argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. The short answer to him is no: I have received no indication that a Minister has any plan to come to the Chamber today. But I have known the hon. Gentleman a long time, and he is nothing if not a persistent woodpecker—that is a compliment—so my very strong hunch is that he will be in his place on Monday, using such devices as are available to him to try to secure the presence of a Minister to answer on this important matter. Meanwhile, I hope the hon. Gentleman has an enjoyable, and moderately restful, weekend.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Other
David Thomas Charles Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): May I also put on record my support for this Bill, and for what the hon. Lady is saying? Does she agree that it is not enough just to pass legislation? We must also enforce it, which has been somewhat lacking over the last few years?
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Civil Rights
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): May I commend the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) for introducing the Bill and for the typically excellent speech she made? She is one of the best performers in the House of Commons and she further enhanced her reputation with her speech today This is a Bill to: "Require the United Kingdom to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the Istanbul Convention); and for connected purposes." I do not expect to find much support in this House for some of what I want to put on the record today—that is normal, in my experience—but I expect that many people outside this House are more likely to agree. We have only to look at the EU referendum to see how out of touch this House is with majority opinion across the country This is a typical Friday Bill. It comes with a worthy sentiment; who could possibly be against trying to stop violence against women? The answer is nobody. I am not aware of anybody who wants to argue that people should be violent towards women and girls—of course they should not. The argument seems to be that, as long as someone supports the premise in the Bill’s title of "combating violence against women", they must support the Bill, and that someone who opposes the Bill must be in favour of violence against women and children. That is the level of debate I would expect from the morons on Twitter, but I still live in hope that we might have better-quality debate than that in this House, although in my experience it does not actually get much better normally. I live in hope and will try again to have a sensible debate about these matters rather than the level of debate that we get used to on social media. I have a fundamental objection to the whole premise that we need to deal only with violence against women.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Civil Rights
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for highlighting that, and I will come on to that. As she rightly said, and as I tried to illustrate at the start of my contribution, there are two separate elements to this Bill, and I want to do justice to both of them if I may To be honest, I cannot believe that this needs saying, but it is so discriminatory and sexist to say that we should be focusing only on violence against women. If this was the other way around, there would be an absolute outcry from people in this House, and rightly so. I do not take the view that violence against women and girls is somehow worse than violence against men and boys. As far as I am concerned, all violence is unacceptable, and all violence against the person should be punished by law. Both men and women are victims and both are perpetrators of these crimes. I believe in true equality, and want people to be treated equally whether they are a victim or a perpetrator of crime.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Civil Rights
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I will come on to the discrepancy between the levels of violence against men and women in due course, because it is worth highlighting I believe in true equality and want people to be treated equally. At the moment, whether people like it or not, men are treated more harshly than women in the criminal justice system—that is certainly the case when it comes to sentencing. I know that that is an inconvenient truth for many people, but it is the truth nevertheless. On top of that—this is where it relates to my hon. Friend’s point—all the evidence shows that men are more likely to be a victim of violent crime than women in this country.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Civil Rights
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very grateful to the hon. Lady. Perhaps then we can go back to the drawing board and make it clear that we want to introduce a Bill that targets men and women alike. If we do that, I would be delighted that both of us would be able to support it.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Civil Rights
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very grateful to the hon. Lady. As I have said, we can go back to the drawing board and bring back a Bill that all of us can support. We have had four speeches so far, and I think I have heard only one passing reference to men. The whole thrust of this debate and argument, and the whole point of this Bill today, is simply about the unacceptability of violence against women. That is all we have heard so far. It is no good now trying to redraw the nature of the debate, because I am raising the point about true equality. If people really believe in equality in this House, let us go back to the drawing board and bring back a Bill that makes that clear.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Civil Rights
David Nuttall (Conservative, Centre-right): Although it is true that article 4, which has just been quoted by the promoter of this Bill, says what she says it says, article 2 is the relevant article, because it sets out the scope of the convention. Paragraph 1 of article 2 quite clearly states: "This Convention shall apply to all forms of violence against women."
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Civil Rights
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will also come on to article 1, which makes it clear that discrimination against men is absolutely fine as far as the convention is concerned. It flies in the face of the impression that the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan wants to give. There is an easy way to deal with this, as we all seem to be in agreement: we can go back to the drawing board and bring forward a Bill on which we can all agree.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Civil Rights
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): If my hon. Friend is happy for a convention to make it explicitly clear that it is fine to discriminate against men—[Interruption.] I know that a lot of people are up in arms. I suspect that most of them have not even bothered to read all of the articles in the convention. If they want to, off the cuff, repeat to me article 1 of the convention in full—[Interruption.] No, I did not think that they could. They are just up in arms because of what I said at the start of my speech. They think, "It seems like a worthy sentiment, so we must support a worthy sentiment." They have no substance for their view, but I am sure that if they want to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, and explain all the nuances of the different articles of this convention, you will humour them. I suspect that there is not much substance behind all the hollering, as usual, from our Scottish National party colleagues. I will try to help out my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) by explaining why I think that this convention should not be ratified. I am trying to make it clear that I believe in true equality rather than in this kind of equality that applies only to one gender My premise is that all the evidence shows that men are more likely to be victims of violent crime in this country than women.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Other
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): There are also funerals of men who have died. I am sure that that is just as uncomfortable an experience for their children. I am very sad that the hon. Lady does not recognise that, when a father dies, it is just as upsetting for the children as when a mother dies. I take issue with that premise.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Civil Rights
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend has been referring to statistics from the United Kingdom. He may be aware of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, which issued a very big report on violence against women—an EU-wide survey—in which it found that 11% of non-heterosexual women in Europe have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of other women.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
David Nuttall (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for putting that on the record. I think it worth also noting that article 36 refers to "Sexual violence, including rape", article 37 refers to "Forced marriage", article 38 refers to "Female genital mutilation", and 39 refers to "Forced abortion and forced sterilisation."
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right to highlight the subjects of those articles. It was probably remiss of me not to do so myself It seems that the Government are hanging their hat on article 44. Perhaps the Minister will be able to explain more about the difficulties that they are experiencing in relation to it and the other articles mentioned in it, to which my hon. Friend has just referred.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Civil Rights
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I am glad that I am educating the hon. Gentleman, because he certainly knew nothing about article 1 of the convention before I highlighted it for him. Chapter 8 of the report looked at ratification, and began by setting out what others had said about it. The International Development Committee has called on the Government to do more to address violence against women and girls within the UK. Again, it is about violence against women and girls. It states that "the UK’s international leadership is weakened by its failure to address violence against women and girls within its own borders" Professor Kelly argued in evidence that, although the Government are undertaking good work abroad on violence against women and girls, more needs to be done in the UK: "I think we have a hypocrisy about human rights. We talk about human rights internationally for others, and we are mealy-mouthed about it at home. If we could have a common discourse that, actually, this happens here, too—then I think we might be able to have a more constructive conversation about it." The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales said: "Ratification would emphasise that the state has a positive duty in law to intervene in a proactive way to modify practices that result in harm, violence and degradation to women and girls. It would provide a further basis in law for those who wish to persuade the state to provide adequate and meaningful resources to construct an effective mechanism to protect women from gender violence and harm." Again, this is not gender-neutral. How can anyone argue that the convention is gender-neutral? There is no gender-neutral language anywhere in it for anyone to read. The report set out the background to the then Government’s position, which I do not want to go through in detail.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Other
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I appreciate that, Mr Deputy Speaker, but there are certain things that I say that nobody else can be trusted to say. If we could rely on balanced contributions from other people, some of these things would not need saying, but they clearly do need saying, so—
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Other
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I take that point on board. I assure you that others will not, not "may not" do so, but you make a good point. In that case—I think you will approve of this—rather than setting out the background to the Government’s position, I will leave it to the Minister to set out the Government’s position—
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Other
Brandon Kenneth Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): I hope my next words will put the hon. Lady’s mind at rest. Both those points and any others Members may wish to raise are areas we will all want to consider more fully in consultation with the devolved Administrations and return to in Committee. However, at this stage I am pleased to say the Government support the Bill in principle.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): We now—[Interruption.] Order. There is absolutely no need to clap. There might be a need for Members to express their great pleasure on something that has happened about which they are joyful—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] Yes, that is the way to do it Question put accordingly, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Other
Peter William Bone (Conservative, Centre-right): On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have a unique procedural point—certainly I have never come across it since I have been in Parliament. On 7 December, the House passed by 448 votes to 75 an Opposition motion that includes the private Member’s Bill that I am to present today. Unfortunately, because of the length of the first debate, we will not reach my Bill. However, we have had seven hours of debate on an Opposition day, so when I move the motion at 2.30, would it be appropriate for nobody to object to it, because the House has already debated the exact motion for seven hours? Is that how it works?
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Well, I fully understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. In fact, it might possibly be a genuine point of order, but he knows that, regardless of the length of time a matter has been debated in this House, if the House decides that it wishes to support a motion or a question and no one opposes it, then of course it will pass without opposition. However, if even one person opposes the Bill—he knows this very well—I will be obliged to require further consideration. I am grateful to him for raising that unusual point, whether or not it is a point of order.
Double Taxation Treaties (Developing Countries) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is answering the point made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), but—I am not particularly criticising the hon. Gentleman, who addresses this House with expert rhetoric and I can always hear what he says—I am taking this opportunity to make a point about other Members who are sitting in that corner of the Chamber. It is not just an old-fashioned rule that when you stand up to speak, you must address the Chair; if you do not, your voice goes into the corner and the Minister, other Front Benchers and I cannot hear what is being said. I appeal to Members that, even though they are currently exchanging interventions with one another in that corner of the Chamber, they please address the Chair, because everybody else wants to hear what is being said. I am not criticising the hon. Gentleman; I am just asking for his co-operation.
Double Taxation Treaties (Developing Countries) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jane Ellison (Conservative, Centre-right): I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I still cannot agree with him. He asks how we can show benefits. I repeat that countries enter into these agreements willingly. We have over 130 of them, and there are more in the process of renegotiation, particularly those that are outdated. Countries would not be seeking to renegotiate or enter into that bilateral discussion if they did not feel there was mutual benefit in their doing so I have recently signed several such treaties—we have recently exchanged treaties with Colombia and Lesotho—and had the opportunity to talk to countries about why they do it, and it is clear they believe it is to our mutual advantage. Over time, these bilateral relationships must be to our mutual advantage. It is also worth noting that countries can rescind treaties. If countries did not think it to their advantage, they could rescind the treaties. We have not locked countries into these arrangements; they are entered into by mutual agreement, and countries can exit from them The Bill also asks us to assess the benefits of foreign direct investment, but again that would be very difficult, if not impossible, on the basis that FDI depends on such a wide range of factors. Investors will consider all sorts of things, including: existing and planned infrastructure; changes to the country’s legal system; political stability—often critical in the developing world; the education level of the workforce; and access to markets. The idea that we could assess in isolation the direct contribution of a tax treaty is impracticable. It would be part of a mix that moves a developing country from poverty to greater wealth; during that journey, all those things, and more, begin to fall into place to produce an environment in which wealth can be created to the benefit of the country because people want to invest there. To analyse one of those things in isolation, however, would be an extremely difficult proposition.
Double Taxation Treaties (Developing Countries) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jane Ellison (Conservative, Centre-right): No, I will not give way again. To be fair to the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, the promoter of the Bill, I want to deal with a couple of his other points Parliamentary scrutiny was mentioned. We have a system whereby tax treaties are subject to parliamentary scrutiny and debate before they can enter into force. That means scrutiny through a Delegated Legislation Committee. There is a gap of several months between signature and debate, which gives hon. Members ample time to acquaint themselves with the contents of a treaty and to inform robust debate. There is also both the power and the precedent for referring treaties to the Floor of the House. That has not been done since 1984, but I would be delighted to discuss any of these on the Floor of the House if Members were moved to bring them forward I thank the hon. Gentleman for championing this issue and for the constructive approach he has taken. It has given us the chance to put on the record what I believe is an admirable track record in this country I will mention one more thing that might be of interest to the House. The Department for International Development is supporting the OECD’s new "tax inspectors without borders" initiative, which has raised more than $260 million of additional revenue in developing countries to be spent on public services. Again, this is a record we can be proud of across parties While we fully support the principles of the Bill, many of its provisions are already in place, and where they are not that is due either to the technical difficulties involved or to the unintended and undesirable consequences that such measures would involve The debate has served to highlight a number of things, particularly the role that tax treaties can play in providing certainty and stability for increased investment in developing countries; the importance of our tax treaties being tailored to meet the individual tax policies of our partner countries; and the considerable impact that the success of these treaties can have on sustainable economic development Although we do not support the Bill, I would like to thank the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath for securing the space to consider these issues—
Business without Debate — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Other
Peter William Bone (Conservative, Centre-right): On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Further to your advice earlier in this session, is it not extraordinary that the Member who objected was the right hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell), the Deputy Chief Whip of the Labour party, whose motion is identical to the one that I have just moved? Is there any way I can get that on the record, Madam Deputy Speaker?
Business without Debate — House of Commons, 2016-12-16
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order, which was, of course, not a point of order, but a point of information. He asks how he can get it on the record; he has just done so.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-11-18
Topic: Mixed Topics
Sheryll Murray (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady and I share something similar in our constituencies. My constituency stretches from the banks of the Tamar to the banks of the River Fowey. The difference, however, is that because my constituents would not find it possible to travel from one end of the constituency to another by public transport, I go to them, which I consider to be my job as a Member of Parliament.
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-11-18
Topic: Other
David Nuttall (Conservative, Centre-right): As we are getting to the nub of why the Bill has been introduced, is it not the case that we have the Bill because so many Opposition Members are frightened of reselection, because of the threat of Momentum taking their seats?