argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Sittings of the House (29 March) — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Other
Luke Patrick Graham (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is making a point about travel. I say to him, my constituency neighbour, that our constituents in North Perthshire and South Perthshire will be plenty happy for us to be here making some of the biggest and most important decisions in this Parliament in modern political history. These decisions cannot wait any longer.
Sittings of the House (29 March) — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. I am sorry, but I said it before to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who took it in pretty good spirit—[Laughter.] Well, reasonable spirit. With the greatest of respect to the hon. Lady, whose experience of the European Parliament is well known, this is not a debate about tomorrow’s motion. I have said this before and I will say it again: this is a debate on the sittings motion. That is all we are debating now. If the hon. Lady would like to make a few remarks—[Interruption.] No, I am telling the hon. Lady what the situation is. The debate is on the sittings motion. If she would like to make a speech on that motion, she can do so, but this is not about tomorrow’s debate.
Sittings of the House (29 March) — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): In so far as it is germane to the right hon. Gentleman’s view as to whether the sittings motion should pass, it is a reasonable point for him to raise. I can say only that the Attorney General can respond now, but I think it became clear in earlier exchanges that he was minded to address such matters tomorrow.
Sittings of the House (29 March) — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. The hon. Gentleman was led astray from the path of virtue when his hon. Friend exhorted him to list matters that it would be worthy to debate tomorrow. I can advise the hon. Gentleman on that matter: the sittings of the House motion specifies the purpose for which the House will meet, and an amendment to it specifies a purpose for which it should not meet. It is clear from the motion what it is about, and this debate is not an opportunity to dilate on a vast range of other matters, which may be of interest to the hon. Gentleman but which are not consistent with the terms of the motion. If I have somewhat truncated the hon. Gentleman’s speech as a result, I am sure he is sad, but that is the reality.
Sittings of the House (29 March) — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): And, very importantly, it is the birthday of the hon. Lady’s daughter, and doubtless of a great many other people to boot, Brexiteer and remainer alike. [Interruption.] I cannot name them all, I am afraid. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), but I am afraid that my knowledge is not that great. It was a good try.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Housing
Richard Michael Bacon (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, I do, although if one went on a sales course, one would be told "Benefits, not features." One does not explain that a vacuum cleaner does 3,000 revolutions per minute rather than 1,500, as nobody cares—one explains that it cleans one’s house better. In the same light, I would not bang on about carbon, making people feel kind of morally inferior—I would explain that one could have the choice of having a house that would cost nothing to heat, and ask why anyone would want one that cost a lot to heat I had this out very specifically at the Policy Exchange think-tank with the land use and planning director of Barratt. I asked about what it did for its customers in this regard. I said, "Is it really true that you have a conversation with your customers in which you say, ‘Now madam, we’ve got a variety of houses available for you, this one over here that will cost you roughly £1,400 a year for heat and hot water, and this one over here that is insulated to, or nearly at, passive house standards that will cost you almost nothing to heat—perhaps, with mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, £80 or £150 a year. Which one would madam prefer?’ Do you really offer them that choice?" Of course, he turned his back on me and stomped off rather than answer the question.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Housing
Richard Michael Bacon (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes. I do not want to be building houses that we will be knocking down in 30 or 40 years’ time because they are so dreadful. That is utterly pointless. The hon. Lady mentioned building regulations. At the Local Authority Building Control conference, where I gave an address, I needed only to say the word "Persimmon" and people fell around laughing as if I was as funny as Tommy Cooper—perhaps there are people who think I am—because it is a byword for poor practice in the building industry I have heard the chief executives of volume house builders criticise Persimmon for its bad practice. We all know what happened to the sainted Jeff Fairburn. Because of his compensation scheme, he was being paid—I will say this slowly—£130 million in emoluments by the shareholders of Persimmon. So egregious a scandal was it that he got so sick of being followed round by someone from the BBC with a microphone asking him to justify it that he eventually resigned, which was a red letter day for many of us who are campaigning for higher quality. In a competitive environment where the company could not afford to pay one chief executive that much money, that money should have been going into larger spaces, better quality material and better thermal performance. There is a huge distortion.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Housing
Richard Michael Bacon (Conservative, Centre-right): I do, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of that. There is a lot of evidence that if people live in better, more spacious, healthier homes, there are lower costs for the NHS and lower sickness rates; it is better for employees and employers. There are lots of other ancillary benefits of having better homes, as well as their being good in themselves I am keeping a close eye on the clock, Madam Deputy Speaker. I planned to start with a preamble, which I seem to be doing without too much trouble, and then get into the specifics of what I want to say to the Minister about the Right to Build Task Force, but I will say one or two more things before I do that The situation we face is one in which an entire generation have basically given up on the chance of either owning a property or even being able to afford to rent one. In general, and especially in the big cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester, people spend an absurd proportion of their income on rent. When it is costing people over 50% of their net monthly salary to rent a ghastly little bedsit where the mattress is hanging over the sink—I do not exaggerate; I saw such an example on a Channel 4 documentary a while ago—we obviously have a big problem I was at a dinner at the London School of Economics where a professor was talking about a graduate student of his who was about to start working in the Bank of England on a not inconsiderable salary, but he was going to be living at home with his mum. The chap from KPMG around the table said, "Well, that’s nothing. We start our graduates on £45,000, and they can’t afford to buy anywhere." Then the chap from BlackRock said, "Well, that’s nothing. We start our graduates on £75,000, and they can’t afford to buy anywhere, certainly not within a decent distance of our office." It has got completely out of sync, and the Government have to fix it There is, of course, a political problem for our own party. I will address that later, but it is perfectly obvious that if people cannot get somewhere to live at a price they can afford, they will not vote for a party that cannot provide that for them. We need a fundamental change. We have dug ourselves a big hole over the last 20 to 25 years, and it will take us 20 to 25 years to dig ourselves out of it. If we are not careful, we will be in the same position in 20 to 25 years, only worse, unless we have the right policy proposals for fixing it. That is what I want to come to When I came off the Public Accounts Committee in 2017, it was to spend time on the Right to Build Task Force, an initiative set up by the National Custom and Self Build Association to help local councils, developers, community groups and landowners who want to bring forward self-build and custom house building projects on serviced plots of land—that is to say, where all the difficult bits such as fresh water, sewage, electricity, broad- band and so on are already dealt with—in order to increase supply and give people more choice. That is what I have spent most of the last two years in this place doing.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Housing
Alexander John Gervase Chalk (Conservative, Centre-right): In Cheltenham, the overwhelming majority of the house building taking place in the town centre is for retirement apartments. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we want to maintain the culture, vitality and vibrancy, we have to ensure that young people can afford to live there as well? Will he join me in congratulating the Government on providing, through the home improvement fund, millions of pounds for a Portland Place development in Cheltenham that subsidises marginal viability schemes, to ensure that young people can truly live in the town centre and contribute to its vibrancy?
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Housing
Richard Michael Bacon (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry, but I will not give way—only because of the lack of time; I need to leave the Minister a couple of seconds What did Adam Smith say "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." The aim of public expenditure on housing should be to lower barriers to entry and increase choice, so that people can have the houses they want. If we get this right, we can engender a revolution in this country in how housing is done. If we get it wrong, we will pay a high price at the ballot box: almost nobody between the ages of 20 and 40 can easily, at a price a normal person can afford, dream of having their own place, even though 86% of people in this country want to. We need to design and redesign a system that allows them, and everyone else, to achieve their aspirations.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Housing
Christopher Laurie Malthouse (Conservative, Centre-right): That was a remarkable example of a combination of encyclopaedic knowledge and conviction about what my hon. Friend rightly says should be not only the Government’s top domestic priority but the entire country’s primary moral mission: to build the homes that the next generation need and which are currently denied to them It is unusual for me to hear strains of my own speeches read back to me. I know that my hon. Friend has not been to listen to many of my speeches, but what he said resonates strongly with me: many of the themes he laid out in his preamble and diagnosis I am myself going around the country promoting—not least the dysfunctionality of the house building market. The one element that he omitted, but that I am sure he is aware of, is that the situation is not helped by the fact that in the crash of 2007-08, 50% of all small house builders were wiped out—removed from the market—having produced, as my hon. Friend said, more than half of all new homes. That proportion has now dropped to about a third, I think Both in coalition and since, the Government have done their best to try to push output up from a low of 124,000 in 2012 to 222,000 last year. The forward indicators for next year are looking pretty good as well.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Housing
Christopher Laurie Malthouse (Conservative, Centre-right): I totally acknowledge the role that high environmental standards have to play in a sense of social justice about housing. I went to a factory run by Accord Housing, which produces 1,000 modular homes a year. So good are the environmental standards in those homes that they have lower arrears because people can afford to heat them. That is definitely something on which I want to focus I want to address some of the questions that my hon. Friend raised. He is right that we need to do something about the way in which the house building market functions at the moment, and my job is to wander around being disruptive, supporting new entrants and players to create the competitive landscape that he is looking for—competing on quality and type; being disruptive on technology and encouraging modern methods of construction, including off-site manufacture and new techniques, so that new entrants find it easier to overcome the barriers to entry that he mentioned; and being disruptive on finance My hon. Friend is a little negative about Help to Buy, but I ask him to take care. Many tens of thousands of young people have accessed homes for the first time when the market was denied to them before, because of a Government-backed effective bank of mum and dad. While there will be assessments of that scheme, there is no indication at the moment that it has pushed up prices.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Housing
Richard Michael Bacon (Conservative, Centre-right): Of course people who are given cash will be grateful, but if there is a subsidy for demand rather than supply, we will not fundamentally solve the problem. Would it not be a good idea to wean people off Help to Buy and towards Help to Build, so that we subsidised supply? If we subsidise something we get more of it, and what we need more of is supply.
Housing — House of Commons, 2019-03-28
Topic: Housing
Christopher Laurie Malthouse (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right. It is possible—although I know it is strange—for Government to do two things at the same time. Help to Buy affects a very small percentage of housing transactions—about 4%—and the indications are that it has not had a particular impact on prices. We continue to review the policy in the light of its success—some 160,000 people have now accessed homes who otherwise would not have done so In the last minute or so I want to return to my hon. Friend’s questions. He asked five specific questions. First, will we look at a review for the taskforce? Given that we are going into a spending round, with what may be small amounts of money in the scale of the spending that I have available, I would be more than happy to do so. I am of course also more than happy to look at planning guidance review and particularly land allocation. In particular, we could perhaps think about communicating more widely to local authorities. I would be happy to help him by sponsoring some kind of event to promote the idea and to help local authorities to learn On viability, when I was on the Treasury Committee we did a housing inquiry in which I posed the question to Kate Barker and David Orr whether we should do away with the viability test as part of the planning system, and both of them thought that that was a good idea. In the meantime we have standardised the viability test to see where we get to On the Planning Inspectorate, my hon. Friend is right. We are trying to talk to staff about how they can be more consistent in their decision making and apply it more regularly across the country Finally I would be more than happy to join my hon. Friend in raising consumer awareness, and I congratulate him on what was a tour de force on his knowledge of housing policy Question put and agreed to.
Midland Main Line Franchise — House of Commons, 2019-05-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: Where the trains for the new franchise for midland main line will be made; and what the timetable is for the delivery of those trains.
Christopher Stephen Grayling (Conservative, Centre-right): The more we build in this country, the more we invest in research and development. In the north-east, we are seeing more of Hitachi’s capabilities coming to the United Kingdom. The same applies to CAF in south Wales and, in particular, to the great success of Bombardier in Derby. Bombardier currently has a huge amount of work, and is delivering new trains throughout the network. However, I am with the hon. Gentleman: I want more to be done in the United Kingdom. As we move further into the 2020s, I am very committed to ensuring that as much as possible of the new rolling stock that we are expecting is built in the UK.
Leaving the EU: Port Delays — House of Commons, 2019-05-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Nusrat Munir Ul-Ghani (Conservative, Centre-right): Once again, my hon. Friend is waving the flag for the United Kingdom. We have indeed put together a 30-year maritime strategy called Maritime 2050, which will help to deliver the fantastic maritime nation that we were before we joined the EU. It is a great opportunity to promote again the hard work undertaken by our ports, including preparing for the possibility of—[Interruption.]
Shipley Eastern Bypass — House of Commons, 2019-05-02
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Frankly, the Minister is altogether too modest. However, it is my own firm conviction, based on observing the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for the past 14 years, that he combines the qualities of both those illustrious orators.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-05-02
Topic: Housing
Questions: The new east midlands train franchise is likely to increase capacity southwards from Kettering, but will it improve connectivity north on the midland main line? The previous Labour Government cut our half-hourly service northwards and it is about time that we had it back.; Train commuters faced 35,000 cancellations last year owing to driver shortages. That is purely because train operators are running the service on the cheap. What will the Government do about that?
Christopher Stephen Grayling (Conservative, Centre-right): When I took on this sale, I ensured—in the work we did to prepare for the sale and with potential buyers—that additional safeguards were put in place for those tenants. Whether the arches had remained in the public sector or been sold, it would always have been right to ensure that a market rent was charged. There is no expectation of rent increases out of line with market rents. In the public sector, it would not have been proper use of public money to provide subsidised rents for businesses.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-05-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: The new east midlands train franchise is likely to increase capacity southwards from Kettering, but will it improve connectivity north on the midland main line? The previous Labour Government cut our half-hourly service northwards and it is about time that we had it back.; Train commuters faced 35,000 cancellations last year owing to driver shortages. That is purely because train operators are running the service on the cheap. What will the Government do about that?
Christopher Stephen Grayling (Conservative, Centre-right): That suggestion has been put to me on a couple of occasions. At the moment, because of the nature of the threat around our airports and the fact that so much airport security—particularly at our principal airports—is done through the Metropolitan police, who co-ordinate anti-terror work nationally, I am not yet convinced that it would be the right thing to do, but I am always open to considering change if it is going to deliver improvement.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-05-02
Topic: Other
Questions: The new east midlands train franchise is likely to increase capacity southwards from Kettering, but will it improve connectivity north on the midland main line? The previous Labour Government cut our half-hourly service northwards and it is about time that we had it back.; Train commuters faced 35,000 cancellations last year owing to driver shortages. That is purely because train operators are running the service on the cheap. What will the Government do about that?
Christopher Stephen Grayling (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very pleased that we managed to resolve the problem. My hon. Friend puts his finger on an important point. When the unexpected happens or there is an unintended consequence which disrupts a community, the ministerial team and I will always try to do everything we can to ameliorate or change it.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-05-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: The new east midlands train franchise is likely to increase capacity southwards from Kettering, but will it improve connectivity north on the midland main line? The previous Labour Government cut our half-hourly service northwards and it is about time that we had it back.; Train commuters faced 35,000 cancellations last year owing to driver shortages. That is purely because train operators are running the service on the cheap. What will the Government do about that?
Alexander Jesse Norman (Conservative, Centre-right): As the right hon. Gentleman will know, we take that matter very seriously. We are about to launch the charging infrastructure investment fund, which will see £200 million of public money matched by £200 million of private sector money. We expect a rapid roll-out to what is already one of the largest charging networks in Europe.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-05-02
Topic: Other
Questions: The new east midlands train franchise is likely to increase capacity southwards from Kettering, but will it improve connectivity north on the midland main line? The previous Labour Government cut our half-hourly service northwards and it is about time that we had it back.; Train commuters faced 35,000 cancellations last year owing to driver shortages. That is purely because train operators are running the service on the cheap. What will the Government do about that?
Alexander Jesse Norman (Conservative, Centre-right): I can certainly confirm that the project originated in the coalition Government, and it would be quite disingenuous of any political party that was part of it to seek to distance itself from that decision. Of course, I can make no statement whatever about the direction, since that is the subject of a continued process of consultation and review.
National Security Council Leak — House of Commons, 2019-05-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend about the corrosive effect of unauthorised disclosures. We all have to be honest with ourselves. I do not think there has been a Government in history from which there have not been leaks and gossip from time to time—as I look at Labour Front Benchers, my mind goes back to what we saw under the Blair and Brown Administrations. But I do want to say this in response to my right hon. and learned Friend: above all, when it comes to National Security Council discussions—I think this applies to the Cabinet, too—there is great merit in the very old-fashioned precept that Members should speak with complete candour in the room and shut up when they get outside.