argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
BBC: Dyson Report — House of Lords, 2021-05-25
Topic: Technology
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): It is obviously up to the board of the BBC to determine the scope of the review. I am sure the noble Baroness has seen the letter today from the chief executive of Ofcom about its work in this area. It is all part of an effort to rebuild trust in the BBC after the dreadful events revealed by the Dyson report.
BBC: Dyson Report — House of Lords, 2021-05-25
Topic: Technology
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): We absolutely agree—we want a strong and successful public broadcasting system, and that needs the BBC to be a central part of it. As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State made clear in his recent article in the Times, there will be no knee-jerk reaction.
BBC: Dyson Report — House of Lords, 2021-05-25
Topic: Technology
Robert Hayward (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I welcome the comments made by the ministerial teams in both this House and the other place over the last day or so. I also welcome the announcement by the DCMS Select Committee that it will look at this matter. I therefore call on the BBC to clear the slate, get a move on and make absolutely clear where it admits responsibility, but commit for the future that it will publish the likes of the Balen report and make absolutely clear, when it has people commenting on news items, what their well-known political positions are.
BBC: Dyson Report — House of Lords, 2021-05-25
Topic: Government Operations
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not completely agree with the noble Baroness: I think part of the role of good governance is to check that inbreeding is not happening within an organisation, and that the governance structure reinforces the culture necessary to deliver on the mission of the organisation. In relation to internal investigations, she will be aware that complaints can be made direct to Ofcom on issues of fairness and privacy.
BBC: Dyson Report — House of Lords, 2021-05-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Archibald Gavin Hamilton (Conservative, Centre-right): The BBC operates under a royal charter; does it not therefore have an obligation not to broadcast interviews with Diana, Princess of Wales, that can only undermine our monarchy? Secondly, Martin Bashir was found by the Dyson report to have actually been implicit in forging bank statements. Is this not criminal activity, and should he not face charges for this, as indeed should anybody further up the food chain at the BBC who knew of this activity and did not report it to the proper authorities?
BBC: Dyson Report — House of Lords, 2021-05-25
Topic: Technology
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend’s first question falls into the area of editorial independence, although I share the very real concerns he raises. On the forgery of the bank statements, as my right honourable friend the Minister for Media and Data set out, my understanding is that a request has gone to the Metropolitan Police to examine the evidence and reach a judgment on it.
BBC: Dyson Report — House of Lords, 2021-05-25
Topic: Government Operations
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): The mid-term review is really a health check point that was built in to the charter review process to look at the effectiveness of governance and regulation, rather than the more widespread suggestions the noble Lord makes.
BBC: Dyson Report — House of Lords, 2021-05-25
Topic: Technology
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend is right to question the culture of the BBC. We welcome the fact that the new chair and director-general are doing the same, as my noble friend says, in relation not just to some of the serious failings we have heard about in the Chamber today and in the Dyson report but to the day-to-day defensiveness in its dealings, which my noble friend referred to and which was also referenced in the letter from Ofcom.
Daniel Morgan: Independent Panel Report — House of Lords, 2021-05-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, a publication date cannot be arranged until the report is actually received. The Home Office is working with the panel for that to happen. My honourable friend did say yesterday that there would be no redactions, but there were caveats in two areas: national security and human rights considerations. Security checks have already been carried out; I bow completely to the knowledge and experience of the people who may have carried them out, but my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has a personal obligation, by dint of her post, to assure herself that those security checks are carried out to her satisfaction.
Daniel Morgan: Independent Panel Report — House of Lords, 2021-05-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I do not see how there can have been a cover-up, if the Home Secretary has not yet received the report. We need to be very careful about the series of events that are required for publication to take place. I am sure that, like the noble Lord, we all look forward to the report being published in Parliament.
Professional Qualifications Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-05-25
Topic: Education
Rachel Trixie Anne Gardner (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, when the Second World War ended and the Australian troops came home, they were eligible to attend universities and many of them became dentists. I myself became a dentist, but I was straight from school. Then the surplus of dental graduates in Australia was so high that there was no work except for digging the Snowy River scheme or the roads, and after a short time they discovered there was this need for dentists in the UK and huge numbers came here at that time, as I did myself. I welcome the Bill in helping to recognise professional qualifications gained abroad where they meet UK standards I came from Australia in 1956, having recently qualified as a dentist from Sydney University and having heard of the shortage of dentists here. My qualification and training for the National Health Service was really to be able to say that I was able to practise dentistry and make my life here in England. The rest, as they say, is history. All I had to redo of my training on arrival in England was to register: the standards of teaching were accepted. I doubt I would have stayed too many years more if more study had been required without any earnings, not to mention the costs one would have to incur. Today we still often need more skilled people than we can train here, and people move to the UK and bring their skills with them, which we can put to good use. Similarly, it is useful in this global economy for our professional skills to be recognised abroad, for exactly the same reasons When looking through the draft Bill, I found myself wondering about the merits of the proposed assistance centre. I fear this looks like something with the potential to be a costly and resource-intensive body, when it merely needs to be something that directs people to the relevant regulators of the professions. In this day and age, it could in fact be a website run by a government department at a low cost. I hope to hear more from the Minister as to what is envisaged for the assistance centre. In particular, I seek assurance, that it will not become the regulator to the regulators.
Elderly Social Care (Insurance) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-16
Topic: Social Welfare
Rosalind Altmann (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lilley for introducing this Bill, and he is absolutely right that social care is in crisis and that successive Governments have ducked the difficult decisions. But the heart of this crisis, as others have said, is not the worries about selling homes. The origins of this issue are, first, the artificial distinction between what counts as NHS care and what is called social care, and, secondly, the demographics of our ageing population, which we have not prepared for. This is not really like home or motor insurance, so I find it difficult to relate to the figures that my noble friend used to illustrate his scheme The proportion of people needing care for their everyday living is potentially one in two of every couple, and that makes the cost of insurance so prohibitive. Private insurance cannot be an option when you have a 50% or even a 30% probability of needing to call on the insurance, and possibly needing to spend tens of thousands of pounds for insurance against something that you may or may not experience My noble friend is right that we need social care insurance and that it needs to be run by the state. However, we already have social care insurance, only we do not call it that. We are artificially assessing illnesses such as cancer as being worthy of NHS free care, while others, such as dementia, get no payment and are excluded. But the National Health Service is about care. That is why what we really need is to incorporate social care into the NHS, providing free care for all citizens who are not well enough to live without assistance, funded by a national social care insurance premium, which would take the NHS and social care together outside the so-called tax system, but with its own national contribution from everybody’s income, so that everybody contributes I believe that if Beveridge were designing our welfare state now, he would include what we currently call elderly care needs in both the state pension system, where no provision is made for the cost of needing support in later life, and in the NHS. Life expectancy has increased; that is great news. Medical advances help keep people alive longer; that is great news. But at the moment, our system does not adequately support the rising numbers of elderly people who need care and are being refused.
Elderly Social Care (Insurance) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-16
Topic: Social Welfare
Howard Emerson Flight (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, on his Bill and on addressing territory that Governments should have addressed long before now. I agreed very much with my noble friend Lady Altmann’s speech The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, argued that social care provides two competing challenges to government. The first is the increased pressure on local social care budgets that comes with an ageing population, the increases in the national living wage and the risk of care homes closing. The second is resentment from homeowners and their relatives who risk having to sell their homes to pay for social care. He advises that both problems could cost billions to solve and that, where there is more placating of homeowners, less finance will be available to provide decent care for those in greatest need Under the Bill, a state-owned insurance company would be set up and guaranteed by the state. The cost of insurance would be calculated to be actuarially sufficient to pay for all the care. If they wished, people would be able to pay for the insurance via a charge on their homes, which would be realised when they died. That charge would typically be a modest fraction of the value of any home and nobody would be required to take out such insurance. Based on updated figures and the calculations from the Dilnot commission, the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, calculated that a theoretical premium would be approximately £16,000 and the average cost to social care, supported by local authorities, would be £25,000, as he said. I question whether the noble Lord’s insurance premium of £16,000 per annum will be sufficient The Bill does not address the point that there is a perceived unfairness, with those who have worked hard and saved having to pay their care costs while those who have spent all their incomes get their social care costs paid for. Those people should arguably get state-provided care, which would be of a more basic nature than the care that individuals purchase. The main objective of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, is to weaken the political pressure from homeowners for the state to provide them with free social care, but his arrangements entail the state insurance body realising its charge on a property on the death of the insured person or the sale of that property—the charge being the fraction, set aside at the time of the purchase of the policy, of the value of the property at the time of death, net of mortgage The terms of the Bill do not therefore fully avoid the much-disliked arrangement of the public sector taking value from a deceased citizen’s property, even though it would be much less under the noble Lord’s system. The insurance arrangement would operate such that the insured persons would be entitled to social care from their local authority, which would be reimbursed for the cost of the care provided. The weakness here is that there is no incentive for the local authority to keep the care costs as low as possible The proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, are complicated and do not—
Elderly Social Care (Insurance) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-16
Topic: Social Welfare
Sandip Verma (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank my noble friend for bringing this Bill to your Lordships’ House. It is an important Bill. I want to refer to my interest in the register as an adult social care provider for 21 years. Knowing the sector rather better than some of your Lordships, I would like to dismiss a few myths but also include some of the things that we should have addressed, not just today but many decades ago A crisis in social care is not a crisis of the last five or 10 years; it has been an ongoing crisis for a very long time. It is also important to note—and I address this directly to the noble Lord, Lord Hendy—that some of our providers are small businesses. Mine is a small business, and 75% of the people who work in my organisation have been with me for at least 15 years or more. So it is about the way we treat our care staff The fact we have been unable to professionalise and make people see it as a profession, by paying with a decent funding stream, is part of the problem. As I have raised on several occasions in your Lordships’ House, if we are to make sure the NHS is not overwhelmed, a serious look at social care, which actually prevents many people going to the NHS, will be a necessary and honest discussion. We know we need to protect the NHS, but we need to protect the social care sector as well. We are all living longer, but whether we are living healthier and longer is a different argument. As we all know, burdens on the NHS increase as we live longer We have never had an honest debate about the NHS and social care, side by side, and we need to have one. They are two sides of the same coin. While we can discuss lots of alternatives, it is important that this debate, yet again, enables us to look at alternative solutions. Ultimately, it is the duty of us all to ensure that, at whatever age we need support, it is available and we are not discriminated against simply because our illness or need is not recognised for NHS cover. I hope that, when the Government bring forward their Bill, we have a strong and robust discussion on social care needs.
Elderly Social Care (Insurance) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-16
Topic: Social Welfare
Peter Lilley (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate—those who disagree with the Bill, those who agree with it, and those who feel that it merits further debate. Two central criticisms were made. First, a number of noble Lords said that it does not address the main issue. With respect, that is precisely what it does. It says that the main issue is the underfunding of the existing social care system for those who do not have the means to pay for themselves, but we must not pre-empt the money needed to bring about proper funding of that by diverting much of it to subsidising those who wish to leave their homes to their heirs and beneficiaries. I hope people realise that resources are finite. If we spend money on those who can afford to contribute to their own care, we have less to spend on those who cannot Secondly, there were those who, as a matter of principle, believe in universal state provision. I respect that point of view, but they should recognise that no Labour Government since 1948 has introduced that, and that if it were possible to have done so before the pandemic, it is much less possible now that we have £2 trillion of debt and a massive deficit. They should also recognise that that is not what Labour offered at the last election; it offered the £100,000 cap on contributions. Setting a cap, which was also endorsed by the Liberal Party, brings me to my final point. They are saying that we should give the greatest benefit to those in Mayfair and the least to those in Middlesbrough. If that is their idea of fairness, priorities and a comprehensive solution, it is not mine. I beg to move.
Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-16
Topic: Environment
Janet Evelyn Fookes (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am delighted to be the first to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, not only on introducing a very sensible Bill but on the excellent and informative way he delivered his response to the crying needs of the environment. I will not rehearse his major points in my short contribution, save to say that I thoroughly endorse all of them and hope the Government will listen to what he put forward so forcefully and well I have a further point to make about the curriculum and pupils. As a former teacher, I have noticed that if you can get children truly interested in a particular topic it has a knock-on effect on the way they tackle other subjects. We already know how many young people are keenly interested in the environment, so I suggest this as a good way of making higher standards—through sheer enthusiasm The noble Lord mentioned many groups that are in favour of the Bill. I pick out one that is of special interest to me, the RSPCA. I acknowledge my non-financial interest, as declared in the register, in this long-standing and very able animal welfare organisation. It rightly sees education as a major way of improving the lot of animals because, often, ill treatment comes not from malice and sheer evil but from lack of knowledge about the needs of animals. Therefore, it has embarked on various school courses, but we cannot expect a charity to do everything. Work about the welfare of animals could be neatly incorporated into the suggestions made. Looking at the terms of the Bill, "instils an ethos and ability to care for oneself, others and the natural environment, for present and future generations", I suggest "others" could be animals. It has the added value that, for children in particular, one starts from something with which they are familiar and can then go on to develop a much wider understanding of all the issues involved in the environment. I hope this can be incorporated within the general idea of sustainable environmental ability. In a very short time, I hope I have made the case for including animal welfare in this excellent Bill.
Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-16
Topic: Environment
Alexander Randall (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am pleased to welcome this Bill and its very worthy aims, so passionately introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth. I declare my environmental and conservation interests as in the register, particularly as a council member of the RSPB and chair of the Essex Climate Action Commission. I am also a member of Peers for the Planet and have had the pleasure of working on these issues with Jamie Agombar, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, in his opening speech It is my greatest fortune to have had an engagement with nature since my earliest days. I want as many people as possible to have that wonderful experience. Of course, now there is a real need to be aware of what my generation has done—and, indeed, left undone I have had the great opportunity over recent years to visit a good number of schools, and I can honestly say that the enthusiasm for learning about climate change and the nature crisis is extremely high. Whether that is reflected in all schools I cannot say—although we have heard some interesting statistics—but, to judge by those I have been in contact with, there is nothing but a very strong appetite. I think that is pretty universal Only last Friday I was part of a panel involved in a "Dragons’ Den"-style event for the Vanguard Learning Trust, a group of both primary and secondary schools in the London Borough of Hillingdon. Each school had held its own competition to find a project to represent the school, with the aim of reducing the school’s carbon footprint and improving its environmental profile. A generous donation from ACS International School Hillingdon enabled the schools to bid for extra funding to upgrade their projects. I pay tribute in particular to the trust’s principal, Martina Lecky, for coming forward with such an innovative idea that really engaged the pupils. I was really impressed by all the projects and look forward to seeing them progress, particularly the beehives at Ruislip High School I have a few questions about the Bill. The first, as just enunciated by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, is how we ensure that teachers have adequate training and access to reliable resources to teach the subject to the level it deserves. I would love to see how schools can benefit from modern technology to engage with young people around the world, some at the very front line of climate change Finally, unless I have misunderstood the measures, they would be confined to secondary schools. I believe that primary school pupils are also immensely interested in and engaged in the climate issue and—just as importantly, in my opinion—in the crisis facing our natural world. As far as I can see, it is never too early to engage our young people in what will probably—almost certainly—be the biggest challenge that new generations face, because of our failures. I therefore commend the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, on bringing the Bill forward and wish it well.