. What guarantees can the Minister provide that the long-awaited shared prosperity fund will provide no reduction in moneys received by the Welsh Government compared with current structural funding? What guarantees can the Minister provide that it will be the Welsh Government who decide how the money is allocated in Wales?