argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-01-13
Topic: Defense
Michael Morris (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I want to speak briefly to Amendments 12, 13 and 14. In relation to the first, I have recently done some research on military national service, introduced by a Labour Government with the support of a Conservative and Liberal Opposition in 1947 and lasting for just over 10 years. This recruited at age 18 young men to serve in the forces and possibly to face death. There was an element in that Act which allowed 17 and a half year-olds to be recruited, so it was not a carte blanche cut-off at 18; it actually started at 17 and a half Against that background, it seems to me—it is quite a long time ago now, but I was one of those who did my national service—today’s young people are certainly more experienced than we were at that age. Also, there is this great move afoot to give 16 year-olds the vote. That is a conundrum, is it not? If that were to happen—Scotland is in the lead on that—are those who get the vote at 16 still children or are they adults? For my money, on Amendment 13, there should be a cut-off age of 18, but subject to particular exceptions.
Trident: Test Firing — House of Commons, 2017-01-23
Topic: Defense
Vernon Coaker (Labour, Centre-left): I am a supporter of the deterrent, but does the Secretary of State not understand that a leak to a Sunday newspaper, followed by, frankly, Government stonewalling, does not enhance support for the deterrent, but undermines it?
Trident: Test Firing — House of Commons, 2017-01-23
Topic: Defense
Ruth Smeeth (Labour, Centre-left): There is now a question about the effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent—[Interruption.] There is in terms of what is in the papers. That in itself undermines our national security. We need to send a clear message that our deterrent is still able to do its job. I urge the Secretary of State to accept the invitation of the Chair of the Defence Committee and appear before it to reassure us and the House that our deterrent is fit for purpose.
House Committee — House of Lords, 2016-07-21
Topic: Culture
Diana Margaret Maddock (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): As chairman of the Works of Art Committee, I wish to make one or two comments. During the process that put together what we are debating and trying to agree today, I took part in explaining what we do and how we should go forward, given the changed status. I wish to express my disappointment that nobody came to me when the final decision was made about what would be in the proposals. I had to find out myself, and it was quite difficult because it was the week before the final Works of Art Committee meeting. I wish to put that on record Having said that, I am also concerned that I have had no discussions with anybody about how we will hand over and the transition—the status is quite different—so that the work we have been doing to protect the heritage of our House carries on. No consideration has been given—at least nobody has told me—as to how that transition will go. It is not that I disagree with what is there, but I am disappointed about how it has affected me as chairman of the Works of Art Committee.
Trident: Test Firing — House of Commons, 2017-01-23
Topic: Defense
Mary Helen Creagh (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State has advised us not to believe everything we read in the Sunday newspapers, but should we believe the Whitehouse official who, while we have been debating, has confirmed to CNN that the missile did auto-self-destruct off the coast of Florida? If that is the case, why are the British Parliament and the British public the last to know about it?
Trident: Test Firing — House of Commons, 2017-01-23
Topic: Defense
Dennis Edward Skinner (Labour, Centre-left): How can this be an independent nuclear deterrent if Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America—a man who is as thick as two short planks—is given the information, but nobody on the Opposition Benches is allowed to see it?
Trident: Test Firing — House of Commons, 2017-01-23
Topic: Defense
David Julian Winnick (Labour, Centre-left): Does not the Secretary of State realise that just because the Trident programme was approved by the House as a whole, that does not mean that thereafter there should be total silence from either Members of Parliament or the media? As far as the failed test is concerned, is it not ironic that if the information had been given at the time and there had been no cover-up, there would be far less publicity, and far less of a row, than there is now? The Government should learn from that.
Trident: Test Firing — House of Commons, 2017-01-23
Topic: Defense
Kevin Denis Brennan (Labour, Centre-left): Does not the Secretary of State’s characteristic "Name, rank and serial number—don’t tell him, Pike" approach actually make no sense at all given that, following the reports we have had, our American counterparts in Congress will certainly be given full details of what happened in the test? Does not his stonewalling do nothing to strengthen our security and everything to undermine the credibility of this House?
Trident: Test Firing — House of Commons, 2017-01-23
Topic: Defense
Stephen John Doughty (Labour, Centre-left): The Prime Minister is ultimately responsible for our deterrent, but yet again she is not here to account to Parliament or to reassure the public and our allies The Secretary of State has now been asked eight times who knew what when. On what date was the Prime Minister told, on what date was the former Prime Minister told, and on what date was the Secretary of State told? I am not asking for operational details; I am asking for dates.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-12-15
Topic: Health
Dale Norman Campbell-Savours (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, can I return to the issue of masks, which I have been pushing since February? With London in lockdown, a new variant and the prospect of an explosion in transmission in the new year, why not, in this rapidly developing crisis, adopt a vigorous belt-and-braces approach, follow worldwide mandatory practice and require mask wearing in all public places outside the home? Why not ban the use of valved masks, apart from in clinical settings? They protect only the wearer. Now is the time for really tough decisions; there is a big crisis that confronts us.
Local Government Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-23
Topic: Health
Gareth Thomas (Labour, Centre-left): In the consultation paper that they published last year, the Government, suggested that attendance allowance might be passed down to local government—I am glad that that is not happening—and that the £3 billion public health grant, and the better care fund that is so crucial to local authorities that face a social care funding crisis, would be axed as part of the fiscal quid pro quo applying to business rates devolution. Is that still the Minister’s intention?
Brexit: Foreign and Security Policy Co-operation — House of Lords, 2016-10-20
Topic: Defense
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I thank noble Lords for taking part in this debate. The debate demonstrates how far Parliament needs to be allowed to ask questions about the implications of Brexit in one area after another. Unless one takes the Bernard Jenkin approach to Brexit, which is that we simply abrogate unilaterally all our obligations and re-establish absolute British sovereignty, the simple decision to leave has all sorts of knock-on effects. If we wish to continue to be engaged in co-operation with our neighbours, we have to work out ways to do so Some of those here are just old enough to remember a very odd organisation called the Western European Union in the 1950s and 1960s, which the British did our utmost to keep alive when it served virtually no other purpose than that it was the one area in which we could discuss security and defence policy with the then six members of the European Union. We are going to have to try to invent things like that again. I recall talking in strong terms to a senior official who was the British permanent representative to the WEU, who told me that his major objective was to abolish it so that he did not have to go to the meetings Leaving the EU has real costs in terms of influence and access. Those who say we can simply go back to the Common Market that we had in the 1970s simply do not appreciate how much more complicated the international agenda has become. We did not have cyberattacks in the 1970s because we did not have computers. Heathrow was a relatively small airport in those days because people did not travel so much. The extent to which the world has become so much more interconnected, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, reminds us so regularly, requires this sort of complicated response I say to the Minister that the complacency with which the Government insist that we are the largest spender on defence in Europe will not survive a further fall in the value of the pound. We spend money on defence in pounds but buy defence equipment largely in dollars, and that is going to get harder and harder as we go on. I expect part of the trigger for the next SDSR will be that we are running into another spending gap in our defence budget and are forced yet again to cut So there is a great deal more to discuss, and we will need to return to this topic. Few of us are yet persuaded that the Government have begun to have answers to some of the questions we have raised, and they need to develop them before they trigger Article 50.
Covid-19 Vaccines Deployment — House of Lords, 2021-02-11
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I do hear the noble Baroness and I would be happy to look into this matter further. However, my understanding is that the vaccination rates among care home staff are much higher than she describes. It is not unusual for care home staff to have their health provided for by the local NHS, and for them to be required to travel to receive that support. That is quite normal for anyone getting a vaccine, even if they work in social care. It is entirely in our interests to make sure that social care staff are vaccinated, so there is no way that there is any kind of policy or deliberate effort to avoid vaccinating care home staff. However, I will be glad to look into this further and, if I may, I will copy the noble Baroness into the correspondence that will clearly result from this debate.
Covid-19 Vaccines Deployment — House of Lords, 2021-02-11
Topic: Health
Michael Farmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, having vaccinated the vulnerable tiers, at what level do we revert to normal, bearing in mind, first, that the remaining population is highly unlikely to require hospitalisation or to die from Covid; and, secondly, the mental health stresses which are starting to unravel our social fabric? On that note, do any members of SAGE have recognised expertise in mental health, so that their advice is weighted to this consideration as well as to others?
Armed Forces Covenant — House of Commons, 2017-03-13
Topic: Defense
Holly Jamie Walker-Lynch (Labour, Centre-left): Some amazing work is undertaken by the British Legion and other charities in my constituency and across the UK, but the head of SSAFA, the Armed Forces Charity, has recently warned that the "Armed Forces Covenant lacks bite". Many local authorities seem to feel that complying with the covenant is an option rather than an obligation. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to reinforce the message of just how essential the covenant is?
Royal Navy — House of Commons, 2017-03-13
Topic: Defense
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I am not sure whether the Minister mentioned this, but one of the Royal Navy’s key roles is to meet NATO commitments to protect not just this country but our allies. In that context, will he say whether the new Type 31 frigate will actually be able to meet those NATO commitments?
Daesh — House of Commons, 2017-03-13
Topic: Defense
Questions: Independent monitors report that this month, in the space of one week, the international coalition killed as many as 370 civilians in air strikes in Mosul. Has the Secretary of State investigated those claims, and what assurances can he give us that UK air strikes will not involve civilian deaths in Mosul?
Ruth Smeeth (Labour, Centre-left): We have obviously seen significant success in Mosul in recent months, and I am sure that the whole House joins me in sending our prayers and gratitude to those serving in our forces, but can you tell us what lessons we are learning from our success in Mosul, so that we can apply them effectively to the battle in Raqqa?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2021-02-04
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the noble Lord alludes with characteristic insight to one of the great frustrations and mysteries of Covid. It seems to me, a lay person and a neophyte in this area, that understanding the body’s immune response to something as simple as a virus such as Covid should be straightforward, but it is one of the unlocked mysteries of Covid. We are working extremely hard to unlock the mystery of it all. We have invested a huge amount in immunology and the detection of antibodies in the British public. I pay tribute to the UK Biobank study, a massive survey which has been going on for six months. It has found that 8.8% of the UK population had been infected by December 2020; 40% of them did not have a single classic symptom of Covid, and a quarter of those with antibodies were completely asymptomatic. We are doing other assessments as well—through the ONS, REACT, blood donors, the RCGP and others—and I would be very pleased to meet Professor Akbar to discuss this work further.
Closure of MOD Sites — House of Commons, 2017-03-13
Topic: Defense
Questions: What assessment he has made of the economic and social effect on local communities of proposals in the defence estate review for the closure of Ministry of Defence sites.
Rachael Helen Maskell (Labour, Centre-left): "A Better Defence Estate" will result in more than 500 civilian and contractor jobs lost in York, where the local economy is already struggling with low wages and job losses. Why is the Minister not following joint service publication 507, which determines that an economic and social impact assessment has to take place first? Will he work across Government to ensure that we can secure jobs in York?
Vanguard-class Life Extension Programme — House of Commons, 2019-01-14
Topic: Defense
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): But I am afraid to say that, as the misery of the modernising defence programme has shown all of us, the Secretary of State’s Department has much less latitude with large projects than he would like. With the nuclear project sucking up money, as he has just mentioned, from all other lines of spending, how long will it be before this overpriced nuclear weapons programme gets within sight of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury’s white elephant hunt across the Government?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2021-02-04
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord is entirely right to raise this issue. There is the awful possibility that the mutant vaccine escape virus could get around the vaccine altogether. We need a plan B, which might be dependent on antivirals as an alternative way of managing the disease. That is what happened with HIV, as we discussed last week. The therapeutic taskforce is looking at antivirals and putting together a plan to upscale our investment in that area. I am aware of Synairgen and ACTIV-2, but he is entirely right that this should now be a greater priority. I will take the matter back for the department to look into further.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2021-02-04
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I pay immense tribute to the test and trace system, which, at 11 am, published remarkable performance figures, as the noble Lord probably knows; 92% of tests were turned around before the next day, and 86% of contacts were traced. This is an incredible performance. On his specific point, the creation of a variant-of-concern tracing group that is targeted at those rare appearances of VOCs in the community is the important development that we have put in place in reaction to the mutant variants. I pay tribute to Steve McManus, who is running that programme, for the impact that he has already made on the problem.
Doctors and Nurses — House of Commons, 2017-07-04
Topic: Health
John Derek Twigg (Labour, Centre-left): According to the latest NHS indicators published by the House of Commons Library last week, the number of GPs is estimated to have fallen over the past 12 months, and the figures for March 2017 are expected to show a further fall. Why is that?
Doctors and Nurses — House of Commons, 2017-07-04
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I want to talk about the spending plans for 2017, in which the Secretary of State can find £1 billion for Northern Ireland, but nothing for nurses in England. Would it not be fairer not to go ahead with further cuts to corporation tax, and to put that money towards giving our doctors and nurses a fair pay rise?
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Defense
Andrew Egan Henderson Hendry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend might recall the family who ran the village shop in Laggan in the highlands, the Zielsdorfs. The shop they ran was a vital component of the community and well loved by the community, but they were deported to Canada by this Government under the current rules. Does my hon. Friend also agree that even under the current rules the Government cannot even support our armed services personnel to be put together with their families, as raised by me in Prime Minister’s questions this week in the case of Denis Omondi and Ann in Kenya?
General Practitioners — House of Commons, 2017-07-04
Topic: Health
Bridget Maeve Phillipson (Labour, Centre-left): In recent years, the number of family doctors in Sunderland has plummeted. All the evidence shows that doctors are more likely to stay in the areas where they have trained. Does the Minister accept that new medical school places should be created in areas such as Sunderland, where there is the greatest need to recruit and retain general practitioners?
Nursing — House of Commons, 2017-07-04
Topic: Health
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): The fact is that when the Government chose to charge students record levels of tuition fees and scrap their NHS bursary, the Secretary of State and his Ministers were warned that that would lead to a fall in the number of applications, and what has happened since then? The number of applications for nursing degrees has fallen by 23%. Given that the Secretary of State has already acknowledged that we cannot continue our over-reliance on EU staff following Brexit, when will Ministers understand that the biggest challenge facing nursing recruitment is not our policy on the EU, but the Government’s own health policies?
Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-06-28
Topic: Culture
Rupert Bertram Mitford (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, while I support the idea of changing international law, we have waited 60 years for this treaty to be ratified by the Government and if we had to wait for the same period of time for the convention—if it happened tomorrow—I would be about 120. So I think it is a wonderful idea to come forward, and of course the irony is not lost that we are talking about ratifying one treaty while of course most of the thoughts in this place are about another treaty I will ask the Minister one thing on the specific problem of the situation whereby much of the cultural heritage being targeted by non-state groups happens in areas we know are destabilised already—and of course, the formation of the cultural protection fund is a way of actually protecting some of those issues. But could the Minister say what proactive measures are put in place in the formation of the cultural protection fund to make sure that culture we know is under threat is being protected? Of course, we discussed digital archives. One wonderful way of doing it is digitally archiving all the archives around the world or helping museums to protect their archives. Of course, as in the case of the museum in Baghdad, that was a problem in itself because they wanted to loot the archive to find out what they could steal. That of course is an issue that will come forward and while we are in the position of forming the cultural protection fund, I very much hope that the Minister can give some indication that we will be taking the issue of pre-emptive knowledge very seriously, rather than trying to reconstruct what has been destroyed.
Carrier Strike Group Deployment — House of Lords, 2021-04-28
Topic: Defense
Annabel Goldie (Conservative, Centre-right): First, I say to the noble Lord that his youthful demeanour belies that he was commanding this impressive operation—I think it was Ocean Wave—in 1997. I am grateful to him for powerfully encapsulating the potential that a carrier strike group has. He made the point extremely well As the noble Lord is aware, we have a shipbuilding programme in place; he and I have exchanged views on that in the Chamber. I think it is a healthy programme; I detected from a meeting this morning that it has excited Navy Command and people there feel a sense of purpose and anticipation. I am delighted about that, because, as the noble Lord would agree, morale within our Armed Forces is very important. So I am pleased to confirm that. On the fleet solid support ships, the noble Lord will probably be aware this is at a critical stage of contract progress, where consideration will be given to the award of a contract. I am constricted in what I can say about that, but he will know that the Secretary of State has been clear about his desire to proceed with augmenting the solid support ship fleet, and I anticipate we may be able to disclose more on that front in the not too distant future.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2017-07-04
Topic: Health
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In his final speech in the House, the former right hon. Member for Leigh made the very compelling case that there was evidence for criminal acts having taken place during the contaminated blood scandal, which was of course the biggest treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. Given that the criminal acts that, allegedly, took place are set out on the front page of today’s Daily Mail, is it appropriate for the Secretary of State for Health to come to the House and say what action he intends to take? The former right hon. Member for Leigh asked the Secretary of State to indicate whether he was minded to set up a public inquiry into what happened, and said that if that did not take place, he would notify the police of the evidence he had in his possession. Mr Speaker, have you had any indication from the Secretary of State for Health about whether he intends to come to the House to make such a statement?
Department of Health: Funding — House of Commons, 2017-02-28
Topic: Health
Peter Christopher Dowd (Labour, Centre-left): The Chair of the Treasury Select Committee is absolutely spot on. If the Chancellor does discuss with the Department of Health any increase in levels of funding, will he point the Health Secretary in the direction of the Public Accounts Committee report, which says that he should stop "plundering" NHS funds? In particular, it asks him to stop his "repeated raids" on NHS capital funds, with £950 million having been taken out of £4.5 billion.