argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Armed Forces Bill — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Mark Lancaster (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful for the comments from hon. Members across the House, and delighted that we have consensus on the issue Question put and agreed to. New clause 1 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill. New Clause 2 Payments to veterans suffering from mesothelioma ‘(1) From 11 April 2016 the Secretary of State has a duty to ensure that compensation due to former members of the Armed Forces who have contracted mesothelioma during the course of their military service is assessed and paid efficiently and promptly (2) By 1 October 2016 the Government must put in place: (a) a publicity programme to raise awareness of former members of the Armed Forces who may be at risk of, or susceptible to, mesothelioma; and (b) a monitoring process to ensure the comprehensive and prompt detection of mesothelioma cases.’.—(Danny Kinahan.) This new clause would place a duty on the Secretary of State from the date sums are due to be paid to pay compensation due to former members of the Armed Forces who have contracted mesothelioma during the course of their service is paid swiftly. It would also require the Government to put in place a publicity programme to raise awareness of those who are at risk of mesothelioma and a monitoring process to ensure the comprehensive and prompt detection of mesothelioma cases. Brought up, and read the First time.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is quite right. That is not the main focus of today’s debate, but that is the context in which it takes place We are here today because the situation I have described is also true in local government, which provides so many of the public services on which our constituents depend. The central facts for the debate are these. Urban residents receive 45% more in central Government grant than their rural counterparts and pay £81 less in council tax per head. One may say, "Well, that’ll be because rural residents are better off. They can afford it. It’s reasonable. Their needs are less", but the Government’s own average earnings figures show that residents in urban areas enjoy higher earnings than their rural counterparts, whereas those living in areas of significant rurality are the very poorest paid. So how can it be fair for poorer rural residents to pay higher council taxes than their richer urban cousins while receiving fewer services? This central unfairness is why, in 2012, along with Liberal Democrat and Labour colleagues, I set up the Rural Fair Share campaign. For many years, rural councils have been underfunded by central Government because of historic political choices and the formidable lobbying power of metropolitan authorities.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is right. This story can be found in places right across the country, yet this inequity continues year after year. That is why so many colleagues are in their places to talk about it today In order to meet the shortfall in grant, of course, rural councils had to respond in the only way they could—and that was, in the past, by increasing their council tax rates. That is why the council tax base is much higher in rural areas, and modest homes in the East Riding of Yorkshire in my constituency can pay higher council tax than is paid on a £1 million property in Westminster. Under the Government’s proposed local government settlement, however, those higher taxes are being used to justify a further shift in support from rural to urban.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right Our campaign has argued from the outset that our councils have to bear additional costs because they serve sparsely populated rural areas. Rural councils face higher transportation costs, for instance, when refuse is collected from sparsely populated villages or when children have to be transported into schools—costs that do not have to be faced in an urban setting. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) mentioned, as we move increasingly towards the digitisation of services, we find that there are additional costs of ensuring fair access for rural residents who do not have superfast, let alone ultrafast, broadband on which they can rely. The Government have made a welcome pledge to conduct a new needs assessment preceding the new retention of business rates regime that they are introducing. That is great to hear, but colleagues would be wise to temper their optimism about any changes that might arise. After all, in 2012, the Government carried out a needs assessment and a consultation process. Those involved in the campaign were delighted—hurrah—when proposals were made that recognised the additional costs of delivering services in a sparse area, yet the additional funding that the Government had agreed was necessary was, for the most part, "damped" away. Under the mechanism designed to minimise volatility in funding in local areas, 75% of the gains that the Government had said rural areas should receive were not delivered. This was not damping as in delay, but damping as in totally and utterly removed. That is why our campaign has been calling for the residual amount, which we have calculated to be worth £130 million a year, to be paid in full to rural authorities.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Housing
Andrew William Murrison (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is doing a great job, if I may say so. Does he agree that the rural services delivery grant was a fine innovation by the Government, and does he share my fears that as we move towards 100% of local authority income being levied locally, provisions such as the rural services delivery grant might disappear—to the disadvantage of our rural constituents?
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): I do. As the system comes in, there will be equalisation, and because of the different dynamics at work and despite the righteous principle—on this side of the House—in believing people should be incentivised to do the right thing and then keep the money, there will almost inevitably be a revisiting. If it turns out that someone’s huge shopping centre is going to be closed, the idea of them being left with no money is preposterous; similarly, if a huge bounty comes someone’s way, it is pretty likely that the Government will do what Governments have always done and raid it.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend makes a strong point Returning to my theme of why we should be at least cautiously optimistic about any review promise in future, the Government responded to our campaign in 2014 and promised to conduct research into the additional costs of delivering services in rural areas. They say that they cannot move to recognise it until the evidence is there, and we have long said, "Show me a single service that is cheaper to deliver per head in a sparse rural area than in a concentrated urban one, and we will be delighted to hear it." I have not heard anything yet. Apparently the current inequities are defensible without any evidence, but any change, even on the most common-sense basis, requires vast amounts of it Anyway, the Government conducted the promised research.in 2014. They gathered data from councils at short notice, during the month of August. Strangely, there was a shortage of data, and—unsurprisingly—no real conclusions were reached and no appreciable change was delivered. We were told, "We are sorry, but there is nothing to justify any change." I therefore caution colleagues not to expect jam tomorrow.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): On this side of the House, but, I am pleased to say, in all parts of the House. They are here because they want a system that is fair to all. Conservative Members represent rural areas, but we also represent suburban and urban areas. We do not want a system that is reverse-gerrymandered, an unfair mirror image of the previous system. We want a system that is demonstrably and objectively fair to all, as far as such a system can reasonably be delivered.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): Historically, most of the Labour party’s support has come from the urban heartlands. That may have led it, when in government, always to use concentrated deprivation as an excuse for moving funds to those urban heartlands, at the expense of rural areas. As I said at the outset, it is important to bear in mind that people in rural areas are not part of an idyll. They are not richer; indeed, on average they are poorer.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Housing
Owen William Paterson (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, and on the splendid campaign he has fought on behalf of our rural communities May I take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray)? Some of us were here throughout the long, long twilight years during which the Labour Government brutally transferred money from rural areas to urban areas. As a result of that, Shropshire will receive £325.67 this year, whereas Westminster, where we are sitting tonight, will receive £715.88. However, the settlement would reduce Westminster’s funding by 13.9% and Shropshire’s by a significant 24% As my hon. Friend says, delivering services in rural areas is expensive. Under the last Government we made some improvements, and we should be grateful for that, but the settlement is still extraordinarily unfair. We are exposed as a party. We are now the party of rural England, and we have to put this right. We do not want to ask for a single penny more from the Treasury; we just want a fair settlement within the envelope.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Civil Rights
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with everything that my right hon. Friend has said, except one thing. We are not just the party of rural England. We are the party of the whole United Kingdom, and what we want, what we have pressed for, and what this campaign has always sought on a cross-party basis, is a system that is fair to all.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Victoria Mary Boswell Prentis (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not represent some rural idyll. I represent two large and growing towns, Banbury and Bicester. I feel particularly strongly about the fact that because of the shortfall in local government funding my council is having to make some very difficult funding decisions that will affect areas of real deprivation. They will affect, for instance, children’s centres and health and wellbeing centres. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a worry?
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Housing
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Withernsea, a town in my constituency, is among the 10% most deprived areas in the country, and I know that similar stories can be told about colleagues’ constituencies throughout England. It is not true that there is no deprivation in rural areas. On average, it is not true. On average, the urban resident receives more. Urban areas do not consist of the most deprived, concentrated communities. They contain some communities of that kind, but on average people in urban areas earn a great deal more than those in rural areas.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): It is, and where will the pressure fall? It will fall either on services, as it already does, or on the only thing that the council has left, which is council tax One of the aspects of this settlement—perhaps the most notable aspect—is the turnaround in the approach to council tax. The rural resident, who is already much more highly taxed, will experience compounded council tax increases. If council tax goes up by 4% in April 2016, and then by 4% a year in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, that will mean five years of compounded 4% increases before the 2020 general election. I suggest to Ministers that they may wish to think long and carefully before presenting that result to the electorate in 2020, while suggesting to rural England that it should support us again.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): As I have said, under this year’s provisional settlement, rural councils are being allowed to increase council tax by up to 4%. In order to compensate for the deeper cuts in their central Government grant, many rural councils will be forced to increase council tax by the full amount so that they can provide their statutory services. The impact of that will be that older, poorer residents in rural areas will be faced with an even larger council tax bill, and, more perversely, the gap in the amount of council tax that they and their urban counterparts pay will increase in cash terms I am also concerned about the mechanism whereby savings are being made in this year’s provisional settlement. At the end of the last Parliament, flat-rate cuts were applied across the central Government grant that every council received. If the Government were saving 11%, every council’s grant was cut by that amount. We argued strongly that that was not fair, because we needed to close the gap rather than allowing it to stay the same. This year, however, the Government are proposing to apply their broadly flat-rate cuts to the core spending power of local authorities. That sounds very reasonable and, indeed, natural, but it includes Government grant and council tax. As a result, the authorities that are already most reliant on council tax will experience a steeper cut in their Government grant, whereas those that are more reliant on Government grant will experience a smaller cut. Research by the Rural Services Network shows that, while metropolitan authorities will face a cut in Government grant of around 19% during this Parliament, rural authorities will face an average cut of 30% or more.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Public Lands
Timothy Paul Loughton (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. May I enter a plea for semi-rural constituencies? Adur, which comprises most of my constituency, is a local government district. In half the areas within the national park we cannot have the development that would attract the new homes bonus, and the population is concentrated on the coastal strip where there are significant areas of deprivation. We are losing revenue support grant at a much higher rate, and it cannot be replaced by the new homes bonus because no land is available for development except on floodplains.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Housing
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right. I remember speaking recently to a North Yorkshire councillor who said, "Given that we have a huge park here, we are specifically barred from development and we are rather restricted in our ability to respond to the incentives that have so generously been put in front of us." Just as we know all people are created equal and we hold them to be equal under the law, so surely we must insist on equity in the way we impose tax on them and fund the services that support their lives. Beyond imprisonment, taxation represents the supreme expression of the power of the state over the private individual citizen. As Members of this place, we would not accept it if the Government proposed to tax people more and to spend less on them because they were black or white, Christian or Muslim, a man or a woman. There would be uproar. Yet at present we presume to discriminate in this way based on the flimsiest of pretexts—the area in which someone chooses to live, to work and to raise their children. The rural voice in British politics in some ways resembles our countryside itself. With a few glorious exceptions, ours is not a land of soaring mountains, plunging valleys and jagged peaks. To conjure up rural England is to convey the patchwork beauty of tended fields, the muted chime of church bells or the majesty of ancient woodland, reflecting man’s presence on the land as it has come down to us through innumerable generations. There is a softness and a neatness to our countryside that can be mistaken for cosseted privilege, all ruddy-cheeked squires and roaring fires. Those of us fortunate enough to represent rural areas know that that is not the case and that sleepy villages can be home to people whose lives are characterised by want every bit as intense, or blighted by strokes of ill fortune or ill health just as devastating, as those who dwell in our towns and cities. Yet this local government settlement would tell them once again, as it has done year after year after year, that they must pay more and make do with less The rural cause can—must, will—be silent no longer. It is for us in this place to give it a voice. For hon. Friends on my side of the House, I believe that to be especially true. It was rural England that kept the flame of Conservatism alive for a long period—nearly 20 years. Now is the time for those of us who have been loyally returned by rural areas to make good on our contract with our electors. I stand with colleagues to ask, politely but firmly, for fairness, not favours, from Ministers, and to express our unyielding resolution that that should be delivered.
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Alexander Jesse Norman (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my right hon. and learned Friend share my view that, in the extremely eloquent speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), he omitted to mention "The Picturesque", which of course comes originally from Herefordshire, as described by Gilpin? Does he also agree that our hon. Friend was the most picturesque adornment present on these Benches as he gave us his presentation? Does my right hon. and learned Friend share my view that the counterpart to the extraordinarily poor settlement that rural areas have received might involve not only an improvement in that settlement on the current basis but also additional capital funding to allow rural areas to develop an economic strength from which future revenue could derive?
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady may be a sole voice, but she is making a powerful and important speech, particularly given that it is from the Opposition Benches and grounded as it is in her constituency experience. Does she agree that the inability of rural councils to deliver services more cheaply and more conveniently digitally because the infrastructure is not there, as she has just described, is another reason why a further increase in the gap between urban and rural is untenable?
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Housing
Andrew James Bridgen (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady is making a passionate speech. Does she agree that it cannot be right that our elderly, vulnerable rural residents, who have paid their taxes like everyone else all their life, may be faced at the end of their life with moving to an urban area so that they can access the normal services that they should expect in rural areas?
Local Government Funding: Rural Areas — House of Commons, 2016-01-11
Topic: Housing
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): No, and for reasons that I will explain to my hon. Friend in just a moment If I took Members to my North Dorset constituency—this echoes what my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness, the hon. Member for Workington and others have said—they would see that it looks lovely, and it is lovely. But we have poor public transport, notwithstanding the excellent service that Damory tries to provide with the budget it receives from the county. The majority of my residents are retired. We have poor and patchy broadband. We have an historical low skills base. We have a poor road infrastructure. One of our straplines is, "Come to Dorset; there are no motorways." Forget motorways; we have no dual carriageway in my constituency. Indeed, a passing place on a B road is greeted like an oasis in the desert. Access to affordable housing is constrained. The average salary of a vast number of my residents is well below the national average—the national average is about £24,000, but in my constituency it is about £17,500. A large number of my constituents are tenant farmers, or those associated with agriculture, living in tied accommodation Therefore, although those wonderful rolling hills and green pastures of the Blackmore vale look enchanting, and while the area of outstanding natural beauty of the Cranborne Chase is indeed beautiful, there are pockets of deprivation in those rural areas, for example in Blandford Forum, Shaftesbury and Gillingham, and for some unknown reason no wise expert in either the Treasury or the Department for Communities and Local Government can find a perfect mechanism for measuring that rural deprivation. That is a huge gap in how we approach the settlement.