argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
UK Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Sajid Javid (Conservative, Centre-right): We have an industrial strategy. People can choose to focus on the semantics—they can call it an industrial strategy or an industrial policy—or they can actually look at the results. As I said earlier, one of the reasons that manufacturing output, sales, employment and exports are all up in the last five years is that this Government have a successful industrial policy.
UK Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Sajid Javid (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales has had some recent discussions on this issue. I think the hon. Lady is aware of that. She is right to raise the issue of productivity more generally. I do not think it is an issue of productivity in our steel industry. If we look at the output of our workers in the British steel industry, we will see that they are second to none in terms of their productivity. We should take this opportunity to commend the hard work of those men and women. Productivity more generally in the UK economy has been a long-running issue. The supply chain is one of the ways to deal with that, especially with regard to import substitution. I think that is where steel has a big role to play, because there are still too many steel imports and I think that a lot of that steel can be purchased here at home.
UK Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: Foreign Trade
Sajid Javid (Conservative, Centre-right): When it comes to tariffs, what I am interested in is what actually works. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to study the results—to look at the action the EU has taken and then to look at the result of that action. He will find that, in almost every case, there has been a reduction in imports of more than 80% and sometimes, as I mentioned earlier with regard to rebar, some 99%. As I have said, and I will say it again, if the hon. Gentleman has a particular idea that is focused on steel—because that is the real issue in British industry right now, and that is what I and he want to focus on— I am willing to listen to him.
UK Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: Foreign Trade
Sajid Javid (Conservative, Centre-right): Where I agree with the hon. Gentleman is that we have to do everything we can to help British industry and British manufacturing, and I think that the long-term interest of the British economy is to remain in the EU.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: Foreign Trade
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her words of support. On the specific questions she posed, I can certainly confirm that, since we are outside the Schengen no borders area, we can and do apply border checks to people seeking to enter this country, including EU nationals and, as she said, UK nationals as well It is indeed the case that, where other countries—the hon. Lady cited Norway—have sought and obtained access to the European Union’s free trade single market, that has come at a price. That price has included acceptance of the principle of freedom of movement for workers, an obligation to pay into the European Union’s budget and, critically, an acceptance that the country concerned will implement European Union rules, including on product standards, without being present at the table, having a say or having a vote on how those rules should be made. Part of the Government’s case is indeed that the interests of British business and the interests of jobs and growth in the United Kingdom are served by our having a role in leading and shaping the direction of the single market, not by simply accepting rules that have been worked out by other countries in our absence. She is also right that, in the case of Canada, we are looking at seven years so far and still no final agreement. It is a mistake to underestimate the complexity involved in a free trade agreement negotiation, particularly if it has to be conducted in the circumstances of the UK having decided to withdraw from the European Union No one could be in any doubt that the leaflet being distributed this week represents the views of the Government. As I said earlier, the Government are not neutral on this issue. We accept that this is an issue on which there are long-standing differences of opinion honourably held by people of different political parties and of none. I have always respected the views of those who differ from my own on this matter, but I believe that the Government have not only the right, but a duty to explain to the electorate, when faced with a decision of this gravity, the reasons why the Government have come to the recommendation that we have come to.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is an absurd proposition to argue that the Government of the day are not entitled to form an opinion or a policy on the role of the Government in the modern world, or are not allowed to communicate the reasons for having such a policy to the electorate? As the general public appear to be demanding more calm factual statements about the issue, rather than less, does he agree that those who disagree should come out with a calm description of the factual basis on which they believe they can negotiate some alternative role for this country, not just resort to blustering about fear-mongering or claiming that we are bending the rules of some sporting jape, which they seem to think the referendum represents?
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): The Government would be abrogating our responsibility to the electorate were we to decline to communicate our views and the reasons for our views. There is an equal obligation on those championing a British exit from the European Union to spell out both the arguments to which my right hon. and learned Friend refers, and, critically, the future relationship they are seeking with the European Union. Having taken part in many debates and exchanges on the subject of the European Union in the past few years, I have found that there are almost as many visions for the future relationship of the United Kingdom with the European Union when outside it as there are advocates of a British exit.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): What the leaflet we are dealing with this afternoon does is explain the Government’s case in plain English. It can readily be understood by people who have not studied every detail of European Union treaties for the past several years. It explains that in clear language, but it is not over-egging the pudding. It is phrased and the argument is expressed in an extremely sober manner, and I hope people will find that argument persuasive.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: Government Operations
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): I return to what I said earlier: there is clear evidence from the independent polling research— its methodology has been published by the company concerned on its website—that more information is wanted by the British public. That research finding bears out what I and, I suspect, many other hon. Members on both sides of the House are finding anecdotally in conversations with constituents. I now spend time virtually every day signing replies to Members of Parliament, who have enclosed letters from constituents saying they feel they do not yet have enough information on which to make an informed decision and would like to have some more I hope that people will look carefully at what the Government are arguing, that they will look at the arguments put forward by the two campaign groups, once they have been designated, and that they will come to a decision about what they believe to be in the best interests of the United Kingdom as a whole. That is how the Government are approaching this matter
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): I think the hon. Lady really wishes that the Government should be neutral in this debate. The Government are not neutral. We are advocating that the British people should vote in favour of continued membership of the European Union. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor, other Ministers and I consistently said that, when the time came for the referendum to be held, the Government would express our view clearly and make our recommendation known, so we are delivering on what we have said to the British people As regards the hon. Lady’s question about one particular element in the leaflet, the footnotes that support each of the statements have themselves been published online by the Government, and she and other hon. Members are welcome to check the source material.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: Government Operations
Liam Fox (Conservative, Centre-right): The weakness in my right hon. Friend’s case is that this "Dodgy Dossier: the Sequel" does not actually contain facts; it contains opinions, assertions and suppositions. Not only is it a waste of public money, but in effectively doubling the remain campaign’s budget, the Government have betrayed any sense of fairness in the process of the referendum and, with the content of the leaflet, have abdicated their responsibility to tell the truth on the issues. It is bad enough getting junk mail, but to have Juncker mail sent to us with our own taxes is the final straw.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): I refer the hon. Gentleman to the detailed notes on the various statements made in the leaflet. He quoted Lord Lawson at me; he and others representing Northern Ireland might ponder Lord Lawson’s view, expressed over the weekend, that in the event of a British departure from the European Union, border controls would need to be established on the border of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The hon. Gentleman might also wish to consider the serious adverse impact on Northern Ireland businesses of a British departure from the European Union.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: Government Operations
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): I reject that assertion. My hon. Friend’s intervention on 8 December last year was specifically about information brought forward under the terms of the Lords amendments that have subsequently been incorporated into the 2015 Act, and, as I said earlier, this leaflet is outwith the scope of the obligations under that Act. I also refer him, as I have referred other hon. Members, to the fact that the Government have published the factual and statistical evidence upon which each of the statements made in the leaflet is based. Now, if my hon. Friend wants to go away and challenge some of those findings—the statistical surveys or the independent reports that we cite in those footnotes—he is free to do so, but I believe that the Government have acted reasonably and responsibly in presenting their case clearly to the British people.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): I hope that when people have read both the information that the Government have published and other available information they will judge, as Ministers have on behalf of the Government, that membership of the European Union makes the United Kingdom stronger, safer and better off than it would be outside it.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
Owen William Paterson (Conservative, Centre-right): This really is a crass move by the Government. It will hugely galvanise those who want to leave the European Union and will do nothing to bring people onside for the remain campaign. It is also in total breach of the guidelines set out by the Venice Commission, which make it very clear that if there is to be a balanced presentation, the view of the opposing side should be expressed. Will the Minister make £9 million available to the leave campaign?
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): As I said earlier, we judge that the benefit to the leave campaign—and, for that matter, to the remain campaign, once both are designated—of a publicly funded leaflet distribution will be of the order of £15 million, which is significantly more than the sums we are talking about this afternoon. Those two campaign bodies will be free to campaign and communicate right up until polling day, including during the final 28 days, during which time the Government’s freedom to do so will be severely constrained. I will also just say to my right hon. Friend that I have never felt that those who support a British exit needed much galvanising.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not agree that this is negative. When people are considering how to vote on 23 June, they will want to weigh up both the arguments about the benefits that the United Kingdom gains from membership of the European Union and the potential risks of departure and of trying to forge some other kind of relationship with the EU from the outside I make no secret of the fact that the judgment about whether we should remain members of the European Union is a pragmatic one, both for the Government and, I think, for most British voters. We accept that not everything about the European Union is perfect—one cannot be Europe Minister for six years and believe that it is perfect—but we believe that the clear balance of the argument lies in continued membership that will help to keep us more secure and prosperous, and we have tried to express that in this publication.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): I cannot make the commitment that the hon. Gentleman asks for, but the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and other Ministers will, on behalf of the Government, continue to press as strongly and persuasively as they can the case for Britain’s prosperity and security to be served by continued membership of a reformed European Union.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
Crispin Jeremy Rupert Blunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I remind my right hon. Friend of what he said when replying to the Second Reading debate on the European Union Referendum Act 2015: "The question I take from the debate is this: how do we provide the credible assurances that give effect to what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said—that the Government will be restrained in their use of public money and have no wish to compete with the umbrella campaign organisations whose job it will be to lead the yes and no campaigns?"—[Official Report, 9 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 1151.] What does he regret more—the fact that this public money is likely to be entirely wasted and achieve the opposite of his intention, or the damage to the Government’s reputation for straight dealing on this issue?
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): If my hon. Friend would like to check Hansard, he will find that the comments by the Foreign Secretary to which I was referring were about whether the Government might be thinking of spending public money to deliver doorstep mailshots in the last four weeks of the campaign, and I assure him that they have no such intention. I reiterated that when replying to the debate and referring to the Foreign Secretary’s remarks, and I said more or less the same thing on Report on 7 September last year.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: Foreign Trade
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman hits on an important point. Although the single market is successful when it comes to trade in goods, it is insufficiently developed for trade in services. We must do more—indeed, we are leading the debate in Europe on the liberalisation of services and the simplification of product standards and regulations. Particularly for an economy such as ours, in which roughly 80% of GDP derives from the services sector, it would be a major risk to turn ourselves from being the shapers of new rules on services trade to the takers of rules set by other European countries, with us absent from the table.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
Damian Howard Green (Conservative, Centre-right): This House passed legislation that specifically allowed the Government to produce this leaflet as long as it was not in the last 28 days of the referendum campaign, so it is possible that some of the indignation is a touch overdone. Does the Minister agree that it is a strange strategy when, instead of arguing the case, as soon as anyone—whether the Governor the Bank of England, the President of the United States, the CBI or even, ludicrously, the British Government— says anything that the leave campaigners disagree with, they prefer to say that those things should not be said at all? Is that a completely nonsensical strategy?
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): I tend towards my right hon. Friend’s second interpretation. The basic problem is that those who perfectly properly and honourably advocate a British departure from the EU wish that the Government were neutral and silent, but they are not. The Government believe that there is a compelling case for continued British membership of the European Union and that that is in the economic and political interests of the United Kingdom.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: Government Operations
William Peter Wragg (Conservative, Centre-right): In the interests of fairness and balance, would it not be better for more funds to be made available or for an increase in the leave campaign’s spending limits to be commensurate with the cost of this publication? My right hon. Friend is a bright man with a quite unenviable task at the moment. Surely he will agree with the fundamental fairness and reasonableness of this argument.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: Government Operations
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): The two designated campaign organisations will have four weeks in the run-up to polling day in which they will be completely free to publish and deliver to the electorate whatever messages they wish, during which time the Government will be very severely constrained in what they are able to do. What we have done on this occasion is in line with the precedent set by Conservative and Labour Governments in the past and I see absolutely nothing wrong or inappropriate in what we have done.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): The Government’s position was announced after the February European Council this year, at which we secured important reforms to the European Union, in particular those that carve us out of the notion of ever closer political union and ensure no discrimination by eurozone countries against those that have chosen not to join the euro. I believe that the leaflet presents arguments that even people in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency might find persuasive once they have aimed off from the fact that it comes from the United Kingdom Government. I know that he and his party colleagues will be campaigning strongly for continued British membership and I very much welcome that fact.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
Bernard Christison Jenkin (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you, Mr Speaker; I sometimes get worried about myself May I inform my right hon. Friend that the Public Administration Committee is receiving evidence to suggest that this is going to be a less fair referendum even than the one held in 1975 before there were any proper rules on referendums? At least in that referendum, the grants given out to the two campaigns were worth twice the amount of the present grants. Also, when the then Government distributed their own leaflet in 1975, they provided information on a no vote as well as on a yes vote. We are not getting that now. It has been suggested that today’s leaflet simply has facts in it, but who believes that we now live in a "reformed EU" except for the fantasists in the Foreign Office? Who believes that "we will keep our own border controls" when we have to admit almost any person who says that they are an EU citizen? Who believes that "the UK will not be part of further political integration" Does not this compare to the claim in Harold Wilson’s leaflet that "decisions can be taken only if all the members of the Council agree"? Remember that one? Does it not also compare to John Major’s claim that Maastricht "addressed and corrected" the "centralising tendency" that many were so worried about? We have heard all the stories before, but they are not facts.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: Government Operations
David Roy Lidington (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not think anything that I say or that the Government might publish could persuade my hon. Friend on this matter, given his track record in this debate. He has been absolutely consistent in his views and I respect that, even though I disagree vehemently with him. He made a serious point about the timing of the distribution and the fact that the Government’s leaflet was not going out at the same time as the leaflets from the remain and leave campaigns. We would have preferred to circulate the Government’s leaflet later in the campaign. The statutory rules under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which prohibit us from making such communications in the final 28 days of the campaign, did not apply during the 1975 referendum period. We accepted the advice of the Electoral Commission that it would be wrong for us to distribute the Government leaflet in a way that interfered with the national elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That is why we have aimed to have the distribution earlier than we might have chosen to do in an ideal world.
Government Referendum Leaflet — House of Commons, 2016-04-11
Topic: International Affairs
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend will be aware that the Government—indeed, Governments of all colours—are rarely shy when it comes to explaining their views to the electorate in public information campaigns. It is perfectly proper and acceptable for Her Majesty’s Government to do that, and to use taxpayers’ money to do it. Given the fact that the Government are not neutral in this campaign but take the view that we should remain in the EU, does the Minister find the arguments against this leaflet rather false and synthetic, or does he think the Brexiteers are suggesting that they should have had editorial control?