argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Security of Ministers’ Offices and Communications — House of Commons, 2021-06-28
Topic: Civil Rights
Diana Ruth Johnson (Labour, Centre-left): May I say to the Minister first of all that this House should take precedence in the priorities of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, not travelling to Scotland When I was a Minister, neither parliamentary emails nor private emails were allowed to be used for Government business. Will the Minister therefore confirm whether using private email accounts to discuss sensitive Government business is in breach of the Freedom of Information Act, the Official Secrets Act, the Data Protection Act or the Public Records Act 1958, which place specific requirements on the use of Government information?
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-06-28
Topic: Mixed Topics
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): I, too, welcome the Secretary of State back to the Front Bench. One vector of the current surge in cases has been the rise in cases in schools. On 17 June, we had a quarter of a million pupils away from school. What steps does he think need to be taken to address the decline in the number of tests being carried out in schools? Does he think that the wearing of masks should become mandatory?
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-06-28
Topic: Immigration
Paul Christopher Blomfield (Labour, Centre-left): The Home Office recently updated its visa guidance to say that new international students and those returning to the UK must be here by 27 September or lose their post- study work rights. Around one fifth of our international students are from red list countries. Their arrival risks a surge in demand that will overwhelm the hotel quarantine system. Universities UK, the Confederation of British Industry and others have written to Ministers urging flexibility on visa rules to enable blended learning to continue with phased entry to the UK, so will the Secretary of State urgently meet his successor as Home Secretary to seek this change?
Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body — House of Commons, 2021-06-28
Topic: Other
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I am not going to delay people for long either. I just wonder: we are doing all this appointing of people to the Sponsor Body, but are they ever going to mix a bucket of cement?
Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body — House of Commons, 2021-06-28
Topic: Mixed Topics
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): As custodians of this beautiful place, we face serious duties for which almost all of us here are supremely unqualified. The Sponsor Body and the Delivery Authority were therefore established in order to bring in the skills and qualities and, above all, the knowledge and experience that we so obviously lack to the essential process of restoration and renewal, untroubled by any political considerations that we may have and aided by the relevant qualities. I understand that the new members to be appointed will bring such qualities. We have to give this magnificent building the love and care that it needs, and in order to do that, we need the right people in the right place at the right time.
Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body — House of Commons, 2021-06-28
Topic: Mixed Topics
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, because it gives me an opportunity to agree with him most wholeheartedly. There are many other things on which we all have personal preferences that we would like to pronounce on. I, for one, would like to see the restoration of the cloisters to the parliamentary Labour party as soon as possible. For that, we need stonemasons and stonemasonry apprenticeships. If some of those could be allocated to some of my constituents in Bristol West, I would be most happy. I also recommend, to colleagues who have not had the pleasure, receiving a briefing from the parliamentary Sponsor Body engagement staff. I had a wonderful briefing today on the matter of voids. I will never again look at the grills under the Chamber in the same way, Madam Deputy Speaker, knowing what I do now and what it looks like underneath The Sponsor Body, of course, does know of what they speak. I am looking forward to seeing them get on with buckets, stonemasonry and whatever else they may need to do in order that we may preserve, enhance and give this building the love it needs to restore it to the fullest possible health and effectivity.
East West Rail Route Consultation: North East Bedfordshire — House of Commons, 2021-06-28
Topic: Housing
Mohammad Yasin (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for giving way; he is very kind. I will make two points briefly. One is that I have been told there is no chance of rerunning the consultation. Is there any realistic chance of rerunning it, because some people believe it was not run properly? Secondly, will he support the four-track option, rather than the six-track option? The four-track option will avoid the demolition of houses in my constituency.
0.7% Official Development Assistance Target — House of Commons, 2021-06-08
Topic: Mixed Topics
Hilary James Benn (Labour, Centre-left): With respect to the hon. Gentleman, that is not the point. We made a promise. I presume he is as committed to keeping promises he makes as the rest of us here in this Chamber What of the human cost? We heard from the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) in her powerful speech about lives blighted, lives shortened and lives lost. Let me just take one example. How can it be right to cut aid for clean water by 80%? The arguments against doing that are so strong, such as the importance of clean water for hand-washing in a pandemic. There is the fact that the single most important thing we can do if we want to reduce infant mortality, apart from improving immediate postnatal care, is provide clean water, because every day babies and small children die because they drink dirty water. Clean water helps girls to go to school, the very thing that the Government say is a priority As International Development Secretary—the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield talked about his experience—I learned that there are moments when those of who have the privilege to do the job have our minds changed. We learn and we understand, and we realise why something is so important. In this example, I came across a well one day with a lot of people standing around it. I was told that the well was closed. I had never come across a closed well before, but it was explained that because demand for water in that part of the city was so high, after the first rush of buckets was drawn from it in the morning, the well had to be closed so that the water table had time to replenish to allow the well to be reopened One of the people waiting was a girl of about 13 or 14. The well was here and she was standing there—I can remember it to this day. She told me in a very quiet voice that it was her responsibility in her family to get the water every day, because until she did so, she could not go to school. Because the well was closed not just that day, but many days, she was often late for class. That is what this is about: a lack of plentiful, clean water, which all of us here take for granted, meant a lack of education for her and millions of other girls like her Are we really going to say that it is acceptable to cut our support for clean water? Is anyone actually going to argue that these cuts are popular with the British people? I fundamentally disagree; the British people are much more compassionate than that. It is not a competition between charity at home and aid abroad. We can, we should, we must do both.
0.7% Official Development Assistance Target — House of Commons, 2021-06-08
Topic: Other
Rosalie Winterton (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point of order, but I am afraid it is rather a continuation of the debate that we have had. I do not think there is much else to add to what Mr Speaker said yesterday, but I am sure that Members on the Treasury Bench will have heard the hon. Gentleman’s views.
Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-06-08
Topic: Other
Rosalie Winterton (Labour, Centre-left): Before I ask the Minister to move Second Reading, I will introduce a three-minute time limit on Back-Bench speeches. As colleagues will know, this is a very short debate, but I will try to get in as many Members as I can.
Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-06-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Gareth Thomas (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister will understand that part of the reason why we are here today is because of Dame Elizabeth Gloster’s excoriating report into the capacity of the Financial Conduct Authority. Is he certain that the FCA now has the powers and, crucially, the capacity it needs to ensure that consumers of financial services businesses are properly protected?
Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-06-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Patrick Bosco McFadden (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister. As he said, the Bill does two things: it enables a Government compensation scheme for the victims of the collapse of London Capital and Finance, and it authorises a Government loan to the Fraud Compensation Fund—part of the Pension Protection Fund—to be paid for through a levy on the pensions industry. Let me take each of those of turn I will start with clause 1 on the LCF compensation scheme. The Minister set out the background and I do not need to repeat it in this short debate, but it involves 11,500 investors losing a total of about £237 million. Some £56 million has been paid out by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme to just under 3,000 of those investors, covering those parts of LCF activity that came under the remit of the Financial Conduct Authority’s regulated activities. The Bill aims to compensate the rest up to 80% of the £85,000 FSCS limit, meaning pay-outs of up to £68,000 for those eligible. This is expected to cost the taxpayer about £120 million.
Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-06-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Patrick Bosco McFadden (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I do think it ill behoves any Member, given the scale of the losses and given the necessity of the Government to bring in this Bill to compensate people for their losses, to profit from this either directly or indirectly. I think that should be clear to all of us The Government are legislating on this because of the litany of regulatory failures set out in the report on this issue carried out by Dame Elizabeth Gloster. These failures included failures to respond to repeated warnings from investors and potential investors, LCF repeatedly running promotions implying its products were regulated by the FCA, and failures of communication between different parts of the FCA, all in the end leading to this collapse and financial loss. Had the FCA acted earlier, far fewer people would have invested through this firm, losses would have been lower and the taxpayer would not be faced with the £120 million we are talking about today.
Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-06-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
John Martin McDonnell (Labour, Centre-left): The Bill will bring relief to thousands of investors who were let down not just by a failed company but by a failed system. That is why we need a Bill that will address the failures of regulation, governance and auditing, but this Bill does none of that. The Government are yet again bailing out victims of an under-regulated finance system that is regularly ripping off smaller investors. I have to say that Government Ministers are guilty of gross negligence for standing by while this happens time and again LCF was offering customers mini-bonds. The FCA said: "There is no legal definition of a ‘mini-bond’", but it did nothing to stop the mis-selling. The FCA saw no issue with LCF’s operations, yet in March 2019 HMRC found that products advertised as ISAs by LCF did not meet the rules. In addition, the FCA was advising that investments would be protected by the financial services compensation scheme; the High Court judged that they were not. The FCA was asleep at the wheel The then chief executive of the FCA, who is now the Governor of the Bank of England, sat on his haunches and did nothing. Some 18 months ago, I called on the previous Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), to delay Mr Bailey’s appointment as Governor, given the concerns I am pleased that the Dame Elizabeth Gloster’s report actually identifies some of the problems. She described the FCA’s supervision of LCF as "wholly deficient" and said that there were "significant gaps and weaknesses" in the FCA’s practices. She said that staff were "not…trained sufficiently to analyse a firm’s financial information to detect indicators of fraud or other serious irregularity." LCF’s founder was Simon Hume-Kendall, a former chairman of the Tunbridge Wells Conservatives and a party donor. It has been reported that the investors’ cash in LCF has been used to buy horses, a helicopter and lifetime memberships to private Mayfair clubs. Perhaps the Minister could update us on the ongoing inquiries into the activities of this gentleman and LCF As has been said, this is not a one-off. There are so many other examples, including Blackmore, Basset & Gold and Chilango. Perhaps the Minister can tell us when further Bills will be introduced to compensate the investors in those schemes who lost so much money. I welcome the Bill—of course I do—but it is now time for the Government to bring forward serious legislation to stop crimes like this happening in the first place and to protect our constituents from these spivs.
Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-06-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Rebecca Long-Bailey (Labour, Centre-left): My constituents were not professional financial investors; most were senior citizens relying on the investment for their pension. They worked hard in their younger years to save a little bit here, a little bit there, to ensure that in their twilight years they would have enough to live on—but this security was savagely snatched away from them. They were duped by grossly misleading and deceitful marketing and let down by negligent regulators and ineffective auditors Although I am broadly supportive of the Bill, there are two very urgent issues that the Government must address. First, the compensation is capped at 80% of what victims would have been entitled to had they been eligible for the financial services compensation scheme. They were denied that protection simply because mini-bonds were not regulated. The Gloster report states: "The FCA had identified the risks to consumers posed by mini-bonds from as early as 2013 and the additional risks relating to the use of mini-bonds as a quasi-investment vehicle by at least 2017." Yet the FCA and the Government failed to regulate. The Government must therefore recognise their own negligence to regulate, as well as the FCA’s, and commit today to offer the full compensation that victims should have been entitled to Secondly, on auditing, London Capital & Finance had only £50,000 of share capital and high leverage in 2016, but its auditors simply waved through its accounts. In 2018, when the firm was all but insolvent, its auditors, astoundingly, had no problem with its accounts. But sadly, as we know, this is not a rare occurrence. BHS, Carillion, Thomas Cook, Patisserie Valerie and many more all sailed through their audits with flying colours despite the horrors lurking beneath. Such scandals required robust action to ensure that they could never happen again, but this Bill does not do that. The Government must therefore set out urgent proposals to address the systemic regulatory failures that this case has exposed in the FCA but also in the auditing industry.
Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-06-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Gareth Thomas (Labour, Centre-left): I rise to support the Bill, but to suggest that there are wider issues to be considered from the scandal behind it. In particular, I suggest that there are disturbing echoes of Dame Elizabeth Gloster’s report in how the demutualisation of Liverpool Victoria is being considered by the same regulators, and that there is an urgent need to tighten up some major legal loopholes The focus of the Financial Conduct Authority’s interest to date in LCF and Liverpool Victoria is very different. LCF was selling, or rather mis-selling, a distinct product. With Liverpool Victoria, the issue is whether it should be allowed to hand over all the capital and assets its British customers have helped it build up over almost 200 years to a privately owned American firm with no commensurate experience, and whether the choices of consumers past and present are being respected. I understand that regulators have had a substantial number of meetings with those pushing the demutualisation, but none with the customers and owners of Liverpool Victoria Consumers lost thousands with London Capital & Finance. The customers of Liverpool Victoria also risk losing out significantly. Dame Elizabeth’s report questioned whether policy papers and staff training at the FCA were adequate. In the case of LCF, the inability to detect indicators of fraud was the key driver of her concern, but given that the FCA has made no analysis of what happened during previous demutualisations of financial services businesses—whether customers benefited or lost out; whether customers were presented with fair information and given access to alternative viewpoints—it is difficult to see how staff could be trained to protect the consumer interest properly during a demutualisation. Indeed, all the evidence that has been compiled independently suggests that demutualisations result in worse services for consumers It is clear that Dame Elizabeth thought that the FCA was not fit for purpose. It did not protect LCF customers, despite repeated wake-up calls. Similarly, given the complicated nature of financial services businesses, the customers of a financial mutual are not always well placed to make a judgment about whether a vote for a conversion is in their interest; they rely on the advice of others. Customers are not given even-handed information by boards wanting to demutualise—they are certainly not in the case of Liverpool Victoria—to allow them to make an informed decision. The FCA has a critical role, and it needs to exercise a little more robust direction to the board of Liverpool Victoria. Similarly, legislation for friendly societies needs updating so that it properly protects consumers’ assets and ensures that regulators can properly protect consumers during demutualisations.
Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-06-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Gareth Thomas (Labour, Centre-left): It is encouraging to hear the Minister’s confidence in the transformation programme. Given the concerns that consumers might lose out in the demutualisation of Liverpool Victoria, will he sit down with the new chief executive of the FCA and go through how the FCA will ensure that consumers’ interests are properly protected if that demutualisation goes ahead?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2021-07-22
Topic: Public Lands
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): In the past two years, we have seen tragic floods in Yorkshire, Cumbria and south Wales. We have seen the floods in Europe and now in China. The Government have cut spending on flood defences by 10%. Why?
Voter ID: Electoral Fraud — House of Commons, 2021-07-22
Topic: Civil Rights
Christian John Patrick Matheson (Labour, Centre-left): I will indeed convey that. The commission has highlighted that polling station voting in Great Britain remains vulnerable to fraud since there are no checks in place to prevent somebody from claiming to be an elector and voting in their name. That distinguishes voting at polling stations from other parts of the electoral process where identity checks already exist, such as voter registration and postal voting. The commission’s public opinion research shows that this issue concerns voters, but I will pass on the right hon. Member’s view to the commission.
Voter ID: Electoral Participation — House of Commons, 2021-07-22
Topic: Civil Rights
Christian John Patrick Matheson (Labour, Centre-left): The commission’s independent evaluation of the Government’s pilots held in 2018 and 2019 found that a large majority of people already had access to the forms of ID that were used in these pilots. There was no evidence that levels of turnout in the pilot scheme areas were significantly affected by the requirement for voters to show ID at polling stations. However, the commission was not able to draw a definitive conclusion from the pilots about the impact of a voter ID requirement, particularly for a national poll with high levels of turnout. The sociodemographic profiles of the pilot areas are also not fully representative of many areas of Great Britain. The commission has recommended that any ID requirements should be secure, accessible and realistically deliverable. The detail of the Government’s proposals for a free, locally issued voter ID card will be key to ensuring that those who do not have another form of photo ID can vote.
Voter ID: Electoral Participation — House of Commons, 2021-07-22
Topic: Mixed Topics
Andrew John Gwynne (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. He knows that in the 2019 general election there were over 47 million people registered to vote and only six convictions for electoral fraud—a rate of less than 0.00001%. He knows that there are fears that mandatory voter ID could suppress turnout and discourage voting in some communities. I do not want that, he does not want that, and I do not believe any MP wants to exclude people from voting. With that in mind, will he tell the House what more the Electoral Commission is doing to try to increase participation and turnout in elections?
Voter ID: Electoral Participation — House of Commons, 2021-07-22
Topic: Civil Rights
Christian John Patrick Matheson (Labour, Centre-left): Increasing participation is one of the Electoral Commission’s core missions. It tells me that it undertakes significant public awareness activity ahead of major polls to ensure that voters can understand how to participate and have their say with confidence. This May, the period of its voter registration campaign, saw over 1 million applications to register across Great Britain, breaking its targets. If the voter ID requirement is passed into law, the commission will be responsible for new public awareness activity to ensure that voters can understand the new requirements. This would significantly focus on audiences least likely to have the required identification and so most likely to need access to the proposed free voter card.
Church Repairs: VAT — House of Commons, 2021-07-22
Topic: Public Lands
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his response. I am sure he will be aware that, in 2019, Historic England commissioned a report into the economic value of and repairs to a sample of 30 churches and discovered consequential costs of 26% to those projects. Obviously, if VAT is charged, it can be claimed back under the listed places of worship grant scheme, as he said. In two cases in my constituency—St Mary’s church, Warwick, and All Saints parish church in Leamington—that consequential cost could be up to £750,000 for both. Does he agree that we should just be scrapping VAT on these projects?