argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-03-07
Topic: Technology
Archibald Kirkwood (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I appreciate that the Minister is trying to make progress, but I wonder if I could ask him a brief follow-up question to RTI. Is he confident that the new system which is to take effect in a few days’ time will be sufficiently sophisticated to disaggregate the data flows in the new system from the old system? Otherwise the overpayments that are overhanging the data at the moment will make it impossible for any statistical changes to be determined in the new system as opposed to the old, in terms of how successful or otherwise it might be.
Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-03-07
Topic: Technology
Zahida Manzoor (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, that may be the case, but we still have £1.9 billion of overpayments being made now—not before, but now—with more than £5 billion in overpayments and £89 million from 2003-04. Those are the latest figures. There is a real issue around the real-time information processed at the moment, and that is my concern. I do not feel that the Minister is reflecting his confidence that the systems are working as they should. I am married to an IT expert who works around the world on these major systems and he expressed concern when I told him about the scale of the problem that the DWP is trying to deal with. Some reassurance from the Minister would be really helpful because the system is not working now, and I am talking about now.
Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-03-07
Topic: Macroeconomics
Jeremy Purvis (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I have listened to the whole debate. I hope the Minister will clarify the matter further as he referred to other areas where the £935 million reduction in expenditure could be implemented—the city deals and employability and housing. However, I was under the impression that this measure aimed to achieve deficit reduction savings. Page 3 of the Red Book states that this is part of deficit reduction savings. So will he be clear: is this for hypothecated other expenditure or is it for deficit reduction?
Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-03-07
Topic: Macroeconomics
Zahida Manzoor (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for summing up. I also thank my noble friend Lord Kirkwood and the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for their support today, although I am very disappointed. I agreed with everything the noble Lord said, up to a point, but when he said that he would not be supporting the Motion to Regret my heart fell I have listened very carefully to what the Minister has said. He has said a number of times that there are no cash losers. We have to disagree on that, because it depends on how you classify cash losers. It is really important to say that this is not a pay rise by any means. This £2,500 is actually recouped back from the tax claimant. It is not a pay rise but can cause great difficulties because of the fluctuations for people who are working on low incomes I will not go over the debate again. The House has been very patient and I thank noble Lords for listening. I feel very strongly about this issue and wish to test the opinion of the House.
Immigration Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-12
Topic: Education
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am a little reassured but I have to say that I am still left in much confusion as to how the Government intend to get from here to where we all wish to be. The ability of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, to raise a very large number of fair questions about what is intended by all this simply demonstrates how unclear many of us in this House and outside are about how the Government will ensure that the extra skills are provided from within this country. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Green, that there is a long-term problem of companies in Britain finding it cheaper and easier to recruit direct from abroad rather than spending money on training their own employees. That applies not just to the Indian IT sector but also to long-distance truck drivers and all sorts of occupations in the private sector However, in the public sector the Government are responsible for training. As regards when we introduce this charge, I simply point out that it takes two or three years to train a nurse and longer to train a doctor, let alone a good maths teacher. Therefore, a year is not enough. We will find in the interim period that schools and hospitals will pay sums out of their flat budgets, out of which they are already paying for additional pension increases—so budgets are being squeezed—before any new training schemes have provided the additional skilled recruits from within the United Kingdom. That is part of the argument we are making about phasing in for the public sector I very much hope that we will have Labour support on this occasion. As I understand it, the Labour Party supports the public sector. I have heard reports that the Labour Party in the Commons has instructed the Labour Party in the Lords not to support this measure because it is a Liberal Democrat amendment and it is a bit queer about supporting Liberal Democrat amendments. I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, will be able to bring his party along. However, I appreciate that sometimes in the Lords the Labour Party Front Benchers have to defend positions they are not entirely happy about, as, indeed, do the Conservative Party Front Benchers.
Immigration Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-12
Topic: Education
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord has not yet got out his walking maps, but we shall see. I conclude by pointing out that the phasing argument is about the time it takes to train the people from within the United Kingdom who we need to supply skills in our schools and hospitals. We have not yet been informed about the new schemes which the Department of Health and the Department for Education will undertake to provide. However, we know that from April 2017 schools and hospitals will pay an additional £1,000 per person per year for everyone recruited from outside the European Economic Area, although I think I may have heard the noble Earl say that independent schools will have to pay only £330 because they are charities, which raises some interesting questions to which we may also wish to return.
Immigration Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-12
Topic: Labor
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): We are reassured by that, but I may wish to take it up further with the Minister. Meanwhile, we are not satisfied. This imposes additional charges on the public sector which is already hard pressed. We have not yet heard sufficient about the additional training which the Government, as employers, need to provide from departments other than the Home Office. We are depressed by the news that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is cutting the staff it has to promote skills and employment within the United Kingdom. We therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.
Energy Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-04-12
Topic: Environment
Lynne Featherstone (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, it is our view on these Benches that carbon capture and storage and transportation should have been woven into the principal objective of the OGA. I hear what the Minister says, but it leaves me some concerns. Although the Government have made many arguments and given many assurances about the importance of carbon capture and storage, we on these Benches are not completely convinced I wish to raise with the Government some points which still give us great concern about the level of commitment to carbon capture and storage and indeed about their ability to deliver on our legally binding targets. If CCS is not going to be integral to the principal objective and functions of the OGA, we might have had more confidence and assurance if Her Majesty’s Government had agreed to an earlier amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, to which my noble friend Lord Teverson added his name, which would have required the Government to undertake and develop a national strategy for carbon capture and storage. CCS is such a vital part of decarbonisation for the period when carbon is still being produced that we have grave concerns in this regard On Report in this House, the Minister made great efforts to assure the House of the Government’s commitment to carbon capture and storage and about the money invested—£130 million since 2011 to support research, development and innovations to foster the next generation of CCS technologies. In Committee, the Minister assured us: "It is not as though no work is happening on carbon capture and storage. We are committed to a competition with up to £1 billion capital—that is current, and we will make an announcement on it early in 2016".—[Official Report, 7/9/15; col. 1230.] That was on 7 September 2015. On 25 November 2015, Her Majesty’s Government cancelled that £1 billion Conservative manifesto pledge, as was stated in this House I simply say to the Minister that actions speak louder than words, so perhaps he will understand that we on these Benches would like to trust the Government’s words, but they have made it somewhat difficult. Time will, of course, tell, but I remind the Minister that carbon capture and storage is a vital component of our ability to meet our carbon emissions targets. The establishment of the OGA was an opportunity to embed proper regard and action on transportation and storage. That is now an opportunity lost.
Energy Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-04-12
Topic: Environment
Lynne Featherstone (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am happy to answer the noble Lord’s question. The Liberal Democrats keep an open mind on all technologies which can advance our climate change agenda. However, in Peterhead, for example, projects were well advanced and should have been continued.
Energy Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-04-12
Topic: Energy
James Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the Minister has moved Amendment 6 and spoken to Amendment 7, and I want to speak principally to my amendments to Amendment 7. My noble friend Lady Featherstone may say something about the wider issue of the early closure of the renewables obligation in respect of onshore wind generating stations. The Minister has repeated the Conservative Party manifesto commitment that there will be no new subsidies for onshore wind, but I well recall the comment from the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, that it is difficult to think that a new subsidy is actually the early closure of a long-existing subsidy. The Minister repeats that again and again, but no one is seeking to overturn the early closure. However, the grounds he has stated— that it is a manifesto commitment—are somewhat doubtful I have yet to find many people in the industry who think this is a very wise move at all. It is not simply about what is being done with onshore wind; as we have already heard in this debate, a large amount of the investment made in developments over a long period will be cut off at a fairly arbitrary date. The Government’s capriciously cutting off developments in the way proposed affects the confidence of those who want to invest not only in onshore wind renewables but in the entire renewables industry and, indeed, in other infrastructure developments Turning to the amendments, I begin by thanking the Minister for his willingness to engage through exchanges of letters and in meetings. One reason why we on these Benches were very happy to support the move to take out the principal clause in the original Bill was not that we did not expect the Government to try to bring back the clause, but that we felt that it would give them an opportunity to reflect on and try to improve the grace periods. Although they were welcome as far as they went, they certainly fell far short of what many people in the industry—I would say almost universally—thought was required What has been disappointing, and perhaps not in keeping with the way this House operates when we ask the Government to think again, is that we have absolutely no sense that they are willing to compromise in any way whatever. They have said that there is no compromise, and that is why the amendments that I have tabled—particularly Amendment 7X—embody quite a number of the changes which the industry wants to see and on which we have had representations. I invite your Lordships to support that amendment. I hope that if that measure is brought back in—after all, the Bill has to go back to the Commons because the Government have brought forward amendments to their own amendments—there will be a further opportunity for the kind of engagement that is part and parcel of the way this House operates. Certainly, when I had the privilege of sitting on the Front Bench and dealing with amendments, I tried to find some means of compromise when there were Lords defeats.
Energy Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-04-12
Topic: Environment
Robin Teverson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. Perhaps I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Howell, as she has, that this amendment does not specifically help the steel industry or, necessarily, the size of the budget from the Climate Change Act. I guess that an amendment back on Report would have been needed to do that. This amendment would make sure that we repatriate entirely the powers to create our own carbon budget. So in fact it is a step towards what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, would want. Ironically, when we debated the Climate Change Bill I raised this matter specifically a number of times, but unfortunately the Labour Government of the time did not want to hear about it. I do not think that they necessarily understood it themselves. However, we now need to make a change. This should not be a party- political issue at all. It is about making a budget something that we could set ourselves and measure against our national performance. That is what we are trying to do In a way, I regret that we are not debating the original amendment, perhaps understandably amended to exclude the fifth carbon budget, for the reasons that have been explained. When we are tackling climate change and trying to get everybody to help, it is really important to make measuring our carbon emissions transparent, straightforward and easy, so that they mean what most people would understand them to mean: that the carbon emissions we create within the boundaries of the United Kingdom from products, services and industry are what our carbon budget measures. At the moment, that is not the case: it is only so for about half of it. The rest of it just reflects the European Emissions Trading Scheme settlement I fully support this amendment and hope that the Government will accept it as a way forward. There is no party angle to it whatever. All it would do is ensure that our UK emissions count against our UK carbon budget under the Climate Change Act. It would make government policy on climate change simple, straight- forward and manageable.
Scotland Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-19
Topic: Government Operations
James Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and for the way he is responding. Does he accept that there is a difference between the amendment moved by my right honourable friend Alistair Carmichael in the other place, Amendment 48, which was withdrawn, and the one we are now debating, which provides that the scheme for double devolution would be a Section 90B scheme, which, as the Minister has been at great pains to emphasise, will take place only with the agreement of Scottish Ministers? The amendment makes subsequent provision that it will be Scottish Ministers who make the transfer. So Scottish Ministers would be very much involved. Indeed, if the Minister were to accept my amendment to, "leave out ‘C’ and insert ‘A’", the Scottish Parliament would have a role, too.
Scotland Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-19
Topic: Law and Crime
James Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, this amendment is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Stephen. It relates to the devolution of tribunals, which we very much welcome. There is much administrative sense in bringing together under one umbrella organisation the different tribunals in relation to reserved and devolved matters, although quite clearly there is still a reservation, which we support, for matters involving national security. Clearly, we have a new arrangement under the Tribunals (Scotland) Act 2014, with the courts and tribunals services coming together. Therefore, there is an umbrella organisation that will allow currently reserved tribunals to be devolved. I suspect that it would not make sense to transfer them all at once. That is why we have this scheme It is a complex provision. On the one hand, it appears to unreserve tribunals but only to the extent that they are provided for in a subsequent Order in Council. We unreserve with one hand and re-reserve with another, possibly with something akin to a Section 30 order to devolve them at a later stage. Again, I do not necessarily quibble with that means of doing it: the Government face a complex challenge. The Law Society of Scotland raised questions at an earlier stage about whether the position in the Bill as originally introduced in the other place was consistent with meeting the Smith commission recommendations. It is readily acknowledged that there was a significant redrafting of these provisions when the Bill was in another place Amendment 52F would remove the employment tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal from the scope of the Order in Council referred to in new sub-paragraphs (4) and (5). As I understand it, new sub-paragraph (1) would be given full effect immediately with regard to the employment tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal, bearing in mind that these tribunals are outwith the jurisdiction of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, so they would not qualify to be incorporated in an Order in Council where there might be a qualified transfer. The amendment is to seek the Government’s view. If the tribunals remain subject to a qualified transfer, could the Government try to insist on conditions such as that the current fee structure and charges for people seeking to access employment tribunals could be stipulated in any qualified transfer? We think that it would be far better if these matters were now devolved to the tribunal service in Scotland.
Scotland Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-19
Topic: Law and Crime
James Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I very much thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, for his response and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson of Glen Clova, for his comments. On the question of fees, which we both raised in relation to employment tribunals, I think we probably believe that we got a satisfactory answer from the Minister. Indeed, I am very grateful to him for the replies that he gave us. In his further elaboration in his response to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, he indicated that the Government would be looking at—and, I hope, achieve—a situation whereby the Orders in Council will allow for the transfer of cases between jurisdictions to alleviate backlogs. It may well be that it applies the other way, too. Then we might be faced with a situation where a Scottish case could be heard in a jurisdiction furth of Scotland. No doubt, an Order in Council would be sufficiently well crafted to deal with that situation as well. The noble and learned Lord is right: I suspect that at the moment there is no statutory provision to allow reciprocity of the judiciary because, of course, we have a Great Britain tribunal system. Where there is legislation, it relates to Northern Ireland—for example, in relation to social security. I would hope to see the kind of provision that has been made for reciprocity with Northern Ireland apply in any orders that are brought forward with regard to the transfer of tribunals to Scotland With regard to the term "or otherwise", the noble and learned Lord suggested that that related to judicial expertise. I think elsewhere in his response to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, he accepted and acknowledged that there could be situations where Scots law was different. That is reassuring. While I think it is absolutely right that there should be a common approach—indeed, the Smith commission recognised that when you are dealing with UK statutes, it is desirable that there should be a common approach—nevertheless there will be circumstances where the respective courts take a different view. It would be unfortunate if that were closed down I apologise that I had not seen the draft Order in Council before coming into the Chamber. I am not sure that the Law Society of Scotland had seen it either. If the Minister would like to indicate where one might find it, that would be very helpful. If he cannot do so today, he can certainly write to us and that will be satisfactory.
Scotland Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-19
Topic: Transportation
David Steel (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I support subsection (3) of the new clause proposed by the amendment moved by the Official Opposition. I hold a number of offices in motoring organisations and I support the thrust of the clauses which the Committee has just passed, and the one we are discussing now, which give the Scottish Parliament more jurisdiction over road traffic management in Scotland. However, I hope when that happens they will be sensible and not introduce differences for difference’s sake, remembering that motorists in this country travel frequently across the border from England into Scotland and vice versa. It would create an intolerable situation if they were to go out of their way to make differences for the sake of it. I like subsection (3) because it requires that, before Scottish Ministers make any change in regulation, they should consult the Secretary of State and, "publish and lay before the Scottish Parliament an assessment of the impact on road safety of any difference between the proposed change in Scotland and road traffic rules in other parts of the United Kingdom" That is an important safeguard and I therefore support the amendment.