argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-11-23
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this has been an interesting debate. It has revealed many gaps in our knowledge and understanding of the Bill, which, perhaps, is very comfortable for the Government. I would go a bit further than some of the previous speakers and say that the Government are making heavy weather of this part of the Bill, not displaying to their best advantage the knowledge and understanding they should have in this area. I presume that the starting point must have been that if there is to be an internal market, it must be regulated so that it works well. It is therefore necessary for the legislation to have regard to our services sector, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said, accounts for some 65% of our economy. If that is right and it is such an important part of our economy, why is this Bill so sketchy about it? Do the Government not know much about our services sector? Is it not important that we get that right? The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, again put her finger on it: is this just a protection against possible future unknowns? If so, does that explain why there is so little in the Bill itself to reflect that Others have made these points very well. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, was right to say that we have to think harder than the Bill does about the way modern companies operate in providing goods. Companies are rarely without a service component, and the Bill does not deal with that bipartisan, hybrid approach. The noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, asked about services that are licensed or rented. In the virtual space of the internet, one is rarely talking about purchase. One is talking about usage, and there is nothing here about intellectual property, copyright or associated interests. What about those companies? Do they get affected by this legislation What sort of world are we living in if our Bills cannot embrace the fact that, in the digital world, services are not delivered by companies based in specific parts of the UK? That point was made by a number of speakers. Most operate in more than a single place, and it would be difficult to drill down to a point where the physical geography can be identified—the "brass plate" question that was raised earlier At the end of the day, it would be more helpful to the House if the lists given in Schedule 2 did not try to discriminate against services. The services listed in the schedule are not covered by the Bill, and it would be more of a challenge but more interesting for us if the Bill listed the services to which the Bill does apply, thereby making it easier to discuss this issue. I challenge the Minister to write to us before Third Reading with a comprehensive list of the services he believes are caught by this Bill and to explain to us, in simple language that we can understand, the impact the Bill will have if implemented.
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-11-23
Topic: Other
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): The issue is that, although the regulations have been taken out—as with my Amendments 15 and 20 that have already gone before, and indeed Amendment 19 in the name of the Minister—the agreement was that the way we deal with them would nevertheless stand. That is why Amendments 15, 19, 20 and 27 were all allowed If it has been pre-empted, may I suggest that we vote on it? I gather that the Government will not resist, and I am sure that the clerks can then disallow it should they find that we should not have done it. I beg to move.
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-11-23
Topic: Other
Ruth Henig (Labour, Centre-left): We come to the group beginning with Amendment 37. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this or any other amendment in this group to a Division should make that clear in debate Schedule 2: Services exclusions
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-11-23
Topic: Other
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the key word of this debate has been "clarity" and the fact that clarity is required. I think that the Minister needs to get to the Dispatch Box and answer as many of the questions as she can, but I assume that government Amendment 51A is intended to answer the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. But questions have been raised that do not seem to point in the same direction, so I look forward to hearing from the Dispatch Box that the amendment does what it is required to do. If not, perhaps the Minister will confirm that she will come back at Third Reading with a better version of it, to make sure that the doubt is removed.
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-11-23
Topic: Civil Rights
Genista Mary McIntosh (Labour, Centre-left): We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 39. I remind noble Lords that Members, other than the mover and the Minister, may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this, or anything else in this group, to a Division should make that clear in debate Clause 19: Direct discrimination in the regulation of services Amendment 39
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-11-23
Topic: Civil Rights
George Foulkes (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I hesitate to add to the excellent introduction that—if I may call her this—my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering gave, except for one thing. We are dealing here with, in one case, direct discrimination and, in another, indirect discrimination, and only in these circumstances. Noble Lords will recall that, in a debate last week, as we were vividly reminded by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, the Minister got into a fankle—if I may be excused for using a Scottish word—on the question of discrimination. I hope that he will spell out these two areas carefully, so that the House is clear exactly what the Government think about this.
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-11-23
Topic: Other
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the general theme here, I suggest, is that we need the Minister to respond very clearly and precisely on this matter. My noble friend Lord Foulkes used the rather nice and elegant Scottish word "fankle" to describe where we are at, suggesting that this needs to be undone. I was going to use the Gaelic word "bùrach". I suddenly thought that Hansard might have difficulty with it, so I checked it on a handy electronic device close to me—and came up with a rather interesting extension, which I leave with the Minister. You can use the word "bùrach", which in Gaelic means a "right mess", but I think a more appropriate term in this case is a "clusterbùrach" which, as the article on my device goes on to say, is "a Scottish term for a hopelessly intractable mess made by hapless politicians."
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-11-23
Topic: Other
Genista Mary McIntosh (Labour, Centre-left): I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in this group to a Division should make that clear in the debate. Clause 29: Objective and general functions Amendment 52
Arrangement of Business — House of Lords, 2020-09-29
Topic: Other
John McFall (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the Hybrid Sitting of the House will now begin. Some Members are here in the Chamber, respecting social distancing, and others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. If the capacity of the Chamber is exceeded, I will immediately adjourn the House Oral questions will now commence. Please can those asking supplementary questions keep them short and confined to two points, and I ask that Ministers’ answers are brief.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Local COVID-19 Alert Level) (Very High) (England) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-10-14
Topic: Mixed Topics
Alfred Dubs (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. Just before this debate began, I was downstairs at home, switched on my television, and Andy Burnham was on, the Mayor of Manchester. His concern was that Manchester might shortly be put in the "very high" category, and he made the plea that local government should be properly involved and consulted in those decisions, as opposed to being bypassed, which seems to have been the plea of local authority leaders for several months now. It is time that the Government trusted local authorities of whatever political complexion. They should also trust scientific advice. I have listened to earlier discussions today and other discussions in the Commons, too, and I have yet to hear one argument why the SAGE advice was not accepted at the time, on 21 September Somebody asked what the advantage would be of a circuit-breaker. I think that the advantage is that it would buy time to properly implement a trace and test system, which we do not have at the moment I want to make two other points. One is about smartphones. I have one, but it is too old or not of the right type to be part of this track and trace system. So apart from the many people in this country who do not have a smartphone at all, there are also many of us who have smartphones that are too old, and that will cause a problem My other point is that there is a real uncertainty about what travel is appropriate or being advised against. The Welsh Government are concerned about people moving into Wales from higher-risk areas. What is the Government’s advice about travel, not just within very high category areas but from one to another I finish by saying that we should trust local authorities and scientific advice, and trust the people of this country to do the right thing.
Arrangement of Business — House of Lords, 2020-07-22
Topic: Other
Richard Oliver Faulkner (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, hybrid proceedings will now resume. Some Members are here in the Chamber, respecting social distancing, and others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. If the capacity of the Chamber is exceeded, I will immediately adjourn the House.
House of Lords: Allowance — House of Lords, 2020-07-22
Topic: Other
Richard Oliver Faulkner (Labour, Centre-left): I have received notice that the following noble Lords wish to speak: the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and the noble Lords, Lord Newby, Lord Shinkwin and Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon.
Arrangement of Business — House of Lords, 2020-07-22
Topic: Other
Richard Oliver Faulkner (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the Hybrid Sitting of the House will now resume. Some Members are here in the Chamber, respecting social distancing, and others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. If the capacity of the Chamber is exceeded, I will immediately adjourn the House. The usual rules and courtesies in debate apply.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-22
Topic: Immigration
David Blunkett (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the only market the Conservative Party is not in favour of is the labour market. In opening this debate, the Minister talked about the referendum and the December election. A number of seats surrounding my city of Sheffield have gone Conservative. I think those voters would be astonished to find that while the numbers from Europe have literally fallen like a stone, the numbers from the rest of the world, as cited by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, have rocketed. The changing culture that that will bring in due course might bring pause for thought to the Conservative Party I want to concentrate briefly on the contradictions between skilling our own people and this Bill. As has been said, we should of course skill people and do everything possible to ensure that we transform their life chances and the ladder of learning through life. The more people learn and the higher the skill they obtain, the less likely they are to work in those industries and services which are absolutely crucial to our survival There are 120,000 vacancies in adult residential care and a turnover rate of 30%. It is estimated that about a quarter of a million people of overseas origin work in adult care services. The Government will probably be saved temporarily by the aftermath of the Covid virus, because people will be desperate to take a job—any job. However, as they skill, they will find that those from overseas will not take the jobs that they are leaving but the jobs that they are seeking—that is, as managers or owners of residential care services. This can be replicated right across the sector We deprecate young people going to higher education, as the Secretary of State and his higher education Minister did recently, and suggest that it would be better if they took other jobs. We also imply that those with little skills should take up the jobs previously occupied by migrants who then educated themselves and contributed to the economy There is not time to go into the disparaging of the Labour Government by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley. I am very happy to take him on in future, inside and outside the House, on the statistics he quoted, the attitude he displayed and the real importance of understanding the contradictions and difficulties of managing migration policy at the same time as transforming the life chances of those already here.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-22
Topic: Immigration
Alfred Dubs (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful that a day or two ago, the Minister allowed us to ask questions and discuss the Bill in a more informal way than we can today. I still regret that there is so much in the Bill that it will not be in our power to do much about: in other words, the powers given to the Government under the Henry VIII provisions or immigration rules will be such that we can hardly influence them, and we cannot amend them. Can the immigration rules come to us in two stages: the first, amendable in draft form; and then the final version Other noble Lords have talked about the difficulties with social care. The Government are saying that their policy is that social care workers should have higher pay, and we should train more of them so that we do not need to have immigrants to deal with social care, where there are 100,000-plus vacancies at the moment. The trouble is, there will not be time for that: we will be near the end of the year and it takes time to train people; it is wishful thinking. The danger is that we will have a larger gap in social care provision as a result of this legislation. It is a retrograde step and we shall live to regret it I shall refer to one or two issues on which, if amendments are tabled, I hope I shall be able to support them. I am concerned about the length of immigration detention. As far as I know, we are the only country in Europe that has no limit on immigration detention. In 2019, 24,000 people were detained in this way. Currently, some 1,500 to 2,000 are detained, although it may have gone down a bit because of early releases due to the pandemic. I hope the Minister will confirm that a large proportion of those detained are, in the end, not removed from the country and are released. The only figure I can find is that 37% of those under immigration detention were removed and the remainder were released, so why detain them at all? What is the purpose of that? It seems to me quite wrong, in a democratic country, that we should be doing that The right to work for migrants should be such that they can work after six months and not one year. It is very hard for people who have arrived in this country and want to contribute to our economy and pay their taxes if they are not able to do that. I am also concerned about the discussions about no recourse to public funds, which punishes people twice over. I hope to be able to move an amendment to the Bill on child refugees. I believe that public opinion, if the arguments are put, supports bringing into this country some of the most vulnerable of our fellow human beings—child refugees in Calais and on the Greek islands. I very much hope the House will support such an amendment in the interests of human rights and justice.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-22
Topic: Immigration
Jack Wilson McConnell (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I look forward to the debates on the Bill in Committee and at other stages and draw attention to my registered interests, not least the work I do with charities representing child refugees. I endorse the comments made by a number of noble Lords already in the debate about the need for us to show more humanity in our approach to that. Hopefully your Lordships’ House will indeed do that I pick up on one of the remarks made by the Minister in introducing the debate. She said that any regional approach to immigration in the UK would cause chaos and therefore should be avoided. I reflect back on 2004 when, as First Minister of Scotland, I had identified the problem of Scotland’s depopulation. One of the ways we could tackle that problem was to encourage in particular those who had come to study in Scotland to stay, but also to attract new people to Scotland to energise both our population numbers and our economy with the entrepreneurship they would bring I agreed a scheme with the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, when he was Home Secretary—an incredibly thoughtful and intelligent Home Secretary, who I think would win that debate he promised us at the end of his earlier contribution. He agreed a scheme that involved a fresh talent visa in Scotland. It was particular to Scotland and allowed those who had studied in Scotland to stay longer to secure work and perhaps establish a family and home in our country. The scheme was never abused. Report after report showed that it was possible to have a scheme in one part of the United Kingdom that worked for the local circumstances there. The partnership we developed at that time between the Scottish Government and the UK Government—the Home Office—was an exemplar in devolved-central government co-operation in the UK While debates about regional approaches to immigration are sometimes coloured by more extreme demands for devolving responsibility for immigration to one of the devolved nations—which I have never been in favour of—it is possible to have regional approaches. There are parts of the United Kingdom where a one-size-fits-all approach no longer works. This is not just in Scotland but can be in other parts of the UK too. I hope that when we come to debates on this in Committee or on Report, the Minister will be willing to listen to the opportunities that would exist if we opened the door to regional approaches, which would benefit the whole UK and not just the nations or regions affected.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-22
Topic: Immigration
Peter Hain (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, under cover of the pandemic, Ministers are doggedly pursuing their Brexit immigration agenda when we are in the grip of a pandemic-induced economic tsunami. A hard Brexit, sought by many Conservatives, will sever links with our most important trading partners and neighbours, and unilaterally end free movement on 31 December, with our economy still on its knees and facing a major skills crisis This will be the second time in the last 10 years that a Conservative Government have retrospectively changed the rights of migrants who have legally entered this country to live and work here. The Bill aims to prioritise "skilled" labour with a points-based system based largely on salary. However, as shown by a recent Ipsos MORI poll, the public recognise, with my noble friend Lord Rosser, the important role played in the pandemic by the 180,000 European Union-national health and care workers, most of whom would be identified by the Home Secretary as "low-skilled" and would not have qualified for visas under the Bill Unless deals on citizens’ rights are reached with the European Union, these workers, many of them heroes in the Covid crisis, will be exposed to the harsh reality of the Home Office’s failed and inhumane hostile environment policy. It is also likely that there will be a second Windrush for the children of migrants, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said in this House on 2 July. The Government’s promises on EU nationals’ rights mean nothing if they are not backed by primary legislation. They should be granted automatic settled status. The Bill does neither To lead a recovery from Covid, the Government are promoting investment in construction and infrastructure, highly dependent on skilled labour from the EU, yet they have no effective strategy for domestic skills-based programmes, which take years to deliver results. By ending free movement, the UK will become less accessible to highly skilled EEA migrants, on whom we have depended for years. The Huawei debacle has illustrated that the "global Britain" assumed by leave in the referendum campaign no longer exists. Our legal, economic and trading relationship with the EU—the world’s biggest, richest market, right on our doorstep—which is in no way settled, should remain our most important for years to come. Our immigration system should reflect that, not the other way around Another huge consequence of the Bill is that, as a direct consequence of the lack of reciprocal agreements on citizens’ rights, 66 million UK nationals will lose the benefits of their EU citizenship, their rights to travel freely and to live, work and study elsewhere in our European home. Frankly, this is all a shambolic disgrace.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-22
Topic: Immigration
George Foulkes (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, although I too am pleased to speak in this Second Reading, I am sorry that we have this Bill at all. Like so many of our fellow citizens, I regret it. It is a Bill that makes provision to end the excellent free movement that we had under EU law in exchange for what I believe to be a punitive points-based system Like my noble friend Lord Rosser and others, I will concentrate on the care sector. We have seen how much care workers do under the pressures of the virus, and how the problems of funding and security have created problems for the care sector and shown how it is often treated as a poor relative of the NHS. We need to give more consideration to the care sector’s value and to work to keep its workforce; otherwise they will continue to be an afterthought in immigration, as well as other areas. As others have said, part of the new points-based immigration system disadvantages them. They will be excluded from the new health and care visa. Even senior care workers would not qualify with the minimum salary threshold. It is unjust and unfair, particularly on top of the lack of support they have had during the Covid epidemic. I hope this matter can be dealt with and looked at more carefully in Committee and on Report As the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, and my noble friend Lord McConnell, did, I will touch on whether this applies to the whole of the United Kingdom. As a Scots Peer, I think that immigration must remain principally a UK-wide competence, as the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, said. I strongly disagree with the SNP’s proposal for an alternative immigration system for Scotland. That is very different from the very limited scheme that my noble friend Lord McConnell introduced, which he described earlier. Scotland’s immigration needs are not significantly different from other parts of the United Kingdom. Anyway, how could we prevent immigrants moving around the UK without border controls? The Deputy Speaker will know and I am sure that he would agree that the last thing we need are border controls at Gretna and Berwick.