argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Industrial Strategy — House of Commons, 2018-04-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Rebecca Long-Bailey (Labour, Centre-left): I completely agree. Unfortunately, what I see as I travel around Britain is a bit of a postcode lottery in business support, and the Government need to address that urgently As I said, the Government failed to recognise the impediments facing many businesses and to outline any more general protections. That could not have been displayed more clearly than in the Government’s handling of the Carillion scandal, where key requests by business organisations to mandate 30-day payment to suppliers and instigate the use of project bank accounts were effectively ignored. The Government simply looked on as Carillion and other big players like it abused the businesses that they contracted with and passed on financial liability and risk down the supply chain. Labour pledged to mandate 30-day prompt payment and the use of project bank accounts for all Government projects, and I will be grateful if the Minster will do the same today when summing up.
Industrial Strategy — House of Commons, 2018-04-18
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Peter John Kyle (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend rightly points to the failures around the collapse of Carillion, which was a disaster for the many thousands of people who worked for it. The other organisations that failed were the regulators, so does she agree that we need a root-and-branch think about how we regulate the private sector, particularly when organisations are delivering public services at vast cost to the public purse?
Park Rangers in Wrexham County Borough Council — House of Commons, 2018-04-18
Topic: Public Lands
Susan Elan Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I rise to present the petition of residents in Cefn Mawr in Clwyd South. First, let me say a special thank you to the tireless campaigners of Cefn branch Labour party, who have collected many signatures to save our wonderful park rangers service and protect the beautiful Ty Mawr country park The petition of residents of Cefn Mawr in Clwyd South, Declares that nature parks are an important part of our environmental heritage; further that they provide an area in which residents and visitors can enjoy nature and open spaces and play a vital role in the conversation and protection of nature; and further that local country parks including Ty Mawr Country Park, Nant Mill Country Park and Alyn Waters Country Park are well used by the community and attract visitors to the area, therefore helping to support the local economy The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to urge Wrexham County Borough Council to reverse their decision to reduce funding for Park Rangers, whose role is vital to the continued existence of unspoilt country parks in Clwyd South constituency And the petitioners remain, etc. [P002133]
Thameslink Upgrades — House of Commons, 2018-04-18
Topic: Other
Gavin Shuker (Labour, Centre-left): I am extremely grateful to hear that from the Minister. Of course, it is a rolling series of timetable changes over the next three years, at six-monthly intervals. Members in this House will be extremely grateful to hear the Minister’s willingness to keep a close eye on things at each of those timetable changes, rather than necessarily relying on the plan as it currently stands to go for two and a half years.
Economic Development: Cross-border Co-operation — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Gerard Killen (Labour, Centre-left): Brexit poses the biggest risk to Scotland’s economy. If the Government want to show co-operation with the Scottish Government, does the Secretary of State agree that the sectoral reports that are available to MPs in this place should also be made available to MSPs?
Presidents Club Charity Dinner — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Angela Rayner (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for securing this urgent question. I welcome the new Secretary of State to his place and thank the Minister for her comments today. I hope that the Secretary of State is as disappointed as I am that a board member and a Minister in his Department attended an event that described itself as "the most un-PC event of the year". Let us be clear about what that meant. It meant an event where women were invited not as guests but as objects for rich and powerful men. They had to act as hostesses and were forced to wear revealing clothes. A number have reported that they were groped and sexually harassed. Will the Secretary of State make it clear that, like me, he believes those women and that the reported events were totally unacceptable I welcome the Minister’s comment that organising this kind of event should not be acceptable for any official, let alone a member of the board of the Department. I also welcome the fact that David Meller is standing down. He should not have any other role in education. Will the Secretary of State also investigate the attendance at the event of the Minister for children? Can he confirm reports that the Minister attended previous events and was invited personally by David Meller this year? His Department is responsible for safeguarding millions of children, for caring for thousands of victims of child sexual exploitation and abuse, for tackling sexual harassment and violence in our schools, colleges and universities and for educating another generation of girls and boys. Is it not time that it started leading by example?
Presidents Club Charity Dinner — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): Is the Minister aware that, according to the Financial Times, the Presidents Club actually includes the following disclaimer in its corporate literature for the event? It states: "The Presidents Club shall accept no responsibility and shall not be held liable for any actions of its members, staff or event attendees that amount to harassment." The fact that it tried to include that disclaimer in the first place shows how shocking things are. It was trying to disclaim any responsibility for what happened. The organisers chose to make it a men-only event. They chose to treat the hostesses in this way, making them parade across the stage in front of the men, making them wear black skimpy outfits and specifying the colour of their underwear. They chose to ask them to drink before the event. Does the Minister agree that all the organisers, including the Presidents Club and all the private companies involved in organising the event, should be investigated for breaches of the law and charity rules?
Presidents Club Charity Dinner — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Angela Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): The Fawcett Society recently published a report stating that violence and harassment against women was endemic in our country, with two thirds of women over 16 reporting that they have suffered sexual harassment. Does the Minister note that the employment contracts and notes for the women attending the event as hostesses asked them to be "tall, thin and pretty" and that they had to deal with what was expected to be harassment? That is surely against the law. Will she look at employment law protections and make it certain that the law is enforced, that the Equality and Human Rights Commission looks at the event and that we get some protection for vulnerable women?
Presidents Club Charity Dinner — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Paula Michelle Sherriff (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for her considered response. However, it is frankly not good enough to say that the Minister for children and families stayed a short time, which is a very subjective term—it might be an hour to some and three hours to others. Can she advise whether that same Minister reported back after he had seen, at worst, illegal or, at best, unsavoury activities during that event?
Presidents Club Charity Dinner — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): As a former Education Minister, I know jolly well that civil servants brief Ministers on what events are in their diary and give them information. I have a lot of time for the Minister. Can she find out exactly what was said to the Minister for children and families about attending the event last week?
Presidents Club Charity Dinner — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): It is absolutely clear from the Financial Times report that the women were employed to be harassed. They were forced to sign a disclaimer beforehand that they were not given time to read. Whatever the Minister’s personal views, will she take away the message from this House that we do not have confidence in the Minister for children and families, who attended the event and who is meant to be in charge of child protection?
Presidents Club Charity Dinner — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Elizabeth Anne McInnes (Labour, Centre-left): What talks does the Minister intend to have with the Financial Times? This was not a one-off incident, and the Financial Times must have had some suspicions that something like this was going to happen. How many times has it happened before?
Presidents Club Charity Dinner — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Sarah Ann Jones (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister talks about the importance of talking to young people. I am sure that all Members here spend time talking to young people, and I have been shocked, in my six months of being an MP, at the young girls who have an expectation that it is normal to sleep with their boyfriend’s friends, carry their boyfriend’s knives and behave in a certain way; and language is so important, as well as words. If it transpires that the Minister did not report his concerns, and that he attended the event on previous occasions, it is obvious that he needs to resign. Our women, our young girls are too important to be getting this kind of message from our leaders and to think that it is acceptable.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Public Lands
Antonia Louise Antoniazzi (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance on how to impress upon the Prime Minister her duty to respond to the First Minister Carwyn Jones’s offer of financial help for the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon.
Refugees and Human Rights — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Immigration
Gareth Thomas (Labour, Centre-left): Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), will my right hon. Friend take this opportunity to praise the work of the International Organization for Migration, a key UN agency leading the effort to provide solutions to the refugee crisis? Will she also take this opportunity to urge the Government, and particularly the Department for International Development, to increase funding for that key UN agency?
Refugees and Human Rights — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Richard Haines Burden (Labour, Centre-left): I completely endorse my right hon. Friend’s point. It is simply not acceptable for the United States President to give vent to his petulance by attacking the vital services that 5 million Palestinian refugees need. Does she also agree that we need to step up to the plate now and to bring forward or to increase the UK’s contribution to UNRWA, to buy some short-term respite for the organisation? There should also be an international conference to ensure that there is a long-term solution and long-term funding for that organisation.
Refugees and Human Rights — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Immigration
Gareth Thomas (Labour, Centre-left): One graphic reminder of the global refugee crisis is the plight of refugees, particularly unaccompanied minors, in Calais. Will the Foreign Office Minister encourage the Home Office to deal more quickly with cases such as that of the 14-year-old brother of one of my constituents, who is still waiting for the Home Office to respond to his application to come and rejoin his brother, my constituent, under the Dublin III convention? If I write to the Minister, will he take up the case with the Home Office for me?
Refugees and Human Rights — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Immigration
Anna Rhiannon McMorrin (Labour, Centre-left): The Bangladesh Welfare Association Cardiff and friends of the Rohingya in Wales are in Cox’s Bazar refugee camps, unloading trucks full of food parcels, blankets, baby food and medicines. They have encountered devastating scenes of hardship and heartbreak and have heard first-hand accounts that no one should experience: people losing loved ones, suffering violence and experiencing squalor, overcrowding and deprivation. Some 48,000 babies are due to be born in the refugee camps this year. Does the Minister agree—
Refugees and Human Rights — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Immigration
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove). I rise to support the motion, and I also speak as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on refugees Taking a human-rights approach to refugees means treating them as human beings who have rights, but who also have skills and experience. We in the Labour party can be proud of the leading role that we played in the creation of the 1951 United Nations convention on refugees, fulfilling our legal obligations. The current Government have provided financial support for refugees in conflict zones, and that is welcome, but aid and charity, although admirable, are not a human-rights approach. They do not honour fully the spirit or the letter of the 1951 convention, and they deny the humanity of refugees and of ourselves The convention made it clear that refugees should be able to provide for themselves and their families by being allowed to seek work, take part in education or start up businesses. It explicitly did not seek to establish a culture of dependency, or structures of confinement or imprisonment. In Uganda, for example, more than 1 million south Sudanese refugees are being helped to get into education or work. There is an economic as well as a legal argument for a human-rights approach. Those refugees are not dependent on aid, are able to keep up the skills that will help them when they return home, and contribute to the local economy. Moreover, they are probably potential customers for our exports As well as the legal and economic arguments, however, there is a moral argument. In an ever more closely connected world, we are all neighbours. On this tiny rock in a corner of the universe, we may all need each other one day. I hope that if we in this country were ever to experience the difficulties faced by people in Syria, with record numbers of civilian deaths from airstrikes, we would receive the help from our neighbours that we should be proud to give to others. Do we want to be seen as the one who is ready to help when tragedy strikes, the one with the emergency food who will also help our neighbours to get back on their feet, or as the one whose doors are closed, whose walls are high, and who does not stretch out a helping, enabling hand? I know which I would like as to be seen as.
Refugees and Human Rights — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Immigration
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): I respect the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen, but time is limited I hear criticisms of the human-rights approach, and I have read them on social media. People say that when we welcome refugees we are letting in terrorists, and we should beware of the pull factor. For a start, there is no good evidence of a pull factor; there is evidence only of the determination of refugees to support themselves and their families, and to escape to wherever they can best do that. I strongly urge Members to come to the House on 16 March to support the Refugees (Family Reunion) (No. 2) Bill, which will be presented by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) It is important to unpick the argument about terrorism. The 1951 convention makes a clear distinction between refugees and criminals. Being a refugee is not a crime, but being a criminal, or of criminal intent, means that a host country is entitled to restrict or cease its hospitality. However, leaving people trapped, with their movements restricted and their human rights held down, risks turning once desperate people into very angry people—and anger is a breeding ground for those who would recruit followers to ideologies of hate who wish to harm us. So my fifth and final rationale for a human-rights approach to refugees is a national-security one On the basis of moral, legal, economic and national-security arguments, and also for the sake of our standing in the world, we urgently need the Government to take a human-rights approach to foreign policy in general and refugees in particular. I think that we in the United Kingdom are proud to be instinctive humanitarians. We all represent people who want us, in Parliament and in Government, to take every opportunity to broker peace, promote human rights and treat refugees as human beings. I urge the Government to support the motion.
Refugees and Human Rights — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Immigration
Marsha Chantol De Cordova (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and to follow the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). I thank him for sharing his story; I think we all felt quite emotional on hearing it. The plight of refugees across the world remains a deeply tragic and often shameful summation of our ability as an international community to create a safe and prosperous environment. The individual circumstances of a conflict that causes displacement, or of the threat posed to vulnerable citizens, can seem insurmountable, given their different causes and effects. The conditions that lead to the movement of people across borders to seek sanctuary will not go away anytime soon. Those conditions include persecution, war, climate change and other complex economic and social factors Britain has the power to play a leading role in setting a co-operative, internationalist agenda that puts human rights at its centre. The plight of Syrian refugees is a prime example. The more recent resettlement schemes announced by the Government are to be commended, but we still are trailing in comparison with our European neighbours. It will be almost a decade since the civil war in Syria started by the time the UK is even close to meeting its targets, while an overstretched region handles the crisis from afar.
Refugees and Human Rights — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Immigration
Marsha Chantol De Cordova (Labour, Centre-left): Time is short, so I will not As the Member of Parliament for Battersea, I must mention the work of a previous MP for the area, Lord Alf Dubs, whose tireless campaigning for child refugees will, we hope, finally undo the Government’s refusal to change the family reunion rules. Mothers and fathers in the UK are unable to sponsor their adult children to join them here. Refugee children in the UK are forced to live apart from their parents, and refugees are unable to bring elderly relatives to live here with them in safety. In my own borough, I have seen the failure of Conservative Wandsworth Council, which has housed a mere two Syrian refugee families I spoke recently in a Westminster Hall debate on the enslavement of black African refugees in Libya. The Minister has spoken in detail on that subject. I must also briefly mention the refugees in Yemen. We are creating that situation ourselves through our arms sales to Saudi Arabia I cannot talk about UK foreign policy and refugees without mentioning one of the oldest United Nations refugee missions in existence: the refugee camps in Palestine. I have visited the camps in Bethlehem, part of the occupied west bank, where three generations of displaced Palestinians continue to face statelessness. Now more than ever, it is important that Britain shows itself to be a team player internationally: tolerant, open and a champion of human rights. In an age of division, we cannot look for short-term solutions. We must be principled leaders.
Refugees and Human Rights — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Tracy Lynn Brabin (Labour, Centre-left): I want to add to the hon. Gentleman’s point about what is being done here on the ground. I do not know whether he knows about Freedom from Torture, which I was lucky to volunteer with for a number of years. I worked with torture survivors in a writers’ group, where there might be a person whose children had been taken from them by a child soldier alongside another child soldier, eating and working together. Does he agree that asking torture survivors to go through their torture to prove they have been tortured is a problem because it might raise their post-traumatic stress disorder?
Refugees and Human Rights — House of Commons, 2018-01-24
Topic: Immigration
Alexander Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): I support the motion but I also believe that we have a special role to protect those who seek refuge and support in the UK. We see many countries in the headlines and in the briefing materials, including northern Africa, Afghanistan, Syria and Myanmar, but others are on the move, too. Some people from those countries are trafficked while others, such as the Palestinians, feel like refugees in their own country as more and more of it is illegally annexed Our Government need to be a leading voice in efforts to ensure that human rights are protected and upheld around the world, but I worry that we could be shifted to the margins as we take decisions to work less co-operatively and even to cut back on the resources to play our full role While I stand in solidarity with the millions of refugees fleeing conflict and war, and urge this Government to do more to stand up for those refugees, I would also like to see a greater focus on the injustices faced by many refugees and victims who seek help here in the UK. A young woman in my constituency is a victim of sex trafficking and is now a refugee as a result. She had travelled to western Europe hoping to pursue her goal to work as a model—a goal shared by so many young people across the world—but it was not to be. She was abducted by two men, kept captive for two months and raped, and then trafficked to the UK. She found herself in another country that she was not familiar with, where she was once again used as a slave for sex—right here in the UK, where it is our responsibility. Yet when she escaped, the British authorities refused her the status of a trafficked victim until my team set them right and she started to get more of the support that she needed That young woman now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and is seeking refugee status. One would think that any compassionate Government would do everything they possibly could to help somebody like that through such a horrific ordeal, yet her case has been refused on the grounds that her home country is judged to be able to provide protection against the persecution of its own nationals. This is not good enough. The Home Office has ignored our arguments that she believes that her own father will kill her should she return home, and that the trafficking organisation has the ability to find and recapture her. Not only that, but she has faced numerous barriers when fighting for the right to stay in the UK. It took 15 months for the Home Office to reach its decision, which means that my constituent has been unable to settle or begin to rebuild her life after going through huge trauma.