argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Energy
Edward Samuel Miliband (Labour, Centre-left): The right hon. Gentleman and I differ somewhat on this. The real problem is that we have not gone far enough or fast enough on the green transition. The more we are subject to the volatility of fossil fuels—the prices are set internationally—the more we are at risk of the kind of crisis we are seeing at the moment If there is one principle that should get us through these tough times, it is that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greatest burden. Britain’s families and businesses are facing the toughest times, but that is not true of everyone. For the oil and gas sector, the price spike has been a bonanza—a trebling of prices today compared with a year ago. Let us be clear about the effect that is having on oil and gas company profits Listen to Bernard Looney, the chief executive of BP. He says this: the rise in prices is a "cash machine" for his company. Those were his words—a "cash machine". Let those words ring in the ears of right hon. and hon. Members in this House. Let us be clear about who is on the other side of the cash machine: the British people. In other words, it is an ATM from which the oil and gas companies collect billions and into which the British people pay—people like the man in Devon who could only afford to heat one room. He is one of the millions paying into the cash machine for BP. Once the companies are withdrawing the cash from the cash machine, where is the unexpected windfall going? Let us not fall for the argument that may be made in this debate—that it is somehow going into investment or workers in the oil and gas sector. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) says from a sedentary position that it is. Let me tell him that he is wrong. All the evidence is that the companies are so flush with cash that billions are being used to inflate the share price in buybacks from shareholders. BP did a share buyback of over £1 billion in August, but it was so overwhelmed with cash that it did another worth nearly £1 billion in November. Shell has done the same, with a £1.1 billion share buyback in December. But that is not enough: it says it will do another one, worth £4 billion, at pace, in 2022 This is simply a redistribution of wealth from the energy bills of the British people—those who can least afford it—to the shareholders of those companies. The question before us, then, is one that has confronted previous Governments: should we do something about the situation or say that it is wrong to take account of the windfall in the tax decisions that we make? I say that it is not wrong to take account of it—it is fair and it is right and it is principled.
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Energy
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. He has identified the immediate issue of energy poverty and crisis that we have in this country. Those of us who are old enough to have lived through the 1970s and 1980s recall how the Norwegians used the wealth generated from the North sea to create sovereign wealth funds. Should we not be thinking about that? Could we perhaps not just use the windfall tax, but deploy such funds in the way that my hon. Friend is describing, to invest in renewables and invest in our country?
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Macroeconomics
Edward Samuel Miliband (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has made a powerful point Labour has come up with a clear and costed plan. We plan, by levying the windfall tax, to reduce VAT to zero, to increase the warm homes discount from £150 to £400, and to extend it from the 2.2 million families who currently receive it to 9 million. On top of that, we have set aside £600 million to help our businesses out. This is in stark contrast with what is being proposed by the Conservatives—the Government of the day, who, six days before the announcement of the rise in the price cap, seem to have nothing to say. What is their explanation for why they are not acting? It is very hard to find the explanation, although perhaps we will hear one today. The one person who has ventured to provide one is the Education Secretary, who has said: "A windfall tax on oil and gas companies that are already struggling in the North Sea is never going to cut it." Even the oil and gas companies do not describe themselves as struggling. They say that this is a cash machine. I have to ask what planet the Government are living on. Does it not say everything about them that it is the struggles of companies making billions from an expected windfall that stir them, not the struggles of the British people? How dare they leave families in the lurch because of their refusal to stand up to vested interests in the oil and gas sector?
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Macroeconomics
Edward Samuel Miliband (Labour, Centre-left): No, I am going to make progress The truth is—we cannot get away from it—that the Conservatives are a party bankrolled to the tune of nearly £5 million by oil and gas interests since 2016. Bankrolled by oil and gas executives, they cannot act on behalf of the British people Let me end by saying this. The British people are fed up with what they have seen from the Government in recent months. They want a Government who are on their side. They want a Government who will act for them. That is why we need a windfall tax. It is a test of whose side they are on, and whose side we are all on in this House—on the side of gas and oil companies making billions of profits, or on the side of millions of struggling families. We know whose side we are on. If this Government were truly on the side of the British people, they would act, and that is why I urge Members on both sides of the House to vote for our motion tonight.
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Energy
Janet Jessica Daby (Labour, Centre-left): The Conservative party has received more than £1.5 million in donations from companies and individuals linked to the oil and gas sector. Is it not the case that although some Conservative Members want a windfall tax to help their constituents, they and their Government are not prepared to stand up to vested interests?
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Macroeconomics
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister is being generous with his time. We need to put his point about the drop in the ocean and the value of £1.5 billion in the context of the £4.3 billion that the Treasury has just written off. We are talking about not dissimilar sums of money, are we not?
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Macroeconomics
Clive Anthony Lewis (Labour, Centre-left): Is the hon. Gentleman not making an excellent case for a just transition, where taxes such as this, on those who have made billions—perhaps trillions—over the past century from sucking our resources out of the ground and making excessive profits, are invested to ensure that his constituents and the workers in those oilfields are entitled to a decent, sustainable, well-paid job?
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Energy
Clive Anthony Lewis (Labour, Centre-left): Over the past two years, the North sea oil and gas that was exported doubled. It is not our oil and gas. It belongs to the corporations that bring it out of the ground, and they sell it to the highest bidder. It does not increase our energy security. The right hon. Gentleman made a point about Biden inheriting fracked shale oil and gas in the US, but he failed to mention the ecological costs, which every year run into hundreds of millions of pounds of damage to the natural world. That is the price the United States is paying for its fracking, which I imagine the right hon. Gentleman would expect us to take up here as well.
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Macroeconomics
Imran Hussain (Labour, Centre-left): While the Prime Minister, the Government and Tory MPs have spent the past several months arguing among themselves about the untenable future of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), my constituents have been on the blunt end of rising fuel prices, mounting food costs and soaring energy bills, which have pushed already struggling household finances to the brink and created a grave cost of living crisis for many families across the Bradford district. I remind the Minister that that is the central part of the debate. Let me be clear, however, that the cost of living crisis, which means that many families in Bradford need to choose between heating and eating, is no accident. It is the direct result of a decade of this Conservative Government’s incompetence and complete indifference to the lives of ordinary people in places such as Bradford, and it is the direct result of their ideologically driven austerity cuts targeted at some of society’s most vulnerable. It means that in places such as Bradford, nearly half of all children continue to live in poverty, working families continue to be forced to use food banks and destitution continues to spread like a cancer The cost of living crisis is not of the making of my constituents in Bradford or, indeed, of the constituents of any Member in this House, but they are the ones literally having to pay the price. Now this Government’s failures to get a grip on soaring energy bills mean a further attack on the most vulnerable, as the needs of greedy energy companies and their profits are put before the needs of our constituents. That is frankly scandalous, and people struggling to make ends meet in Bradford and across the country deserve much better. They deserve better than a Conservative Government who delay taking action on this cost of living crisis to spend time trying to save their doomed Prime Minister. We have to be clear: when people are struggling to put food on the table, to heat their homes and to keep a roof over their head, it is not the time for dithering or for political games; it is the time for leadership and immediate action—something that is lacking from those on the Government Benches.
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Macroeconomics
Imran Hussain (Labour, Centre-left): I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, but the reality remains, as I stated earlier, that this tragedy has not just started now. The last decade under this Government has seen some of the biggest ideological austerity cuts in places such as my constituency in Bradford and in many other places across the country. The reality remains that it is ideological, and the Government know the impact. That is the worst thing: they know the impact of what they do. Not once in the Minister’s speech did he talk about the impact on ordinary people up and down the country. He could not bring himself to talk about the fact that today, children in our constituencies will go hungry. He could not bring himself to discuss the fact that many people go days on end without a hot meal. He could not bring the words to his mouth to say that destitution is now rife in our country, or that we now have international reports that say that we—the fifth largest economy in the world—are not providing for the public. He does not mention any of that. I am not sure he was in the right debate. He is a new Minister, so perhaps he was in the wrong debate, and I forgive him if so Those things are why, as the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) stated clearly, a Labour Government would scrap VAT on domestic energy bills, expand and increase the warm home discount, and impose a windfall tax on greedy energy companies that are taking people for a ride The reality is that, even as people in Bradford continue to suffer and even as the plan set out by the Opposition stares them in the face, the Government have no answers, no solution and no offer for my constituents. Frankly, it seems that they could not care less if the most vulnerable places in the country, such as Bradford, are plunged into further poverty and deprivation. I assure them that the longer they take people in Bradford and across the country for fools and the longer they delay in taking the action that ordinary people need to save them from the cost of living crisis, the more that those people will repay them with interest in the ballot box at the next election.
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Energy
Nadia Edith Whittome (Labour, Centre-left): It is clear to anyone living in this country that we are experiencing a cost of living crisis. As food and energy prices are spiking, my constituents tell me that they are anxious and outraged at ever larger bills. The Resolution Foundation estimates that in April, when changes to the energy price cap are introduced, those bills will soar by 50%. That will lead to more than one in four households spending at least 10% of their income on energy. With housing costs already taking up a significant proportion of household spending and food bills increasing, more and more people will be forced to choose between heating and eating while this Government dawdle I strongly support Labour’s proposal to introduce a windfall tax on oil and gas. While my constituents worry about their bills, North sea oil companies have been reaping criminal profits. The think-tank Common Wealth reports that Shell and BP alone have paid £147 billion to their shareholders since 2010, which is more than seven times the £20 billion that it would take to keep household energy bills at their current level. Those profits have only become more obscene as the current energy crisis has worsened. At the end of last year Bernard Looney, the chief executive of BP, described the crisis as a "cash machine" for his company. That cash is coming from my constituents’ pockets, and those of people who are struggling to pay their bills. There is simply no argument when it comes to whether these companies can afford a windfall tax. It is my constituents who cannot afford the Government’s inaction. This refusal to act, however, comes as no surprise when the Conservative party has taken almost £1.5 million from the energy industry under this Prime Minister In the short term, the proposed tax will lessen the burden on families; in the longer term, we desperately need to reduce our reliance on gas, seriously invest in renewables, and create a national programme to insulate homes. We must also acknowledge that the privatisation of our energy system has failed. Competition has not driven down bills; in fact, gas bills have risen by 50% since 1996, and private companies have failed to switch to the sustainable energy sources that we need in order to tackle the climate crisis. Public ownership of our energy system could have helped us to withstand the current turbulence in the energy market, and the public support it: in 2019, 52% of people polled were in favour of it I therefore urge the Government to implement a windfall tax now, to bring energy into public ownership, and to invest in the transformative changes that will protect struggling families and our planet now and for years to come.
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Energy
Daniel Joseph Carden (Labour, Centre-left): We associate energy poverty with the poorest people and the most deprived communities. Liverpool, Walton is home to many people struggling to afford everyday essentials and wishing their streets and neighbourhoods might see some of the prosperity this Government promise in their empty words For the young mum struggling with the top-up payment card in the local shop, trying to keep the lights on and the heating running in her home, that poverty is humiliating, yet the experience of living hand to mouth for energy, and that humiliation, is now spreading across the UK, because the energy market is broken. It is not even really a market but a racket of monopoly suppliers, capped prices and enormous excess profits. Rising energy bills are not an act of God. They are the result of the anarchy of global energy supply and the total mismanagement of Britain’s energy industry by a Tory party that seems to put any interest above the interests of the British people. I support a windfall tax on oil and gas producers to lower bills this year. I listen to my hon. Friends asking Government for an extra £1 billion here or an extra £1 billion there. Now more than ever, the evidence before us—an industry pleading with Government to lift its cap, families pleading with Government to make the cap tighter, and oil and gas producers boasting that their companies are like cash machines—demands a new settlement I stood for election pledging to take the whole energy supply industry into public ownership, to set up a national energy agency to own and manage the grid and to put the big six energy suppliers, the only ones likely to survive this crisis, under public control. I believe it is the job of Government to fix the energy crisis, not to prop up the failing energy market To manage security of supply when gas is being used as a geopolitical tool is bigger than an economic issue. To decarbonise energy is also bigger than the forces of supply and demand, and to stop energy bills wiping out the income and savings of families up and down the country is a matter of social justice. The market provides no solutions to those problems. The only way to resolve those issues is to have a Government with the will to act and to put the interests of the people we in this House are supposed to represent above the interests of big energy companies and their shareholders. Sadly, that seems a long way off.
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Energy
Michael Whitley (Labour, Centre-left): I applaud my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), the shadow Secretary of State for climate change and net zero, for demonstrating the strong leadership and breadth of vision that is so sorely lacking on the Government Benches. While Ministers issue desperate excuses from the Dispatch Box for their lack of action, the Labour party has today put forward a fully costed package of proposals that would provide millions of UK households with much needed support. By axing VAT on domestic energy bills, ensuring that no domestic consumer is forced to cover the cost of supplier failure and providing support for those most in need, we can slash energy bills by at least £200. In the midst of this Tory cost of living crisis, that is the difference between just about getting by and deepest destitution As people in my constituency bear the brunt of this unprecedented crisis, oil and gas companies are set to report near record profits, with private shareholders cashing in on soaring wholesale energy prices.
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Energy
Michael Whitley (Labour, Centre-left): No—[Interruption.] I am sorry Even so, that is not enough for this Cabinet of millionaires. In fact, last month, the Education Secretary had the temerity to take to the airwaves and plead poverty on behalf of the fossil fuel giants, saying that they were struggling enough already. This morning, when my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) challenged the Chancellor to put the interests of ordinary people before those of the oil and gas companies, the Chancellor made it clear exactly whose side he was on. Today, Conservative Members have a simple choice: they can either insist that the fossil fuel giants step up and accept responsibility for a crisis from which they have profited so handsomely, or they can continue to turn a blind eye to the immense human suffering unfolding not just in my constituency but in theirs, as they have throughout this long and bitter winter Labour is offering the Government the chance to right their failure to prevent the crisis. We know from the Prime Minister’s grotesque performance in the House yesterday that the word "responsibility" is entirely missing from the Conservative party’s vocabulary, but, as recent research by Carbon Brief demonstrates, had successive Conservative Governments not taken a wrecking ball to the zero-carbon homes standard subsidies for onshore wind and spending on essential energy-efficient measures, household bills would be £2.5 billion cheaper than they are today With the greatest respect to my good and honourable Friends on the Front Bench, I am convinced that we must be even more muscular in our response to the crisis. At the moment, the energy sector is simply not fit for purpose. Costs for consumers are far too high, investment in green energy is wholly inadequate and we remain dangerously dependent on volatile foreign energy supplies. We learnt last week that extraordinary amounts of UK gas were exported in autumn and winter, even as rising costs decimated hard-working families’ standard of living and hit small businesses’ bottom lines. Our energy system must always put ordinary people’s interests before those of private profits. Confronted with this historic crisis, we must surely accept that public ownership is the only way forward We must not forget that the public are watching. They will remember who stood up for them at this terrible time and they will never forget those who looked away. I hope that Conservative Members will reflect on that before walking through the voting Lobby today.
Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax — House of Commons, 2022-02-01
Topic: Energy
Deborah Angela Elspeth Marie Abrahams (Labour, Centre-left): I hope the Minister will forgive me if I point out that an increase in the energy price cap is likely to be announced on 7 February, and ask what he will say to my constituents who will be pushed into fuel poverty as a consequence of that.
Domestic Abuse Victims: Legal Aid — House of Commons, 2022-02-08
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Jane Foxcroft (Labour, Centre-left): The Bellamy review outlines serious and long-standing concerns about the lack of funding for criminal legal aid. Domestic abuse victims already face trauma, and experience mental and physical scars that are only exacerbated by the Government’s failure to fund legal aid properly. What assessment has the Justice Secretary made of the impact of the potential strike by the Criminal Bar Association on the already immense courts backlog? Will he finally commit to engage with the CBA, so that victims are not denied access to justice?
Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2022-02-08
Topic: Law and Crime
Andrew Joseph McDonald (Labour, Centre-left): A woman has approached me for help. She tells me that as a teenager, she was raped and has lived with the trauma for over 30 years. She has no confidence or trust in the police or the criminal justice system. She feels intimidated and frightened by her attacker to this day and fears that she will not be listened to, taken seriously or protected. What can I say to her?
Violence Against Women and Girls — House of Commons, 2022-02-08
Topic: Law and Crime
Eleanor Claire Reeves (Labour, Centre-left): At a roundtable with rape survivors last week, victims told me that they had come to terms with what had happened with them, but could not come to terms with how they had been treated by the criminal justice system. It now takes a shocking 1,000 days for a rape case to get to court, and only 1.3% of rape cases are prosecuted, so it is no surprise that victims feel that the system is working against them. Will the Minister back Labour’s fully costed plans to give rape victims a legal advocate from the moment they report the crime through to trial, or will she continue the Government’s failure to tackle violence against women and girls?