argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Atkins (Conservative, Centre-right): I probably ought not to support the application, given that I am a Minister in the Department handing out the bids. What I will do is warmly encourage the efforts of police and crime commissioners who are focusing on violence against women and girls as part of their priorities, having recently been elected. It is critical that the national expectations that we have set in this strategy and continue to set in other pieces of cross-Government work are met at a local level. I look forward to the help of my hon. Friend and other colleagues in ensuring that police and crime commissioners are able to do that.
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Atkins (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Member will know the work that has been done in recent years—indeed, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead—to tackle female genital mutilation and ensure cross-agency working. It is difficult, in that the victims are often very young; they are children, and are facing that criminal behaviour from close family members or friends. Through the mandatory reporting duty, we have set out what we expect of agencies that discover such injuries in the course of their public service. We very much want to support victims—if they feel able to do so—to support prosecutions.
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Atkins (Conservative, Centre-right): It is great to hear about the initiatives in my hon. Friend’s constituency and, indeed, throughout the country. The Ask for Angela scheme is really effective and we took inspiration from it earlier this year when we launched the Ask for ANI codeword scheme in chemists up and down the country for victims of domestic abuse. I am happy to support my hon. Friend and the landlady he mentioned in her work. The fund is open to police and crime commissioners, local authorities, British Transport police and civil society organisations; that will allow for the development of a variety of innovative initiatives and encourage local partnership working. My hon. Friend’s constituency is lucky to have a Member of Parliament who does such a great piece of work with his local landladies.
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Atkins (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady knows the range of crimes that are included under the umbrella of violence against women and girls: they range from rape and sexual assault through to female genital mutilation, forced marriage, stalking and so on. Every victim of such crimes must be treated as a victim first and foremost. If they feel able to—they will not always—they can report their offences to the police, and helplines and so on are available to them as well. If we can help them with investigating those crimes, I hope that will be a significant support for them.
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Atkins (Conservative, Centre-right): I have already met my hon. Friend to discuss this area of potential policy development and I am very interested in it. As he rightly says, as we review the modern slavery strategy we will be able to build on the significant success we have had since the introduction of the previous strategy and, indeed, the passing of the Act. My hon. Friend knows that I am looking carefully at his suggestion.
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Atkins (Conservative, Centre-right): I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. I hope he has heard, as I have said before, the assurances I have given at the Dispatch Box that while we are working on launching the public communications campaign and the other measures, we continue to explore whether a bespoke street-harassment offence is necessary. As I say, some offences already exist that may address some of the concerns, but we are keen to understand what is needed in addition to legislation, which is why we have responded carefully with the communications campaign, which I hope will see real dividends over time.
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Education
Victoria Atkins (Conservative, Centre-right): I am so grateful to my hon. Friend, who does so much work in her constituency to help women and girls and to tackle these heinous crimes. We very much want, through the strategy, to build on the existing relationships and sex education that is now mandatory in every school. Indeed, only yesterday I visited Uplands Primary School in Sandhurst and learned about Pantosaurus, the dinosaur who wears pants. That is the first lesson that children as young as five and six have at that school to start to understand about personal privacy, safeguarding and what is healthy and what is not. We are determined that such education continues at school, but of course we have to reach beyond school, which is why there are measures in the strategy such as a public communications campaign and reaching out to universities. We want to try to reach the wider public with some of the attitudes that we all find so concerning.
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert John Blackman (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for her statement. She will well know that many victims fail to come forward for fear of retribution by an abusive partner or by gangs or other individuals. What more can she do to ensure that victims of these horrible crimes come forward, so that the police can take action to not only arrest those individuals responsible but to ensure that they go through the courts and the judicial process?
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Atkins (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend identifies an important theme in this work. I should say that it is work that we set out not just in this strategy; there is a whole body of work that we are doing across government to fight youth violence, in particular, and the work of gangs. Part of that is about ensuring that girls do not fall foul of criminal gangs through exploitative relationships that can harm them greatly. On building confidence, this is where, among other things, the national policing lead can make a real difference, because we must tackle head on this issue of trust in the police and the ability of victims and complainants to put their experience before the police. Interestingly, the analysis we did during the rape review suggested that victims are reporting rape offences more to the police, but we must do more to ensure that people know that the sorts of offences we have heard about today, particularly those in the street, are offences and that they can and must, please, if they are able to, go to the police about them. We can do that through the communications campaign, as well as through education.
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Atkins (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady has described just one of many calibrations—behaviours—that we all use and have used to ensure that we get home safely. I have talked before about the immediate term, the medium term and the longer term. The sort of cultural change she is talking about is going to take time. I wish that we could change it overnight or over a couple of days. However, I believe that this strategy sets out our clear ambition, over this Parliament and beyond, to change those attitudes, to improve the trust of victims and to pursue perpetrators relentlessly. That is how we are going to eliminate violence against women and girls.
Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2021-07-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Atkins (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the right hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) for bringing Mrs Squire to meet me. It was an incredibly moving meeting. Indeed, Mrs Squire and parents of other women who have been murdered have set out very clearly the escalation of behaviours before such terrible, awful, horrendous crimes are committed We are doing a number of things. The right hon. Lady mentioned the public communications campaign—I know that was something that Mrs Squire was very interested in—but I hope that she will also see in the strategy that we want to review the police management of sex offenders to ensure that it is as effective and safe as it should be. She may note, too, that in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, we are strengthening sexual risk orders and sexual harm prevention orders, which can be used to manage such offenders in the community However, the plea must go out that if you are the victim of a non-contact sexual offence—in common language, that means if someone flashes you, if they are following you, if they are masturbating in front of you, if they are making you feel unsafe in the streets, and it is sexually motivated—please, please, if you feel able to, ring the police so that we can get these crimes recorded and, hopefully, the police can start to find those serial perpetrators before they do something even worse.
Rough Sleeping — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Social Welfare
Edmund Francis Hughes (Conservative, Centre-right): Our focus in the last year has rightly been on managing the response to the pandemic and supporting tens of thousands of the most vulnerable people across our society. During the pandemic, we took unprecedented action to protect people sleeping rough or at risk of doing so. This saved lives and achieved huge reductions in the number of people sleeping rough: a 37% decrease in the latest statistics. Our ambition to end rough sleeping within this Parliament still stands. We are taking into account the lessons learned from our ongoing pandemic response, including Everyone In and the Protect programme, to inform our long-term plans.
Somerset: Unitary Local Government — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Government Operations
Ian Richard Peregrine Liddell-Grainger (Conservative, Centre-right): That is the most pathetic answer I think I have heard in 20 years. The Government’s consultation for the unitary was finished months ago. I have asked parliamentary questions and written to the Minister—I have tried everything. If on 13 December 2019 the returning officer in Thornbury and Yate had stood up to announce that a total of 52,000 votes had been cast but refused to declare the winner, there would have been outrage. Why will the Government not come clean over this? Why are they holding it back? Why on earth has this become an issue? Let us just hear who won the Government’s consultation. Please tell us now and tell the House.
Somerset: Unitary Local Government — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Government Operations
Luke Anthony Hall (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank my hon. Friend for his question. There is no broken commitment. We always said that we would publish the outcome before the summer recess, and we are absolutely on track to do that. We received more than 5,500 responses to the consultation on local government reorganisation in Somerset and, when we publish the information, which will be on schedule, as promised, we will show the proportion of respondents who supported the different proposals, together with a summary of their expressed views. I assure him that we are on track to publish before the summer recess.
HGV Driver Shortages: Waste Collections — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Environment
Luke Anthony Hall (Conservative, Centre-right): We are working across Government and with the waste sector to better understand the issues facing waste-collection vehicle staffing levels. We are working with the industry and have already taken action on HGV driver shortages, including by ramping up vocational test capacity and funding apprenticeships.
HGV Driver Shortages: Waste Collections — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Government Operations
Luke Anthony Hall (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my right hon. Friend for raising his concerns again about the performance of Urbaser and for taking the time to meet me to explain in detail the concerning situation that his constituents face. It is something that we take extremely seriously. Following our meeting, I have written to Urbaser to ask how it intends to address the concerns that he has relayed. I certainly urge it to use every tool at its disposal to meet its contractual commitments and I look forward to working with him to continue to monitor this important situation.
Planning System Modernisation — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Government Operations
Robert Edward Jenrick (Conservative, Centre-right): As the hon. Gentleman knows, all meetings that Ministers have are correctly identified on the register of interests, but I have to say that he has been on quite a journey. One adviser who worked with him as leader of Lambeth Council has been left bemused: is this the same Champagne Steve he remembers meeting with developers? It is not just him who has invited charges of shameless hypocrisy; the Leader of the Opposition has received thousands of pounds of donations from developers, and the deputy leader of the Labour party caused a splash in the papers the other day for accepting £10,000 from developers for her leadership campaign.
Local Government Finance Settlement — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Government Operations
Luke Anthony Hall (Conservative, Centre-right): The local government finance settlement this year was another excellent outcome for councils. We made available an increase in core spending power from £49 billion last year to £51.3 billion this year—an increase in cash terms of 4.6%. There are no plans to review this positive outcome for councils, which was unopposed by this House.
Local Government Finance Settlement — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Government Operations
Luke Anthony Hall (Conservative, Centre-right): First, I would not accept that there are cuts for local government spending in the finance settlement; there was a huge increase this year. If the hon. Gentleman felt it was an unacceptable settlement, he had the chance to oppose it. His local council saw a 4.1% increase in funding this year and it has £150 million sat in reserves, so I do not accept that argument at all. On biddable pots of funding, that is exactly why we have provided capacity funding to councils in the top priority status for the levelling-up fund and community renewal fund, to help them with that work to build good business cases and bids, and submit them to central Government—and to build strong relationships with us as well. I do not accept his overall point about funding, but we are absolutely supporting councils with the capacity funding that they need, and helping them to build that through the support we provide through the Local Government Association as well.
Health Inequalities: Levelling-up Fund — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Social Welfare
Luke Anthony Hall (Conservative, Centre-right): The £4.8 billion levelling-up fund will invest in infrastructure that improves everyday life in our country. It is a core part of our levelling-up agenda, and I regularly speak to my ministerial colleagues about the fund. These discussions will inform our levelling-up White Paper, which we intend to publish later this year.
Levelling-up Agenda — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Government Operations
Luke Anthony Hall (Conservative, Centre-right): Levelling up all areas of the country remains at the centre of our agenda, empowering our regions by devolving money, resources and control away from Westminster. In March the Secretary of State and I met Ministers from each of the devolved Administrations to discuss UK-wide funding programmes. My officials will continue to hold discussions with their counterparts in the devolved Administrations as we continue to develop this important investment.
Levelling-up Agenda — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Government Operations
Luke Anthony Hall (Conservative, Centre-right): I am afraid that the hon. Lady’s question overlooks the facts. We are prioritising funding in the devolved Administrations by delivering £125,000 capacity funding for every single council in Scotland to help them work up strong bids for the UK community renewal fund, and to build a strong, lasting relationship with central Government so that we bond our precious Union together and help deliver the kind of infrastructure in Scotland that people want to see in every area. We are putting our money where our mouth is and putting that investment straight with the Scottish councils.
Levelling-up Agenda — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Government Operations
Luke Anthony Hall (Conservative, Centre-right): The point of delivering the funding in the way we are is that it is localism in its truest form. We are asking local areas to come up with solutions to the problems that they are telling us they face. We certainly do not believe that the Scottish Government have a monopoly on good ideas for improving Scottish communities. That is why we have asked them to come forward with us, and of course we want to work closely with communities in Scotland and build that long-lasting, strong relationship so that we can bind together our precious Union for many, many years to come.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Law and Crime
Christopher Lionel John Loder (Conservative, Centre-right): Good afternoon from West Dorset, Mr Speaker. Dorset Council has done a huge amount of effective work to protect vulnerable people by tackling domestic violence, and there is no doubt in my mind that the extra funding given by my right hon. Friend’s Department will help substantially. However, this funding is ring-fenced for reactive responses to domestic violence. Can I ask my right hon. Friend to look at providing non-ringfenced funding for new burdens under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, so that Dorset Council can continue its vital work in preventing domestic abuse, not just reacting to it when it happens?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Edward Jenrick (Conservative, Centre-right): Domestic abuse is a terrible crime, and I, like Members on both sides of the House, was pleased that we passed the landmark Domestic Abuse Act earlier this year, and that the Government are fully funding the duties on local authorities with £125 million. I have written to all local authorities in England, asking them to use that money for its intended purpose, and to ensure that money goes to refuges, which are not the only thing we should be supporting but are a very important part of the answer in protecting victims of domestic abuse. I will take his comments with respect to Dorset Council seriously. I have heard that it is taking a number of important steps, including, for example, spending £650,000 to tackle this issue.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Foreign Trade
Robert Joseph Roberts (Conservative, Centre-right): I was enthused to hear recently that a positive discussion is ongoing with the Welsh Government about a freeport in Wales. Does the Secretary of State agree that a freeport would be massively beneficial, particularly if it spreads the entire length of north Wales, taking into account its borders at the port of Holyhead, as well as manufacturing centres in Wrexham, Deeside and Delyn, to drive forward economic benefits for our entire region?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Foreign Trade
Luke Anthony Hall (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, we want to establish at least one freeport in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as soon as possible, and negotiations with the devolved Administrations are ongoing. Freeports will benefit and regenerate communities across the country. They act as national hubs for international trade, innovation and commerce, bringing together ports, local authorities, businesses, stakeholders and the community, to boost prosperity and opportunity for the region. We want to see progress, and it is in the interests of Welsh businesses and communities to benefit from that policy as quickly as possible.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Government Operations
Robert Peter Moore (Conservative, Centre-right): Local post offices play a vital part in keeping our high streets vibrant and our communities thriving. That is why I am deeply disappointed that, without undertaking a prior consultation, the Post Office served notice on Mr Ahmed, who runs Haworth post office in my constituency. Will the Minister meet me, alongside ministerial colleagues from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, urgently to review the Post Office’s intention, and aim to save our Haworth post office?
International Travel Rules — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: International Affairs
Robert Alexander Courts (Conservative, Centre-right): The Government have at all times an ongoing programme of engagement with all interested parties, including those in the devolved Administrations, and, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, the Scottish Government have followed our action in this case. We continue to talk to them, as we talk to all our international partners—that, I think, is the answer to the second part of his question—and he will of course be aware that, most importantly, we continue to talk to all parts of the sector to understand how they may best be assisted at this time.
International Travel Rules — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: International Affairs
Robert Alexander Courts (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry to hear about the case of the hon. Lady’s constituent. If there is any assistance that I can offer, I will offer it. The hon. Lady is, of course, right to point to the fact that so many of the solutions here are international, and we continue to work bilaterally with international partners in, for instance, the World Health Organisation, and also with the International Civil Aviation Organisation, to ensure that we find that international solution as soon as we can.
International Travel Rules — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Government Operations
Robert Alexander Courts (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is quite right to raise her constituents’ concerns. I accept that this is a very difficult situation for her constituents, and for others all across the country and in all parts of the industry. I can confirm that across Government we continue to discuss the next steps we may be able to take. When we are able to, we will come back to the House and update people.
International Travel Rules — House of Commons, 2021-07-19
Topic: Transportation
Robert Alexander Courts (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady is quite right to draw the attention of the House to the importance of Manchester and Liverpool airports. I visited Liverpool airport not long ago, so I understand how important it is for her area. I am grateful to her for acknowledging that the airport and ground operations support scheme was welcomed and has been of assistance in relation to fixed costs, in particular business rates, to airports around the country. The most important thing we should all be doing is looking to find a way to enable people to get flying again. That is the way we will best be able to support our airlines and airports, which are so important in many different ways to all our constituents across the country.