argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-06-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to all who have spoken, and I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Bennachie, for lending his support in co-signing the amendment I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker; if you look at paragraph 12 of Schedule 1, it really is not very forthcoming. It just talks about paying "such sums as the Secretary of State considers … reasonably sufficient to enable the OEP to carry out its functions", and then talks of "subject to such conditions as the Secretary of State may determine" if there is further assistance by way of grants or loans. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Khan, that both amendments deal with a potential revision; I think the difference in Amendment 93 is if any additional funds are required. To a certain extent, I think that is already addressed in the schedule The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Bennachie, is right that we need to equip the OEP to be in a position to respond rapidly to what we are asking it to do. I am not in a position to say whether £8 million seems low. It does not seem particularly high for its first year, but it depends on whether it is for half a year, assuming that the organisation really only comes into swing properly on 1 July, this week. Perhaps my noble friend could confirm whether it is six, nine or 12 months—I think we are going to have a penalty fine for anybody whose mobile phone goes off in the Chamber, as that one has just done The noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, is absolutely right. I am grateful that my noble friend confirmed that it is an indicative budget, but we do need greater clarity to enable the OEP to do its work, for all the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, gave about how out of kilter the Natural England budget is. Obviously, that has not been a blow to Tony Juniper in making these points, because he has gone from strength to strength. I do not think people should be shy of criticising the funding—not the Government themselves—where that is due The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, said, both in this debate and the previous one, that it is not just the OEP and Natural England that are being kept short of funds. What worries me very much is the fact that the Environment Agency is on the record as saying that it does not have sufficient funds to inspect the rivers. If we are not inspecting the rivers, how is the OEP going to impose the penalties that we wish it to I believe this has been a very useful debate. We might want to consider how to address this, if it is necessary, going forward. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-06-28
Topic: Environment
Lucy Neville-Rolfe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, and to hear from her about the situation in Northern Ireland, with its beauty and diversity of flora and fauna. These amendments relate to the issue of the independence of the office for environmental protection, which was much debated at Second Reading. I have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and, like him, I hope the Minister can reassure us.
Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-06-28
Topic: Government Operations
Alexander Randall (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have not taken part directly in these important debates around the OEP, mainly because of the fear of repetition. There are many noble Lords far wiser and more eloquent than me to discuss this. However, I share many of the concerns that we have heard around the funding and, as we are now discussing, the independence of the OEP. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will take on board the serious concerns of many around the Committee, including myself. I hope that he and his officials will consult with noble Lords before coming back with the Bill on Report. If he does not, he may find himself in rather more difficulties than I would like. There are lingering doubts about this There have been some very wise words. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said that it was important for the OEP to be seen to be independent. The problem is that there is distrust on both sides. The Government’s position will be that they are distrustful, fearing that a strongly independent OEP will run riot and cause many problems—although we would probably argue that, if that is what is necessary, that is what will have to happen. Others think that the Government’s intentions are to make sure that that does not happen and so are curtailing the power of the OEP As I have often discovered since I arrived in this House, I take on board the very wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I say to the Government that it is just possible that having a strongly independent OEP could help, because the public will not necessarily believe a government Minister. If the OEP were not seen to be independent enough, when it made a decision that the public did not like and went against them, they would consider it a government stitch-up. However, if there were a strongly independent OEP, they would have to accept that it was an independent decision I hope that this can be resolved because this is a very important part of the Bill. If we are to have faith in how the legislation works, we need that strongly independent OEP.
Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-06-28
Topic: Government Operations
Zac Goldsmith (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank noble Lords for their contributions. I will begin by addressing the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch On Amendment 94, the Government are committed to ensuring the OEP’s operational independence. This is precisely why we have included in paragraph 17 of Schedule 1 the duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to the need to protect the OEP’s independence. The actions of the Secretary of State in exercising functions in relation to the OEP will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny in the usual way However, the OEP itself is not an elected body. It is the Secretary of State, as an elected representative of the Government, who is ultimately accountable to Parliament for the OEP’s use of public money. Ministerial accountability is one of the Government’s key principles of good corporate governance. Ensuring the OEP’s operational independence must therefore be balanced with allowing appropriate levels of scrutiny. The amendment suggested by the noble Baroness would prevent Defra, as the OEP’s parent department, exercising vital functions of public accountability, including carrying out accounting officer responsibilities.
Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-06-28
Topic: Environment
Zac Goldsmith (Conservative, Centre-right): Amendment 95 creates a duty for the OEP to set out in its strategy how it intends to interact with devolved environmental governance bodies, as defined in the Bill. It will promote co-operation between the OEP and devolved environmental governance bodies, and respect the devolution settlements by imposing this duty on the OEP only. Government Amendment 95 complements other measures in this Bill that enable the OEP to share relevant information with equivalent bodies and require it to consult them on any matters relevant to their functions The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, has outlined the importance of consultation with devolved counterparts in previous debates, and I hope that this government amendment will therefore be welcomed by him, in particular. This is a crucial addition to these other measures, which together will ensure that the OEP and devolved bodies can co-ordinate their functions effectively for the benefit of our environment across the union.
Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-06-28
Topic: Environment
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, Amendment 96 in my name has nothing to do with Amendment 95 but, for the convenience of the Whips’ Office, has been grouped with it In this legislation and many other policies, we aim to accomplish substantial changes in people’s behaviour. Particularly when it comes to keeping the heat down, we are faced with immediate disbenefits—things we are asking of people to make their lives worse or different. Therefore, we need to find a way of taking people with us, of explaining to and sharing decisions with them, to have their confidence and mean that they, with us, will take the decisions we need to take. The fundamentals of this are that we should be telling the truth, being transparent and trusting the public. Those are the virtues that I would like to see inculcated into the OEP. The amendment asks that we gather research and information, because it is hard to find what you want if you are an ordinary member of the public or someone trying to put together an understanding that would allow them to critique government policy, to end up as an informed supporter or to offer helpful suggestions. Secondly, we should make it open, because far too much vital information is hidden behind paywalls. Thirdly, we should make it clear how the evidence supports government policies because, that way, people can see why they should be lining up behind the Government Absent that, we will get a lot of policies that sound nice but whose outcomes are suboptimal, and we will lose public support. Take an easy example: recycling. We all sort of want to do it but, when the council turns up outside my door, it smashes the glass into the paper. How is that recycled? Is it recycled or does it just go off to the incinerator? What is the truth? What is actually happening to justify all the effort that I have put in to separating one lot of rubbish from another? I cannot find the answer to that, but it ought to be easy Take another example: plant-based diets. We are told they save lives, alleviate hunger, reduce climate change, save water and minimise land use. That makes sense; there are obvious reasons to cut out the middle cow, go straight to the source of the energy and process it ourselves. That way, we ought to have much less impact on the planet. I have been indulging in an experiment, because my daughter went vegan at Christmas, and I record my thanks to Yotam Ottolenghi for making that a process that I have been able to endure However, you soon come to notice that milk from a cow is 90p a litre and milk from an oat is £1.80 a litre. If the plant-based diet arguments were right, it ought to be 45p a litre. Some of the difference may be down to rapacious Swedish capitalists outfoxing socially minded British supermarkets, but not that much. The problem is that we are not being offered information on the whole system costs; we are being offered information that cherry-picks things and leads us to make suboptimal decisions.
Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-06-28
Topic: Environment
James Graham (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, in addressing the amendment put forward by my noble friend the Minister, the Committee has today listened to some skilful analysis of the devolution situation from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. I await his comments on this amendment with some interest I want to probe my noble friend the Minister a little more on one aspect of what he sees as the content of his amendment, which refers to "how the OEP intends to co-operate with devolved environmental governance bodies." Like some of your Lordships, I sat in the House as we debated Schedule 5 to the Scotland Act in 1998. The argument ended up being not to reserve the environment to Westminster, but there was still the oversight of all the EU’s environmental legislation to fall back on. That is the situation we face at the moment The Government are working on the problems that this now presents. I understand that they have hopes of a legislative consent Motion for their ideas. We foresaw some of this when we debated the Trade Bill in January. The Government were prepared to admit that one route to achieving agreements was to have a number of framework agreements. How many frameworks do the Government expect to have in relation to the environment, and what mechanism are they using to reach agreement on any of them? Are they working on any of these? If so, what stage have they reached? I wonder whether my noble friend could give us some details either now or in writing.
Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-06-28
Topic: Environment
Zac Goldsmith (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank noble Lords for their contributions Although I welcome the commitment to transparency of my noble friend Lord Lucas, Amendment 96 would effectively cause the OEP to become a data bank. This would weaken its ability to focus on its principal objective of contributing to environmental protection and to the improvement of the natural environment. The OEP cannot simply publish commercially held data, nor can it ignore the sensitivity and confidentiality of certain data which may inform policy-making and make it public. It will be subject to clear requirements set out in existing law, such as the Data Protection Act 2018, which govern access to and protection of information. I highlight that the Bill explicitly sets out that the OEP must have regard to the need to act transparently. However, there may be occasions when the OEP cannot be transparent and make information publicly available, such as during the investigation of a complaint The Government support making environmental data open and public where possible: for instance, through DATA.GOV.UK. Defra is also developing a new interactive dashboard to improve access to the open data used in the 25-year environment plan outcome indicator framework. Defra published an update on 11 June which I encourage any noble Lords interested in this area to view My noble friend questioned the discrepancy in cost between cows’ milk and oat milk. Although I cannot pretend to know the absolute details, I can remind him that the thesis of the Dasgupta review was reconciling our economy with nature, learning to value valuable things and adding costs to pollution, waste and plunder. That is not the case today, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made very clear in her speech earlier; unfortunately, the consumer often pays twice, over the counter and then through their taxes, or perhaps through a damaged environment. If products reflected the true costs of production, I suspect that the price system would be very different across most products today. I was asked by my noble friend the Duke of Montrose to write to him about—I have to remind myself what I promised; I am now promising to write him about something and I cannot remember what it was. Yes, it was about the framework agreements that we have made with the devolved Administrations. I will take him up on that offer and I will write to him as soon as possible The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked whether I believed that the OEP should follow the guidelines and guidance of the chief scientific adviser. It is certainly the case that the two should be working very closely together. Whether that relationship should be formalised is a different issue—I suspect probably not. However, I would expect that relationship to be a close one Finally, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, for his kind comments about this amendment So I hope I have reassured the noble Lord and I ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-06-28
Topic: Social Welfare
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for his explanation of the reasons why he cannot go down the road that I would like him to go down. I suspect that, after I have studied them, I will fully accept them. However, it seems to me that, one way or another, we have to find a way to empower ordinary people to make these decisions and not leave this as something which is happening to them—particularly if, at the end of the day, we will be asking them to pay more for things or to not have things that they have at the moment.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-20
Topic: Law and Crime
John Attlee (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I strongly support these amendments. I too have little confidence in the IOPC and the resources that are available to it. It was very interesting to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, said about it. We must shed some light on the timelines for these investigations, both for the police officers and for the alleged victim I have been within and have commanded a disciplined organisation, and I was always acutely aware of the need to complete investigations as fast as possible when something had gone wrong. If this amendment does not find favour and the noble Lord needs to return on Report, I can make a very much longer speech then.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-20
Topic: Law and Crime
John Attlee (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I think the noble Lord and I are in agreement that the problem is that we are not prosecuting these offences, rather than the outcome in the courts. Because, for the prisoners, it may be that even another three-month penalty for my new offence would be enough to deter them—or, using the existing penalties, as the noble Lord said, it is the probability of being prosecuted that matters.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-20
Topic: Law and Crime
David Wolfson (Conservative, Centre-right): I am afraid that the noble Lord appears to have missed the point of principle that I made before making what he characterises as a lame excuse, but which I thought was in fact rather a good point. The point of principle is that we have a definition of "emergency worker", which Parliament accepted back in 2018. It is a good working definition, and we shall stick with it; that is a point of principle. The point on this amendment was that it goes too far because it has those unintended consequences. The noble Lord should not lose sight of my first point by concentrating only on the second, which he regards as lame and which I regard, from a legal perspective, as quite a nice point—I do urge upon him the point of principle as well I was coming to the point that we value prison officers. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, laid down the gauntlet and asked that we do so from the Dispatch Box. Of course we do. Our position on this amendment has nothing to do with not valuing prison officers or the work that anybody does in prison The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham asked what we were doing to protect prison staff. Those who carry out corresponding functions to prison officers and prison custody officers are already included in the definition of an emergency worker. Offences against those people will be treated as an aggravating factor in sentencing guidelines. That is what I wanted to say in response to that amendment.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-20
Topic: Law and Crime
David Wolfson (Conservative, Centre-right): I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to do that. As I am sure everybody recognises, that was not the point I was making. I appreciate that it was regarded as lame by some people, but the point that I sought to make was that the distinction and purpose of the amendment was to expand the definition from prison officers to other people working in prison. My point was that from the way in which it is drafted—and I appreciate that it could be redrafted—it could and would be read so broadly as to include prisoners who were doing jobs in prison. It was certainly not what I was saying to place prisoners doing jobs in prison with chaplains and others who are working in prison. I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for giving me the opportunity to make that clear, if it was not already.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-20
Topic: Law and Crime
David Wolfson (Conservative, Centre-right): As the noble and learned Lord knows far better than I do, one has to distinguish between aggravating and mitigating factors and the likelihood of prosecution. With regard to the Sentencing Council, I am confident that it already has that point on board. The question before the Committee is that of maximum sentence rather than aggravating or mitigating factors. I have also said—and, I hope, explained—that there is clear guidance in place to make sure that, when these offences are committed, they are dealt with either through the courts or through prison adjudication.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-20
Topic: Labor
David Wolfson (Conservative, Centre-right): I think I made it clear earlier that I was making two points in response to this amendment. The point that we are focused on at the moment is whether we could have more—and I say this respectfully—felicitous drafting than the drafting of the amendment that we currently have. I have accepted in principle that one could, and I made that clear in my previous answer and my answer to the right reverend Prelate. However, I do not want us to lose sight of my first response, on the point of principle: we have a definition in the 2018 Act of "emergency worker", and that was regarded in 2018 as suitable and fit for purpose. It treated that definition as a separate status and a distinct group, and the Government’s position is that definition was good in 2018 and remains so now.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-20
Topic: Law and Crime
John Attlee (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. On Amendment 11 from the right reverend Prelate, I am aware of the problem that he describes, but I did not make my new offence cover other Prison Service staff. I deliberately excluded probation officers just for reasons of simplicity, but if I managed to make my potting amendment find favour with the House, I would have to decide who was to be protected by it I am slightly disappointed by my noble friend’s response, because I thought that I was offering him the best thing since sliced bread, but he turned me down. The problem for the Minister running the Prison Service is that he cannot direct the police force to investigate these issues and, as he carefully explained to the Committee, he cannot direct the Crown Prosecution Service to pay greater attention to these offences either. My noble friend has no tools to protect prison officers—so I suspect that the Prison Officers’ Association will be a little bit disappointed with his approach I think we identified the underlying issue, which is the probability of being prosecuted for these sorts of these offences, and we need to have another look at that. I shall, of course, withdraw my amendment, subject to the usual caveats and discussions with the Opposition Front Bench.
Net Zero Strategy and Heat and Buildings Strategy — House of Lords, 2021-10-20
Topic: Environment
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): I believe there were some documents that were published in error, but they have been withdrawn. Fundamentally, we do not believe in telling people what to eat or how to live their lives. Our focus is on helping people, incentivising them to make green choices, and to make those choices easier and cheaper. As we transition to net zero, we will be tech- led using British technology and innovation, just as we did in the last innovation revolution. I appreciate that the Greens want to lecture people and instruct them; I believe that carrots are much better than sticks.