argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Leaving the European Union — House of Lords, 2019-01-21
Topic: International Affairs
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, perhaps I could return to the point that was made that the language used by the EU in describing the effect of the backstop has no legal standing. There may be reason to think that the words it used have a greater force as understood in Europe than we give credit for. It might well be worth asking the Attorney-General to look more closely at the meaning of the words because it would be most unfortunate if the whole thing were to fall apart because of a gulf between what we and the EU think the words mean, and how it regards them as affecting its future conduct. They may well be much stronger than we so far give them credit for. There may be a way through if we really understood what they meant.
Leaving the European Union — House of Lords, 2019-01-21
Topic: International Affairs
John Kerr (Crossbench, Unknown): I am concerned by the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, about a negotiating advantage. It is a myth. I do not think you strengthen your negotiating hand by saying, "If you don’t give me what I want, I will shoot myself". This is the "Blazing Saddles" argument, which worked very well for the sheriff in that film but does not work in Brussels. Perhaps I may say to the Leader that there is a third way of avoiding the disaster of no deal: to recognise the inevitable. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, said that we are going to need an extension under Article 50. I believe that that has become absolutely clear, for all sorts of reasons. I also believe that so shocked are our friends on the continent by the chaos and incompetence of our political system here, they would be perfectly willing to concede now that there should be a short extension, in order that we can get our act together.
Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-01-21
Topic: Foreign Trade
John Kerr (Crossbench, Unknown): Like the noble Baroness, Lady Young, I welcome the sentiment behind the amendments—in fact, I welcome their substance, but with one exception. I am uneasy about Amendment 25. I may have misunderstood it, but it seems to fall into a slightly different category—Amendment 15 is perhaps partly in that category, too I apologise for picking up one of the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, because she shames us all with her enthusiasm and hard work, but Amendment 25 seems slightly different because it would lay down a requirement on the Government to require something from the other participating Government in the agreement. Paragraph (b) requires that goods should, "have been produced to standards that are comparable in effectiveness to those of the United Kingdom in protecting food safety, the environment and animal welfare" On the environment, India will be burning more coal next year than this year, and more the year after than next year. In China, coal will remain a very large of the power mix. Would the amendment debar the Government from doing trade agreements with India or China in respect of goods produced using power? It would seem quite a wide provision to require the Government to require something from the other Government. I may have misunderstood it. I also recognise that it would only enable the Government to do these things; it would not require them to do them, yet I am not sure that the distinction indicates a real difference. If it was on the statute book, the Government might feel obliged Amendment 15 raises the question of non-regression. As I read it, and I may be wrong about this, too, it would place an obligation on the Government to require that the agreement incorporated the principle and that the principle applied to both sides—not just to us but to the other side. I may have misread that, but, if so, my point about China and India perhaps applies to it, too.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: International Affairs
Karan Bilimoria (Crossbench, Unknown): I want to make one point. When we were dealing with the withdrawal Bill, one of our greatest fears concerned these Henry VIII powers. This is the first time that we are having to apply them in a specific Bill, and we are already scared about the consequences. Noble and learned Lords are already asking, "Have you thought about wording such as ‘adjustments’ and the interpretation of words?" From my experience, every time there is a grey area in a contract, it can be interpreted in different ways. It leaves the door open, and that is very dangerous. I ask the Minister, whom the whole House respects, to take all that into account; otherwise, on Report this will be badly defeated because a precedent is being laid here with a fear that the Henry VIII powers will demolish our whole democracy and the reason for our Parliament. That is really frightening.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Government Operations
Igor Judge (Crossbench, Unknown): I apologise for not leaping to my feet before the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe; I was looking at something else—I am very sorry. Perhaps I may be allowed to say just a few words in support of the general idea behind Amendment 6 We are going to embark on a huge body of secondary legislation. I have spoken in this House on a number of occasions about secondary legislation and I think that my views on its dangers are quite well known to a number of Members. One problem with secondary legislation, if we are honest, is that we have no idea what we are looking at. When secondary legislation comes through, I doubt whether more than 1% of the Members of this House actually look at it; I doubt whether more than 5% of the Members of the other place look at it, and it goes through We are here dealing with very complex legislation and doing it as best we can in a hurry, in the demanding situation that we are in. Would it not be helpful for an explanation to be given about any individual piece of secondary legislation, identifying, for example, the legislation in the EU with which it corresponds or to which it is similar? We could then look at it and say, "Yes, that’s fine. No need to argue about it". Otherwise, we tend to leave it so that we examine it blind. There is something to be said for us knowing what is going on.
Jammu and Kashmir — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: International Affairs
Indarjit Singh (Crossbench, Unknown): Kashmir is a large and beautiful state, which in normal circumstances could get by and do well on tourism alone. Unfortunately, as has been mentioned, it has been caught in this crossfire between India and Pakistan. Should we not encourage both states—Pakistan and India—to move towards recognising near autonomy for Kashmir, with important trading and cultural links between both countries?
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: International Affairs
John Anderson (Crossbench, Unknown): Could the Minister clarify one point? Was Mr Alberto Costa MP sacked, or did he resign, over his attempt to have EU citizens’ rights in the event of no deal ring-fenced? What is the Government’s view on this amendment—do they support it or not?
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: International Affairs
Hugh Dykes (Crossbench, Unknown): I am grateful to the Minister, who is struggling not only with a bad cough but with some very bad arguments; I sympathise greatly. At the beginning of his remarks he emphasised that the Prime Minister had been badgering people endlessly in Brussels, the Middle East and elsewhere, and had spoken to the Heads of Government, or whoever was appropriate, of the 27 other member states. How many of those member states agreed with the Prime Minister’s bizarre arguments, and how many thought them a load of rubbish?
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: International Affairs
Ruth Deech (Crossbench, Unknown): Since the noble Baroness has mentioned morality, I raise a question with her: does morality lie with no deal? Brussels asked us what we wanted and we said we wanted a change to the border situation—a way out of the backstop—and it said no. It is not this Government who have led us to no deal—it is Brussels. When it comes to moral leadership, I have no idea what the leader of her party in the House of Commons has wanted for the last two years—it is not clear to the average observer. Leaving aside, for a moment, the moral swamp going on there, we have no idea what his position is.
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: Foreign Trade
John Kerr (Crossbench, Unknown): Following the noble Lord, I am reminded of how much he has done down the years to encourage our engagement in Asia and Asian investment in this country. I feel very sorry for him, because this must be a sad time for him. If you take just Anglo-Japanese relations, his work down the years was remarkable. We know what the Japanese banks here are doing. We know what Hitachi and now Honda are doing. We know what Toshiba is doing. We know about Sony and Panasonic. When will we hear from the third of the great car companies, Toyota? Actually, we did hear from it. It exports 80% of its UK production to the European Union. Its executive vice-president, Didier Leroy, said that: "The UK government should … understand that we cannot stay in this kind of fog when we don’t know what will be the output of the negotiation", and that any kind of EU import tax would create a huge, "negative impact in terms of competitiveness", for its UK plant. That quote— "we cannot stay in this kind of fog"— was from October 2017. It is still in this kind of fog. We have not told it anything, so it is not surprising that it has given up and is backing off. It has given up expecting clarity from us.
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: Foreign Trade
John Kerr (Crossbench, Unknown): I am worried about it because I do not believe that the Prime Minister intends to use the short delay she says she is prepared to settle for—although she has not said that she would vote for it—to explore the possibilities of a better Brexit. As far as she is concerned, the only deal is that which she brought back in November, possibly titivated slightly in the declaration to try to deal with the objections of some to the backstop. I believe that is all she intends to do. The right thing to do is to have a long enough extension to go back and consult the people. This has turned out so differently from what we were told, and it is absolutely right that we would go back and consult the people The point I was trying to make was about trade. I would like to end on a warm and friendly note towards the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, who is in such sparkling form today—I shall try to sparkle back in what is, for me, an unusually friendly way. I congratulate him on his honesty in the last debate, when he put to rest the Legatum Institute theory that the answer to the problem of WTO terms and no preferential trade deals was Article 24. It was extremely straightforward and honest of him to say of Article 24: "This provision refers to interim agreements. In order to use it, we would need to agree with the EU the shape of the future economic partnership, together with a plan and schedule for getting there. This would then need to be presented to all 164 WTO members and they would be able to scrutinise it, suggest changes and, ultimately, veto it".—[Official Report, 13/2/19; col. 1935.] That, I believe, is absolutely correct. I think it was generous and honest of a Minister to put it on record. Article 24 is absolutely no way out in the situation we would be in with no deal. It depends on a deal being struck. It depends on a process going on. It is possible that eight years into future negotiations this is what we might be able to do, although we would, as the Minister rightly said, be dependent on the agreement of 164 parties in GATT. Therefore, even that cannot be assumed.
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: International Affairs
David Hugh Alexander Hannay (Crossbench, Unknown): The noble Lord has just read out a long list of the motivations of those who voted leave in June 2016, with percentages for those who were moved by those considerations. Will he say which one the Prime Minister’s deal fulfils?
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: International Affairs
David Hugh Alexander Hannay (Crossbench, Unknown): I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Is he by any chance aware that the biggest extension of qualified majority voting was conducted under Baroness Thatcher, with a view to establishing the single market? Why does he think it terribly undemocratic that decisions can be taken by a majority, when he has just told us that because 17 million people voted to leave we have to agree with them?
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: International Affairs
David Hugh Alexander Hannay (Crossbench, Unknown): I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord for giving way. He said that the Prime Minister was not responsible for putting no deal on the table. Did he read the Lancaster House speech, in which she said that no deal was better than a bad deal, and then repeated it several hundred times?
EU Withdrawal — House of Lords, 2019-02-13
Topic: International Affairs
Onora O'Neill (Crossbench, Unknown): The noble Lady asked what the fuss was about the backstop. Perhaps I may explain in one sentence. It is a constitutional point, not a point about customs. Any change to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland has to respect the terms of an international agreement, the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. That agreement specifies no constitutional change without consent. I do not know what conversations are going on, but if the noble Baroness reads the present version of the backstop agreement, she will discover that it does not respect the Good Friday agreement. This, in my view, has been an error both by our Government and by the EU.
EU Withdrawal — House of Lords, 2019-02-13
Topic: International Affairs
David Hugh Alexander Hannay (Crossbench, Unknown): The noble Lord said that Brussels did not intervene in the negotiations at an earlier phase. The reason was perfectly simple. It was that both the United Kingdom and Ireland were in the single market; they were in the European Union together, and there was nothing for Brussels to intervene about. That is not now the situation.
EU Withdrawal — House of Lords, 2019-02-13
Topic: International Affairs
David Hugh Alexander Hannay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Viscount. He does not do frictionless, either in debate or trade. In any case, I suggest that if he was surprised about the form which the withdrawal negotiations have taken, it can only be because he did not read Article 50 before we got going down this road. It is only about six lines; it is quite clear; and it was drafted by a Member of this House. It is a pity he did not read it first. If he had, he would have found out what the format of the negotiation would be.
Civil Procedure (Amendment) (EU Exit) Rules 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-25
Topic: Law and Crime
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I would like to follow the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, mainly because I have been involved in one or two cases in the Supreme Court where this type of procedure has been used. It causes real problems for appellate judges because one of the features of the closed procedure is that you cannot give reasons for your decision that can be made public so you are taking a decision in private, the reasons for which are kept private as well. That is the situation that we are faced with With regard to the content of this measure, however, I cannot see it as extending the procedure any further than it exists at present. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I did not get up earlier because I could not see anything to comment on in the substance of the instrument. I cannot speak for other noble and learned Lords but I think there is some virtue in remaining silent if you have nothing to say.
Animal Health, Plant Health, Seeds and Seed Potatoes (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-05-13
Topic: Agriculture
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, perhaps the Minister could say a little more about the process by which these errors were discovered. I think he used the phrase "further scrutiny", particularly in relation to what we find in the animal health, alien species regulations regarding fruit bats, dogs and cats coming from Malaysia and Australia. Some of the things that have been corrected seem, at a glance, to be almost typing errors. We are asked to substitute for the words "set out in" the words "as set out in", and elsewhere to substitute for the word "Law" with a capital "L" the word "law" with a small "l". It looks as though someone is taking great care to look at these regulations again to check that something which may have been done under great pressure is being corrected so that it is absolutely accurate. I applaud that if it is what is going on, and I sympathise entirely with the Minister and all those in his department having to deal with such an enormous quantity of material in great detail. It would be interesting to know what the process is and whether more of these instruments may come forward as further errors are discovered. If so, for my part, I would regard that as a consequence of this very punishing exercise, which is putting great strain on many people.
Parliament: Freedom of Speech and the Rule of Law — House of Lords, 2019-05-23
Topic: Government Operations
Simon Denis Brown (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, it will be obvious to all that the impetus for this debate, its essential backdrop, was the statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, in the Chamber on 25 October last year, naming Philip Green under parliamentary privilege as the subject of an anonymity order issued by the court two days earlier. I should make plain at the outset that my central objective in this debate is not to criticise the noble Lord, Lord Hain—although inevitably I will need to persuade your Lordships that he acted wrongly before I can hope to ask the House to change its procedures. To that end, I will have to spell out why I regard his statement as a misuse—indeed, I would suggest, a clear abuse—of privilege Still less do I seek to have the noble Lord, Lord Hain, disciplined. Indeed, as to that, while several complaints were made against him by members of the public, as well as by Philip Green’s solicitors, the Commissioner for Standards rightly recognised that the only complaint within her jurisdiction was an alleged breach of the noble Lord’s obligation to declare his role as global and governmental adviser to the law firm Gordon Dadds, which was acting for the Daily Telegraph in the litigation. Against that complaint, the noble Lord had a complete defence: he had no idea that Gordon Dadds was involved in the litigation. He would have known had he looked at the court judgment, because the solicitors’ name was prominently shown there—but he did not. Whether, overall, that is to his credit I leave to others. To set oneself up as a one-person or one-Peer court of final appeal over a fully considered Court of Appeal judgment without even reading the judgment might be thought a touch presumptuous. Indeed, the noble Lord in his evidence to the commissioner went further and said that he did not think it would have made any difference even if he had read the judgment—a judgment that had granted a short interim injunction pending a speedy trial of the issue so as not to pre-empt the final decision on the merits of anonymity.
UK Convergence Programme — House of Lords, 2019-04-09
Topic: Macroeconomics
Richard Gilbey (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I want to pick up on a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, made about financial services. I asked a Written Question on 27 February regarding what assessment the Government had made of the reduction in tax take that would arise from the actions taken by financial services businesses to enable their businesses to operate after Brexit The Minister was kind enough to respond, saying: "The Government has published a detailed set of economic analysis on the long-term impacts of EU exit on the UK economy, its sectors, nations and regions and the public finances. The Chancellor will also be providing the independent OBR’s updated fiscal and economic forecasts at the Spring Statement on 13th March" In anticipation of finding the answer to my question, I ploughed through these analyses. You can imagine my surprise and disappointment when I was unable to find anything that answered it. I must have missed something, I assume This is important. The financial services industry is a significant part of our tax base, contributing around £72 billion or 12% of the total annually. My question is not theoretical; I am asking about actions that have already been taken. A study by New Financial has identified 275 firms that have stated that they are moving parts of their businesses out of the country. Only a small number of those firms have said what they are moving, but already the figures are very large: banks have moved or are moving some £800 billion in assets from the UK to the EU, insurance firms are moving tens of billions in assets, and asset managers have transferred more than £65 billion in funds. That £800 billion in bank assets is nearly 10% of the UK banking system. The final tally is likely to be much higher; there are suggestions that more than £1.5 trillion in assets has already been moved Studies also suggest that at least 7,000 financial services jobs have already been moved. That does not include the new jobs created in other countries that would have been created here but for Brexit. New Financial expects the headline numbers to increase significantly in the next few years as local regulators across the EU require firms to increase the substance of their local operations. They have also identified hundreds of firms that they think will have to move something somewhere to retain access to EU markets, but which have not yet done so It is inevitable that these moves will have an impact on the UK’s annual tax take in the current tax year, and that impact will continue and increase. Given the importance of the financial services industry to our tax yield, could the Minister now answer my earlier question and tell us how much of that £72 billion we are going to lose? Could he also tell us to what extent that has been taken into account in the Budget?
Domestic Abuse — House of Lords, 2019-05-14
Topic: Law and Crime
Ann Butler-Sloss (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I chair a commission on forced marriage. Will the Minister keep in mind that victims of forced marriage are often victims of domestic abuse? Many are extremely young and sometimes need rather better accommodation than the refuges provided—when they are provided—for victims of domestic abuse. They are also victims of domestic abuse, but in forced marriage.