argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Civil Rights
Lucy Allan (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point Many Members represent constituencies with a high level of unregistered voters, but the Boundary Commission is not prepared to take them into consideration. Very often, those in most need of representation are not registered to vote. I normally have my constituency surgeries on a Friday—I feel passionately that I should be here today to represent my constituents’ interests—and my time in surgery will, very often, be devoted to those who are not registered to vote. No one is suggesting that we, as elected representatives, should ignore their voice. No one is suggesting that we should not allow them to come to our surgeries. It is a fundamental principle that they are included in the whole process. These people count, we represent them, and we have an absolute duty to make sure they are considered For all the consultation, no changes have been made in my constituency—or in many others—to reflect the points that have been raised. There needs to be more flexibility and discretion if the reforms are to achieve their objective. I would support the Government if their objectives were to be achieved through this process. We need a process that has integrity and can be relied on to achieve what we all hope for in terms of democracy.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Civil Rights
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right, but I do not want to dilate too much on the other place as I am still pursuing the first argument that the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton made in favour of his Bill The second part of the hon. Gentleman’s first argument, which dealt with trust in politics, was about the size of constituencies. He was talking about their geographical size. We obviously represent physical parts of the country, but it is the people in those constituencies that we represent, not the spaces. My hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) agreed with his proposition that we should have seats of broadly equal numbers of constituents, because it is only then that the weight of those constituents’ views can be broadly the same across the country. That proposition was espoused by the Chartists many years ago We obviously do not want exact electoral equality between constituencies, because we have to take into account other important factors, which I will say more about in a moment, but we need to have broad equality. When we brought forward the original legislation, we set a range of +/-5%, which means that the number of constituents could vary by 10%. I want to give the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton some credit here. The former Member Pat Glass brought forward a similar Bill almost a year ago—this is a sort of anniversary of Labour’s attempt to go backwards in terms of sensible boundaries—and she set a range of +/-10%, which would have given a 20% variance. I welcome the fact that the hon. Gentleman thought that that was too big and has reduced the range to +/-7.5%, giving a 15% variance. That is of course welcome; when someone moves in your direction, it would be churlish not to give him credit for doing so We need to stick fairly rigidly to broad equality, but boundary commissions can take into account a number of other factors. My constituency neighbour across the water, the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew), seemed to suggest that boundary commissions could not take into account any of those considerations. He talked about those things being swept away completely. It is worth going back to the legislation, which makes it clear that they have to stick to the rule about broad equality but can take into account special geographical considerations, local government boundaries, boundaries of existing constituencies, any local ties and any inconveniences attached to them. They can take all those factors into account Obviously, we are not talking today about the specific proposals brought forward by the boundary commissions, but I have taken a cursory look at the changes that they have made. It is clear from the evidence they have taken, and the changes they made between their initial proposals and their subsequent proposals, that many local people made clear representations about the factors I have just set out. The boundary commissioners listened to those concerns and made significant changes as a result.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Bernard Christison Jenkin (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend inadvertently says that the registers would be 22 years old, but he meant to say that the boundaries will be based on registers that are 22 years old. The registers will actually be completely up to date.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Housing
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): If we look at the existing range of constituency sizes—excluding the small protected island constituencies—we see that some Members represent mainland constituencies with perhaps only 40,000 electors, but others represent constituencies with nearly 100,000 voters. They seem to manage perfectly well, so I do not think that we will find things enormously challenging. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) is in the Chamber. Her constituency is one of the largest in the country by population, and she does a fantastic job of representing her constituents in this House. Her local authority is seeking significant planning permission for house building to deal with the housing crisis, which means that her constituency numbers will grow considerably I have talked about the size of this lower House, and we represent relatively few people compared with legislators in comparable lower Houses. It would therefore not be impossible for us to have slightly more constituents each, on average, than at present.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Other
Wendy Morton (Conservative, Centre-right): I am another west midlands MP with a very small constituency, and it might be worth the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) recognising that we also have the west midlands Mayor, Andy Street. We are very used to working together across boundaries.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Civil Rights
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): No. I accept that some people may not be able to use the electronic method, but they are of course able to register in the traditional way. I think I am right in saying, although the Minister will be able to confirm this, that many local authorities go to considerable lengths to make sure people who might be disadvantaged are registered to vote. I know many local authorities make great efforts to make sure homeless people are registered. Under the law those local authorities have a duty to get as many people legitimately registered as possible That bring us to the other part of the argument, because the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr said that people disappeared from the register. Yes, they did, because the registration process does two things. It deals not only with making sure the register is as complete as possible, so that everyone who is entitled to vote is on it, but with making sure that it is accurate and that only those people who are eligible to vote are on it. Many of the people who left the register when we introduced the new voter registration system were, in a sense, not really people at all. Many of them were people who were no longer in those constituencies and should no longer have been registered to vote but had not been removed from the register, and some of them were no longer alive and that had not been taken into account On accuracy, I also come back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex about how up to date the register is, as the other thing to remember is that the current boundaries are based on electoral registers from 2000. So however imperfect the current process may be, if we do not get this review done and have the boundaries implemented, Members are saying that they are comfortable for seats to be drawn on the basis of registers from 2000. That means that at the next election we would have the absurdity of people voting who were not alive when the registers on which the seats were founded were put together. That is absurd and it needs to be changed.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Civil Rights
Kevin John Foster (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend made some interesting points about the registration process. Does he agree that it is bizarre to be hearing in the 21st century arguments that electoral registrations should still be based on a concept of male heads of households formed in the 19th century, as the old system was?
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Civil Rights
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. We had an argument about this at the time, and the concept that the head of household, who was invariably the man, should be responsible for registering people was rather out of date. Putting that responsibility on individuals is an improvement. As I said, all the evidence suggests, and the fact that a lot of people registered to vote in the referendum demonstrates, that this is not a difficult process. It is straightforward. The online registration system is much easier The only significant Electoral Commission recommendation—the Minister ought to reflect on this point—related to the problem that in the current system it is not easy for people to check electronically that they are already registered. A significant proportion of the people who tried to get registered for the general election were already registered and these were duplicate registrations. That puts a burden on electoral registration officers at a very busy time, and there would be some sense in our reflecting on whether we can improve the online system to deal with that.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Housing
Gregory Knight (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my right hon. Friend agree that the longer this boundary review is delayed without being implemented, the greater the unfairness becomes, particularly with regard to rural seats, which, in the main, have seen a large increase in population?
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend makes a good point. We are not carrying out this process at a massively fast pace, and the boundary changes should have come into force some time ago, but there was an unholy alliance between the official Opposition and the Liberal Democrats. I do not see any Liberal Democrats here today, which is surprising, because they are normally fascinated beyond all bounds of reasonableness with constitutional matters. As this Bill is of a constitutional nature, I am amazed that there is not a single Liberal Democrat here to debate it. I worked closely with them in the coalition Government—
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Civil Rights
Michelle Emma May Elizabeth Donelan (Conservative, Centre-right): I am a little concerned that we are getting off the important topic under discussion—I would like to get back to it. The hon. Gentleman said that he wants to make votes count much more. Does he concede that the equalisation of constituencies would do that?
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. It is very good of the hon. Gentleman to sit down when I rise to my feet. He is an extremely experienced and dextrous parliamentarian, and I was going to say to him, politely, that he has started his speech "broadly"—let me put it like that—and he cannot be accused of having attended too closely to the specifics of the measure before us. I feel sure that he will now apply his scholarly cranium with laser-like intensity to the matter before us, rather than to the matter that he might wish were before us.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Civil Rights
Victoria Mary Boswell Prentis (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and he makes the point I was going on to make: while we do not, of course, agree with everything in the people’s charter—for example, it provides only for votes for men, and Conservative Members are passionately in favour of votes for women—we do adopt the more far-reaching ideas in it, and we believe very firmly that votes must count equally.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Victoria Mary Boswell Prentis (Conservative, Centre-right): I think I had better make progress for a minute The independent Committee on Standards in Public Life also endorsed the idea of fairness of votes for our constituents in 2007. One vote, one value must be a vital democratic principle. To make that happen, boundary reform was a key pledge in the manifesto on which I stood in 2015 and again in 2017. The Boundary Commission is already well on its way to making that a reality. It has been working hard on drawing up proposals, consulting, analysing responses and revising its plans. My own association, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), has taken considerable time and effort to engage with the Boundary Commission’s recommendations, to gauge the thoughts of constituents and to draw up responses While my constituency, under the new proposals, will remain one of the largest in the country—I think it will still be the fourth largest—I will lose a chunk of my electorate as it drops to 78,250. Just as a parent loves all their children equally, I of course love all the areas I represent equally—I would be sad to lose any of them. I could no more choose between Hook Norton and Finmere than I could between my daughters, but my belief in democracy is stronger. Ensuring fair representation and that a vote in north Oxfordshire counts the same as it does anywhere else is extremely important to me.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): I am most interested in the autobiographical details of the hon. Gentleman, with which I was personally familiar, not least on account of the whereabouts of members of his family—my illustrious constituents—but other Members are not so fortunate.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for his courtesy in giving me advance notice of his intention to raise it. It was at least in part—I say this in a non-pejorative sense—a rhetorical inquiry. I think that I can say safely, without fear of contradiction—again, non-pejoratively—that he was, on the whole, more interested in what he had to say to me than in anything that I might have to say to him Nevertheless, in so far as the hon. Gentleman is genuinely seeking advice—I think that, to an extent, he is—my response is as follows. I appreciate that it is deeply annoying for right hon. and hon. Members if the Department in question transfers their oral question and they therefore lose their slot at Question Time. The Table Office does its best—it always has done in my 20 years’ experience in this place—to advise Members on departmental responsibilities, but ultimately it is for the Government to determine how responsibilities are divided among Ministers and which Department should answer a particular question. I am therefore afraid that it would not be appropriate for me to reinstate the transferred oral. I am advised that the hon. Gentleman might be able to use his ingenuity to find an orderly way to raise his concerns at Question Time on Monday. It will, of course, be open to him to seek to do so, if he is speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, and the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) may, for example—I speak hypothetically—seek to air her concerns at topical questions. If she seeks to catch my eye, she may be successful, and if she were successful, any attempt to thwart her would have been thwarted.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Other
Huw William Merriman (Conservative, Centre-right): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is the first point of order I have made, but I was so taken aback by this that I felt I should do so. The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) referred to peers as vermin in ermine, and I have confirmed that with Front Benchers. I seek your advice as to whether that was unbecoming of this place.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): The short answer to the hon. Gentleman is that it most certainly was unbecoming of this place and of the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden). It was said—as far as I can imagine, because I did not hear it—sotto voce. If it was muttered inaudibly by accident I am, frankly, surprised, because in the short time that the hon. Gentleman has been a Member of this place, I have always thought him an articulate fellow who speaks lucidly in terms that are readily audible and intelligible. If, on the other hand, it was a deliberate ruse to blurt these words out in a manner intended not to be heard, but nevertheless to be incorporated in the Official Report, that is unworthy of somebody with the budding aspirations and potential stature of the hon. Gentleman. I hope he will not resort to such a tactic again. We should, seriously, treat each other in this place with basic courtesy. In referring to Members of the other place, it is not appropriate to make that comparison or to draw that analogy. We will leave it there for now.
Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Other
Kevin John Foster (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to be called to speak on Second Reading. It will come as no surprise to those who follow my contributions in this House that this is exactly the sort of Bill that I like to be here to support on a Friday. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) has picked up the Bill, following on from the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Ms McVey), and introduced it, having been lucky in the ballot. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), I had a private Member’s Bill passed in the last Session and came to watch the doffing of caps as it received its Royal Assent. It is always good to see people coming forward with ideas, and it is a reminder that Back Benchers can make a difference in this place.
Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Other
Wendy Morton (Conservative, Centre-right): On Back Benchers introducing legislation, does my hon. Friend agree that sometimes what seems like a small piece of legislation—often just one or two clauses—can make a big difference? I believe this Bill will do that.
Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. That most peculiar noise is not reminiscent of any mobile phone known to me. [Interruption.] It is an extraordinary pinging sound that should be discontinued. I suppose it shows the breadth and diversity of mobile phone noises. I hope the problem has now been addressed.
Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Other
Kevin John Foster (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is ironic that that would happen in this of all debates—we have a debate on where it is inappropriate for a mobile phone to be used being interrupted by a mobile phone left on the Benches. I suspect the Member whose phone it is will find the Deputy Chief Whip of our party wanting to talk to them about her views on where mobile phones are not appropriate. It is not just in jails, but in the Chamber.
Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Mixed Topics
Miriam Jane Alice Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I would like to help the debate and my hon. Friend. I believe that was a signal displaying that a phone has been lost, allowing it to be found by the person looking for it. This highlights just how technically able these phones can be—we may not know how capable they are.
Principal Local Authorities (Grounds for Abolition) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-01
Topic: Housing
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not, actually, because I have only one more minute to go This is analogous to the EU referendum. We wished to take back control over our national democracy, so why should we wish to take away from local people and their local councils the right to decide their own future and therefore potentially force them to surrender valuable assets and control over vital services such as planning, the allocation of housing and so on? During the Adjournment debate to which I referred, the Minister said that those were very important matters I will not be able to finish my speech today, but I hope that there will be an opportunity for the debate to be adjourned until a time when, with any luck, the need for it will have evaporated.
Leaving the EU: Defence Co-operation — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): Our foreign policy, defence and development paper set out our ambition for a strong partnership when we leave the European Union. We are unconditionally committed to European security, and we will work closely with our European partners to defend our shared values and to confront shared threats. Our long-standing commitment to NATO nuclear deterrence remains the ultimate guarantee of our security.
Leaving the EU: Defence Co-operation — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: Housing
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): We are looking again at a large number of the airfields that we are not making full use of at the moment to determine whether they can be released for other use in a number of parts of this country, which would give us an opportunity for the new housing that we need. The Royal Marine base at Condor is part of that review, and I have said that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East, who is responsible for basing, is very happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman and to the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) about the future development of that airfield.
Leaving the EU: Defence Co-operation — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: Other
John Luther Mercer (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my right hon. Friend agree that Members all have a responsibility when it comes to speculation? We could speculate about anything at all, but we are talking about people’s lives and jobs, so we should base our debate around facts, not a political agenda.
Defence Funding — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): I note that the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) appears to be powered by wires. If he is subject to some sort of exterior propulsion, he may be setting a precedent for Chairs of Select Committees. We are very grateful to the hon. Gentleman, I feel sure—his attire will be closely followed in the future.