argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: Foreign Trade
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): I accept that there will be trials along the way, but what is the harm in trying to lead by example? What is the harm of believing in true internationalism and international free trade, and leading the world in it? That is all we are asking A free trade deal can be concluded so quickly. We have harmonised our laws for 40 years. It is only politics that prevents our European friends from concluding a free trade deal with us. I say to the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central, in all sincerity, that we do not want to create a bargain basement economy in which we lessen workers’ rights. On the contrary, such is the strength of our economy, innovation and industries that surely we can enshrine a gold standard protecting our workers as well as our fields, forest, rivers and seas. There is nothing, apart from politics, to stop our European friends rapidly sorting out a free trade deal in goods and services. There has never been so easy a free trade deal I appeal to my French cousins—not figurative ones, but literal ones—living in Provence and Paris. We want to strengthen our links, not dissolve them, in an amity of nations. On the way, we have to ensure that we enshrine security, control of borders and all those things but, for the positive and international reasons I have given, many Members of Parliament will be proud to vote for this tomorrow evening.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): I might support unilateralism, but does the right hon. Lady concede, given the Government’s policy, that the only obstacle to guaranteeing reciprocal rights is that our European partners have dogmatically insisted on no negotiating before notification?
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: Foreign Trade
Owen William Paterson (Conservative, Centre-right): I chaired the meetings in French, and we translated for the Germans when they could not keep up I saw at the time the extraordinary growth of young economies elsewhere in the world, and I saw that we were being held back. It is tragic now to see how Europe is falling behind. Everyone bangs on about our sales to Europe and the single market. Our sales were 61% of our trade in 1999, they have now fallen to 43% and they will fall to 35% There are wonderful opportunities out there in the three main areas for which I have had ministerial responsibility. First, on Northern Ireland, I bitterly resent the comments about this damaging the peace process. We have, and will continue to have, the very best relations with the Republic of Ireland, and we will respect the common travel area and all that is good, but we need to revive the economy of Northern Ireland Secondly, it is hard to think of two areas of government activity more damaged by European government than the common agricultural policy and the common fisheries policy. We will now return responsibility for those areas to a person at that Dispatch Box whom we can hold responsible. As Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I would come here and lamely say, "I’m a democratically elected Minister, but I cannot change this because we were outvoted." For now on, responsibility will lie with elected persons accountable to this Parliament.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: Agriculture
Owen William Paterson (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She invited me to Cornwall last summer. In a hotly fought contest, the CFP is the most dreadful, the most shatteringly bad act of misgovernment. It is a biological, environmental, economic and social disaster, and it cannot be reformed. Once we get power back to a Minister at that Dispatch Box, we can start holding them to account, and we can learn the lessons of the CFP, as I did in an Opposition green paper in 2005, after having travelled across the north Atlantic, to Norway, the Faroes, Iceland and Newfoundland, and then down to the Falklands. We can bring in modern technology and get away from the disgusting relic that is the quota system, which ensures that a quarter of fish are thrown back dead—no one really knows, but it can be 1 million tonnes and worth £1.6 billion annually Finally, there are also advantages for the environment. We are proud signatories to the Bern convention and the Ramsar convention, but those should be interpreted not at a European level, but specifically for our own environment. So we will gain in agriculture, in fisheries and on the environment, and I will be voting tomorrow for the Bill.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Oliver Letwin (Conservative, Centre-right): After more than three hours of debate, a great deal of what needed to be said on either side has been said, and I do not intend to bore the House by repeating it. Like my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), I voted to remain; unlike him, I voted to promote the referendum and indeed played some part in bringing the Conservative party to the point of committing to a referendum. I shall therefore obviously vote tonight in favour of triggering article 50 in line with the outcome of that referendum. I shall also vote in the succeeding week against each and every attempt through amendments of whatever kind to bind the Government in any way—administratively or legally—because the Government must have the ability to negotiate flexibly and in the national interest In the brief minutes allowed, I would like to add one point that I do not think has so far come out of the debate: what we are doing if, as I suspect, we vote tomorrow night to trigger article 50. There has been some suggestion in some speeches that, somehow or other, this vote is not irrevocable or final, and that there will come a time when Parliament can decide whether it likes the deal that the Government have negotiated or whether it prefers instead to go back to the position of remaining in the EU. That is clearly contrary to what the Prime Minister set out in her speech, when she made it perfectly clear that, in her view, what Parliament will then be deciding is whether to accept the deal or not to accept it, in which case we will have to fall back on the WTO and other such arrangements because we will in any case leave I want to make it clear why I think the Prime Minister was right about that from three points of view. The first is the question of legal fact. None of us in this House is qualified to make a judgment about the law in that respect, but we have a piece of luck, which is that the Supreme Court has made a judgment on that. In the judgment of the High Court—a rather unusual High Court as it was composed—it was not totally clear, but in the Supreme Court judgment it was totally clear that the presumption of the minority as well as the majority was that this was an irrevocable act. The whole foundation of the legal case was that.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: Law and Crime
Peter William Bone (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech, but was it not agreed in the High Court that both sides accepted that it was irrevocable, so that the Supreme Court did not look at that question?
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Nicky Morgan (Conservative, Centre-right): A 6,000-word speech from my right hon. Friend would be a very short speech. I want to challenge him on the issue of the White Paper. He and many others who campaigned and voted to leave want to take back control. They want control to rest in this sovereign Parliament. Does he agree, therefore, that it is right that the terms on which the Government want to start the negotiations should be presented in a White Paper to this Parliament and not just in a speech at Lancaster House?
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): The Prime Minister has already agreed that a White Paper will be published, and rightly so. The Secretary of State has said from the Dispatch Box that it will come as soon as possible. I have enormous respect for my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), and I shall return in a moment to an argument that she has made outside this place Many of those who have called for a White Paper or for clarification rarely outline what they think the right course of action is. It is very rare to hear a positive case being put forward. Instead, we repeatedly hear attempts to rewrite what happened in the referendum. The right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) tried to present the referendum debate as though it had somehow been inconclusive on questions such as our membership of the single market or the customs union, but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset said, we could not have been clearer on behalf of the leave campaign that we were leaving the single market. It was also made perfectly clear that we could not have trade deals in the future without leaving the customs union.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): I have no idea whether the word "lie" is unparliamentary, but as someone who is not in the Government I cannot deliver such sums. What I can do, however, is consistently argue, as I have done, that when we take back control of the money that we currently give to the European Union we can invest that money in the NHS. In fact, it was the consistent claim of the leave campaign, as my right hon. Friend well knows, that we wished to give £100 million to the NHS—some of the money that we were going to take back control of—and also spend money on supporting science and ensuring that we could get rid of VAT on fuel, something which we cannot do while we are still a member of the European Union.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): I have repeatedly argued that we should ensure that that money is spent on our NHS and on other vital public services when we leave the European Union. That goes to the heart of the fair challenge issued by the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the Opposition spokesman: how do we ensure that the views of the 52%, which were clear, unambiguous and to which this legislation gives effect, and the views of the 48% who did not vote to leave are respected? The 48% are represented at the highest levels of Government. We have a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who voted to remain in the European Union, so it is not as though those views are ignored or marginal My challenge and my offer is that we ensure that the Brexit we embrace is liberal, open and democratic. For my part, that means more money to the NHS, but it also means embracing the principles outlined by my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough in a recent "ConservativeHome" article. It means, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) said, giving an absolute unilateral guarantee to EU citizens that they should stay here. It also means having a free trade policy liberated from the common external tariff, allowing us to lower trade barriers to developing nations and to help the third world to advance. It means exercising a leadership role on the world stage at a time when European Union politicians are increasingly naive or appeasing in their attitude towards Vladimir Putin. It means that we can stand tall, as the Prime Minister did, in making the case for collective western security and NATO. Those opportunities are all available to us as we leave the European Union. The challenge for the Opposition and the opportunity for us is to ensure that we make that positive case.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Neil Carmichael (Conservative, Centre-right): I suspect and fear that the process we are about to vote on will, in effect, close a lengthy chapter in our national history that has included our support of enlargement, and that has seen sustained growth in our economy, our country becoming more liberal and our being more active in the international field. That is a great problem to have to deal with, and historians will ask in years to come: why did we do this? We have to make sure that we understand the gravity of the situation and the seriousness of our decision. I campaigned very hard to stay in the EU, both in my own constituency, where I got 55% to say yes, and across the country. However, I did say that this was the decision and it was the decision that mattered, so I feel duty bound to recognise that I have to support article 50 this week, although I do so with a very, very heavy heart I want to say something about trade. There seems to be this idea that because we are in the EU we cannot trade elsewhere, but that is wrong. Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Spain all export to the rest of the world precisely because they are in the EU and because we have free trade agreements with the rest of the world. Let us be clear that all such agreements will have to be remade by us.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: Foreign Trade
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): If, as my hon. Friend supposes, the EU has been so successful at putting in place trade deals, how is that Switzerland has been able to set up many more trade deals than the EU has managed over the years?
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Neil Carmichael (Conservative, Centre-right): It is worth bearing in mind that the EU accounts for almost a quarter of the world’s GDP and is involved in a huge amount of trade. That is a signal of why it is important for us to bear in mind what the EU has done for us I now want to talk about the 48% of people who voted to remain, because it is crucial that they are properly represented in this process. When we elect a Government in a general election, we do not expect them to govern just for one bit of the country; we expect them to govern for the whole country, with regard to every aspect of our national life. I do the same in my constituency. I do not ask whether someone voted for me before I start dealing with them; I say, "You are one of my constituents, whoever you voted for." That is how we have to deal with this business about Brexit. We must recognise that the 48% have a say and should be included, because that is how we are going to bring this together. We need to open things up and make sure that we reach out to them. Those of us who were in the 48% need to reach out to the others. When we are looking at the great repeal Bill—we should recall what happened to the Conservative party when we looked at the Great Reform Act—we will discover one or two important things about our national life, as we find that we are not always being told by the EU to do things that we do not want to do. I am look forward to the opportunity of exposing the facts during that debate, because Brexiteers will be disappointed to discover that quite a lot of things that we supposedly want to repeal are actually things that we might want to retain.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): This is an historic day. I participated in the campaign and fought hard for us to leave the European Union. I was too young to vote in the first referendum in 1975—[Interruption.] My birth certificate will be available for viewing later. I was too young, so this, 43 years later, was the first referendum on Europe in which I had an opportunity to vote. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) said that when someone is jumping out of an aeroplane, they should make sure that the parachute is working; I prefer the adage "if at first you don’t succeed, skydiving isn’t for you" On this occasion, the British people knew exactly what they were doing. It was a hard fought campaign. We heard all the arguments for remaining, which were characterised as "Project Fear". I am really pleased that the vast majority of what was predicted has simply not happened.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): It was said that a number of things would happen when we left the European Union. I suspect that the reality is that many were somewhat surprised that the British people had the guts: despite what they were told was going to happen, they still decided to vote to leave the European Union. I remember the then Prime Minister appearing on television and saying that if we voted to leave, we would also be leaving the single market—he actually said that on the "Marr" programme just a couple of weeks prior to the referendum on 23 June. As Prime Minister, he said that, so we needed to take heed. People knew that. He said it to frighten people into not voting to leave the European Union.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I will make a bit more progress if I may Despite all those threats, the British people decided that, in their considered opinion, they wanted to vote to leave the European Union. About 57% of my constituents voted to leave—all the Lancashire constituencies, in fact, voted to leave the European Union. In the north-west of England, on a 70% turnout—not a thin turnout— 54% decided to vote to leave. That reminds me of the referendum on Welsh devolution. The turnout was 50.1%, 49.7% of whom said no and 50.3% of whom said yes. And what did we do? We did not shout for a second referendum. We did not even call for a recount. Is it too late? The fact is that we accepted the result on a thin turnout and a very close result indeed, and that is what is expected of us on this occasion I condemn the pamphlet that was sent to every household in the country at the cost of £9.3 million. I was one of the people who did not send it back to No. 10 Downing Street without a stamp; I kept it as a souvenir. The back of it read: "This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide." Therefore, if we believe in democracy, the onus is on us to accept the verdict of the British people—52% versus 48%—and give the Prime Minister the power to trigger article 50 I fully recognise the trauma felt by many European Union citizens who live and work in this country, thinking they could be asked to leave. The idea that we will round up EU nationals and put them on the next Ryanair or easyJet flight back to whichever country they came from is bonkers. That would be quite despicable, and we ought to clarify as quickly as possible that we will not ask that of them.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not because I do not have time As I understand it, the Prime Minister has already made it clear that as soon as the rest of the EU says yes—whether President Juncker or someone else makes the decision—regarding British citizens in the EU, that is exactly what will happen for EU citizens living here. It is cruel and inhumane for the Commission to say that it will not clarify its position until we trigger article 50 and the negotiations begin, as if human beings should be pawns in the negotiation. If that position is kept up, I ask the Government to ensure that this matter is the first thing negotiated in the process. As soon as the agreement comes, we should announce it straight away and we should let people know our exact intention, not wait until the two-year process is finished. That is the humane thing to do. The prospect of Germany, which has taken in 1 million refugees from the middle east, rounding up British citizens and sending them home is a remarkable thought and it would be a remarkable sight. The situation must be clarified as quickly as possible In conclusion, I believe in democracy and I actually love Europe. I love my European neighbours and I visit on a regular basis. I am a member of the Council of Europe. Indeed, I was at one of its part-sessions in Strasbourg last week. But the British people have voted to leave the European Union. It is a simple choice. Those who are going to deny the verdict of the British people appear to love the EU more than they love democracy, and that is a dangerous thing.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (Conservative, Centre-right): With regard to this list of all the rights that we are going to lose, allegedly, or that those who wish to remain in the EU think we are going to lose, why can we not make all these decisions in this place, for our country, for the benefit of our people? We do not need other people to make our rules.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-31
Topic: International Affairs
George William Freeman (Conservative, Centre-right): Last year, as Minister for Life Sciences, I voted for the EU referendum on the basis that I would be bound by the result. Despite watching over many years with a heaviness of heart the growing failure of the EU to create an entrepreneurial economy, on balance I felt that we were better off staying in to fight for a reformed, 21st-century EU. As Life Sciences Minister responsible for a £250 billion sector, I felt that I had to speak for its interests. So I campaigned, along with many colleagues, for remain, not in a bullying way but in an open way I actively offered my constituents a choice by inviting my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and my friend the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) to my constituency to put their side of the debate. We held the debate, and I lost it. Our constituents voted to leave the European Union. My constituents voted, and the country voted, in one of the biggest acts of democracy we have seen for centuries As my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) said, we are not delegates. As Edmund Burke said, we are not sent here to be slaves to our constituents. I believe that the one thing that parliamentarians should never give away is the sovereignty vested in us by the people we serve. The truth is that successive Parliaments in recent decades have done that, not least in the Maastricht and the Lisbon treaties, fuelling public anger and disillusionment and the sense of unaccountable political elites giving away powers that were never theirs in the first place. That is why I believe we were right to give the people their say and we are right—all of us—to recognise the importance of that vote and the anger that was expressed.