argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-01-21
Topic: Mixed Topics
Rona Fairhead (Conservative, Centre-right): I am seeking to reassure the House because what we are agreeing in the withdrawal agreement is that all those obligations that we are party to come over as a result of the EU withdrawal Act. We remain parties to exactly the same international commitments made before, during and after we leave the EU. Nothing in that changes. I am trying to convey that this is about continuity of the existing obligations. We are not changing them; they are therefore being brought across as they stand I turn now to Amendment 13, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, and Amendment 14, tabled by my noble friend Lady McIntosh, which focus again on standards. Amendment 13 restricts the use of the Clause 2 power if it has the effect of lowering market standards for agricultural products below EU standards. Amendment 14 extends this to animal health, hygiene or welfare standards for agricultural products. I hope noble Lords will let me try to address any concerns over trade agreements leading to a change in standards for those agricultural products Our trade agreements must work not only for UK consumers, businesses and farmers but also for the environment. The global demand for British products is based on our high standards; people buy British not because it is cheaper but because of its high quality. To disregard standards would be to undermine the future of our farmers and of the British exporters. The Government have already announced a new environment (principles and governance) Bill to ensure environmental protections will not be weakened as we leave the EU. We have finished a consultation on a new body, which promises to hold the Government to account on the environment, and have published our 25-year environment plan which sets out our goals.
Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-01-21
Topic: Other
Hazel Byford (Conservative, Centre-right): Before the Minister responds, I would like to say that we do not have that Bill in front of us. What is being proposed is quite rightly reflected by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, but it is up to us to ensure that when that legislation comes those safeguards are built in. I will be one who strongly fights that corner, because it is no use having a body established if it cannot actually hold anyone to account at the right time. Forgive me for intervening on my noble friend the Minister, but I think we need to await the detail, which we do not have at the moment.
Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-01-21
Topic: Mixed Topics
Rona Fairhead (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my noble friend Lady Byford for saying those words. This is a Bill, and the whole purpose of it going through will be that it gets scrutinised. These concerns and changes will be raised, and it will go through in the usual way. I am happy to write to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, about where we are on the Bill but, like all legislation, when it is going through that is the right time to challenge it, and that Bill will be challenged in the same way as I would expect others to be The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said last year: "I have been very clear that Brexit will not lead to a lowering of our high food, animal welfare and environmental standards. This will remain at the heart of our approach as we negotiate both with the EU and with new trading partners around the world".
Universal Credit — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Immigration
Peta Buscombe (Conservative, Centre-right): I will respond by saying first that perhaps we should ask the press what on earth is going on. The news that there is a delay is wrong. The Government previously committed to hold a debate on the affirmative regulations in relation to managed migration, and that will happen in due course on the Floor of the House. We will debate them as and when parliamentary time allows, but we will also make sure that we meet our commitment to severe disability premium recipients. To ensure a start date from July 2019 for those 10,000 people, we have long said that we will work with a test and learn process The noble Baroness talked about a pilot. We have always called it a test. It is perhaps just different terminology. In my response to a debate put to the House by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, on 1 November, I made it very clear that we were always going to have the test and learn phase starting at the end of July 2019, whereby we would manage-migrate only 10,000 people through the following 12 months. A debate will be held on the regulations to allow for the managed migration.
Universal Credit — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Immigration
Peta Buscombe (Conservative, Centre-right): I very much take on board what the noble Lord said. This has been very much part of our thinking in the department. It is very important that we make sure that we have an opportunity to debate the managed migration regulations prior to the end of July 2019 and the pilot phase—as it is now popularly referred to, rather than, as we have called it, the test and learn phase—whereby we will be co-designing the whole system with 70 stakeholders working with us to make sure that we get this right. So there is no question of us not being very cognisant of the fact that we want to ensure that we protect recipients of the severe disability premium so that they do not in any way have a gap in receipt of their severe disability premium. We want to make sure that that happens as soon as possible.
Universal Credit — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Mixed Topics
Peta Buscombe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the noble Baroness is wrong to say that the regulations have been widely condemned. Why do 70 different stakeholders want to work with us if they condemn what we are trying to achieve? I feel very strongly about this. The noble Baroness herself came to the department to see the fantastic work done by our work coaches. She may laugh at what our employees do day in and day out, 24/7, to help benefit claimants in a far better way than ever happened under the legacy system where, frankly, people were left to—
Universal Credit — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Immigration
Peta Buscombe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am trying to clarify it to the best of my ability. The reality is that, as I have already said, we want to make sure that we protect those with a severe disability premium and we need to do that by the end of this month. I think that noble Lords will accept that at the moment we are in an unusual place when it comes to the parliamentary system and the timetable, but I am absolutely clear that, when parliamentary time allows, we will debate on the Floor of this House affirmative regulations for managed migration.
Seaborne Freight — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Mixed Topics
Elizabeth Sugg (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, we conducted searches on the director of Seaborne via a third party and found absolutely nothing that would prevent the company contracting with the Government, which is why we went ahead. There was no ministerial direction in this case. The company has been working to open the service for over two years. Since we have given them the contract, it has been developing that service, and there will be updates in the near future.
Seaborne Freight — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Mixed Topics
Elizabeth Sugg (Conservative, Centre-right): I assure noble Lords that this is not a joke but part of our contingency planning. We are concerned that in the event of no deal, there will be disruption at the port of Dover. Our first priority is to minimise that disruption on the narrow straits, but we are aware it is a real issue, which is why we are making these contingency plans and why we are looking at alternative ways of ensuring that trade carried on ro-ros can continue to come and go from this country.
Seaborne Freight — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Other
Elizabeth Sugg (Conservative, Centre-right): It is not part of this contract. I believe that the cost is around £1.5 million. I will have to get back to the noble Lord with the exact details of who will pay for it.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Other
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): For the points I will come to in a minute, which the noble Lord has slightly pre-empted. Obviously he has read the wind-up speech I gave at Second Reading—the arguments about volume of legislation and timeliness remain consistent—but I will come back to that.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Mixed Topics
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): We will have the debate under the future group of amendments on equivalence. We are not setting here the test or the bar as one of equivalence. We are simply talking about the specific directives and regulations before us and mentioned in the Bill: the 15 here; the four already agreed, which are mentioned on page 1 of the Bill; and the further 11 mentioned in the schedule accompanying it, which have not yet been agreed. Because they have not been agreed and may be under debate or amendment without the UK at the negotiating table, we are simply adding in that greater level of power to say that the UK, in the event of leaving without a deal, would need to look after the interests of the UK financial and industry sector and could not give a blank cheque in the opposite direction to the EU to pass whatever regulation that we would automatically implement because of adherence to a notion of equivalence. That cannot be right for UK financial services. We need to look at what comes to us, then act within the interests of the UK financial services sector at that time I will deal with some of the specific points raised. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, talked about the recommendation of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I pay tribute to the work it did on this and the quick turnaround and punchy conclusions it arrived at. We are considering its recommendations, which the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, asked us to look at. I will be happy to meet with noble Lords ahead of Report to discuss where we stand. I thank the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for its work and recognise that it raised some very pertinent issues. We want to look at them in greater detail, and I would be happy to discuss that with noble Lords ahead of Report I hope I have gone some way to addressing noble Lords’ points at this stage. We will come to a number of the other points in future debates and groups.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Mixed Topics
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): I am happy to do that. As the negotiations on these files continue, further amendments may be agreed, proposed or dropped that the Government will wish to domesticate or remove using the powers under this Bill. As the final outcome on many of these files is still unclear, we need to make sure that we can bring them into UK law in a way that works best for UK markets. This might, for example, include areas where the final parts of legislation could, if unchanged in a no-deal scenario, present inconsistencies with the UK regulatory framework, with global standards or with the UK’s position as an open global financial market. It is important therefore that we have the power to adjust these inconsistencies when bringing them into UK law. I acknowledge that this is a—
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): That is not the case. I accept that the noble Lord is presenting a caricature of the situation that proves a particular point, but of course that is not what will happen. First of all, certain guarantees are presented in terms of reporting, which we will come on to again later. There are certain processes in terms of scrutiny of secondary legislation, not only by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which does incredible work and of course has a role set out in Standing Orders as to how it must scrutinise secondary legislation. Also, the affirmative SIs must be debated in your Lordships’ House. In addition to that, we have also undertaken that there should be proper engagement with the industry in talking about this and with other stakeholders too. There is a wide range of things We will delve deeper into some of the points in the noble Lord’s own amendments later. I appreciate that the role and purpose of Committee is to elicit from the Government further explanations about what these terms mean. We may have a difference about whether the noble Lord’s view is shared by the Front Bench, and whether all these matters should be dealt with by primary legislation in 15 Bills or by secondary legislation, which has been the convention, particularly when it comes to financial services.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): I will just finish this point if I may. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and I and indeed the noble Baronesses, Lady Kramer and Lady Bowles, spent so much time in Grand Committee talking through various pieces of secondary legislation on financial services. That has been the conventional way in which we have worked. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, believes that the legislation ought to be primary in this case. That is his view. It is not the Government’s view and it is my job to outline the Government’s view on this. We are following established procedures and providing powers under scrutiny to allow us to deal with a unique set of circumstances, which we have never had to deal with before.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Other
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): Perhaps it would be helpful at this stage to agree that these issues will be addressed in future groups. We will choose some wording—if not today, then certainly before Report—that is quite rightly required by the Committee to reassure itself about what is and is not referred to in that respect. With that, and with the undertaking to meet with colleagues specifically on the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee before Report, I invite noble Lords not to press this amendment.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Other
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): I am happy to give that undertaking. I thank the noble Lord for his work on the committee and thank it for its report, which raises specific concerns. I will address those initially through a meeting with interested colleagues ahead of Report and then, more formally on the record as a result of that, on Report.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Other
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord is familiar with the way this works. I used to sit on that side of the House while he was having similar words prepared for him. Adjustment leads to an altered version of the original. Changes that produce something completely different go beyond adjustments. Dictionaries make it clear that adjusting is about making small changes to achieve a desired fit or to adapt to a new situation. I hope that helps.