argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. As for this last point, we always review such things. We have a new Contest process, which involves examining where we can learn lessons all the way through, and there are many lessons to be learned from all the tragic attacks we had last year. He is absolutely right about Vodafone, and I am determined to ensure that we find out what went wrong. On the plus side, it has not happened before or after, but that is not an excuse and we must ensure that we receive guarantees, and exercising can help with that I want to highlight one important point. I have read some of the media over the past few days, and one would not be blamed for thinking that no one was there on the scene, but that was not the case. Within one minute of the explosion, which was targeted at women and children, British Transport police, police community support officers and paramedics were there. Within 12 minutes, ambulances were on the scene. It is regretful that the fire service was not there, but that was not key to whether people were getting treatment. The other blue-light emergency services did a fantastic job. They set up a casualty station, and they improvised. I know that the Labour party fully understands that and supports that view, and it is something that we should reflect on when the media picks on the worst, not the best, of the event We will continue to keep things under review, and I have always said to the shadow Minister that if he would like to visit some of the response units to see how things are being worked through, I would be delighted to host him—or any other Member—to ensure that the complexity of the situation is understood The biggest point in relation to the report and all terrorist actions is that we often start by not knowing what the situation is. All Members will remember the day of the Westminster Bridge attack: we were locked in our offices and shut off from one another because we did not know whether it involved firearms or a bomb or whether another person was in the House or not. That is the biggest challenge that our blue-light services face—"Is it a single explosion?" If lots of protocols had been broken in Manchester and there had been a second device—there are lots of examples of where second devices or attacks have been employed—I would hate to have been standing here for another reason, saying that we exposed our emergency services to too much danger because we rushed in or did not do something. It is a difficult balance to make, but I think the right calls were made on the night. Yes, there were some failures, but my constituents and those of the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) can be confident that help was there and that the blue-light emergency services did a fantastic and brave job.
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Marcus Charles Jones (Conservative, Centre-right): This was a barbaric act of terrorism, and I welcome my right hon. Friend’s measured tone in response to the report. In an ideal world, we would always work to prevent such incidents from happening in the first place, so what more are the Government willing to do to put additional resources into counter-terrorism to ensure that we do not see these awful events on our streets?
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. We are always open to more requests, and the Home Office will take the case to the Chancellor. After last year’s attacks, the police and the security services requested more funding, so we went to the Treasury and got £71 million more than was marked to be spent, including £51 million of new money, and we will continue to invest In Manchester, we have met nearly all requests for funds, but there are some still to work through. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has asked my Department to speak to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy about business rate relief for the businesses that may face bills, but not the council, which will not receive so much in business rates. There is always more to do, but we are in listening mode, and we do our best to get the money to help.
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Education
Robert Henry Halfon (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) for her urgent question, and I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for his statement. What are the Government doing through the Prevent strategy in schools and colleges? Obviously, Prevent is the thing that stops the conveyor belt to extremism.
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend makes an important point. If we are really to reduce the risk to our people, we need to invest in prevention. Although some people have issues with the Prevent scheme, we published the first lot of figures last week showing yet again that more than 200 people have been diverted away from following a path of violent extremism, and schools play one part of that role.[Official Report, 19 April 2018, Vol. 639, c. 3MC.] This is about safeguarding, and it is key that people remember young people are being preyed upon right now—I am afraid that I see it in ongoing operations—by people who choose to groom them. Whether young people are being groomed sexually, being groomed for violent extremism or being groomed by the extreme right wing, the methods are exactly the same. We have to invest in Prevent, and we hope to see more investment in Prevent with the Contest review. If we do not deal with it effectively upstream, we will still be here having this debate in many years’ time.
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Lady will know there is still some way to run in the coroner’s inquest and other inquiries, certainly on Manchester, when it comes to attribution and the avoidability of death, etc. We should not forget that a live police investigation of the event in Manchester is still ongoing, with an extradition request outstanding that we are working to help the Libyans to fulfil so we can see justice be done—that is another plank in this process On Prevent and the case of the Parsons Green bomber, there has been an internal review by the police with the local Prevent organisation. I am happy to brief the right hon. Lady on some of that on Privy Council terms, if she would like to come. There are definitely issues there that need to be sorted, but Prevent, as a policy, is not guaranteed. We have to try, as a society, to deradicalise and divert people. There are people who are determined to commit acts of murder and brutality, but we would be totally wrong if we did not try to deradicalise them because we cannot give a 100% guarantee. We will continue to try to make sure we are safe.
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Technology
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Not only have I sought and been given assurances about the Vodafone system, I have also asked that we explore a back-up system or contingency plan if something like this does not work in future. There is always the potential for something to go wrong with technology, which is why we need to exercise it, but we also need to consider alternatives should the technology fail on the night The one thing on which I can give the hon. Gentleman some assurance is that, before and after, the technology worked successfully at, for example, London Bridge and Westminster and elsewhere, but it is not good enough that the technology did not work on the night when it was needed in Manchester.
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. People should understand that the response by the emergency services was not just about the city of Manchester. One of the proudest things for me is that, when I walked into Manchester police headquarters at about 8.30 am, the counter-terrorism commander on duty came from the Lancashire force. It was a collective effort, whether from the local fire service or ambulances sent from all over the north-west to help. It shows the strength of the Contest strategy that the response is about pulling together Only last week, I went to visit the Salisbury investigation, where I found officers from the midlands and the north of England responding in both the chemical and decontamination space and in the investigation. The fire service is absolutely important; I understand the frustration of many of those brave men and women who feel that they did not have access to helping people, although I want the public to understand that it was not that people were therefore left alone. We will work together to put this right, so that it does not happen in the future, but I must say that the judgments that were made were as much about the safety of officers and crew as they were about the victims.
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a good point. Nothing in this report is about a failure of the services that were deployed that night. There were failures relating to some individual decisions, including on interpretations. There was a failure of technology in respect of the Vodafone response. To some extent, as we have discussed earlier, there was a failure of interpretation—whether or not it was too rigid—but this was not about the failure of the fire service and the police to do their job, about their ability to do their job or about the people who make up both services.
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very happy to meet the people undertaking that review, but I must point out that the figures published yesterday and those published earlier in the month show that Prevent is working in many areas.[Official Report, 19 April 2018, Vol. 639, c. 4MC.] Prevent is not perfect. I listened carefully to the discussion on the BBC’s "Question Time" not long after the event, when Andy Burnham and the representative from the Crown Prosecution Service in the north-west gave their views on Prevent at the time. Prevent could be better applied sometimes; but ultimately, if we are saying that it is about safeguarding and delivering a space so that people are not radicalised, the people who are against Prevent have to come up with an alternative. Every alternative I have heard articulated is Prevent with a different name. I do not think that when dealing with really important issues about young people being groomed and exploited we should be too hung up on the semantics of the name—we should be looking at the results and the processes. Again, I say to Members that I am happy to take them to meet Prevent providers, to understand communities. I met a family whose children were diverted from going off to fight in Syria, and if we were to look that lady in the eye and say, "Sorry, Prevent is not working," she will give us a rather robust answer about whether it is or not.
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert John Blackman (Conservative, Centre-right): The whole country was shocked by the severity of this atrocity, particularly as it was aimed at young people who were going out for a night of fun with their friends. All our thoughts must be with the victims and their families, and our thanks must go to the emergency services. As we are learning the lessons from this terrible atrocity, will the Minister update the House on how many attacks have been disrupted in this country since this terrible atrocity and which groups are responsible for trying to perpetrate such attacks?
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): The best and latest figures I can give my hon. Friend are that since the first attack last year at Westminster Bridge 10 plots were disrupted and there were four extreme right-wing plots. The plots we face are broad, coming from people ranging from neo-Nazis— that is why we proscribed National Action earlier in the year—to followers of Daesh, followers of al-Qaeda and other extremists who do not follow anything other than seeking to cause harm and to murder on our streets. No one has a copyright on terrorism in this country; a number of groups of people are trying to prosecute it. Again, that is why Prevent is important. Prevent is not just about Islamist terrorism; it is also about extreme right-wing terrorism, and in some parts of the country referrals to Prevent are greater in the extreme right-wing space than they are in the Islamist space.
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): Both local papers, the Lancashire Evening Post and the Manchester Evening News, did the right thing: they got behind the community and understood what had happened in the middle of them. I go back to a point I made earlier: sometimes it is important that the media understand that sensationalism is not the trump card that means they can ignore all the other rules of accuracy and of being sensitive to people’s issues. The media have a strong role to play in communicating the facts in the immediate aftermath of events such as this, because when we do not have facts people get scared. This is why I have tried to work on this, as we all have. The reason people sometimes get frustrated with the police and the intelligence services not being as quick as they could to inform them of things is that if we get the facts wrong, people get scared. We have to make sure that the terrorists do not win by scaring us. We win by showing that we are controlled and by responding. The media have a really important and responsible role to play in that.
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Technology
Thomas Christopher John Pursglove (Conservative, Centre-right): Building on the previous question and the Minister’s answer, does he agree that the real-time reporting of incidents and of their aftermath needs to be more carefully thought about by some elements of the media? Would he welcome a constructive industry-led approach to looking at that?
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Technology
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): I would welcome any initiative that does that. This is a real challenge in the 21st century: in real time, people are eyewitnesses and people tweet, having immediately got on their phone. That is not going to go away. What is important is that the producers, the people churning out the programmes and the editors are employed, partly, to be able to sift gossip from reality, and sensationalism from impacting stories. The message is that there is a strong role for the editors and producers in this day and age of live reporting. They must be able to say, "It might be sensational, but we are not going to report it because it is not true or factual, and I would not be responsible if I did."
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The reliving of that horrendous night is done by our police officers and ambulance crews every day of their lives. One of the most disturbing parts of my job was to see a lot of the footage that was captured before, during and after the attack. That will stay with me for the rest of my life, and I was not even on the scene. Our emergency services will relive it. I passionately feel the frustration of those firefighters who wanted to help on that day. They do not deserve to have to deal with that, which is why we have to put some of those things right through the recommendations in Lord Kerslake’s report. I will make sure that we do that, and the only thing I would say is, "Rest assured, others were there to treat the victims and help the bereaved."
Kerslake Arena Attack Review — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We should put it on record that the civic leadership of Manchester—including Andy Burnham, the chief executive of the council and the leader of the council—has been exemplary. Because of that, the terrorists have not been successful in dividing our communities, and nor will they be. Manchester is a perfect example, and I used it recently when talking to Salisbury’s local civic leadership. I said, "If you want an example of how to do it, albeit on a different scale—making sure that your communities return to normal and being prepared to ask central Government for funding—look at the way they did it in Manchester." We should all be proud of it.
Worboys Case and the Parole Board — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
David Michael Gauke (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with the hon. Gentleman regarding transparency. I am pleased that there is cross-party consensus on the need for increased transparency of Parole Board decisions. That should not undermine Parole Board independence, which is important. I hope to move swiftly to change systems in order to ensure that the reasons that the Parole Board has reached a decision become available to the victims. I hope that that will be in place shortly The hon. Gentleman touched on the licence conditions. In a way, this is not necessarily as much of an issue as it was. It had been determined that Worboys would be electronically tagged and excluded from London. That may or may not be an issue in the future, depending on future Parole Board decisions On the dossier that was provided by the National Probation Service—and, therefore, my Department—for the hearing that occurred on 8 November last year, it is the case that there may well have been information that should have been included in the dossier and that was not provided, but it is worth pointing out that it is the responsibility of the Parole Board to satisfy itself that an offender is no longer a risk to the public. The judgment of Sir Brian Leveson was that the Parole Board failed to probe that evidence sufficiently, as it should have done. I reiterate that the National Probation Service opposed the release of John Worboys I made no secret of the fact that I was considering whether to take a judicial review, and I set out in my earlier remarks the reasons why I did not bring that forward. The reality was that the victims were in a better position than me to bring a successful case. It is important that we ensure that when the Parole Board reaches a conclusion that meets certain criteria, there is an ability for it to look again and examine whether the relevant panel has performed its duties as it should have done. Sadly, that is not what happened in this particular case, and that is the issue that we need to fix for the future.
Worboys Case and the Parole Board — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome Sir Brian Leveson’s judgment. The victims have obviously got the justice that they were seeking. Does my right hon. Friend accept that it would have been absolutely scandalous if he, as Justice Secretary, had ignored the legal advice that he got, which sounds to have been perfectly sensible on the basis of facts available to him? It would be a very bad day if Ministers started intervening in criminal sentencing cases in response to campaigning, and did not judge them objectively according to the rule of law and the public interest While implementing these extremely welcome proposals, which are obviously needed in the light of all this, would my right hon. Friend make sure that the Parole Board and its panels are not undermined when they carry out properly their extremely difficult task? The Parole Board is often asked almost impossible questions, and we cannot have people making any judgments except on the basis of the best judgment that they can make in the public interest. Criminal sentencing must never be simply a question of campaigning and responding to popular pressure.
Worboys Case and the Parole Board — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
David Michael Gauke (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, who is also a distinguished predecessor in my post. He is absolutely right on both counts. In terms of whether I took action or not, I thought that it was very important to test the legal arguments. As I made clear on 19 January, I was not going to stand in the way of others and, indeed, others may have been better placed to bring that case. I looked carefully at the advice I had received and based my actions on that advice. My right hon. and learned Friend’s second point is also important. There were failures in what the Parole Board did, including not probing sufficiently and not being sufficiently inquisitive. We must, however, accept that the Parole Board makes thousands of decisions every year that often involve difficult judgments, and it is not always necessarily going to get it right, but it is not the role of politicians to interfere and second-guess those decisions. We do, though, have a role in ensuring that we have a system in place with clear guidance, clear training and the right people. We clearly need to do some work on that, and I have set out some proposals today.
Worboys Case and the Parole Board — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
David Michael Gauke (Conservative, Centre-right): On legal aid, the hon. and learned Lady will be aware that we are undertaking a post-implementation review of the changes to legal aid that were made earlier in this decade, and we will conclude that before the end of the year. Certainly, given what she has said, we would want to take into account the evidence in Scotland as part of that review As for failures within the Parole Board, I think, as I said, that it is right that Professor Nick Hardwick stand down as chair of the Parole Board. I acknowledge that he has been a dedicated public servant who has done a number of very good things at the Parole Board as well. However, I believe that there have been significant failures and that at this point new leadership is required within the Parole Board.
Worboys Case and the Parole Board — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Zac Goldsmith (Conservative, Centre-right): I very much support the calls by the Opposition for a thorough, end-to-end review. The reality is that these victims have managed to blow open the system using, as we have heard, a very big, popular campaign. They have given us a rare glimpse into something that many people across this House would find utterly terrifying, given the profound errors that have been uncovered by Leveson in the inquiry that he has just concluded. Will the component of my right hon. Friend’s review relating to transparency be completed in advance of the new Parole Board determining the second stage of the Worboys case?
Worboys Case and the Parole Board — House of Commons, 2018-03-28
Topic: Law and Crime
David Michael Gauke (Conservative, Centre-right): First, let me put on record my tribute to my hon. Friend for his tireless work on this case, as he has been a very strong advocate for the victims. On transparency, as I said, I hope that we can make progress in the course of the next few weeks. It is not for me to determine when the Parole Board will next look at John Worboys’ case, but I would be astonished if it were before we had new rules on transparency in place.