argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-01-15
Topic: Government Operations
David Pannick (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I have tabled, with the support of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, a number of amendments in this group on the subjects of procedural fairness and proportionality. The Minister acknowledged in Committee that these were topics that he and the Bill team would need to consider before Report. Given the adverse consequences of being designated, the Bill must provide for procedural fairness and the provisions must be applied in a proportionate manner. Again, I thank the Minister and the Bill team for some very helpful meetings on these subjects, and for tabling these amendments, which address my concerns In particular, government Amendments 31, 36 and 58 will require the Minister to be satisfied that any designation is appropriate, having regard to both, "the purpose of the regulations … and … the likely significant effects of the designation", on the person concerned. That addresses the substance of my Amendment 38 on proportionality. It does not use the word "proportionality" but that does not matter. It contains the essence of proportionality and I am grateful to the Minister for confirming in his opening remarks that that is indeed the purpose of these government amendments Government Amendments 32, 37, 59 and 61 are also very important in placing in the Bill a requirement of procedural fairness; that is, that the person designated is entitled to a statement of the reasons why he or she has been designated. That is absolutely fundamental to any fair sanctions procedure. I recognise that the government amendments exclude any right to information the disclosure of which would harm interests such as national security, but they rightly provide that these exclusions will not allow the Minister to provide no statement of reasons. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that the intention here is to ensure that a person who is designated will always be entitled to at least a statement of the essence of the reasons for the designation, albeit that details which affect national security or other protected interests cannot be disclosed In the light of these government amendments, I am satisfied that the Bill now makes it clear that procedural fairness and the substance of proportionality are part of the administrative machinery. The Minister made it clear in Committee that this was always the intention and he made it clear—and I respectfully agree with him—that the courts would in any event hold Ministers to such basic standards of the rule of law. I am pleased that the Minister has recognised that it is appropriate to include these matters in the Bill and I thank him.
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-01-15
Topic: Law and Crime
David Pannick (Crossbench, Unknown): Perhaps I may add one brief point to what was said so powerfully by the noble and learned Lord, which is to remind the House of what was said by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, of which he and I are members. The committee’s eighth report of this Session, which was on the Bill, stated in paragraph 21: "We are deeply concerned that the power in clause 16 may be used to create an offence for which a sentence of imprisonment for up to 10 years may be imposed, and that rules on the evidence to demonstrate that the case is proved, and defences to such charges, are subject to ministerial regulation. We consider that such regulation-making powers are constitutionally unacceptable and should not remain part of the Bill" The Minister has dealt in Amendment 46 with the second part of that criticism, which is the quite extraordinary suggestion in the original Bill that a Minister, by regulations, should have power to alter defences to charges and to address rules on evidence, such as the burden and standard of proof. This was a quite extraordinary suggestion and I hope that the House will never again see such a provision presented in a Bill by Ministers. However, to his credit the Minister has accepted in Amendment 46 that that provision should be removed. What remains is the suggestion that Ministers should have the power to create offences for which a sentence of imprisonment of up to 10 years is imposed—and on that I entirely agree with what the noble and learned Lord said.
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-01-15
Topic: Government Operations
Igor Judge (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I appreciate the way in which the Minister has put these matters. He has expressed his sympathy for our concerns and he understands them. We are talking about a basic, simple constitutional position. We do not for one moment think that sanctions should not exist, or that there should be some kind of break in the ability to enforce against breaches of sanctions where they currently exist—that is not the purpose of the amendment. Nor is it beyond parliamentary counsel to find a way of making sensible provision to meet the Government’s requirements. If it does, the Government will bring this matter back to the House on Third Reading or take it to the Commons. As it is, we are being asked to sanction a provision that is constitutionally dangerous Therefore, although I am willing—assuming that the House agrees with my view—to meet the Minister and indeed parliamentary counsel at any time to discuss how the issues should be addressed, I propose to invite the view of the House on this amendment. I add that I have been addressing the House on the basis that Amendments 45 and 47 run together. That has plainly been the understanding of everyone who has participated in the debate, but for the moment we are concerned only with Amendment 45. If it is carried, I will move Amendment 47 formally. I should like to test the opinion of the House.
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-01-15
Topic: Government Operations
David Pannick (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, Amendment 54 is in my name and that of my noble and learned friend Lord Judge, the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury. It proposes that the obligation under the Bill on Ministers to review a designation every three years should be reduced to one year I have reflected on this matter in the light of very helpful meetings with the Minister and the Bill team. In the light of the right of the person concerned to request a review if there are new significant matters and of the duty on Ministers under Clause 26, to be amended by government Amendment 55 in this group, themselves to review regulations every year and to place a report for Parliament, I shall not pursue Amendment 54. Simply to enable other noble Lords to participate in this short debate if they so wish, I beg to move.
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-01-15
Topic: International Affairs
Dafydd Elystan-Morgan (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, the arguments have been put clearly and attractively by the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Faulks. Indeed there can, apparently, be a conflict between two very important and sovereign authorities of law—international law and domestic law. However, one has to favour the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick; in other words, however much the attitude of the rule of law in Britain might respect international comity, it would be morally ultra vires to be prepared to perpetrate an injustice in the name of that loyalty. That would be utterly wrong. That, I think, is the answer to the whole question. In other words, as regards the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, our respect for international comity is very considerable but is not absolute. It is ameliorated and qualified by that condition, save and in respect of a situation of perpetrating a blatant injustice. That would be beyond our authority ultra vires.
Data Protection Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-01-10
Topic: Law and Crime
David Pannick (Crossbench, Unknown): I am not suggesting that breaches do not occur; I am not an apologist. My position is that if and when errors are made and wrongful acts occur, the law has ample means of dealing with them. We do not set up a massive public inquiry in areas of the law or practice whenever there is a risk that wrongful acts are going to take place. My position is that we have inquired sufficiently into these matters, and to the extent that there are still wrongful things going on, the law provides perfectly adequate remedies, and indeed under this Act there will be perfectly adequate administrative procedures.
Data Protection Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-01-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Ann Butler-Sloss (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I was not going to speak, but I feel impelled to do so. I have no time for the media. I have been libelled and I disliked the experience a great deal. But what we are being asked to provide is a remedy. They are saying that the current remedies will not do and that the remedy is an inquiry. As a judge, I have chaired a number of inquiries, and there are other former judges in this House who have done so. They are inevitably long-winded. This one would go on for a very long time, so I would ask this question: what sort of remedy would there be at the end if the inquiry is mired in a huge number of lawyers making a great deal of money out of defending all sorts of groups of people? At the end of the day we would get—what?—a report.
Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 (Consequential Provisions) Order 2017 — House of Lords, 2018-01-10
Topic: Transportation
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, as a fairly frequent traveller on the east coast railway line from Edinburgh to London King’s Cross, I would like to say a word or two about this issue. As the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, pointed out, there is no train station at the border, which you reach a little north of Berwick-upon-Tweed on your way to Dunbar. As I understand the situation, that means that in order to police effectively south of the border, British Transport Police officers will have to get on to the train at Waverley in Edinburgh, so they will travel the whole way down the line, as they do at present. Going north, they cannot get off at Berwick-upon-Tweed, because they still have several miles to run in England before they reach the Scottish border, and they will have to travel all the way to Waverley Therefore, the ridiculous situation created by this proposal by the Scottish National Party is that the British Transport Police force will remain on the train, as it does at present. It will cease to provide the kind of security north of the border that the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, talked about, although to do its job effectively in England, it will have to travel the whole journey. Therefore, members of the Scottish police force will be travelling on the train, getting off at Berwick if they are lucky—but not every train stops there—or going all the way down to Newcastle and then having to travel all the way back again. I cannot speak for the west coast line because I am not so familiar with it, but presumably the same problem applies there, and you have to travel at least to Carlisle before you can get off the train.
Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 (Consequential Provisions) Order 2017 — House of Lords, 2018-01-10
Topic: Transportation
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, a curious feature of this measure is that if British Transport Police officers are brave enough to exercise their powers as British Transport Police officers north of the border, they are given the power to do that by paragraph 2 of Schedule 2. In fact, the paragraph is consistent with the idea that we do not go ahead with the merger at all. It is a perfectly sensible method of solving the problem which the Smith commission had to face up to, which was to say that the functions of the British Transport Police in Scotland will be a devolved matter. That is a perfectly sensible proposition. What has gone wrong is the Scottish National Party’s interpretation of it, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said For all the reasons that others have given, I am strongly against the merger. However, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, I cannot see anything wrong with the order we are asked to consider. Therefore, if the Motion were pressed, I regret that I would have to vote with the Government because that is the state of play. However, I entirely sympathise with the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, to the Minister. Given the practical example I have given to the Minister, I hope that he can point out to the Scottish National Party that it is a waste of public money to have two police officers travelling on the train from Newcastle all the way to Edinburgh and back again just to solve the problem of the merger which it is trying to advance.
Data Protection Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-01-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Beeban Kidron (Crossbench, Unknown): Before the Minister sits down, can I get absolute reassurance from him that this is not pushing it into the future, where it will languish? Will the Government be looking to this review to actually solve the problem that we have put forward on behalf of children?
Housebuilders — House of Lords, 2018-01-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Richard Best (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I know that we must conclude at 2.08 pm, so I have only a few minutes in which to express my appreciation to everybody who has joined in this very good debate. A few extra points were made that I had not picked up sufficiently—for example, my two noble friends mentioned apprenticeships and sustainability. I do not think we have done enough on that. However, nearly all the points were the subject of agreement rather than disagreement, with the possible exception of Help to Buy subsidies. But apart from that I think that broadly we are all agreed on the direction of travel. The list of ways in which government is now pointing in absolutely the right direction was impressive. I think that it was Paul Getty who said: "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money". Some resources are coming down the track, we just need delivery and a foot on the accelerator to make things happen, not to castigate the big builders but help them perform better in the future. I thank all noble Lords for joining in the debate.
Social Media: News — House of Lords, 2018-01-11
Topic: Technology
Beeban Kidron (Crossbench, Unknown): I would like to be the first member of the data users union proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I hope that other noble Lords would like to join me. It is an excellent idea. In my excitement at starting the debate I forgot to declare my interests as set out in the register, including that as founder of 5Rights I think it is fair to say that you could characterise our feeling towards online services and social media as a combination of loving someone who is behaving badly, the frustration with an 18 year-old who does not quite know that they have grown up and is supposed to behave in a different way, and a palpable fury at corporate indifference on certain important subjects. However, it is too easy to just look at it that way. All those things are true and I share all those views, and I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this fantastically interesting and progressive debate. However, what I heard most was our failure to articulate an ethical standard by which we want the industry to behave so that we can then meet it halfway. That was what came out of today’s excellent debate—questions of democracy, accountability, transparency, monopoly, tax regimes, codes of conduct and global consensus on governance. These are matters for society. If we are to have the society that lives by the values we want, we have to show leadership. I say to the Minister that I think the Government are showing leadership, which I welcome. I again thank all noble Lords for their contributions. This has been, by all standards, a wonderful debate.
Transparency of the Parole Board and Victim Support — House of Lords, 2018-01-09
Topic: Law and Crime
William Laming (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am sure the Minister will recognise that the House welcomes the review that is to be undertaken. However, would he agree that the review outlined by the Statement is rather narrow? One of the concerns that many of us—certainly the victims—will have is the quality of supervision that will be available on release. It is true, as the Minister has indicated, that the Parole Board will have had a plan based on assessment of risk. However, it is one thing to have a plan but quite another to ensure that it is operated effectively and reliably. Reports that we have had from the inspectorate about the level of supervision provided in some of these cases sometimes not going beyond an occasional telephone call do not give us much cause for comfort. I would be grateful if the Minister could assure the House that the review will look at the capacity of the National Probation Service to provide comfort and assurance to victims and to the wider community.
Transparency of the Parole Board and Victim Support — House of Lords, 2018-01-09
Topic: Law and Crime
Ian Warwick Blair (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I ask the Minister to take away from this short discussion the view of the House that the terms of reference for this inquiry need to be pretty wide. In 1985 I wrote a book called Investigating Rape: A New Approach for Police. Since then, more than 30 years have passed, and we have seen in these last few months really difficult rape cases failing in the courts. It seems to me that the Worboys case is a perfect example from which we could learn in a wider sense how to both support victims and provide the accused with a proper defence. At the moment, the investigation of rape and serious sexual offences is in a mess.
Transparency of the Parole Board and Victim Support — House of Lords, 2018-01-09
Topic: Law and Crime
Dafydd Elystan-Morgan (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, can the Minister tell the House whether a full, preliminary review at the time Worboys pleaded was held by a learned judge? Normally such a mechanism enables many of the issues arising in this case to be ironed out at that stage.
Transparency of the Parole Board and Victim Support — House of Lords, 2018-01-09
Topic: Law and Crime
David Pannick (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, are not the Government making a bit of a meal of this? Is it not clear beyond argument that the decision of the Parole Board to release Worboys cannot command the confidence of the public, and certainly not that of the victims, without the Parole Board being able to tell the public why it has taken that decision? Do we really need a review to establish that?
United States: Foreign Policy — House of Lords, 2018-01-18
Topic: Foreign Trade
John Kerr (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am grateful for the chance to speak in this debate, in which I have the unusual pleasure of agreeing with every word said by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont of Lerwick I will make two quick points. First, this is a brilliantly timed debate, one year after the inauguration. I am less worried than I was then about the threat to NATO. The investigations into possible collusion and certain Russian involvement in the election campaign in America have neutralised what I saw as the biggest risk to NATO: candidate Trump’s openly avowed admiration for President Putin. If that is still in his head he cannot act on it, given the investigations taking place on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in Washington, so I am slightly less worried about that One point that perhaps was not brought out in the debate, and about which I am more worried about than I was a year ago, is the threat to the rules-based trade system. The open insistence that the United States will no longer be bound by WTO rulings, and the attempt to subvert the WTO system from within by refusing to make appointments to panels—refusing to appoint judges in the WTO’s dispute settlement procedures—is an existential threat to a central element of a rules-based system that originated here in London. We invented the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The WTO was run for a very long time on British expertise. When we joined the European Union we imported the old Board of Trade expertise into it and we saw great commissioners such as Leon Brittan and Peter Sutherland. We should pay tribute to Peter Sutherland for all his work, not just in Brussels but also in Geneva, in all our interests It is very important if we are to leave the European Union that we remain in very close touch with it in support of the WTO system. To my mind, a sweetheart trade deal with the United States is a mirage. It clearly has an "America first" policy. We remember the inaugural speech. We must not let pursuit of close contacts with America, which are very important, blind us to the fact that the rules-based system is particularly important to an open trading country such as the United Kingdom.
Brexit: Deal or No Deal (European Union Committee Report) — House of Lords, 2018-01-16
Topic: International Affairs
Frederick Butler (Crossbench, Unknown): I am very grateful to the chairman of my committee for giving way. If I may defend the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, I do not think he was challenging that conclusion of our committee. What he was saying was that, even if there was no enforceable means for the EU to extract a divorce payment, having made an agreement the UK would never walk away from it. That, I think, was the point he was making.
Brexit: Deal or No Deal (European Union Committee Report) — House of Lords, 2018-01-16
Topic: International Affairs
Ruth Deech (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am rather pleased to join the small band of dissenters in this House. As a lawyer, I believe that the adversarial process gets to the truth and it is often the case that the dissenting judgment in a case is the one that echoes down the years. Obviously, one hopes for a good deal, but the report was predictably gloomy, reflecting the majority of its selected witnesses. It was surprising that there was no reliance on the significant body of economists and commentators who are analysing no deal and who have come up with constructive views. The committee assumed that being outside the EU was de facto disastrous, taking no note of the situation of other countries outside the EU which have good quality of life and good regulation and which trade successfully. As a result, the report could have been written by Eeyore. Today, I present the Tigger response The only goalpost placed before the UK by the 27 is that the UK must not be seen to gain by leaving, lest others follow suit. What sort of organisation is this whose only purpose is to maintain itself in its present position by threats? How unacceptable is the reported attempt by President Macron to use the Calais refugees as the price of a deal? Where is the statesman or stateswoman in Europe who can draw a portrait of what the organisation will be in a few years’ time, what its attractions and benefits might be? Nothing except "more Europe". A great leader, which it manifestly lacks, would not want to inflict harm on European citizens, including the British, for the sake of it, which is the tenor of the discussions now, but would have sufficient confidence in the EU’s future to be able to say goodbye to one of its partners handsomely and generously. The attitude of the EU does not bode well for its future, and it has given us no idea what that is. It uses fright tactics—apocalyptic views of being out of the single market, punishing the renegade—rather than focusing on the well-being and prosperity of its citizens The EU’s intransigence over its own citizens’ rights, apparently unconcerned about what might happen to its own 3 million, and its intransigence over the divorce bill and the Irish border amount to self-harm. If the EU were reasonable or acted in the best interests of its citizens it would seek a free trade deal and give a degree of certainty to the troubled and unhappy economies of the 27. If in the end there is no deal, it will be the EU’s doing.