argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Lords, 2021-01-27
Topic: Social Welfare
Caroline Chisholm (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I will speak briefly on Amendment 34. I start from the point of having huge respect for the noble Baroness, Lady Lister; her expertise on this subject far outweighs mine. But I have concerns about what she is trying to do. The amendment puts a duty on the domestic abuse commissioner to investigate and report on universal credit payments. I have concerns about this because surely it is vital that we protect the independence of the domestic abuse commissioner, as we have heard from many noble Lords in discussing earlier amendments. The commissioner must be free to set the priorities she chooses; it must be wrong for her to have to report on universal credit or on any other matter On the rest of the amendment, as we know, universal credit is a single-household payment. Where a claimant is part of a couple living in the same household, they need to make a joint claim for universal credit. For many legacy benefits, a payment is already made to one member of the household, so the way universal credit is paid is not a new concept, and evidence shows that the vast majority of couples keep and manage their finances together. So payments into a single bank account fit with how most couples organise their finances. Therefore, I am concerned that departing from that would fundamentally change the structure of universal credit, from a single-household payment made to one individual of the benefit unit to payments split between joint claimants by default As we all know, a more proportionate response was the creation of split payments to prevent hardship to the claimant and their family. Anyone in a joint claim, including individuals suffering from domestic abuse, can request a split payment arrangement, and it is my understanding the DWP will support them in putting this arrangement in place Surely it is important that we allow the individual experiencing domestic abuse to decide whether they think split payments will help their individual circumstances. No information on why a split payment has been requested or granted will be notified to the claimant’s partner. If someone is experiencing domestic abuse, they can tell their work coach in the way that is easiest for them; it is not a requirement for their partner to be involved. As soon as there is awareness of abuse, individuals are signposted to third-party organisations that can provide expert support and advice Of course, access to money for those suffering domestic abuse is vital, but the approach in place ensures victims are supported, while the simplicity of the overall system is maintained for others. Sometimes reinventing the wheel can have unintended consequences. I look forward to what the Minister is going to say on this point to reassure me that all those suffering domestic abuse can manage to get their universal credit when required.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Lords, 2021-01-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Stephen Parkinson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, we agree in principle with the spirit of this amendment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has indicated, the draft framework document already requires the Home Secretary to respond within 28 days. We agree that such a response needs to be provided promptly, so that the commissioner can finalise and publish her strategic plan. Where we disagree with the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Burt of Solihull, is on whether this level of detail is appropriate to put on the face of the Bill We submit that it is more properly a matter for the framework document, which must be agreed with the commissioner. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, quoted from paragraph 5.19 of that document, which says that the Home Office will provide a response within 28 calendar days of receipt I do not intend to be flippant, but sometimes things take longer than expected. In debating this amendment, we have only now reached the target that we set for the first day of Committee. If things are to be done thoroughly, as they always and rightly are in your Lordships’ House, they sometimes take longer than anticipated. I am happy to give an assurance from the Dispatch Box to the same effect as that set out in paragraph 5.19 of the framework document: the Home Office will provide a response within 28 calendar days of receipt. I hope that, with that assurance, the noble Baroness will be willing to withdraw her amendment.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Lords, 2021-01-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Elizabeth Sanderson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I shall keep my comments brief as to why I think Amendment 51 and, in particular, Amendment 54 could be a worthwhile addition to the Bill. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if, in this instance, I talk just about women, because those are the statistics we have We know from the ONS that, on average, two women a week are killed by a current or former partner in England and Wales. We know from the UK’s femicide census that the number of women killed each year has gone largely unchanged in a decade. While the femicide census covers all women killed by men, its analysis of the data from 2009 to 2018 reveals disturbing trends relevant to this debate. In 62% of cases, the woman was killed at the hands of a current or ex-partner. In 43% of those cases, the victim had separated or taken steps to separate from the perpetrator. In 89% of those cases, the woman was killed within one year of that separation or attempted separation. We also know that, for all those women who died over those 10 years, the most common method of killing —47%—was a sharp instrument; followed by strangulation, 27%; then by a blunt instrument, 16%; and then by the use of hitting, kicking or stamping, 15%. I say this, not to be gratuitous, but to show that there are patterns we could learn from. Given that the numbers have not changed in a decade, this suggests that the system is not working. An oversight mechanism that could give the commissioner access to all the data and the reports from the different bodies that already provide them would make it possible to look across the whole piece to identify and examine key themes and help drive implementation nationally and in the long term. The current commissioner designate wants to do the work, but she can only do it if she has the information. Surely, we do not want to find that, in another 10 years, there are still two women being killed every week in these supposedly "isolated" incidents.
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Lords, 2021-01-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for tabling this amendment. The Government are in full agreement with its aims; we too want professionals to have the skills and confidence to ask the right questions about domestic abuse and take the appropriate action. I will not be making arguments about overburdening them, but rather suggesting how we think it might be achieved We absolutely want to embed understanding of domestic abuse in all agencies. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, what is the point if agencies do not know how to respond and cannot spot the signs? We want to ensure that there is strong recognition, from senior leadership through to front-line staff, of the importance of tackling domestic abuse. We want staff to ask about domestic abuse, because it is integral to their role and driven by professional curiosity. One of our concerns about introducing a statutory duty, to which noble Lords have alluded, is that it risks undermining professional judgment, and we do not want these sensitive and complex conversations to turn into some sort of tick-box exercise The Government are committed to taking wide-ranging action to improve understanding of domestic abuse across statutory agencies through guidance, targeted resources and training for responding agencies such as the police, social workers, healthcare professionals and universal credit work coaches. Work is already under way to strengthen the response from key agencies. In the health sector, front-line staff must undertake mandatory safeguarding training, which includes a focus on domestic abuse. The intercollegiate documents for child and adult safeguarding set out the core skills, competencies and knowledge expected for healthcare staff to be covered in the safeguarding training, and the level of training expected depending on their roles NHS England and NHS Improvement are strengthening safeguarding practice in local health systems through the updated NHS safeguarding accountability and assurance framework, and a new safeguarding commissioning assurance toolkit. Schedule 32 to the NHS standard contract sets out the service conditions for safeguarding, which include that the provider must implement comprehensive programmes of safeguarding training for all relevant staff and must have regard to the intercollegiate guidance on safeguarding training.
Personal Statement — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: Law and Crime
David Freud (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House I will make a personal statement. Today, the Commissioner for Standards has published a report into my conduct. The report relates to letters, to which I was a signatory, to members of the judiciary about references provided to the court to inform the sentencing of Mr Elphicke. My motive was purely to alert the judiciary to what I considered to be an important issue of principle. However, I recognise that it was not my place to do so, and that I should not have added my name to the letters. I apologise to the House and the judiciary.
UK Shellfish Exports — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: Agriculture
John Eric Gardiner (Conservative, Centre-right): [Inaudible]—to Commissioner Kyriakides, because we want to restore the trade in undepurated live bivalve molluscs. That is the issue here. We think that the interpretation that the Commission has come to is not correct, and we wish to have discussions with the Commission about it. A 25% uplift in fishing opportunities is an important part of the trade and co-operation agreement, and we will be working on that. As the Government have announced, not only is there a £23 million fund for those who have been in difficulty in these early stages but we will invest in a £100 million fund for fishing over the next three years. There is a lot of promise and a lot of opportunity for British fishing interests and the shellfish industry as well.
UK Shellfish Exports — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: Agriculture
John Eric Gardiner (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Baroness has hit on why we wish to have discussions with the Commission. It interprets the matter as being one of public health. The point is that all molluscs exported from class B waters have to be depurated. That is undertaken by businesses near to the market on the continent, and it is on that we are seeking redress. The Commission made it clear in September 2019—and I can put copies of the correspondence in the House Library along with the letter to the Commissioner—that molluscs exported for purification can be certified. We therefore think that there is an issue that we need to clarify.
UK Shellfish Exports — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Lilley (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, is not this and other measures taken recently by the EU to punish the UK for leaving its jurisdiction a flagrant abuse not only of the EU’s own laws but of several international laws such as the WTO SPS agreement, which states that WTO members "shall accept the sanitary or phytosanitary measures of other Members as equivalent, even if these measures differ from their own"— ours, of course, are identical—as well as the recent TCA, which states that each party shall ensure that SPS measures "are not applied in a manner which would constitute arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination against … the other Party’s territory where identical or similar SPS conditions exist", which they do in this case? I hope that my noble friend will make this lawlessness apparent to this House, which always maintains the importance of upholding international law.
UK Shellfish Exports — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: International Affairs
John Eric Gardiner (Conservative, Centre-right): Again, my noble friend is correct to raise this point. It is why the Secretary of State wrote to Commissioner Kyriakides yesterday. We wish to meet her and her officials, because we simply do not understand the legal interpretation of what has come out of the Commission very recently, which is entirely contrary to what we had been told previously.
UK Shellfish Exports — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: International Affairs
John Eric Gardiner (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, what the noble Lord has said is important. The working of the Northern Ireland protocol and the fact that Northern Ireland is part, clearly, of the United Kingdom, our quartet of nations, are why the meeting that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will have with the Vice-President of the Commission on Thursday is important. We wish to conduct trade as good neighbours, but within the context that we are a United Kingdom.
UK Shellfish Exports — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: Agriculture
John Eric Gardiner (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, that is precisely why we wish to discuss with Commissioner Kyriakides a situation that we do not think is founded on a correct interpretation of the law. It is clear that the fishing and shellfish industries are going through difficulties, as the noble Lord said, partly because of a reduction in demand due to Covid and partly because of issues that we need to resolve. However, in the long term this is a very important part of our food supply and we will support it.
UK Shellfish Exports — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: Environment
Malcolm Sinclair (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it is frustrating that the EU is behaving in the way it is on so many issues. Would be it possible to get the class B waters up to class A, as in Scotland? Is it economically feasible to have our own processing and cleansing plants here, so that we can produce the end product rather than having to let the Europeans do that for us?
UK Shellfish Exports — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: Environment
John Eric Gardiner (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend makes an important point, which is that we all need to work on improving water quality—it is part of the 25-year environment plan and it is addressed in the Environment Bill. We believe that the depuration capacity in GB is sufficient to depurate all oysters produced in GB, but there is insufficient cover for the depuration of mussels, for instance. The £100 million fishing fund could be used to support traders setting up, for instance, a depuration centre. We will continue to explore all those options.
UK Shellfish Exports — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: Foreign Trade
John Eric Gardiner (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the Secretary of State has written to Commissioner Kyriakides in a very friendly and a constructive spirit. This issue relates to undepurated live bivalve molluscs and we are now addressing it. I hope that the discussions will resolve this matter so that this important trade can be resumed. It is important for exports; it is also important to all those businesses on the continent that have set up depuration outlets because they wish to be close to the final destination market. I think that this is where discussions with the EU will be very important.
Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: Law and Crime
George Young (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendment 4, which deals with juveniles and vulnerable adults, and the government amendments to that part of the Bill. The background to this is the debate we had on 13 January, when a group of amendments, led by Amendment 12 in my name, sought to remove children aged under 18 and vulnerable adults from the Bill’s scope entirely. While this secured support from all sides of the House, it was clear that without support from the Official Opposition it was doomed. Therefore, I withdrew it The House then coalesced around Amendment 24, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, whose impact on this debate has been substantial. I pay tribute to that. I also supported her amendment, although it did not go quite as far as Amendment 12. Her amendment trumped government Amendment 26 in the same group by offering additional safeguards. Although the Government described these as unworkable, the House supported Amendment 24 in a Division by 339 to 235. As we heard, this was rejected in another place and we now have the government amendments we debate today My view, which is shared by the Children’s Commissioner, is unchanged—namely, that we should exempt children and vulnerable adults—but I accept that that will not happen. What we now have is a welcome improvement on government Amendment 26, and I am grateful to my noble friend for listening to the concerns and meeting them where she felt she could. I also pay tribute to the work of Stella Creasy in taking the debate forward Some relevant questions on the government amendments have been raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Kidron. I hope my noble friend will feel able to continue the dialogue once the Bill reaches the statute book, to focus again on the code of practice, in particular to consider extending the protections in the Bill to all children used as CHIS, not just those authorised to commit criminal conduct, and to reconsider the issue of appropriate adults for those aged under 18. In the meantime, I am happy to support the government amendments.
Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: Law and Crime
Andrew Robathan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I apologise for not adding my name, which I put down to speak but not on a particular group. Yet again, I find myself as the only person taking part in the debate who is not a lawyer. I shall come back to that later In layman’s terms, I joined the Zoom call on polygraph testing last week, to which other noble Lords referred, and it was extremely useful. I thank Heather Sutton from the probation service, Professor Don Grubin and others for laying it on because it explained to me what polygraph testing is. They explained straightaway that a polygraph is not a lie detector but an additional tool to enhance the safe and effective risk management of offenders and could not be used as evidence I did, in fact, ask why sex offending was used as the only precedent for using polygraphs on terrorists. I think that I sort of understood the response, which was that it was a question of denial. That is what they sought to find out. It was a very useful teach-in session That is why I am slightly puzzled that we are discussing these amendments. As I said, I am not a lawyer. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, reminded us that law can be a gift that keeps on giving. We were reminded of that only at the weekend. We heard from three Liberal Democrats. I think they all said—the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, certainly did—that you cannot use a polygraph test as evidence. If you cannot use it as evidence against the specific person against whom you have done the test, surely by implication it cannot be used as evidence against somebody else. My noble friend the Minister specifically pointed to hearsay. It seems that we are slightly arguing about angels on the head of a needle: it will not be used, so why on earth are we arguing about it? This was presented as a probing amendment, but it seems to be probing something that we do not really need to probe The point of polygraph testing is that, as an additional tool, we would get away from the case of Usman Khan at Fishmongers’ Hall, who had convinced his mentor, Jack Merritt, that he was de-radicalised. Jack Merritt believed in him and his redemption, and Usman Khan killed him. Surely we should use these additional tools if they have any substance or credibility. From what we heard in the teach-in last week, polygraph testing has some credibility Let us please back the use of an additional tool until proved otherwise, because frankly we are dealing with something that I guess probably none of us in this Chamber or on this call understand. We do not understand why somebody would get into an aeroplane, train for months in the United States and then fly that aeroplane into the twin towers. We do not understand suicide bombers. We do not understand the radicalisation that takes place in these people, so surely we should give the Government every tool they can possibly have. I certainly back them on this.
Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: Law and Crime
David Wolfson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful for the question put to me by my noble friend. As I said, that is precisely what the Government seek to do: to provide an additional tool for the management of these offenders. The point he made regarding deradicalisation is, if I may say so, very perceptive. It is a difficult part of the overall structure we are putting in place in the Bill, as we have in other legislation I am delighted to hear that my noble friend found the teach-in session helpful. I am particularly grateful to him for putting on record the names of the people who presented it. I know that they put a lot of work into putting it together The only point I would respectfully disagree with my noble friend on is one that I had cause to point out to another Member of your Lordships’ House—I think last week. One must really stop apologising for not being a lawyer. I think my noble friend did it twice. I pointed out last week that what is regarded as a cause for apology in this House is generally regarded as a badge of honour everywhere else. The question put to me by my noble friend exemplifies how this is a matter for lawyers and non-lawyers.
Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: Law and Crime
Ian Duncan (Conservative, Centre-right): We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 27. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the clerk during the debate. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in the group to a Division must make this clear in the debate Clause 37: TPIMs: condition as to involvement in terrorism-related activity Amendment 27