argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-02-24
Topic: Law and Crime
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack; as usual, I agreed with one or two of the things he said. I oppose this Bill. For me, it is a panicky little piece of legislation that has come out of two terrible events. It fits the definition of the politician’s syllogism: something must be done—this is something, so it must be done. It is illogical to think that keeping somebody a little longer in prison will solve any of our problems. I suppose that the Government will feel that they can then at least say that they are being tough on terrorism, but that is plainly not true. If they were being tough on terrorism, they would think about what happens to people in prisons, as well as before they go into prison and, very definitely, after they come out. Simply keeping people in prison a little longer is no use if they come out just as dangerous, just as hate-filled and just as angry, or even angrier, as when they went in This Bill will not solve the problems of terror unless the Government sort out proper deradicalisation in prisons. Of course, the severe cuts to prison budgets over the last decade of Conservative austerity cannot have helped improve the quality of supervision in our prisons. Some are now squalid dumps, in which radicalisation can fester rather than be solved. If the easy access to drugs in prison is any parallel, extremism could spread quickly and we will have a serious epidemic. The Government need to take back control of our prisons and put in the resources to solve these complex problems, which cannot be fixed by this Bill. Just talking tough is really not enough The scope and application of the Bill are very important. I have listened to the learned arguments made this afternoon; I hope that the Government have listened to them too and will perhaps take some lessons from them. But I have also been contacted by an animal rights activist who is currently serving a prison sentence and is due for automatic release in the summer. This person was visited by a Prevent officer, who told them that their release date has now been scrapped due to the new legislation going through. I do not believe that this Bill would have that effect; the Prevent officer is either behaving in an oppressive manner or is severely misinformed. Will the Minister please reassure me, and correct this Prevent officer, by making very clear that the legislation will not affect the sentences or early release of non-violent environmental, animal rights and social justice political prisoners It has been an interesting debate but, unfortunately, the present Government are far too arrogant to listen to the wise words that have been said in this Chamber. I deeply regret that and hope that, in the future, perhaps they will think twice about bringing something so panicky to this House.
Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-06-03
Topic: Law and Crime
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): My Lords, Amendment 19 is a very important amendment to probe the Government on what they anticipate the application of Clause 2 will be. I very much enjoyed some of the other contributions today, particular that of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, which was particularly scathing and deserves to be in a newspaper somewhere. I loathe the Government trying to make these power grabs. The idea that they can just extend the concept of a crime is inherently damaging to democracy In particular, the key question that I need the Minister to address is in what circumstances he foresees a private international law agreement creating or amending criminal offences. As I understand it, the Bill and the agreements that it seeks to implement are entirely focused on the resolution of disputes between individual people or companies. Can he tell us what situations would give rise to any criminal liability, as opposed to civil liability? Does he anticipate that we will attach criminal fines and imprisonment to civil disputes? If there are not any good examples, why is this provision contained in the Bill and should your Lordships’ House not amend the Bill exactly in the way proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton?
Agriculture Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-14
Topic: Agriculture
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): My Lords, it is a pleasure finally to get to this group after so many hours of waiting. I commend the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. Again, I say what a pleasure it is to follow her; her contributions are always extremely valuable. Having signed a lot of her amendments, I am afraid that I shall keep saying that. I also commend my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and her Amendment 47. In fact, I support too many of the amendments in this group to list them all. It is a fantastic group, which strikes at the heart of what the Government should be aiming for with their food policy: supporting high-quality, healthy, nutritious food, grown as close to the consumer as possible When I chaired London Food, an initiative of the then mayor Ken Livingstone, I put together a report on how to make food sustainable for a huge conglomeration of cities and large towns. The single most important factor was that food should be local. I love organic food, but local food is the way forward if you want to be truly sustainable, so that food does not move around too much and stays nutritious. We can eat it very quickly after cooking. These amendments recognise the fundamental link between the food we put into our bodies and our resulting health. Too much of our food system remains tied to the World War era mindset of processing as much high-calorie food as possible to meet the most basic nutritional needs of the population. The outcome has been obesity, diabetes and food-related ill health. Good food policy should have health and nutrition as its core principle Sadly, I have not signed Amendment 53 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, or Amendment 63, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. I did not spot them in time, but they are wonderful amendments. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on what the Government plan to do to support urban and community food-growing, which the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has already mentioned in previous amendments. Finally, I turn to my Amendment 46, which would tie public procurement into the Bill. The enormous buying power of the public sector is often overlooked, but it is essential for the transition to a sustainable and ecologically friendly world. Too much procurement goes to the lowest-cost bidder without consideration of social and environmental impacts. My amendment hopes to prompt the Minister to address public procurement and its role in supporting a better food system for the UK.
Universal Credit: Court of Appeal Judgment — House of Lords, 2020-06-29
Topic: Social Welfare
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, the problem has been evident for years, so the Government have yet to explain why they kept fighting to defend this "unlawful" and "unfair" system, in the words of the judge. Crucially, would the Minister accept that whenever you have a conditional payment scheme, some people will unfairly miss out? No system can be "agile and flexible", in her words, to ensure that everyone has a fair, secure payment. Only a universal basic income would do that.
National Minimum Wage (Offshore Employment) (Amendment) Order 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-06-25
Topic: Labor
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, it makes a welcome change to speak in your Lordships’ House on a measure of social progress brought forward by the Government. That is rarely the case and I really hope that we will see more of it. It is also welcome to see the co-operation with unions behind this order. It would be lovely to see more of that, particularly with the teaching unions with regard to Covid-19 and the reopening of schools. I noted that in his comprehensive introduction the noble Viscount referred to semi-skilled and skilled roles being affected by the order. That is quite telling. People who have probably developed their skills through training and experience should see a rise in their wages with the minimum wage. It brings to the fore the way in which in far too many industries the minimum wage has become not a floor but the standard payment for a large number of people I also echo the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, about enforcement. We all know that one prosecution per year in no way reflects the level of failure to comply with the existing minimum wage legislation Like the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I have to focus on the fact that we have a minimum wage but not a living wage. The situation for people under the age of 25 is particularly difficult. They are not paid enough money to live on, and often they are paid a lot less than others over the age of 25 who work beside them and do the same job. The fact is that younger workers have to live too, and any kind of assumption that they can rely on family support instead of decent pay cannot be considered well founded If we are talking about the minimum wage, we need to look at the real living wage, as calculated by the Living Wage Foundation, and at the work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on minimum income standards. In 2019 the JRF concluded that the wage level for a single person is £36 below what is needed for a basic minimum standard, and for a couple working full-time with two children it is £47 a week below what is needed. In the age of Covid-19, we have to focus more and more on resilience, and that has to mean at a foundational level the resilience of households. Households cannot save or deal with shocks if the minimum wage is not a real living wage Finally, we have to look at training more seafarers. A number of noble Lords referred to offshore wind, in particular, and perhaps, in the future, offshore tidal power. We will need to see the necessary training and development of the skills required to work in those areas. We also need to see the necessary skills to carry out research in our oceans, as we very much need to understand the desperate state of our nature crisis and our climate emergency.
Sentencing Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-06-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, in welcoming this Bill, I am guided by the expert voices in your Lordships’ House, particularly those from the Cross Benches. As a relatively new Member of your Lordships’ House, I am well aware of the challenge of coming to terms with the detail and complexity of the fine points of law and lawmaking I particularly want to reflect on the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. He referred to the legislative morass in which this Bill is trying to find some clarity. That legislative morass is not a technical issue but very much a political one, and one on which I hope I can make some useful comments. I go back to the words of the Prison Reform Trust before the 2019 election. It called on party leaders to temper their language with regard to law and order so that sensitive issues of intense public concern were not exploited but were used to contribute to a reasonable and constructive public debate. Far too often, that is not what has happened around law and order issues. Very often we have seen politicians—certainly from the largest parties—competing to appear tough on crime, perhaps with "tough on the causes of crime" added as an afterthought. There have been easy responses to awful events: the creation of a new offence or a knee-jerk promise to increase penalties. Often this is deeply confusing as well as deeply destructive I associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, about the evidence, particularly that around young men and how they are not necessarily in a position to react appropriately and should be managed differently. The fact is that our prison population has quadrupled in the past century, and half that increase has been since 1990. We have the highest rate of imprisonment in western Europe. I do not believe there is any doubt at all that that makes our society worse, for all its members and all its futures I particularly want to take a short moment to focus on the work of a Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, who in 2007 wrote an internationally renowned report on women prisoners. It acknowledged that women prisoners are objectively different as a population. The majority are victims of domestic abuse, 48% committed their offence in relation to someone else’s drug use, half have drug issues themselves and 25% have a problem with alcohol. Then there are the non-offending victims: only 5% of children remain in the family home when their mothers are sent to prison. So there is no doubt that we need sentences to be clear and transparent, but we also need them to be humane.
Food Supply and Security — House of Lords, 2020-05-14
Topic: Agriculture
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for securing this debate and for her comprehensive and deeply sobering introduction. I associate the Green group with all the concerns that she expressed. I do not know whether in recording this debate, Hansard plans to put the phrase "cheap food" in scare quotes, but it certainly should. So-called cheap food is costing us the earth and our health I know that when farmers hear criticism of the food system, they often feel that it is directed at them, but many noble Lords have rightly focused on the over- weening, enormous place of supermarkets in our food distribution system. The National Farmers’ Union has highlighted how farmers get just 6% in the food chain. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, focused on how supermarkets advertise, promote and push highly processed food that is disastrous for our health. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, rightly said that government procurement should look to support local food-growing and distribution systems rather than supermarkets. Here in Sheffield, I have been lucky enough to get great Yorkshire cheese from local suppliers, and just this morning I got a fruit and veg box from a local cafe. These should be supplying schools, hospitals and prisons We also need to think about how food is grown. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, referred to European workers doing the heavy lifting. In a report in the Times, an asparagus grower was quoted as saying, "British workers just won’t do 12 hours a day of back-breaking work". But I think that no one should be asked to do that. That means that we need a different kind of food system: small, market garden, biodiverse crops, which pretty well anyone could work on. That also means that we need reform of our land ownership. We need tens, even hundreds, of thousands of small businesses around our towns and cities, growing healthy food and supporting horticulture, building a different kind of food system that works for people and planet.
Covid-19: Transport — House of Lords, 2020-05-14
Topic: Transportation
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): Something that makes our roads much less safe and will deter people from walking and cycling is extreme speeding, which has been happening increasingly during lockdown. The police in London have enforced more than 5,000 instances of speeding, and some of those speeds—in areas with 20 or 30 mph limits—are incredible. This will deter people. Will the Minister undertake to speak to the traffic police and find out if there is anything the Government can do to ensure stronger enforcement of this offence?
Planning Process: Probity — House of Lords, 2020-06-16
Topic: Government Operations
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, I declare my position as vice-president of the Local Government Association Does the Minister agree that cases such as this, in which the judge found apparent bias and ruled against the Government, fuel fears that the country is not being run for the common good, and that the underlying problem is large private political donations? Is not the only way to protect Ministers to ban large private political donations?
Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-06-16
Topic: Environment
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): My Lords, in view of the time constraints, I will limit my comments to just two issues. The first is that Committee has been limited to an afternoon, which I think is absolutely appalling. It is all in line with the way the Government are reducing Parliament to a series of nods that they think they can control. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Monks, that there are, in fact, two huge gaps in the Bill. The first is the environment, which I spoke about at Second Reading. There is an absence of any thought of protecting our environment, when the Bill could play quite a major role in our transition to a net-zero carbon economy As the noble Lord, Lord Monks, pointed out, the Bill has another major flaw, which is the lack of protection for workers’ interests in this special insolvency scheme. Without these provisions, the Government will just have to hope that already wealthy people will not take advantage of this emergency scheme, but we all know that predatory capitalists use whatever legal loopholes they can to trash our planet, cheat our workers and strip the assets of companies to extract as much cash as possible. I think we will be able to point to today’s Hansard in six months’ time, when the inevitable happens and people are driven out of their livelihoods while bosses and shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank. I look forward to seeing the Government’s new amendments next week and I hope that Report will perhaps show that this Government have a heart.
Coronavirus Bill — House of Lords, 2020-03-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, I support the amendment and I stress, as others have, the extreme urgency in this. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, told us a very moving story about a situation involving an older worker, but I invite the Committee to think about the situation of many young people, who are disproportionately represented in the gig economy in these sorts of roles In London and many other cities, young people live in shared households. There may be four, five or six people, each with one bedroom, probably not even with a living room, because what was once a living room is now a bedroom. What happens in that household when most people cannot pay the rent? What strains will there be in that household as people struggle to get by, with the most basic cooking facilities and the smallest amount of space? One can imagine the difficulties such people will be in. They need to be rescued, to know that they have security now, and that will give stability and certainty As many other noble Lords have stressed, this would ensure that that person would not have to continue to operate as a courier for food travelling around the country—I am trying not to mention a brand name—or as a care worker or in any other of the roles they might be fulfilling. This is in the interests of everybody’s health, but also in the interests of people who do not have, as some in this situation will, the bank of mum and dad to rely on. It is those young people who do not have the bank of mum and dad that we really have to help.
Coronavirus Bill — House of Lords, 2020-03-25
Topic: Social Welfare
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): Government figures say that there have been 477,000 new universal credit claims in the past nine days, and social media is full of accounts of some 30,000 or 40,000 people being in the queue just to apply. What steps will be taken to ensure that everyone can get access to the provisions to which the Minister has referred?
Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) (Amendment) Order 2019 — House of Lords, 2020-02-25
Topic: Energy
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): That this House regrets that the Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) (Amendment) Order 2019 (SI 2019/1441) fails to provide public funding for energy efficiency paid out of general taxation, continues a regressive system which disproportionally increases energy costs for fuel poor households, and does not grant sufficient funding to bring all domestic properties up to modern standards of fuel efficiency Relevant document: 2nd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)
Pension Schemes Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-06-30
Topic: Labor
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): I thank your Lordships’ House for allowing me to speak. I apologise for the earlier confusion. I also apologise in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for upsetting the rhythm of his speech. I thank him and other noble Lords for providing an introduction to Amendment 33. I must pay tribute to the campaign group ShareAction, which has done a lot of work on the amendment. I know that it has informed other noble Lords about it I moved the amendment in Committee. In response, the Minister pointed to the consultation on the future of trusteeship, which concluded that, due to a lack of consensus on how to address the issue, it would look at setting up, and is setting up, an industry working group to look at the diversity of pension boards. While this is welcome, we need the data to inform that work. I ask the Minister to consider incorporating this into future versions of the Bill A further development has happened since we last debated the Bill. There has of course been a great upswelling of frustration and understandable anger, represented by the Black Lives Matters movement. The issue of ensuring that all voices in our society are heard and have decision-making powers is particularly pressing. I urge Members of your Lordships’ House to consider it In response to the amendment in Committee, the Minister stressed that she wanted the pensions dashboard to focus on the provision of basic information. That is why the amendment has been amended so that it does not refer to this information being on the pensions dashboard, but rather that it would simply be reported. Information on diversity could be published elsewhere. That might be on the Pensions Regulator’s website, or as an annexe to its planned SIP repository Other noble Lords have referred to the level of inequality in our society and the lack of diversity. I will finish by reflecting on what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, and the fact that a 2016 survey showed that on average 83% of pension boards are male and that a quarter are all male. That reflects another crucial disparity: we all know that there is a very large pay gap between men and women, but the pensions pay gap, at 40%, is double the pay gap. These inequalities have to be tackled in our society along with levels of inequality and poverty. We have had a lot of discussions about intergenerational fairness, but we must not forget that there are already a lot of people at pension age now who really are struggling to get by in this difficult world I thank your Lordships’ House for the debate that we have had thus far and I look forward to further debates.