argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Roger Duncan Godsiff (Labour, Centre-left): I will not give way anymore If parents say they have concerns, and if they have sought to raise those concerns with the headteacher and have not been allowed to do so, I believe it is incumbent on a Member of Parliament to articulate those concerns. That does not mean to pass judgment, but if they have concerns, they are entitled to have them addressed. So far as the parents at these two schools are concerned, there has been no engagement and no meetings, whereas 256 other schools in Birmingham are doing things differently What is this "homophobic hatred" that these parents are supposed to be spreading? That is massively serious. Let us look at some of the police witness statements. As I have said, the police were at every protest. These statements are not hearsay or recycled versions that have been fed to social media to feed the frenzy; they are legal daily reports by police officers who were present. They say the chants were repeated over and again, and what were those chants? "Our children, our choice." "Listen to parents." "Let kids be kids." "We are not homophobic." "Parent governor step down." "Headteacher step down". That is not nice for the headteacher or the parent governor, but I do not accept that as being homophobic.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Roger Duncan Godsiff (Labour, Centre-left): No, I have given way on a lot of things Furthermore, the police who were present wore body cameras and were asked by the organisers of the protest to check whether any placards contravened the law. I understand that only one placard was deemed inappropriate at an early protest, and the people carrying the banner were told not to bring it again I make these points because I believe the parents have not had a fair chance to put their side of the dispute. They have been branded professional agitators, accused by a councillor of not having children at the school, called a "mob" and told that they are spewing out homophobic hatred. These mothers have been smeared, and the fact that the local Member of Parliament, having weighed up the evidence and listened to all sides of the argument, came to the conclusion that the people protesting had just reason to complain and protest merely added a target for the witch hunters and increased the lust for a sacrifice, irrespective of the facts I return to a couple of specific questions, which I supplied to the Minister before the debate. I ask these questions because I suspect many primary school head- teachers watching this debate, like their colleagues in Birmingham, want to know whether they are inadvertently contravening the law in how they impart the nine protected characteristics of the Equality Act to their pupils As I have said, 256 of 258 primary schools in Birmingham are, in different ways, ensuring that their pupils know when they transfer to secondary school that any form of discrimination, victimisation, prejudice or bullying of other people who fall within the nine protected characteristics is unlawful. They do this by engaging with parents to explain the nine characteristics; by having workshops about the individual characteristics; by having ongoing consultations with the parents and showing them the type of material they propose to use; and by engaging with parents about what age is most appropriate for the various characteristics.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
John Eugene Joseph Dromey (Labour, Centre-left): I had not intended to speak, but decided to do so in the light of what I have heard today. Let me first say that I come from an Irish Catholic background, so I know from experience what cultural conservatism can be like. I know some of the terrible things that happened in the Irish Catholic culture, going back over many years—at its most obscene, the Magdalene laundries. But ultimately that changed because brave Catholics challenged their own culture. Ireland is now a tolerant country with a gay Prime Minister; that would have been thought unachievable and impossible in decades gone by With regards to what has been happening in Birmingham, I am the first to respect cultures, including cultural conservatism. I believe that there should be engagement without hesitation, but I do not accept what has been said today—that there has been no engagement by the head, Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, with parents. I think there has been engagement, but I also think we need to distinguish between two things: on the one hand, there are those who feel uneasy; but on the other hand, there are there those who have been deliberately stirring this up This is not just happening in Birmingham. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) referred to what is happening in Cardiff, and we are seeing a network develop in a number of cities around the country. To be frank, that network is absolutely wrong because, as a very good Muslim friend and constituent of mine said, "Jack, if we go down the path of dividing and demonising, or in any way suggesting that we would ever do that, our country and our city are a poorer country and city." I never want to see the day when we in any way feed the view that there is something wrong about two men living together or two women living together I remember a man who came out to me in the old Transport and General Workers’ Union many years ago. He was desperate, in tears and afraid to speak out. But now Birmingham is the city of pride—pride with a small p and Pride with a big P. We have tens of thousands marching in Birmingham, celebrating our diversity: our rich cultural diversity, our rich ethnic diversity and our diversity in terms of sexual preference. Long may that always be the case I stress again that I absolutely understand that one has to engage, listen and explain, but if there are forces on the march the kind of which we thought were history in our country, we have to say, "No, you’re wrong."
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Jessica Rose Phillips (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; she is speaking incredibly movingly. As somebody who lives closer, I think, than anybody else to the schools particularly in question and lives in the community amongst the people who go to that school, I want it to be said on the record that she is absolutely right in what she says about this being on the fringes, because I do not recognise the Muslim community that I live amongst as being part of that mob.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Angela Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend. She has a great deal of experience in this, not least because she lives amongst the community that is being portrayed in such a way We must not give in to this kind of organised campaign, which is effectively being organised from the outside. The Equality Act—which was passed in 2010, so has been on the statute book for nine years—actually says that schools have a duty not to discriminate against LGBT people. That includes discrimination against pupils who are LGBT—to be fair, that would probably not be very apparent at primary school level—pupils who are perceived to be LGBT, and pupils with LGBT parents, carers and family members. These are the diverse parents that we have in our communities now, and the children that they send to school, or the potentially LGBT children in school, do not deserve to be treated with anything other than equality and respect. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] All that is meant by the teaching on relationship and sex education is that this diversity needs to be represented. It is not propagandising and it is not trying to "turn people gay", which I have heard mentioned—I am not sure it is possible to turn people gay; there certainly would be no gay people if you had to be taught about being gay to be gay. [Laughter.] What we are talking about is respect, their rights, their right to be equally welcome in school, not to be bullied or treated as if they are lesser, not to be made to feel that somehow there is something wrong with them, not to feel suicidal, not to be called "faggot" or "lezzer" in school and not to be humiliated. That is what we are talking about when it comes to relationship and sex education—plain, simple decency.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Mixed Topics
Stephen Pelham Pound (Labour, Centre-left): In 2001, in Holy Cross church in the Ardoyne district of north Belfast, there was a concentrated campaign not only against Father Aidan Troy, the priest there, but against that community. Recently, I met two girls who had been primary school pupils at the time, and they are still, 18 years later, suffering the trauma of that experience. Even if we can put aside for one moment the substantive argument, does my hon. Friend not agree that it is simply impossible and unconscionable that we allow primary school children to be subjected to this sort of concentrated mob abuse? That cannot be allowed, surely.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty). I rise to put one point to the Minister I welcome the fact that we are having this debate and I share my hon. Friend’s dismay at the scenes in Birmingham, but it is right that we talk about this issue and discuss the concerns that have been raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr Godsiff) is right to remind us that religion or belief is among the protected characteristics identified in the Equality Act 2010 In the debate on the regulations on 20 March, I raised concerns that were being voiced, particularly by representatives of the Orthodox Jewish community. I chair the all-party group on faith and society. After the debate, I asked the Minister whether he would ensure that officials from his Department and from Ofsted attended a meeting to discuss the implementation of the regulations with representatives of a wide range of faith groups. I am very grateful to him for arranging that: the representatives came and the meeting took place One idea that emerged from the meeting, mentioned in a letter I copied to him, is a requirement to subject local plans for implementing the regulations in each area to consultation with the local standing advisory committee on religious education—the SACRE. I recognise that in some areas there may well be a question about the capacity of the committees to undertake such a consultation. In other areas, however, they are certainly well up for doing it. The SACRE is in most areas, I think, quite a wide and representative body that is currently focused purely on religious education. The suggestion that emerged was that its remit might be extended to take in local plans for implementing the relationships and sex education statutory instrument. I wonder whether the Minister will be able today, or separately, to respond to that specific idea, which came out of the meeting he very helpfully supported after that debate in the House.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I mean the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes). I am sure that there is no segregation between the two In fact, despite my having been ordained, my constituency is, according to the last census, the second least religious constituency in the country, but there are people of faith among my constituents. I often speak to them, and I think that, in the main, they have found a profound generosity in recent years, but this is still a difficult issue for many Muslims. There are those who struggle to find new, liberal ways of expressing Islam in a modern world. Many Catholic Members of both this House and the other place have often voted for equality although their Church has voted in a different way, so my biggest hope is that Islam will find a way of reconciling itself with the modern era—with the things that we know, which, I would argue, our God has taught us to understand in the last 100 or 200 years about ourselves, about humanity and about human sexuality I hope that Muslims will be campaigning outside all those schools to make sure that every child knows that sometimes there are two daddies and sometimes there are two mummies. They may not be your parents, but they may be the parents of someone else in the family or someone else in the school, and you should not spit at them, and you should not denigrate them, and you should not laugh at them, and you should not call them names, and you should not bully them In the end—and here I use a religious term again—equality is a seamless garment. The tunic worn by Christ on the cross was a seamless garment, which is why the soldiers could not tear it apart when He was taken down from the cross. The equality that we demand for people regardless of their religion, or their political allegiance, or the colour of their skin, or their gender must also apply in equal measure—in full and equal measure—to our sexuality.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): Quite! We all know how the game of Chinese whispers works, and the danger is that if children learn things second hand, the message will have been garbled or lost by the time it reaches the third child down. If we are going to teach our children about these ideas of respect and if we are going to keep them safe, we need to do that in a whole way I was taught by my parents that of course it did not matter who you fell in love with. I can remember as a child hearing nursery rhymes about falling in love with different groups of people. That is the kind of family I grew up in, and I feel very proud to have had parents who introduced those concepts. My sister is a happily married heterosexual, and she had those songs sung to her as well when she was young. They did not make me gay, but they made me feel comfortable with who I was. Let us be honest, however. Parents are loving, but there is no qualification to be a parent. There are some good parents and some bad parents. My mother is a linguist and an English teacher, but she knows absolutely nothing about physics or maths—she dropped out of science at GCSE—and if I had been taught science by my mother, I would not have been able to go on to do my physics and chemistry A-levels, as I did. We understand that parents are the primary lovers of their children, but they are not always the best people to give them a holistic, rounded education, because they have not experienced all the different elements and aspects of the world People in positions of responsibility, whether they are teachers or Members of Parliament, have a responsibility in these debates to show leadership. It was the Labour Government between 1997 and 2010 who showed leadership. If we had followed the mob and listened to what the opinion polls were saying at the time, it is unlikely that we would have made much progress at all on LGBT rights. We would not have made progress on abolishing section 28, for example, because Brian Souter was busy ploughing money in to garner public opinion in one way. We as politicians have to recognise that public opinion can be whipped up by dangerous forces, and we have a moral responsibility to sometimes make a judgment, not on whether there has been consultation—that was a totally vacuous argument that had no content to it—but on the content of the objections, in order to analyse and review them. That is something that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr Godsiff) has failed to do in this debate even once. Not once did he articulate the problems with the content of the curriculum.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): I totally agree. It is even more important that a Member of Parliament, and I would not want to tell anyone how to do their job, should not go and plonk themselves down on one side of the debate without analysing—my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) gave resources to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green—the content of what is being discussed. It is extremely dangerous not to show that leadership, and that is why the debate was wrong from the beginning. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green has been deeply wrong in how he has handled the issue. Pandering to the mob is never right. It is always easy for an MP to do, but we go in the wrong direction if we do it. Let us remember that one of the things that instigated section 28 was the book "Jenny lives with Eric and Martin". It is a pretty mundane and boring book: Jenny goes and has an ice cream; Jenny has a book read to her by one of her fathers. It is hardly high literature. There was a backlash, against a backdrop of rising right-wing tension—[Interruption.] I thought you said something, Mr Speaker. Of course, that led to the introduction of section 28. I do not think that we are on the verge of section 28 being introduced again, but we must be vigilant about bringing people along on that journey I shall conclude with two points. First, there is a place for parents on that journey, not to consult them on whether something should be included in the curriculum or not but, to some extent, to make up for the fact that we had section 28 for so long. Many parents failed to receive that level of education and understanding. There is a purpose in reaching out to the community Secondly, before I became an MP, I wrote an education resource for the Council of Europe on how we talked to educated children under 10 about sexuality and different families. The Council of Europe hardly draws its members from purely progressive countries—it includes Russia, Turkey and Poland—and the resource was accessible in all those countries. I am proud of that resource, which a team helped to write. People in the Council of Europe, including British Ministers, helped to lead a debate at that level to change attitudes and run campaigns to change minds and educate people We have not really received an apology. What we heard was a defence of the position taken by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green, with a little apology at the end. I wish that he had just been honest about having real problems with the content of the teaching or said that he had not decided to take one side or the other. What we now have is a very disappointing outcome.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I think we are all excited by the Minister moving slightly leftwards, and I am grateful to him. Is it not also worth pointing out the irony that many parents who are particularly concerned about their children growing up might want to know that good sex and relationships education nearly always leads to children delaying their first sexual experience, making fewer risky decisions when they do so and making more informed choices? Surely that can only be in the interests of every single child.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Mixed Topics
Elizabeth Anne McInnes (Labour, Centre-left): Will the Minister be taking any guidance from Nazir Afzal, the former Crown prosecutor in the north-west, who I understand has been brought in to mediate over the protests outside the schools? He is a practising Muslim. He is a very sensible man; he is the chair of the governors at Hopwood Hall College in my constituency. I wonder whether the Minister will be taking any of his advice.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Lilian Rachel Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): Many of my colleagues will have anticipated what I am going to ask, which is: how will schools know whether they have pupils with an uncle or aunt in a same-sex relationship, or with a friend who has same-sex parents? Surely it is appropriate that every child, from the earliest age, should know that there are all sorts of different families—some with one parent, some with two parents, and some with two mums or two dads. The school is not going to know everybody’s experiences, and everyone should know that it is right to respect difference, irrespective of where we come across it.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with the Minister to the extent that it should, of course, be up to the school and the teachers to make the decision about what is age-appropriate. However, he seemed to be suggesting that it was only once homophobic bullying had arisen in a school that a school would start talking about respect for gay people, and that it was only once a gay couple who are parents of a child appeared in the school that this subject should be taught. I am sure that that is not what he really means. I hope he can clarify his point.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Angela Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): Until we got to that passage in the Minister’s speech, I thought I understood what the situation was, but he seemed to be saying that he is going to give very radicalised fundamentalist-type campaigns options to make as much fuss as possible in order to prevent the teaching of LGBT equality and relations until it is easier to do it. I fear that what he said a few minutes ago—I hope that he will be able to put me right on this—is almost an open invitation to these organisations that are already spreading disruption across the country to do even more of it. We cannot compromise with such organisations, and if he does not stand up to them now, he will regret it.
Parental Involvement in Teaching: Equality Act — House of Commons, 2019-06-25
Topic: Civil Rights
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): Can the right hon. Gentleman clarify for me what we mean, in this context, by "sensitive"? Do we mean talking about families with single parents, and so on, or are we talking about trans issues? What is "sensitive"? I am a bit confused, and I am worried that that word will be used as a hook on which to hang things that we might not want to put on it.
Windrush Victims: Compensation — House of Commons, 2019-06-10
Topic: Civil Rights
Helen Elizabeth Hayes (Labour, Centre-left): Community organisations working with Windrush citizens, including the Black Cultural Archives in my constituency, report that the compensation scheme simply is not working. The form is too complex, advice is neither accessible nor specialist enough, and the burden of proof is far too high. Will the Minister review the scheme, acknowledge that it is not working, and, as an absolute minimum, provide immediate funding for specialist legal advice to be available not only by phone but in person to every Windrush citizen who needs it?
Windrush Victims: Compensation — House of Commons, 2019-06-10
Topic: Immigration
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour, Centre-left): This gross injustice with respect to the Windrush scandal is not an accident or a one-off; it is a direct result of the Government’s hostile environment policy. Have the Government considered how their hostile environment might affect migrants from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh now and in the future?