argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Stuart Campbell McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am happy to support my hon. Friend in that call. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry), he makes an important argument about rural Scotland If the Government were to succeed in reducing net migration to the tens of thousands, it is projected that Scotland’s working age population would decline by 4.5%, or 150,000, between 2016 and 2041. It is time that the Home Office engaged with these concerns. So far it has veered between platitudes about the useless Scottish shortage occupation list and total disinterest in the issue. I ask the Home Office: please, look at the analysis that has been done and proposals about how a differentiated or devolved system can work—not just from the Scottish Government but from academics such as Christina Boswell, Sarah Kyambi and Eve Hepburn. Look at what think-tanks such as the Institute for Public Policy Research are saying; see what works internationally in Canada, Australia and other countries Whatever our differing views on Scotland’s constitutional future, migration and demographics must be recognised as huge issues for the future of Scotland. The total lack of interest from the Home Office is just shocking. If it fails to start engaging and addressing the issue, there is no better illustration of why we need decisions on immigration to be in Scotland’s hands For all those reasons, the Bill must be refused a Second Reading. For such a short Bill, it risks remarkable damage. We will all be poorer if it passes. We say no to terminating our mutual rights to free movement and no to giving the Government a blank cheque to implement a disastrous alternative policy. We say no to extending the hostile environment and anti-family policies, and no to damaging Scotland’s future. For all those reasons, and all the reasons set out in the reasoned amendments tabled by the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, as well as that tabled by the SNP, the Bill must be refused a Second Reading.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Peter Wishart (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The right hon. Gentleman is correct that immigration was the cold beating heart of the case for leaving the European Union—there is no doubt about that. However, he is just making a traditional, right-wing Tory speech on immigration, saying that immigration somehow changes communities and drives down wages. Does he have even a shred of evidence to support all these lazy, right-wing Tory views about immigration? We have never seen any evidence.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that those of us in areas that have had a positive experience of immigration should continue to have the right to have that experience? Will he therefore back our call to devolve immigration to the Scottish Government so that we can continue to have that positive experience of immigration?
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Stuart Campbell McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): What I did not do in my speech was to set out alternative ways of addressing some of the concerns that the right hon. Gentleman is raising, such as by investing in public services in communities where there has been migration and in integration strategies, and through proper labour market enforcement of standards and wages. Those are ways of addressing community concerns without the whole country having to cut off its nose to spite its face by ending the free movement of people.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Other
David Melvyn Linden (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I just wanted to remind her of some history. It was the Conservative party that, in an election, had huge billboards saying, "Are you thinking what we’re thinking?" That was the kind of rhetoric that was whipped up by this Tory party, so I will take no lectures from her on that point.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Lady talks about the UK’s one-size-fits-nobody migration policy. Like other countries such as Canada and Switzerland, does she support decentralising or devolving the issue, or is she still of the mindset that we must hold things centrally in London, and that London knows best?
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I was only going to make a couple of points, but as I have listened to the debate, the number of points has grown. I shall kick off by correcting, or perhaps taking on—I do this on migration quite a lot—the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mrs Badenoch). I was very disappointed by the remarks of the hon. Lady, who is not in her place, and the sort of reverse dog whistle when she looked at the SNP Benches. She should be aware that the first ethnic minority Member of the Scottish Parliament was Bashir Ahmad of the SNP, that the first Government Minister in the devolved Scottish Government was Humza Yousaf of the SNP, and that the first Muslim woman from Scotland to be an MP was Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh of the SNP. I merely put that on record so that people such as the hon. Member for Saffron Walden do not repeat that sort of nonsense again This immigration debate is an interesting one. It is not a debate about what we want or what we could do; it is a debate about what we can stop, what we can control and what we can limit, and that is very disappointing. There is actually something really akin to the Soviet central planning of the 1920s onwards: we have Soviet tractor statistics. That is really the sort of theology that is driving this current Home Office—centralised planning and red tape, with Government at the heart of people’s lives and building bureaucracy where there is no bureaucracy at the moment. All the time, what the Government will do is increase the work in MPs’ offices up and down the country as a result of the nonsense we are going to have.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Civil Rights
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the historical point. In response to what the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) said, does my hon. Friend recognise, as I do, that freedom of movement was actually brought in to replace the extremism of Soviet communism and Nazism? It is one of the greatest achievements in history—economically, diplomatically and culturally. Is it not a great shame that people such as the hon. Gentleman can see it go so easily and cheaply?
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Mixed Topics
Alison Emily Thewliss (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am almost loth to interrupt my hon. Friend because he is making some excellent points. He mentioned the increased casework for MPs’ offices. My surgery on Friday overran by an hour and 10 minutes, all because of Home Office problems. Does he agree that the Home Office cannot cope with the additional 3 million people, and woe betide anyone else in the system at the moment?
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend’s point stands for itself and is well made. As we are dealing with further voodoo from the Home Office, let me say that the problems that we have at present are based on voodoo thinking. Part of it was "Take back control", but when we are dealing with the Home Office, no one is in control, least of all the Home Office itself The Bill is based on Soviet-style central planning and a desire for tractor statistics, but it does not take account of what we really need. I have raised one of the most important points with the Home Office time and again. It is said that we are in control and we do not have free movement, but if we need people to come and work on fishing boats—people from outside the European Union want to come here, their Governments want them to come, our local authority wants them to come, fishing organisations want them to come and our communities want them to come; indeed everybody wants them to come except somebody in an office in London—we are told it cannot happen. The Home Office in London says no, and boats are tied up.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): That is correct, and the point has been well made by many MPs. If it was not for the voodoo thinking of the Home Office, and if normal people were allowed to decide this, that would be happening, to everyone’s benefit I introduced a private Member’s Bill on refugees, and I would have thought that this Bill would be an opportunity for the Home Office to extend the same rights to people who have already been given refugee status and are under the age of 18 as it does to those over the age of 18. Again, we have voodoo arguments and nonsense thinking from the Home Office about why it should not do this. There is an opportunity. The Home Office could end the need for my Bill if it wanted to, and it is disappointing that it does not. We are happy in Scotland, but we need more people. Switzerland has 26 cantons. Half the visas of people going into Switzerland are divided between the 26 cantons, and the other half are centrally controlled in Berne. Switzerland can manage to do that, but the UK cannot, because of voodoo thinking and a desire to keep control where the Home Office does not need control, thereby creating problems and messing up people’s lives unnecessarily. That is our lot, given that we are stuck with the Home Office as it is Migration is good. I will repeat that for anyone who is in any doubt: migration is good. I live on a small island in the Outer Hebrides and our construction industry is just about driven personally by a guy called Pawel Kochanowicz. He is a young man who came to live on Barra, and he works day in and day out. Such people are welcome, and the more like him, the better.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
David Melvyn Linden (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He knows how much respect I have for him. The Immigration Minister is on the record as saying that she would not grant the Scottish Government powers that she would not grant to Lincolnshire County Council. Does he support her view on that matter?
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Civil Rights
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) said earlier that we needed to stop freedom of movement to counter extremism. However, is it not the point of freedom of movement to put into the past the kind of extremism that built the Berlin wall?
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Of course if the Brazilian gentleman had become a full Irish citizen, he would have been able to move through the common travel area without hindrance. There is a question here, and it is one the Scots Tories do not like. They do not want Scotland to be able to contribute to common travel area migration in the way that Dublin and the London Government can. Does the hon. Gentleman support the Scottish Government’s having the same rights to enable people to become citizens as the Irish Government have, and having them freely move within the common travel area, which is not a problem?
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Gavin Andrew Stuart Newlands (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) spoke in great detail and with great skill about the many deficiencies of this Bill. I want to focus on just one: ending freedom of movement Since 2016, we have listened to those who wish to rip Scotland from the European Union speak triumphantly about the prospect of ending freedom of movement. They speak of this as if it is a victory that will benefit the people of this country. In truth, we cannot measure what will be lost. We will lose countless opportunities, relationships, stories, and human experiences that would have been worth just as much to us culturally and socially as the billions of pounds that our EU membership generates every year. I know that this will be hard to believe, but, by the end of this week, I will be one birthday away from my 40s. [Interruption.] It is the truth, yes. A clear majority of Members in this place are clearly older than I am. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) is clearly one of those. I am angry about the impact that ending freedom of movement will have on my generation and on those of older generations, but that anger is as nothing compared with the rage felt about the impact that this will have on younger generations—those who overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU, or who were left voiceless due to this Government’s opposition to giving the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds I equate the situation to the support that the Tory and Labour parties gave to the various versions of tuition fees at university. They were happy to accept all the benefits of free tuition and the unburdened opportunities that it afforded themselves, but are now happy to pull up the ladder of opportunity behind them. So it is with EU membership and freedom of movement—it is selfish, self-defeating and utterly, utterly senseless.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Gavin Andrew Stuart Newlands (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): As usual, far from being senseless, my hon. Friend makes his point with force and alacrity, as is befitting of a budding statesman. I could not agree more—[Interruption.] I think that I have perhaps gone too far with that, Madam Deputy Speaker We had to listen to vacuous calls for reductions in the number of EU citizens making their homes and their lives here. We saw the Eurosceptics’ de facto leader stand in front of Nazi-inspired political advertising that cynically equated desperate refugees fleeing war-torn areas of the world with EU citizens. Those Eurosceptics lied about money for the national health service and they lied about Turkey joining the EU. Some even promised that we could stay in the single market and yet still somehow end freedom of movement.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Mixed Topics
Stephen Patrick Gethins (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): There is one other point that we do not often hear. I am somebody who benefited from freedom of movement, which gave me career and educational opportunities. Why should anybody in here have the right to take away those opportunities for those who come after us?
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Gavin Andrew Stuart Newlands (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I would give way but I am conscious that others want to speak, and I am coming to the end of my speech Scotland does have an alternative: Scotland voted to remain. I hope that colleagues across the House will reject this Bill and ultimately give people a chance to have the final say. I also reiterate that immigration powers must be devolved to Scotland so that we can get on with building an open and welcoming immigration system that works in the interests of Scotland. However, it would seem that Scotland’s interests are now wholly incompatible with those of the rest of the UK. That leads to the only clear solution—to become like every other normal country and secure our independence so that we might forge that better future To conclude, perhaps on a note of consensus, we have just marked Robert Burns Day, so I would like to ask hon. Members to reflect on some words from Scotland’s immortal bard—not "parcel of rogues", although rarely would that particular verse have been more apt, but this: "For a’ that, an’ a’ that, It's coming yet for a’ that, That Man to Man, the world o’er, Shall brothers be for a’ that."
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
David Melvyn Linden (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): As this debate approached, I reflected on one of the first experiences I had when I first stood for election in 2017. It was at a hustings—although they seem to be a dying art in election campaigns, they are still a very important aspect—and I remember being challenged by a guy in the audience about what my party’s policy on immigration was. I gave a very full-throated argument in favour of immigration and why we need it. After the hustings was over, he came up to me and said, "Look, before the public meeting tonight I was intending to vote for you, but because you are so pro-immigration, I can’t." It was probably that experience that led me to reflect on how we managed to get into a situation where immigration has become such a hotly contested issue. There is an argument that during the Brexit referendum, leadership on this issue was completely absent from the main political parties. I believe that immigration is fundamentally a good thing, and that if politicians talked about it more, we would be less likely to be in this position. There is a degree of hypocrisy when we speak to some of our constituents. When we talk about immigrants, that means people who come here from Europe, but when we talk about people going to live in Spain, we call them expats. People will complain, "They don’t speak our language when they are on the streets of Glasgow," but when I go on holiday to Gran Canaria or Tenerife, I do not often hear many British people speaking Spanish, so there is a degree of hypocrisy there On the issue of hypocrisy, I want to address very directly the absolute mess that the UK Labour party found itself in this afternoon. The shadow Home Secretary opened the debate by saying that Labour would abstain on Second Reading. It took 135 miles for Jesus and Paul to walk the road to Damascus, but today it took an hour and 35 minutes for the Labour party to make a U-turn on its position. That shows the absolutely nonsensical position that the Opposition have found themselves in—and it is the same with Brexit. If someone is trying to ride two horses, eventually those two horses will give way. What we saw today is the very beginning of that for Labour, and its Members should reflect on that We have to be very, very upfront about the benefits of immigration, because if we are not, there will be major challenges coming down the track for us, in terms of not just our economy and our public services, but social care. We know that the number of people with dementia will have increased by about 40% in 12 years’ time, and that means more people in care homes. It is a sad thing, but the vast majority of people that I went to school with do not like the idea of going to work in care homes—of wiping people’s bottoms or serving meals. If we do not confront the reality of our ageing population, we are going to have a very serious problem with regard to our current argument on immigration.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. It is not simply about providing labour; it is also about the taxes that these immigrants will pay, which are needed to fund the social services that so many people rely on.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
David Melvyn Linden (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Absolutely. My hon. Friend almost anticipates my next point. We have an ageing population, and people are going to have to be looked after. People will live for longer and we will need others to fund the tax base that pays for their pensions, so there is absolutely an economic argument for immigration as well As I was preparing for this speech, I reflected on the fact that we begin the sitting day in the House of Commons with a prayer in which the Speaker’s Chaplain says: "May they never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals but laying aside all private interests and prejudices keep in mind their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of all mankind" We stand here at half-past 2 and pray that to God. We say, "Let us take decisions not just to please people but for the right reasons." In reality, we find ourselves in a position politically in which we are not leading anymore—we are reacting to public opinion I make no apology for the fact that I took a very pro-immigration stance at the hustings that night. Tonight, with a German surname, I will walk through the No Lobby and vote against the Bill because I believe in the free movement of people. The sooner that Members get to grips with the challenges coming down the track and the benefits of free movement, the better, because we have serious challenges, and any vote for this Bill would be a seriously retrograde step.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Immigration
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) that, given the need for the people whom this Bill dismissively describes as low-skilled, if we allow them to come here for a year but then ask them to stay away for a year, after which they might be allowed to apply again, we would not attract anyone to work in sectors such as care and public services?
Proxy Voting — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Other
Hannah Mary Bardell (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that we have to get past the point where we are making policy as a result of being shamed? We had to be shamed into doing this. There were so many debates, and the Leader of the House herself said that she might look at it when we moved out of this place while it was being refurbished. A lot has changed since then, and it is great to see progress, but we cannot let things continue like this.
Proxy Voting — House of Commons, 2019-01-28
Topic: Civil Rights
Martin John Docherty-Hughes (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Just as a point of information, we should be mindful that there will be women who will be married to, or have partners who are, women so the impact will be not only on fathers, but on mothers whose wife or partner is giving birth.