argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
European Union Referendum Bill — House of Lords, 2015-10-13
Topic: Civil Rights
John Tomlinson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke. I was particularly pleased when he made it clear to us all that it was UKIP pressure that led to this rather inadequate debate. He went on to say that the same old arguments were being brought out, and I thought that that confession from UKIP was good for the soul I thank the Minister for a very clear introduction of the referendum Bill. It was rather technical; nevertheless, it was clear and succinct, and I thank her for it. In reality, of course, nothing in the Bill is to do with the circumstances we are facing. It is a mechanism much more concerned with papering over the cracks in the Conservative Party, some of which we have seen today. I do not say that in a partisan way; I recognise it, as does the noble Lord, Lord Radice, from our past experience of Harold Wilson’s referendum. He was not prepared to say what the demands were, proclaimed a great triumph when we got something and then had a referendum on the basis of it. This is the same pattern, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery I remember that referendum well because we had a parliamentary bookmaker at the time, one Ian Mikardo, the late Member of Parliament. I went to Mr Mikardo and asked him what odds he would give me for a yes vote in every constituency of the UK. He had to reflect on it overnight before he offered me 200-1. I put £10 on with Mr Mikardo, and there was a yes vote in every constituency in mainland England, Wales, Northern Ireland and mainland Scotland. However, the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, was wrong: not just Orkney and Shetland, but also the Western Isles, voted no. They were the only two constituencies in the whole of the UK that voted no, and even then by hair’s-breadth majorities of 50 point something against 49 point something. I lost because of those two constituencies; it was the Lamont curse from the Shetland Islands that got me. I suspect that the result in a referendum today would not be significantly different from that, because it will be fought on the basis of lots of people having their say in the circumstances The noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Lawson, and a number of other people have criticised the words "ever closer union". You get the impression that those words were forced upon an unwilling British people some time after we had joined the European Union. That is of course nonsense; they were there in the treaty of Rome. When Geoffrey Rippon negotiated our membership on behalf of a Conservative Government, he was negotiating on the basis of the treaty of Rome, which contained those words that we adhered to. It is not something that was brought out of the cupboard afterwards—"Let’s force those Brits into greater federalism"—it was there at the outset.
Transport for London Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-11-30
Topic: Other
Alfred Dubs (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I think the Chairman of Committees will agree that this is rather an unusual procedure; it is certainly not one with which I am familiar. This is quite a controversial Bill. Therefore, would the Chairman of Committees agree that it would be appropriate for the House to have an opportunity to debate the Bill fully and properly?
Enterprise Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-11-30
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Martin O'Neill (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on his amendment. He covers a number of the concerns which we all have about the proposals. He laid great and correct emphasis on the systems of control of this bank—the board, et cetera—but one thing has not yet been mentioned. Perhaps the Minister can give us some information on whether the Green Investment Bank will continue to be British. The international character of banking is such that many banks are not British, and they will take an interest in this. We have already seen that many railway companies are not British—indeed, some of them are not even private enterprise companies—and they take ownership of British assets. Can we get an assurance that the process of privatisation will not involve the selling off of these assets—which are of an almost unique character, given the ambitions and mission of the bank—and that they will not be put into the hands of countries which may not be wholly sympathetic to the green ambitions which this Government and most of us in this Chamber espouse? One would question, for example, some of the green credentials of our new-found friends from China or, indeed, the green credentials of a number of Indian institutions, to mention only two. So the House needs reassurance that before we pass legislation to dispose of these government-owned assets—in the main: I realise there will be a UK element—all efforts will be taken to avoid a unique British institution becoming foreign-owned in the main.
Enterprise Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-11-30
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Jonathan Mendelsohn (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the noble Lord for that unusual intervention. He is absolutely right—it is important that management is retained and incentivised, and that will happen. The bank may or may not make an appeal for anyone to come in as an investor, and as the bank goes forward it will be fairly irrelevant. There will have to be some provision as to how you will acquire the full amount and what price you pay for it. Given that it is a portfolio, it has to be established how much the Government want back from the money they have supplied, and that will be calculated. The merits of whether you have such a stake seem fairly minimal, if not irrelevant Apart from all that, I feel strongly, in keeping with the interventions we have had, that we should try to cherish this fantastic instrument we have created and find a way to maintain its mission. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has done that and has the support of a number of people who have examined his amendment in detail, and here we have a win-win. It gives greenness a degree of certainty; it does not affect the sale or the price; there is no risk that the bank will fall on the Government’s balance sheet; and the Government have complete flexibility as to what they sell, be it 51%, 76% or even 100%—they can cash in on the rest if they so choose at another time, or can do other things The mission is worth protecting and the organisation is worth backing. In this amendment, both have been achieved. It broadens the mission of the Green Investment Bank to areas currently excluded by state aid rules and avoids some of the problems of trying to be, in a sense, half pregnant. Therefore, rather than a recipe for conflict, controversy and confrontation, it provides clarity and greater flexibility to deliver a sale. The amendment is a perfect example of something which achieves all the objectives everyone is looking for, and we strongly support it.
Enterprise Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-11-30
Topic: Other
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): I hesitate to interrupt the Minister but can she be very clear about exactly what she is offering? The offer of talks is obviously welcome and we would like to engage in those, but is she saying that following the talks there will be an amendment that we can discuss at Third Reading?
Enterprise Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-11-30
Topic: Other
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): I am sorry to press the noble Baroness but she has to be very clear about this. She needs to say to the House that she will accept an amendment being brought back in one of two cases: either we have an agreed position with her, in which case the Government can bring it forward; or, if that agreement is not forthcoming, we will be permitted to come back with an amendment. Obviously the rules are very tight, and I am looking very closely at the clerk to make sure that this is sufficient for us to be able to continue the debate.
Enterprise Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-11-30
Topic: Housing
Peter Snape (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for telling your Lordships what would be in my speech. I had no idea he was so perceptive. He might have had the idea that I would disagree with pretty much everything he said, as I am sure he would acknowledge I have done at every stage of the Bill. To listen to the noble Lord, one would think that the employers’ side—the pubcos—are a group of eminently reasonable people who are anxious only that their tenants enjoy a decent living. Without going back to my own experiences, which I related at an earlier stage of the Bill, such a figment of the imagination should be treated as exactly that The amendments we are discussing are perfectly reasonable. As we keep saying, apparently to no avail, they would reinforce what we thought was agreed in the other place before the last general election, and during discussions in your Lordships’ House since. Even if the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, disagrees, it appears perfectly reasonable for MRO to be offered on a fixed timescale and not just in the event of a rent increase. There are lots of ways the pubcos can get round the proposals if they remain as they are in the Bill. Indeed, they are planning to do so already. The chief executive of Enterprise Inns, Simon Townsend, has already said publicly what they intend to do. Given that these matters have been debated ad nauseam, both at previous hearings and in Committee, I do not propose to repeat what was said but I ask the Minister to reflect on whether the pubcos are already planning ways around the proposals in the legislation. They are certainly adamant in their opposition to my noble friend’s amendments For example, can the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, assure us that there have been no instances of pub companies gaming or intending to game the Pubs Code by selling pubs to avoid the 500-pub threshold? Can he assure the House that such conduct is not taking place or that the pubcos are not manipulating rents at present, and preparing what they describe as a holding tank for certain pubs that they would wish to see outwith this legislation? I would be delighted to give way to him if he can, but of course he cannot because the pubcos are, as ever, planning to evade the legislation in any way they can. My noble friend’s amendments are perfectly reasonable, as they would put into the Bill the promises the Government made before the last general election and which, if the legislation is passed as it stands, will not be kept. Indeed, a lot of pub tenants will be in the same invidious position that—
Enterprise Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-11-30
Topic: Housing
Peter Snape (Labour, Centre-left): I will give way in a second if the noble Lord can control himself while I finish this sentence. Tenants would be put in the same position they were in prior to the passing of that legislation in the other place before the last general election.
Enterprise Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-11-30
Topic: Housing
Peter Snape (Labour, Centre-left): Again, both of us have to stand by our remarks, but I reinforce mine by quoting the statement made by Enterprise Inns’ chief executive on 17 November 2015: "Where publicans who are currently on tied agreements transfer to the MRO model, the sites will be managed by our commercial property team, but will only be transferred to our commercial property estate on a permanent basis if they meet our strict quality criteria, in order that the underlying quality of the estate is not compromised. Sites that fail to meet the quality criteria, and where we believe that the MRO outcome is unattractive"— to the pubco, of course, not to the tenant— "will be run as commercial properties until such time as an opportunity arises to generate optimal returns through conversion to an alternative model" Nothing the pubcos could say as far as this legislation is concerned can really be believed. The only real protection for tenants and for pubco employees lies in the acceptance of these amendments. If the Government are not prepared to accept them and to stand by the promises and pledges made continuously over the 10 or 11 months since the House of Commons passed the relevant amendment, I urge my noble friends on the Front Bench to test the will of the House and to see that these eminently reasonable proposals are implemented.
Enterprise Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-11-30
Topic: Civil Rights
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the case for the amendments has been made by both my noble friend Lord Wills and the noble Lord, Lord Low. I merely re-emphasise that undermining everyone’s desire to outlaw discrimination or to encourage whistleblowing in the public interest—which is good for patients, consumers and fellow workers—by including any compensatory payment in the cap would be yet another unintended consequence of this clause The point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham—and, in a way, by Amendment 70A, although not formally moved—is the general worry that a court-approved or ordered settlement would be exempted. We support what the Government are trying to do elsewhere to get early settlements, including by ACAS, but we are worried that unless those sorts of settlements are excluded there will be a perverse incentive to go to tribunal or court because, otherwise, the settlement could disappear under the cap. This could be for unfair dismissal, harassment or victimisation in addition to discrimination and whistleblowing If the Minister agrees to discussions on this issue and how we can support what the Government are trying to do elsewhere—which is to achieve settlements before going to court and not at the court gate—it would be very helpful.
Enterprise Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-11-30
Topic: Other
Michael Wills (Labour, Centre-left): I appreciate that the issue cannot be given greater clarity at the moment, but if she can, will the Minister say a little more about how she would describe "appropriate cases" and who will be the judge of those?
European Union Referendum Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-23
Topic: Civil Rights
George Foulkes (Labour, Centre-left): When the noble Lord is talking about democracy, what does he think of the democracy where a party—the UK Independence Party, say—gets a large percentage of the vote but only one seat in the Parliament? Is that the vibrant democracy that he believes in?
European Union Referendum Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
David Edward Lea (Labour, Centre-left): I have the highest respect for my noble friend but I am afraid that on this one he is wrong. In international trade, employers will claim we are at a competitive disadvantage if we do not do things together. This is what Europe is about. That is what Delors pointed out in Bournemouth in 1988 If we were to say to an employer in Holland, Italy or Spain, "You can lead the race to the bottom", all the employers, one by one, would scream that they had to go in that direction. I will be calling for a European identity card the way I am going, but if we had a floor for all European workers in all these areas, the comparison with the minimum wage—although we do not have a European minimum wage—would be valid in that all workers and employers would be protected. If noble Lords will allow me to conceptualise, we will have a European ring-fence—let us not start getting into the argument about competition with China or Japan; it is a good argument but quite different from the one we are considering at the moment. This is for the parties in the referendum debate to discuss, and they are valid points to discuss Another factor that will determine how Brexit would work would be, no doubt, the majority in the country and the state of agitation on how best to progress matters on the Back Benches of the Conservative Party—and indeed, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and everybody else in the House of Commons. To get to the nub of the point for this debate, and maybe to add some value to what I am about to say, we have a difficulty which would have been avoided if we had followed what we called in an earlier debate the OBR-type of authorship because all these amendments look to HMG to produce these studies. How will Ministers avoid the charge of cherry picking, as and when they deal with what are, with good will all round—and there will not be an oversupply of that—difficult analytical distinctions between things that we know and things that are going to be debated In conclusion, I will try to answer my own question.
European Union Referendum Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
David Edward Lea (Labour, Centre-left): For once in his life, my noble friend may care to pay a little more attention to what I am about to say, and he may even be convinced by it. I think that there is scope for an inter-party agreement on the preparation of a statement of intent, as it were, between the two camps that neither will accuse the other, or even the Government, of bias, if not dishonesty, simply as a consequence of having conducted an insufficiently robust analysis of the distinction between the facts—the known knowns—and the unknowns. What I am saying may prove to be true or untrue, but on the percentage chance that it is true, can we follow up the worries of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, about tsunamis by saying that they will be prevented only if we can avoid charges of bad faith when these reports are published? Therefore, the leaders of the two campaigns should swear an oath—as in ancient Rome, or some such—that they will accept that the assessment is dispassionate and that neither side will try to shoot the messenger, as and when these surveys are produced.
European Union Referendum Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
Bruce Joseph Grocott (Labour, Centre-left): In that case, the noble Lord really should have put down a different amendment. In my book, possible consequences means possible consequences. Possible consequences of withdrawal from one organisation will include what will happen to the beneficiaries, if that is the right word, of the common agricultural policy in the event of withdrawal. If there is no possibility of uncertainty, remove "possible" from the amendment. The noble Lord has to defend his amendment as written. In any conversation interpreting the meaning of the amendment as written, there would be any number of possible—I use the word myself again—ways in which the consequences of withdrawal could be written I think that the noble Lord will be frank enough, as am I, to admit that he does not come from a completely neutral position. If he thought that his amendment would result in a large number of statements and heavy tracts one or two inches thick pointing out what disastrous consequences there would be for Britain if it remained within the European Union, I am quite sure that he would not have put the amendment down. He has put the amendment down precisely because it is consistent with his perfectly sincerely held view—and we know that almost irrespective of what the Prime Minister brings back he will be voting to stay. I just find it unacceptable in terms of the language.
European Union Referendum Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-23
Topic: Immigration
John Reid (Labour, Centre-left): The security of our borders, even with the free movement of people, subjects anyone coming here to the same level of scrutiny that would be available were they coming from anywhere else in the world. So while it is true that there is free movement of people, it is not true that the security of our borders is impeded.
European Union Referendum Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-23
Topic: Immigration
Raymond Collins (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we do not support the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Green, mainly because, as the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, said, they are highly speculative, impossible to calculate, unpredictable, and not based on factual information that the Government have. Confusing the free movement of labour with migration and simply putting everyone in together will not lead to a rational debate. The free movement of labour has been an important component of the EU. Certainly, people have come here to work. Where they have not come here to work, the Government have been addressing those issues in terms of the benefits system, as the Labour Party has also committed to do I have no doubt that in the course of this referendum campaign, the noble Lords, Lord Green and Lord Willoughby de Broke, will repeat what they have said. They will make this issue part of the referendum campaign and I will take great pleasure in making sure that other voices are heard in that debate which challenge some of the assumptions about migration. But for the purposes of the EU referendum campaign, it is wrong to confuse the free movement of labour with migration, and it certainly is not capable of being subject to a rational report.
European Union Referendum Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
Mair Morgan (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I apologise for submitting this amendment at such a late stage in our discussions, but I believe that essential clarification for charities about their ability to be involved in the EU referendum campaign needs to be set out. This is a probing amendment The EU referendum is essentially a single constituency vote, and charities from across the UK should be able to engage fully and equally with that referendum if they wish. The problem, however, is that existing guidance from charity regulatory bodies differs across the UK. Charity law that regulates political campaigning should be the same UK-wide, and I am sure the Minister will agree that there should not be any cross-border disparity. What we need, therefore, is a single set of rules which will create a level playing field across the UK and clarification for charities that are registered with more than one of the charity regulators We believe that it makes sense to base this guidance on the tried and tested model of the charity guidance for the Scottish referendum. Let us remember that this has been proven in a fierce campaign north of the border, facilitating engagement while ensuring that charities are still subject to strict rules to act prudently and independently. Let me be clear: we are not setting out what the joint guidance should look like in this amendment. We accept and suggest that it should be carried out by the regulators themselves I request that the Minister gives us an assurance that she will seek the full co-operation of the various national charity commissions, so that common guidance can be issued for the whole of the UK in adequate time, prior to the start of that referendum campaign. I beg to move.
European Union Referendum Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-23
Topic: Civil Rights
David Edward Lea (Labour, Centre-left): Before the Minister sits down, I am intrigued by whether she is saying that this is a one-off issue of conversation to do with the referendum, or is the word "political" and how it is used by the Charity Commission for England and Wales going to be subject to some new regime?
Northern Ireland (Elections) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2015 — House of Lords, 2015-11-23
Topic: Other
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): Before the Minister sits down, I remind him that I put a number of points to him about when these decisions were taken—whether before or after 27 October—on what he knew when he was voting on 27 October and with regard to timelines. He has not addressed them at all in his response.