argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Aviation Sector: Financial Support — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Mixed Topics
Ruth Margaret Cadbury (Labour, Centre-left): Furlough ends in September, which is of no help to the aviation sector and airport communities, which will take months to recover even partially as we wait for the world to unlock. Many aviation businesses are on the edge financially, and they employ staff in safety-critical roles where there is a risk of skill fade if they cannot be supported. They are seeking longer-term support, as are communities such as ours in Hounslow, where tens of thousands of people depend on the airport for their livelihoods. Will the Treasury address the specific challenge of the aviation sector and airport communities well before the furlough scheme ends in September?
Small Businesses: Customs Paperwork — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Mohammad Yasin (Labour, Centre-left): Just over a month ago, the Paymaster General told me that she would follow up on my invite to Bedfordshire chamber of commerce to hear the widespread concerns of businesses that are really struggling to overcome the new and complex operational challenges around her Government’s Brexit deal. I have heard nothing. Will the Minister attend a meeting with the chamber of commerce to hear about how customs paperwork is impacting viability, or would the Treasury also prefer to ignore the problem?
Coronavirus Business Support Schemes — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Mixed Topics
Emma Louise Lewell-Buck (Labour, Centre-left): It is clear that equitable distribution of covid business schemes is not a priority. Only those on this Treasury Bench would have the gall to claim fairness when the Chancellor and his Ministers were consumed with pulling out all the stops to support their friend the former Prime Minister on behalf of Greensill, while 3 million people were excluded from support schemes, some so distraught that they took their own lives. So to clear this up once and for all, can the Minister explain what news did Treasury officials report at a meeting on 24 April that made Greensill representatives "very pleased"?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Christian John Patrick Matheson (Labour, Centre-left): The Financial Conduct Authority has asked John Swift QC to investigate the mis-selling of certain business loans to small businesses, as well as their response to complaints about that mis-selling. The review has refused to take into account any loans that were settled with non-disclosure agreements between the businesses and the banks, giving a skewed view and a skewed outcome. Will the Chancellor speak to the FCA and ask John Swift to ensure that all evidence is taken into account, so that we get a proper review of the FCA’s dealings?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Anneliese Jane Dodds (Labour, Centre-left): A year ago, the Chancellor personally announced the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme, or "our loan scheme for large companies", as his Department put it. Allowing Greensill Capital access to that scheme put hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money and thousands of jobs at risk. The Prime Minister said he would publish every personal exchange related to covid contracts. Has the Chancellor published his every communication relating to Government business on Greensill, including with David Cameron—yes or no?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Mixed Topics
Mohammed Afzal Khan (Labour, Centre-left): That the Prime Minister said that he would rather see the bodies piled high than enter another lockdown is utterly despicable. My mother and parents-in-law were not bodies; they were my family, my loved ones. Grieving families like mine deserve better. We deserve a place to remember those we have lost. That is why the covid memorial wall is so important. Has the Chancellor estimated how much it would cost to make this wall of hearts permanent? If not, will he now do so?
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Immigration
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour, Centre-left): Like many other Brits abroad, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been completely let down by this Government through a litany of errors, including the Prime Minister’s gaffe. Nazanin and her family will doubtless be experiencing serious mental health pressures and anguish at this point in time. Indeed, her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has previously stated that the Government’s inability to secure his wife’s return is a "failure of diplomacy". Would not the Minister agree that this further sentence proves that he is right?
Post Office Court of Appeal Judgment — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Mixed Topics
Michael Whitley (Labour, Centre-left): This gross miscarriage of justice has taken a terrible toll not only on the wrongly convicted sub-postmasters who have endured so much suffering and struggled for so long to see justice, but on the local communities that rely on post offices as precious community resources. In the wake of this scandal, can the Minister tell us what steps the Government are taking to ensure that every community has easy access to a post office?
Fire Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Other
Rosalie Winterton (Labour, Centre-left): Before I call the shadow Minister, may I reiterate that this is a very short debate with a long list of speakers, which is why I have put a three-minute limit on Back Benchers? Obviously, if colleagues can be shorter than that, we might actually get everybody in.
Fire Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Housing
Sarah Ann Jones (Labour, Centre-left): The Sunday Times reported two days ago that the Bank of England is worried that "Britain’s building safety scandal could cause a new financial crisis." The Bank is worried about the scandal’s impact on property values, as new data from the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership shows that fire-risk flats can sell for as little as one third of their purchase price. That is devastating and requires an immediate response from the Government The Government surely should not need reminding that a collapse in house prices triggered the global financial crisis in 2007, but it seems that they do, and it seems that they also need reminding of the misery that this crisis is causing hundreds of thousands of people. The safety scandal that has unravelled in the wake of inaction and indecision since the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 has left up to 1.3 million flats unmortgageable and affects thousands of recently built houses. As many as 3 million people face a wait of up to a decade to sell or get a new mortgage because they cannot prove that their homes are safe, and we have leaseholders who face repair bills of up to £75,000 for flaws such as flammable cladding and balconies, and missing fire breaks We stand here today while thousands watch this debate and suffer, worrying about their futures, getting into debt and facing bankruptcy. We have to ask ourselves what the Government actually care about. They do not appear to care that the Bank of England thinks that we are heading for a financial crisis. They do not appear to care that thousands and thousands are living with anxiety, fear and debt. They do not seem to care that the vague and undefined loan scheme that they have hailed as the answer—despite having promised many times that leaseholders will not have to pay—will damage people’s property prices and will not actually be in place, as we hear today, for at least two years, leaving thousands to pay mounting waking watch bills and stuck in properties that they cannot sell.
Fire Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Housing
Stephen John Doughty (Labour, Centre-left): I completely agree with the points that my hon. Friend is raising. She will know the suffering of my constituents in Cardiff South and Penarth. Does she agree that the UK Government need to get around the table with the Welsh Government and provide clarity on how those taxes will work, and how money will flow from the building levy and the tax? The UK Government have not yet done that. We have finally had an answer to the letter from the Welsh Housing Minister, and the Welsh Government have put aside money, but they are not clear how much money is coming from the UK Government.
Fire Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Housing
Sarah Ann Jones (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has raised that point many times, and he is standing up for his constituents in a way that I am afraid that this Government will not What do the Government care about? We are left with one possible answer. Do the Government care only about the donors who keep their Prime Minister in fancy furniture, so that he can spend £60,000 on curtains in No. 10, while nurses and key workers out there face £60,000 bills for cladding with no wealthy Tory donors to bail them out? Do the Government really care only about big property developers, such as European Land and Property, which developed a block of flats in Paddington that used the same aluminium composite material cladding as was on the Grenfell Tower, and which has donated £2.5 million to the Conservative party since the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017? Do the Government really care only about Britain’s biggest builders, who have built up vast profits during the pandemic, such as Persimmon—
Fire Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Housing
Sarah Ann Jones (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister is shouting names at me from a sedentary position, but he is not answering the question. I do not want to be right. I do not want that to be what the Government care about. I honestly always believe the best in people and applaud my colleagues from across the House who have stood up for their constituents time and again on this, but even they are asking why else the Chancellor and the Prime Minister are ignoring a financial and human crisis on such a growing and worrying scale Let us vote today to start putting this right and prove me wrong. It is not just Opposition Members who support amendments to protect leaseholders. A recent poll from YouGov commissioned by the National Housing Federation found that three quarters of MPs, including two thirds of Conservative MPs, say that the Government should pay the costs of all building safety work up front and then claim it back later from those who are responsible. I have not heard a single argument that bears any scrutiny as to why it is okay to let leaseholders foot a bill for tens of thousands of pounds, or to sit by as homeowners face bankruptcy or decades of lingering debt We welcome the latest amendment from the Bishop of St Albans, which would put into law a guarantee that building owners cannot pass on the costs of any remedial work to leaseholders in the time before the Government introduce their promised legislation. I am also very interested in the amendments tabled by the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), which propose that the Government should follow the polluter pays principle Yet again, the Government have decided to lay a motion to disagree with the Lords amendment. This is a betrayal of the promise that Ministers have made over 17 times that leaseholders will not be left to foot the bill. The Minister’s argument that it would delay further works does not work. If the Government have not managed to work out how to pursue the money from those responsible, why do they not do what is right and stop leaseholders footing the bill The Bishop of St Albans’s amendment would buy the Government some time. It would protect leaseholders while the Government come up with a longer-term plan. We ask the Minister again, if he does not think that the proposed amendments are right as they are, why not amend them? Why, when it is directly in their gift, will the Government not pay to fix these problems and then go after the building companies and developers that are responsible? Leaseholders deserve justice now.
Fire Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Housing
Hilary James Benn (Labour, Centre-left): It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith). Here we are again debating a Lords amendment to protect leaseholders from having to pay to fix construction defects and unsafe cladding that never were and never should be their responsibility, and yet Ministers continue to resist, even though they have repeatedly said that leaseholders should not have to bear the cost. The trouble with this endless debate is that the clock is ticking and innocent leaseholders continue to face unreasonable costs as bills now start to arrive demanding sums of money that they simply do not possess. One constituent wrote to me last week enclosing a photograph of the bill he has just been sent, for £27,000. Another thinks that their bill will be £40,000. They obviously cannot remortgage their flats. So I ask the Minister: what are people in this situation meant to do? Sadly, we know that the Government do not have an answer to this, or indeed to the mental and emotional torment that these people are being put through. That is why this amendment is needed, and needed now Even taking account of the Government funding already announced, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership estimates that about two thirds of the total cost will still fall on leaseholders: the very people whom the Government say should not pay. The Association of Residential Managing Agents estimates that the average remediation bill will be about £50,000 a flat and that insurance costs have risen by 400%. The Government estimate that the average cost of a waking watch outside London is over £2,100 a year for each flat. Leaseholders in shared ownership properties are in a particular bind. The building safety fund is moving too slowly. There is a shortage of companies who can, or will, do the work. There is total uncertainty as to what is meant to happen when we know that there are other works that have to be done to make buildings safe but for which the Government are not prepared, so far, to offer funding. I find it very hard to believe that Ministers do not understand that the remedy they have come forward with so far is patently insufficient, or that, without a comprehensive plan, leaseholders will, month by month and year by year, inevitably face financial collapse because of the huge burden of costs being put on their shoulders. In conclusion, can I assure the Minister that the growing number of MPs who support the Lords amendment are not going anywhere, and that is because our constituents have nowhere else to go?
Fire Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Housing
Matthew Thomas Pennycook (Labour, Centre-left): I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to speak so early in this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland). I thank their lordships for the tenacity and perseverance they have shown over many months in standing up for all the blameless leaseholders affected by the cladding crisis, including the many thousands who live in one of the more than 70 affected buildings in my constituency In seeking last week to persuade their lordships to cease insisting on amendments designed to protect all leaseholders from remediation costs, the Minister for Building Safety argued once again that such provision is unnecessary and that to continue to seek to amend the Bill in such a way would risk its passage in this Session, could increase fire safety risks and might "ultimately cost lives". Yet it is the very fact that this crisis is already ruining countless lives that led their lordships to insist once again that this place reconsider, and they were entirely right to do so.
Fire Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Housing
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with what my hon. Friend says. I wonder whether he has visited claddingscandalmap.co.uk, which maps 450 buildings with 60,000 homes affected by this scandal. It also shows the Members of this House who are voting to force leaseholders to pay towards the costs.
Fire Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Housing
Matthew Thomas Pennycook (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I have seen the site in question, and it brings home—I know he shares my feelings, as his constituency is so close to mine—the fact that certain parts of the country with high numbers of new build properties, including constituencies such as ours, are particularly badly affected. I have tens of thousands of constituents affected As welcome as they were, the five-point plan and the additional grant funding that the Government announced on 10 February are still only a partial solution to the cladding crisis, and they consciously and deliberately leave a significant proportion of leaseholders exposed to costs they cannot possibly hope to bear. For significant numbers of leaseholders, that exposure is not some theoretical future risk, but a reality that they are already confronting To take just one example, I had a lengthy exchange yesterday with the right-to- manage directors of a small 24-unit building in east Greenwich, Blenheim Court, which requires urgent remediation and is under 18 metres in height. As things stand, not only are the leaseholders in question living with the punishing uncertainty of not knowing if or when their building might be issued with a forced loan of the kind the Government propose, but because they do not have the funds to commence remediation works, they are struggling with myriad secondary costs, including a soaring building insurance premium, which has led their service charges to increase from about £2,500 a year per flat to more than £130,000—I have seen the invoice, and the figure is correct—and there is a very real risk of mass defaults as a result Every week that this House fails to act, more leaseholders are placed in similar situations and put at risk of negative equity and bankruptcy. I have absolutely no doubt that the Government will ultimately be forced to bring forward a more comprehensive solution that protects all affected leaseholders from the costs of fixing both cladding and non-cladding building safety defects. Seeking to pass the costs on to even a proportion of them will almost certainly mean that the works simply do not get done. Unless this House is content to follow that path and see many more lives needlessly destroyed in the interim, it must act today and take decisive steps towards resolving this crisis. I urge Ministers, even at this late stage, to honour their commitments previously given from the Dispatch Box and come forward with a sensible concession. If they do not, I urge MPs from across the House to protect blameless leaseholders and support the amendment in the name of the Lord Bishop of St Albans in the Division Lobby shortly.
Fire Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Housing
Shabana Mahmood (Labour, Centre-left): Four years have passed since the Grenfell tragedy, and once again the House is debating whether or not to protect leaseholders from the costs of remedying fire safety defects caused by a failure of regulation and negligence, as well as by deceptive practices in the building industry. Meanwhile, the Government continue to dither and delay, and order their MPs to vote against amendments designed to protect leaseholders. Make no mistake, the funds that the Government have made available thus far have taken too much time to come on stream. The money will not ultimately be enough to meet the scale of the crisis and, crucially, interim costs are not covered On top of all those costs, today we have heard about the cost of insurance. I have lost count of the times that I have pleaded with the Government to do something about insurance costs. In my constituency there have been insurance increases of 1,000% in affected buildings. Those are shocking figures, and this shocking situation is falling on deaf ears as far as the Government are concerned. Long before any cladding is removed from these buildings, the people living in them will have been ruined by the costs of insurance and interim measures such as waking watches to keep their buildings open. There is simply nothing left to remedy the internal fire safety defects as well. Leaseholders need the protection that the Lords amendment would offer We should never forget that at any point, a further tragedy could—God forbid—occur. That is a terror that leaseholders in Brindley House in my constituency have had to face, because on 31 January this year there was a fire in a flat in their building. I have seen the burned-out husk of that flat for myself. The fire service said that the residents were only two minutes away from the fire engulfing the whole of their building. Two more minutes and the windows in that flat would have shattered, and the cladding wrapped around that building would have caught fire. When I heard that, my blood ran cold. Can the Minister imagine what it must be like for the people who live in Brindley House? That is the risk, that is the fear, and that is the scale of the financial ruination that people in my constituency and all over the country are trying to cope with One of my constituents recently said to me that he now thinks it will be less stressful to declare himself bankrupt and become homeless than to try to find a way to carry on as a leaseholder. At the very least, the Government could and should support the Lords amendment, or indicate a clear way through the crisis, so that we send a clear signal to all leaseholders that we will stand with them.
Fire Safety Bill — House of Commons, 2021-04-27
Topic: Housing
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister should be very careful. The speeches in this debate today are an example of Parliament at its best and Government at their worst. The Minister has heard Members from across the House, and from his own party in particular, criticise what the Government are doing. He would be a very wise Minister to listen to Parliament. If he refuses to listen, I think he should think about his future In March this year, leaseholders in Wembley Central apartments in my constituency were told that in response to the publication by the Government of the Building (Amendment) Regulations 2018, a waking watch system would be implemented as soon as possible. The cost of the waking watch patrols would be recovered from leaseholders in the sum of £91,380 a month. The cost of the remedial works to the fire alarm system across Central Apartments, Ramsey House and Metro Apartments is estimated to be in the order of £250,000 to £300,000. The owners said that they were unable to say the total cost of all four recommendations and that they therefore could not advise the liability of each leaseholder I find it unacceptable that the Government are imposing billions of pounds of costs on leaseholders retrospectively to remedy misconduct by others, such as the developer, the builder or those producing the Government’s own advisory documents and in particular building regulations control. The fire survey for these particular buildings said: "There is evidence that the junctions between compartment floors were inadequately fire stopped…as there were gaps at mineral wool fire barriers at steel framing. There were no visible fire barriers at vents or around windows/door frames and it could not be confirmed that the window/door frames themselves formed cavity barriers." That indicates that at the time of construction the building regulations then in force were not followed. That means that these people were sold a building that was not fit for habitation, yet the Government are not pursuing the people responsible; they are making sure that it is the innocent parties who will pay. Their lives are being ruined, as Members in all parts of this House have said. It is vital that the Government address this and accept the Lords amendment. In particular, they need to focus on addressing the very real issues in building control regulations that allowed this scandal to happen in the first place.