argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Wild Animals in Circuses (Prohibition) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Agriculture
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you, Mr Speaker. My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester did not refer to the outcome of the licensing regime, which has, perfectly rightly, been brought into effect. The regime requires up to seven inspections a year of animals in travelling circuses. My hon. Friend will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that zoos, including Colchester zoo, are inspected only once a year. We are now about to embark on the fourth year of that licensing regime and nobody has criticised the welfare of the animals subject to it. On the basis that good Conservatives should argue for as little regulation and prohibition as is possible and reasonable, I think we have reached a compromise whereby we have a proper and tight welfare licensing regime without the need for a total ban or prohibition. That is why I say to my hon. Friend that it would be wrong of him to raise people’s expectations—I accept that many support the views he has expressed today—by suggesting that this legislation could be passed under the Private Member’s Bill procedure. I hope that his response will be that the Government should bring forward legislation, if indeed the Government have the will to implement this particular aspect of our manifesto It would be out of order, Mr Speaker, for me to talk about other aspects of the Conservative manifesto that have not yet been implemented and might not even be implemented at all. The onus for putting this matter right, if it needs to be put right, must be on the Government. This will be controversial and technical legislation, which is why I do not think it appropriate to be dealt with under the Private Member’s Bill procedure Question put (Standing Order No. 23) and agreed to. Ordered, That Will Quince, Jim Dowd, Sir Roger Gale, Bob Blackman, Mark Pritchard, Mr Philip Hollobone, Nusrat Ghani, Mr Virendra Sharma, Simon Hoare and Louise Haigh present the Bill Will Quince accordingly presented the Bill Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 March, and to be printed (Bill 135).
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I beg to move, That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) for 2016–17 (HC 753), which was laid before this House on 4 February, be approved I crave your indulgence, Mr Speaker, because I noticed that the new Serjeant at Arms was in his place earlier and I was hoping that he would still be there now, although I mean no disrespect to his deputy. I know the new Serjeant at Arms well. He comes from a great regiment, and we will miss him at the Ministry of Justice where he looked after our security. I am sure he will do a fantastic job here I was enormously proud when I was appointed the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice. Early on, I encountered a great deal of lobbying about the grant from colleagues here, as well from police constables and police and crime commissioners around the country. The lobbying was about whether the grant was fair, whether it should be changed and whether police forces would be able to survive further cuts. We inherited a really difficult economic situation and the Treasury quite rightly asked the Home Office to investigate whether further cuts could be made. A very good job was done in the last Parliament of taking really difficult financial decisions to address the funding issues we inherited. What was really good was that in most cases—I say in most cases—discussions were sensible and pragmatic, and we can see from the fact that crime has fallen since 2010 and has continued to fall under this Government, that it is possible to do more with less.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): Unlike the previous Labour Administration, we believe in police officers making the decisions they need to make for their communities, and we do not believe in a top-down approach. We have devolved operational policing to make sure that chief constables and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner can make operational decisions and other decisions such as how local community funding is run, whether that is though the Mayor’s office or through PCCs. I know that the Labour party opposed PCCs extensively, but it has sensibly changed its mind, not least on account of much lobbying from Labour PCCs. I shall not in any way instruct the Metropolitan Police Commissioner on how he should police in London and the Mayor will not instruct him on operational issues; those are matters for him What I will say is that there will be more money for policing in London than there would have been if a Labour Minister were standing at this Dispatch Box. Labour wanted to cut 10% of its funding budget—and perhaps I will come back to that later.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): As the Minister knows, I have opposed cuts to the policing budget every year but he has always had a good argument to put back to me by saying that crime is going down, thereby justifying the Government’s position. My local paper, the Bradford Telegraph and Argus pointed out last week that crime had gone up by 15% across the Bradford district over the course of the last year. If falling crime was a justification for a falling police grant, now that we face significant rising crime in the Bradford district, including in my constituency, does that mean by the same logic that we will get a substantial increase in the police grant?
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is nothing less than determined to press his case every time, but crime has fallen, although some types of crime have increased. Reported crime, particularly sexual assaults and domestic violence, can be seen to have gone up. I am very pleased that people have the confidence to come forward now when they might not have done so in the past We need to look carefully at where certain types of crime are increasing. Only the other day, I met car manufacturers and asked them why we have seen such an increase in car thefts, particularly of high-value vehicles, when we had previously seen a decrease for some considerable time. We are seeing some increases in crime that were not previously included in the statistics—on fraud, for example. Under the previous Labour Administration, fraud was not reported, but it is now part of the statistics we use because it is, sadly, a crime that we face today It is interesting to reflect on what happened after the Chancellor announced from this Dispatch Box that we would not cut the police budget by 25%, or by 10% as the shadow Home Secretary suggested, or even in a way that some forces had said could be managed. We said that we would not cut it at all between now and 2020 in order to give the police the confidence they needed about the funding that would be available. What is particularly interesting is that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and other chief constables did not suddenly say, "Okay then, we are not going to carry out any more reforms; we are not going ahead with them now that we have the money we need". Rather, they said that very night that they needed to go ahead with many of the reforms that were designed to make our police forces better at detecting and convicting criminals.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me make a couple of points about that. The right hon. Gentleman, with his experience in the Home Office, was absolutely right when he said that there used to be more warranted police officers than there are today. However, actually in percentage terms there are more warranted police officers on the streets of this country today doing the work we need them to do than when he was the Minister It worries me that more than 10% of some forces’ warranted officers are still not out on the streets doing the job that we would expect them to do. That is one of the reforms with which we must persevere. We must ensure that officers with the skills and the equipment that they need are out on the streets.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): Not for the moment. I will give way to the shadow Home Secretary when I have given way to colleagues who have already tried to intervene As for the point raised by the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), he should have asked those on his own Front Bench why they had said publicly, "Let us cut the police grant by another 10%"—something that we have not done.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
James Jacob Gilchrist Berry (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. I feel almost as though I have been promoted, given that he has allowed me to intervene ahead of the shadow Home Secretary My right hon. Friend has referred to the response of police and crime commissioners to increases in police budgets. In Lancashire, our directly funded police grant is going up. The police and crime commissioner and chief constable had previously presented doomsday scenarios, saying that the Lancashire constabulary was no longer fit for purpose. Given that the Government have listened to not only Members of Parliament but to the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable, is my right hon. Friend as surprised as I am that they have not come out and welcomed the increased budget?
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I met a delegation of Lancashire Members from all parts of the House, and indeed I met everyone who had asked to see me, including the police and crime commissioners and the chief constables. What really shocks me now is that not only has the Lancashire police and crime commissioner failed to welcome the budget, but he has been out there whingeing that he will be short of money again. What I would say to him is that he needs to take a very close look at his reserves. He has been moaning about a sum of £1 million, but if he looks at his reserves, he will find that it is minuscule compared with them.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): Before I give way to the shadow Home Secretary, let me make a point about precepts. All Governments look at precepts. Some PCCs have said that they will not increase theirs, some are increasing theirs by the 2% limit, and others will take the £5 option. That is the arrangement to which we agreed. However, I was lobbied extensively by PCCs throughout the country who wanted the precept to go up by much, much more than 2%. Now I will give way to the shadow Home Secretary.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I think that the hon. Gentleman is wrong. Not only have I met South Wales MPs in the last couple of days, but the very vocal PCC—whom I know very well, as, I am sure the hon. Gentleman does—has not raised those figures with me. I suggest that, before South Wales police asks for any more money—which I do not think that it will need to do—they should look very closely at the size of its reserves, which are astronomical We need to take account of what the police have already been able to achieve, and the collaboration that has taken place with the help of extra funding from the Department, in order to find ways of providing better day-to-day policing out there. We should not sit in our silos, as we have for many years, allowing money to be spent in a building that is being only half used while another building up the road is just sitting there and could be put to full use Hampshire MPs are rightly proud of their emergency services. I am sure that we are all proud of ours as well, but the innovation that has taken place in Hampshire is quite astounding. Money has been saved that can be used in other front-line work, and that has been absolutely brilliant. Winchester has a brand-new fire station. On the first floor are the fire officers and on the next floor are the police, because it is a police station as well as a fire station. More than half the fire stations in England and Wales are within 1 kilometre of an ambulance station or a police station. We are starting to see the same sort of innovation elsewhere in the country, and we should ensure that it continues.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I can tell the hon. Gentleman that crime has fallen in Manchester since 2010, as it has in the rest of the country. There is real concern about certain elements of crime, which the hon. Gentleman’s chief constable and PCC will be addressing, as we are at the Home Office. However, I ask him to look closely at the figures that he has given. We must be careful not to scare people away. We want people to report sexual assaults, but historically they have not done so. We want them to report domestic violence, but historically they have not done so.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I have never insulted an officer, or anyone’s constituent, in my entire life, and I never will. I am proud to be Policing Minister, and glad to be in the House representing my constituents and the country as a whole, so I resent the comments that the hon. Gentleman has just made. What would have happened in London if there had been a 10% cut? [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says, from a sedentary position, that that would not have happened, but it is exactly what was proposed by Labour Front Benchers
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Andrew George Stephenson (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with the point that the Minister was trying to make about the emergency services working together more closely. In the town of Barnoldswick, we have seen the removal of an ambulance station but now our paramedics work out of the local police station. Such collaboration between the emergency services could deliver real savings across the country and ensure that this very generous financial settlement delivers even greater reductions in crime and even more police officers on the frontline.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): That really depends on where those officers were in the first place. Were they working in the communities and on the beat, or were they doing desk jobs? The truth of the matter is that, while we have had a decrease in the number of officers around the country, there are more in front-line duties now than there were in 2010. The other thing the hon. Gentleman might want to ask his local police and crime commissioner, if he is really worried about the funding—even though there would have been a 10% cut under a Labour Government—is why his police force is holding £71 million in reserves.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I saw reports of those shootings on the news and I got reports across my desk as well. Our thoughts must be with the families of those affected. We must praise the fantastic work of the local police in making those arrests, and let us hope that they get prosecutions as well. That is crucial, because public confidence is created when the police get prosecutions and the criminal justice system becomes involved.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): Why anybody would get in a car, drive off, open the window and shoot someone is beyond me, and probably beyond the comprehension of anybody in this House. What we do know, however, is that the police forces around the country are doing a fantastic job. We have just heard of the arrests that have taken place. So, simply to say, "That is happening just because you cut the money" is a really, frankly, silly, silly comment.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Macroeconomics
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): The fact that it is a priority is exactly why the Chancellor stood at this Dispatch Box and said that he would make a very generous settlement. No one dreamed we would get that settlement, but that money will come through. There are no cuts going forward, even though that is exactly what you would have had if a Labour Minister had been standing here.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Stewart Jackson (Conservative, Centre-right): The Minister is making a strong case. Is it not important to trust the professionals in the police service? We do not rely on the Labour party’s mooted 10% cut; we trust the professionals. He will know that the terrible Joanna Dennehy murders around Peterborough could not have been solved by the Cambridgeshire constabulary alone, and that it had to work with other constabularies such as Norfolk in order to attain the critical mass in forensics and other back-up services necessary to solve the crimes. We trust our local professional police officers.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend has just touched on a point that I was going to make about collaboration. None of the 43 police forces around the country—not even London’s, with all its size and capabilities—can police alone. They need help across the board. The East Midlands regional organised crime unit is doing fantastic work, for example. And in my own region—the Eastern region—capabilities that were always exercised, with difficulty, in separate local forces are now being spread across the region. [Interruption.]
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I know the Labour party are desperately trying to find a reason to vote against our very generous funding settlement, even though they would have liked to make it a really difficult settlement by cutting it by 10%. What I actually said was that there are more operational police officers on duty now on the frontline than there were in the past. That is what I have said at this Dispatch Box time and time again. Perhaps, when we hear the shadow Minister’s arguments as to why there should have been greater cuts—I should say cuts, because we are not going to cut at all—he will tell us what front-line services we would have lost. We need to ask that, because the money would have had to come from somewhere.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me go over the arguments. We inherited a fiscal mess left by the previous Administration. We had to make really difficult financial decisions, including on policing. The police forces did brilliantly well. They were genuinely very worried that we would extend that approach into 2015-16, but we did not do that, which is why they are saying thank you to us for not making 10% cuts to policing, which is what Labour’s Front-Bench team would have done.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Stephen William Hammond (Conservative, Centre-right): I have been listening carefully to the Minister. I met my local borough commander last Friday, and although there are of course challenges, he told me that some of the reforms will actually make policing more effective. More importantly, he stressed to me that there are now as many police on the frontline in the Met as there have ever been.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend has brought me on to an interesting point. The Friday before last, I was at Hendon with the commissioner, taking the salute—he took the salute and I nodded my head, because I was not in uniform—of the 135 new recruits coming through. These are brand-new police officers wanting to join the Met, coming through their training and passing out on parade, and 60% of them live in London. That is because of the reforms that the commissioner has introduced, whereby he has said, "You need to live in London for five years unless you have served in the armed forces." That figure will be boosted again; I was speaking to the officer in charge of the training there and I was told that in excess of 2,000 officers are expected to be training at Hendon in the new buildings at the Peel centre, which the investment is being put into. We should be really proud of the numbers in London.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Christopher John Pincher (Conservative, Centre-right): We all know that one perennial problem of policing has been the amount of time that police officers have not been able to spend on the beat. Does the Minister agree that when good police and crime commissioners use innovative technology to help those police officers spend more time on the beat in places such as Staffordshire, it can mean as many as 100 extra police officers on the beat, at a tenth of the cost?
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): There are a myriad different ways we can give the required confidence to our constituents, with our uniformed officers out there and others from the community who are doing this as well. I pay tribute to our specials, who do not get mentioned as much as they should. They do a fantastic job. We have to look carefully at the situation in certain parts of the country where their numbers have rocketed into their thousands, whereas in other parts of the country we do not have as many as we would like.
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Victoria Atkins (Conservative, Centre-right): Will the Minister join me in congratulating the Conservative candidate in the Lincolnshire PCC elections on introducing special constables—parish constables—who will look after the very remote rural areas of Lincolnshire, giving those communities a policing figure they know they can go to for help and advice?
Police Grant Report (England and Wales) — House of Commons, 2016-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I have spent quite a bit of time in Lincolnshire over the years, and was lobbied extensively by the chief constable and the commissioner for a change to the funding formula. The sort of innovation we have seen in places such as Lincolnshire, with the parish specials, rural mounted specials and so on, is exactly the sort of thing we would like to see replicated.