argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Raqqa and Daesh — House of Lords, 2017-10-24
Topic: International Affairs
Tariq Ahmad (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord for his continued support on these issues. He asked, first, what happens next. Our partner forces will close in on Daesh elsewhere in Syria. He will know that it is still present in the Euphrates river valley and on the border with Iraq. There, the Syrian efforts will meet up with those of the Iraqi security forces, closing in on Daesh from both sides. The noble Lord’s second point is well made, as I have acknowledged previously. He is right to say that those on all sides who have committed crimes should be brought to justice. On Daesh-specific issues, in 2017 I was pleased to report back from the UN General Assembly that a resolution was passed specifically on the UK’s efforts, including £1 million allocated by this country, to ensure not only evidence-gathering but the quick creation of a full investigation under the auspices of the UN to deal with Daesh. Other elements of the Syrian regime should also be fully accountable before international law.
Raqqa and Daesh — House of Lords, 2017-10-24
Topic: International Affairs
Tariq Ahmad (Conservative, Centre-right): This is an issue about which the noble Baroness and I have spoken on several occasions. She is right to point out the destruction in Raqqa. It is terribly regrettable that, because this was urban warfare, many buildings and much infrastructure were destroyed, and let us not forget that Daesh destroyed much of the remaining infrastructure. That said, she will know that we have stepped up our humanitarian support in this regard. At the weekend, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development announced an additional £10 million to restore crippled health facilities and deliver much-needed medical support and relief. On her final point, safety and security remain the primary concern. As I have mentioned to the noble Baroness before, we will not engage in large-scale redevelopment of infrastructure in Syria until we can ensure both the political settlement and the safety and security of all citizens.
Raqqa and Daesh — House of Lords, 2017-10-24
Topic: Law and Crime
Tariq Ahmad (Conservative, Centre-right): On the final point the noble Lord raises, let us be clear that people— certainly those of British nationality—who have travelled from anywhere in the world into the region and taken part in the crimes committed by Daesh were doing so at their own risk and were putting themselves into the line of fire. There is the important issue, he says, about bringing people to justice. He will be fully aware of the structured programme in which the CPS and the police are making criminal charges against those returning to the UK. Secondly, there is the issue of the International Criminal Court and other such bodies. As I have already alluded to, we have passed a resolution in the UN and we are currently looking at the governance structure, exactly as the noble Lord suggests. The final structure is to be determined, but it will respect all the norms of international law.
Raqqa and Daesh — House of Lords, 2017-10-24
Topic: International Affairs
Tariq Ahmad (Conservative, Centre-right): The right reverend Prelate is right to raise the issue of minorities and particularly the Christian minorities in Syria. The crimes committed in Aleppo have been a tragic example of the regime of Bashar al-Assad. I revert to the point I made earlier that any support that the British Government give to those returning is done to ensure their safety and security. We have begun to do exactly that in ensuring that, in the areas where people are returning, medical facilities are available including to all minorities who have been displaced. Let us not forget that over 50% of the Syrian population has been displaced. It will take time to ensure that they can return to their homes. Underlining our approach, both safety and security must prevail.
Raqqa and Daesh — House of Lords, 2017-10-24
Topic: International Affairs
Tariq Ahmad (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord raises an important point. We have been supporting the coalition forces and the SDF. I acknowledge that the Russians have also been engaged directly in support of the regime forces. We are clear that the Assad regime initiated this conflict. Although a lasting resolution is very much a matter for the Syrian people, we do not believe it is right that the person who initiated this conflict should be involved in the final, lasting solution. Various international players are working on the ground. I reassure the noble Lord on our actions. The United Nations resolution specifically on Daesh was passed with unanimity, including support from Russia.
Raqqa and Daesh — House of Lords, 2017-10-24
Topic: International Affairs
Tariq Ahmad (Conservative, Centre-right): I have not seen the letter, but I align myself with the sentiments expressed in it and by the noble Lord. The responsibility for the larger conflict—not just in Raqqa—lies firmly on the doorstep of the Assad regime which created it in the first place. Daesh emerged as a symptom, created by what was happening on the ground. Wherever there is a vacuum and vulnerability, Daesh has reared its head. Although we all breathe a large sigh of relief on its defeat, we are not complacent in any way. Let us not forget that Daesh has recreated itself before and I am sure it is looking to regroup and do so again.
Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-10-24
Topic: Labor
Peta Buscombe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I beg to differ. Despite the noble Lord’s extensive experience in another place, it is entirely possible for us to bring forward an amendment in the Commons to introduce such a ban As I was saying, we want to ban pensions cold calling because a private pension plan is often an individual’s most valuable asset. A ban will send a powerful message to consumers to put the phone down. My officials recently met a range of stakeholders to explore the details of the ban and are currently working on developing the details of the policy arrangements Pensions cold calling is also a complex area which we want to get right. Indeed, the recent discussion with stakeholders uncovered interesting questions around how to define existing relationships and express requests for information. The Government will continue to finalise these complex policy details and we intend to publish draft legislation for scrutiny in early 2018. Following this, we will legislate at the earliest opportunity. This gives us the opportunity to develop legislation which is more carefully targeted and allows us to make proper provision for enforcement which this current draft does not allow The Government have listened and want to work at pace to introduce a targeted response which will strengthen the arrangements already in place. However, the proposed approach in this amendment could delay implementation of any such ban. If this amendment were passed, the Government would first have to wait for the body to be set up. It is not expected to be set up and operational until October 2018. Then, recommendations would have to be made to the Secretary of State. No doubt, this would not be immediate because this body will have a huge amount of work to undertake when it is first set up. So it could be at least another year or two before any consideration could be made, prior to a recommendation being put to the Secretary of State to introduce such a ban. Then the Secretary of State would have to make and lay affirmative regulations The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said that we need protection now. If Amendment 2 were passed, there would be much more delay than if the Government were to wait.
Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-10-24
Topic: Labor
Peta Buscombe (Conservative, Centre-right): I have already made it clear, as we did in Committee, that we intend to bring forward a ban on pension scams. We cannot be entirely accurate on timing because, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made clear, we have to find a legislative opportunity. As I have just said, we will introduce draft legislation early next year and that will go through a process of pre-legislative scrutiny. I hope noble Lords will accept that this is very sensible in order to get it right. Indeed, some years ago, this House introduced the possibility of draft legislative scrutiny in important situations such as this. We do not want to get it wrong I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, that it is not without this planet to expect and hope that there will be opportunities—gaps in the timetable—for legislation to come forward. Given the timetable for setting up the body and for the many things it will have to undertake in its early months, I suspect that passing this amendment would mean a protracted delay in introducing a ban on CMCs. The noble Baroness knows perfectly well that we cannot introduce the ban on pensions cold calling in this Bill because it is out of scope. CMCs are actually in scope.
Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-10-24
Topic: Labor
Rosalind Altmann (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I too congratulate the Government on their decision to host the pensions dashboard and to put in place the necessary measures for the dashboard to be held in one place. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, on her persistence and her excellent description of why it is so important that this measure is implemented in the manner she set out The public need a single dashboard. If individual private sector organisations each released their own dashboard, it would be too confusing for the public. One thing that will certainly assist in any dashboard is standardised statements, required perhaps by the FCA and the Pensions Regulator, whereby anyone who receives a statement about what pension they have—what terms it has and so on—has to be given a piece of paper. Sometimes called a pensions passport—although it does not matter what it is called—this will be a standardised, simple statement that tells people in one place what they have and clearly explains the kind of terms that the pension has, its value and any special features. Sadly, too often, the private sector has not been able to achieve that. Very often the statements that people get are almost unintelligible. They are sometimes far too long and use different language for the same type of pension, so that people struggle. I support this amendment and congratulate the Government and the noble Baroness.
Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2017 — House of Lords, 2017-10-24
Topic: Government Operations
Alastair Cooke (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, made reference to the unusual circumstances in which this order comes to the House this evening. It has not been scrutinised by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments because that committee has not been re-established because of the failure of the other place to provide its members to the committee. I was a member of the Joint Committee in the last Parliament, and I am looking forward to resuming work, I hope, at an early point in this Parliament The committee receives advice from a formidable array of legal experts. They invariably find points that need correction—sometimes smaller, sometimes larger. I have just one question for my noble friend. In the absence of the committee, is she satisfied that this order has been subjected to sufficiently rigorous scrutiny by legal experts?
Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-10-24
Topic: Education
Rosalind Altmann (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I echo the wise words of the noble Viscount. It is absolutely clear that the level of financial education across the country is woefully low, and that stems from the absence of any financial education at the schooling stage. When I was looking at introducing some pension issues into the national curriculum, the main message that I received as to why it could not happen was that teachers themselves did not know enough about those issues to be able to teach even primary or secondary schoolchildren. There is clearly a role for the single financial guidance body, which is set up to provide information and education for the public, to devise modules that schools could use—but not only schools. I would hope that, given that most people in the workplace did not get financial education in school, such modules would also be useful within the workplace. This is a big gap in our education system. Education needs to provide our students and young people with the tools that they need to manage their lives. If they cannot manage their finances, they will often get into difficulties that they do not need to be in I certainly echo the sentiments of the amendment, which would require the single financial guidance body, as the obvious body to do this, to provide education materials that could be used within schools, but even importing that into the workplace alongside auto-enrolment, because all workers will automatically be put into pensions and need to have some understanding of how finance works in order to make the best of that. I support the sentiments expressed.
Terrorist Attacks — House of Lords, 2017-12-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, yes, I agree with that. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister was clear in her statement of 4 June that "enough is enough". We need our counterterrorism strategy, which is currently being worked up in the Home Office, to keep up with a number of fast-moving areas. One is most definitely to tackle terrorist ideology and to deny online safe spaces to terrorist communications, part of which will be to ensure that warped doctrine does not reach the internet. However, we also need to deny safe spaces in the real world so that malign and misleading published material is not promulgated.
Terrorist Attacks — House of Lords, 2017-12-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord’s knowledge and experience in this area. He will know that policing requirements are assessed almost day by day, and a particular situation may well require more armed police officers to be stationed in particular locations. I cannot generalise about that, but I am sure that noble Lords will all be conscious that the Palace of Westminster has seen a much tighter degree of security from armed police in recent months, for which we should be grateful On the noble Lord’s general point, I agree. Surveillance is important but, as David Anderson himself acknowledges, it is impossible for the authorities to prevent every single terrorist attack. In his executive summary he says in terms that the recommendations, if accepted, would not remove the risk of a terrorist attack—to do so would be manifestly impossible in a free society. He also mentions that MI5 and CT policing have thwarted 20 Islamist terrorist plots in the past four years, resulting in 10 life sentences from the seven plots that have so far come to trial. So we can point to some signal successes achieved by MI5 and the police, but they cannot possibly be expected to pick up lone-wolf attackers.
Terrorist Attacks — House of Lords, 2017-12-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Sayeeda Warsi (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement. I agree that it is the responsibility of us all to ensure that we do all we can to prevent these terrorist attacks. Much of this evidence is now in the public domain, but can he confirm that in each of the attacks by so-called Muslims—Khalid Masood, Salman Abedi and Khuram Butt—these individuals had been reported to the authorities by friends, family or members of the communities in which they worked and operated? In the light of the Government’s commitment, can he also undertake to ensure that all those attracted to terrorism are prevented from going down that route, and that the Government will look again at the recommendation of David Anderson, Human Rights Watch and individuals in the security services and the police to now have an independent review of the Prevent strand of the Contest strategy?
Terrorist Attacks — House of Lords, 2017-12-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, as the Statement made clear, a number of the attackers in each of these incidents were, to put it loosely, on the radar of the authorities as either open or closed subjects of interest. I am afraid I am not aware of how exactly those people’s names came to the attention of the authorities but, if I am able to shed further light on that, I will of course inform my noble friend I hope my noble friend will agree that, if we did not have the Prevent strategy, we would need something very like it, because it is all about taking an end-to-end approach in the community and ensuring that partners work together to share information and that those who are vulnerable and susceptible to malign indoctrination are protected and not radicalised. I will write to my noble friend to let her know where the thinking in the Home Office has reached on the progress of the Prevent strategy, but I think it is doing very good work, and we can point to some welcome statistics on the number of people who have been successfully counselled.
Terrorist Attacks — House of Lords, 2017-12-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): The right reverend Prelate makes a series of excellent points and I of course agree that we need to remember that there are sometimes hidden victims in all this, not least in our ethnic minority communities, who may feel—wrongly, in my view—that they are being put under pressure or discriminated against. However, that feeling needs to be addressed, and I know it is very real among some communities On victim support more generally, we are very aware of the need to ensure that effective, comprehensive and co-ordinated support is available, which is why the Government created a new cross-government victims of terrorism unit earlier this year. We have worked closely with each local area affected by the attacks, alongside the police, the third sector and other agencies, to make sure that support to victims is comprehensive and effectively delivered.
Terrorist Attacks — House of Lords, 2017-12-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): I of course take note of the noble Lord’s very well-informed comments. I undertook to write on the whole issue of policing and the approach the Home Office is taking, and I will make sure that his observations are factored in to that letter.
Terrorist Attacks — House of Lords, 2017-12-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I will be advised on whether this is correct but my understanding is that the authorities have sufficient powers to apprehend and intercept anyone who is known to have joined a terrorist organisation overseas when they return to this country, and those people should expect to be subject to arrest and detention where appropriate. There are provisions in law for removing passports from certain individuals, but I would need further advice as to the conditions of those, and I will write to my noble friend about that.
Terrorist Attacks — House of Lords, 2017-12-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the noble Lord for his suggestions; indeed, they resonate very closely with comments made by David Anderson in his report, when he talked about the need for the public sector and the private sector to work together rather more than they do to keep the public safe. I would go further. The Government cannot and should not seek to carry out their work without drawing on the significant expertise that the private sector and, indeed, private citizens can offer. This is not about spying on innocent people; it is about enlisting the support of retailers, for example, both online and physical, to report any suspicious activity. We know that schemes such as Neighbourhood Watch have been extremely successful in their own way in preventing household crime. Perhaps that is something that could be developed rather further to encompass the kinds of crime that we are now discussing.
Terrorist Attacks — House of Lords, 2017-12-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, whenever there are reports of imams or anyone else preaching seditious material or any other kind of malicious doctrine, those reports are followed up. As the noble Baroness will know, the full force of the law is there to bear down upon them. The challenge is to find out where these people are and who they are. That is something that the community as a whole can play a part in highlighting. It cannot solely be for the police to do that. Indeed, it is important that communities should not feel that they are being spied upon all the time.
Terrorist Attacks — House of Lords, 2017-12-05
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, with her extensive experience in this field. She is of course right that we can be proud of how the police and MI5 have addressed their own performance in the way that these cases have been investigated. David Anderson is very clear that their process was thorough and fair. Nevertheless, it is reassuring to us all that we did commission David Anderson to do this exercise. It was not that the police and MI5 were not trusted to do the job but, on some occasions, we need that added element of reassurance which we have received clearly from Mr Anderson.
Brexit Negotiations — House of Lords, 2017-12-05
Topic: International Affairs
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I shall now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given to an Urgent Question in another place: "Mr Speaker, negotiations regarding our exit from the European Union are ongoing as we speak. Indeed, we are in the middle of an ongoing round, and as such I will have to be more circumspect than usual. We held further talks in Brussels over the past few days and progress has been made, but we have not yet reached a final conclusion. However, I believe that we are now close to concluding the first phase of the negotiations and moving on to talk about our future trade relations. There is much common understanding, and both sides agree that we must move forward together Our aims in this negotiation remain as they always have been. In particular, on the issue of Northern Ireland and Ireland, we have been clear that we want to protect all elements of the Good Friday/Belfast agreement, to maintain the common travel area and to protect associated rights. We want to ensure that there is no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. We recognise that, as we exit, we must respect the integrity of the EU single market and the customs union, but we are equally clear that we must respect the integrity of the United Kingdom There remain some final issues to resolve that require further negotiation and consultation over the coming days. Our officials are in continuous contact, and we expect to reconvene in Brussels later this week for further negotiations. I or the Prime Minister will formally update Parliament once this round of negotiations concludes, as I have done for every round so far. As was made clear by the comments from President Juncker and President Tusk yesterday, all parties remain confident of reaching a positive conclusion in the course of the week".