argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): That is not correct. The right hon. Gentleman needs to look back through the record. The vote was on Second Reading and the Bill was carried very healthily on Third Reading by English MPs as well. The measures this afternoon have nothing to say about Second or Third Readings On the amendments, the Procedure Committee was clear that it wanted a proper pilot system for these measures. These are enormous constitutional changes and they should be properly piloted. The response from the Leader of the House suggests that he thinks this will be a pilot. He stated in a written ministerial statement that "there will be a limited number of Bills to which the proposals will apply in the remainder of this Session of Parliament"— that is all he is talking about. He went on: "While this is not a pilot in the exact terms of the Committee’s Report, the outcome will be very similar." —[Official Report, 20 October 2015; Vol. 600, c. 43W.] I gather the Government Chief Whip has been telling all his anxious colleagues not to worry as it is just a pilot, so I am taking the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip at their word. Our amendment (e) would mean that the Government would have to come back to the House in April if they wanted to continue the measures, or if they wanted to introduce other measures after we had had an opportunity to review how the processes had worked Talking of taking the Leader of the House at his word, he said earlier today that the Speaker is able to dismiss minor or consequential issues when certificating Bills. That is what he said—minor or consequential issues. He is wrong. It is minor and consequential issues. He knows that perfectly well and he went on to correct himself. Yet again, he does not fully understand his proposals. Our amendment (f) would make this "minor and consequential", rather than "minor or consequential", because that is the only way that Barnett consequentials could be taken into consideration when determining whether a Bill applies only in England or only in England and Wales.
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is not arguing for devolution either. This does not create devolution in any shape or form. It retains power here in Westminster and it is completely unnecessary because in this Parliament the Government have a majority in any venue they choose
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I am sympathetic to some of what the hon. Gentleman says, except that when we are discussing a constitutional measure, that is a matter for the whole House. Today’s proposals are also a constitutional matter, the biggest constitutional change for some considerable time, which is being introduced through one House without a constitutional convention, which would have been a better way of doing it. Why on earth did the Government refuse to reply to the Lords’ request for a Joint Committee to consider the constitutional implications first?
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind The Commons has not refused such a request for 104 years. And I am not going to take any nonsense from the Leader of the House about their lordships telling us what to do about Standing Orders. This is a major constitutional change. Devolution was brought in after a cross-party constitutional convention, a referendum, a draft Bill and a Bill. In this case, what do we get? The longest-ever amendment to Standing Orders—742 lines in all—driven through on a Government majority. That ain’t no way to treat Parliament. Nor will I take any lectures about the unelected Lords. I have always voted for reform. It is the right hon. Gentleman’s leader who has appointed nearly 10 times as many barons to the other House since he came to power in 2010 as there were sitting around Runnymede in 1215.
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman. Much as I enjoy what he has to say, there are others who need to speak The honest truth is that this is not a conservative set of measures. It is quite a dangerous set of measures. It is a bureaucratic nightmare and hon. Members will regret it. As Lord Forsyth said last night in the House of Lords, it is like an Uber driver without a sat-nav. It is not a unionist set of measures, either. It is as if the Prime Minister had decided to fashion a new grievance for Scotland—God knows the Scots have never needed a new grievance—because he wanted to antagonise them.
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I have just said that there are grievances, and there are English grievances too. I believe that we need to come to a proper constitutional settlement in this House—and across the whole of Parliament—that delivers an elected House of Lords so that the whole country is represented and so that we do not have the anomaly of a baron who was born in Scotland, lives in Scotland and claims expenses for travelling from Scotland to Westminster—[Interruption.]
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I am terrified of your eyebrows, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was on my perorating sentence, so I would have finished my speech by now had the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) not intervened. I think that Conservative and Unionist Members will ultimately rue the day if they vote for these measures, because this is a charter for breaking up the Union, not keeping it together.
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Ian Colin Lucas (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, on which I was privileged to serve, for preparing the report I want to make two points. I think the Leader of the House has heard enough from me, and I am grateful to him for his patience in listening to me. First, I intervened on him to ask why MPs from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland would be excluded from the English Grand Committee set up under these proposals, but there would be no exclusion for English MPs from the Welsh Grand Committee, the Scottish Grand Committee and the Northern Ireland Grand Committee. He gave me no answer. The reason for that is that MPs in this House are being treated differently, a point made with superb eloquence by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) If the Leader of the House really believes in the Union, and if he really believes in the equality of Members of Parliament in this place—I do passionately, which is why I feel strongly about this, and I hope he will forgive me for my short-temperedness at some stages in this process—then will he please see that he is giving an enormous gift to those who wish to split up the United Kingdom? I believe passionately in devolution. It is right and proper that we decentralise more within England and devolve to Wales and Scotland, but this is not the way to do it. It has been a fractious, bad-tempered and foul debate today, one that I have not enjoyed listening to, and this is just the start of the process. But the process does not address the needs of my constituents My second point is that I represent the constituency of Wrexham in north-east Wales, which is on the border. In my constituency—I will give one example, but I could provide the House with more—NHS services are designed to be supplied from hospitals in England, for example in Gobowen, Liverpool, Manchester and Chester. On the boards of those foundation hospitals are people who represent and are elected from the population of north Wales. The proposals will give me a second-class say on the future of those hospitals.
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Kevin Denis Brennan (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has studied this very closely. Can he answer the point I was trying to make earlier? How can it possibly be envisaged that this will not interfere with the Prime Minister’s ability to make a Crown appointment of a Minister, when any Minister from a Welsh constituency, for example, who is appointed a Minister to a Department would be unable to participate in the Committee stage of a Bill he was promoting in Parliament? Is that not a nonsense?
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Ian Colin Lucas (Labour, Centre-left): It is a nonsense, and it is unprecedented. It will mean that an individual from outside England cannot be a Minister and move amendments in Committee on what is defined as an England-only Bill. If that is not creating two different classes of Member, I do not know what is This is the third version of amended Standing Orders—it came out last week after the Procedure Committee reported—and it is extremely complex. I have tabled two amendments to illustrate my two points, although I have not read them out because they would have taken up my entire four-minute allocation of time. None the less, the Standing Orders are horrifically complex and dangerous, and they go to the heart of the Union.
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: International Affairs
Ian Colin Lucas (Labour, Centre-left): I only have 58 seconds left, so I cannot, I am afraid These changes, which go to the heart of the Union, will probably go through today with the support of Conservative MPs from England, but I think they will rue this day, because they are giving an enormous gift to Welsh and Scottish nationalists. This will foster their grievances and build resentment. It is ill judged and wrong, and I will oppose it till my dying day. If the party opposite really is the Conservative and Unionist party, it should not support this dreadful set of Standing Orders.
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): I represent an English seat, and, like my right hon. Friend, I can tell the House that none of my constituents has ever raised this issue with me on the doorstep, or said that they wanted any change. My right hon. Friend and other Members have drawn attention to the wide-ranging and significant constitutional implications of this measure. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is an utter disgrace that it is being considered here for only three and a half hours, with no pre-legislative scrutiny and no constitutional consideration?
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
David George Hanson (Labour, Centre-left): The level of scrutiny is an extremely important issue, but this is a major constitutional change. I despair that the Conservative and Unionist party has presented this measure. I will never, ever admit to being a Conservative, but I will admit to being a Unionist. That may upset some of my hon. Friends who are sharing our debate today, but the key point is that I am part of a United Kingdom Parliament An issue relating to how England runs its services may well arise. It could involve regional government, it could involve an English Parliament, and it could involve other measures. However, this Parliament comes to this House with its Members having an equal vote and an equal say, based on their constituents’ needs. Today, at five o’clock, that system will be overturned—not with a referendum, as happened in Wales; not with a referendum, as happened in Scotland; not with a referendum and a hard-fought political war, as happened in Northern Ireland; and not with the consent of my constituents. That will happen because the Conservative party—the Conservative and Unionist party—has presented this proposal today I make the point flippantly, but Andrew Bonar Law was MP for Glasgow Central, Asquith was MP for North East Fife, Campbell-Bannerman was MP for Stirling Burghs, Gordon Brown was MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, and James Callaghan was MP for Cardiff South East. How does the Conservative party expect colleagues in Scotland—constituents of the SNP Members who are sitting on the neighbouring Benches—or constituents in Northern Ireland, or my constituents in Wales, to be able to say in the future, "One of our children, or grandchildren, could be Prime Minister of this United Kingdom, while representing a seat in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland", when the Bills before the House will not provide for the ability of such a Member of Parliament to vote on issues to do with that in Committee—or perhaps in Cabinet Committee—or to enjoy the confidence of the House as a whole This is a divisive measure. It distinguishes between Members of Parliament, and it distinguishes between parts of the United Kingdom. It does not allow us to speak when we want to, on behalf of the people who have sent us here. It is appalling. I shall vote today in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) to try to get some sense into this, but I shall continue to oppose the measure, because ultimately it will divide this United Kingdom. It will be the first step down a road to disunity, and I will not support it in this House.
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Jonathan Neil Reynolds (Labour, Centre-left): This is one of those days when I find myself broadly disagreeing with everyone else in the House. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) have summed up the issue in the most accurate way. I am sympathetic to the case put forward by the Leader of the House and other Conservative Members. The status quo is not a tenable settlement and it needs to be discussed and probably to change. I acknowledge that Labour has struggled with this issue. There is no doubt that the question of English votes for English laws poses a substantial problem for Labour MPs in England, such as me. Once we have shattered the common interest between Scotland or Wales and the northern cities and London, it is hard to see how a non-Conservative Government could be elected here, based on the numbers in this House, yet it is reasonable to say that there are millions of people in this country who have a legitimate aspiration for a non-Conservative Government at some point or other Increasingly, we are creating another political problem by denying that this problem exists and by failing to respond to it. There is no doubt that the status quo is a source of resentment, and some movement on the issue is essential, but I cannot agree with how the Government are dealing with it.
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Madeleine Moon (Labour, Centre-left): Would my hon. Friend acknowledge that the resentment is growing partly because of the suspicion among people in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales that these measures represent further gerrymandering by a political party that they do not support in order to ensure that the spending that comes in our direction is not distributed equally? That resentment is growing.
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Jonathan Neil Reynolds (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a reasonable point, and it is one that Conservative Members need to hear. Having listened to the speeches so far, I wonder how many Conservative MPs spent a substantial amount of time in Scotland during the referendum campaign. They seem to have a cavalier attitude to these issues We are in a constitutional mess at the moment—there is no doubt about that—but the worst thing we could do would be to make that mess even worse by adopting ill-thought-through proposals that have not been properly considered and that would probably create an even bigger problem. There are many complicated issues that need to be considered. First, the proposals lack clarity. They are not easy to understand, and I can envisage a situation in which, even after a vote, we will not really know what has happened until we get the figures through Furthermore, the proposals will create two tiers of MPs, and it is pointless to pretend otherwise. We also need to consider the situations in Wales and in Scotland. I wonder how many Conservative MPs really appreciate just how slender a thread the Union is hanging by. We must also consider the role of the Lords and the question of English devolution to areas such as mine in Greater Manchester. Then there is the question of an English Parliament. Should this place be the English Parliament on some days but not on others? There is also the question of a possible federation in the UK Most of all, we need to consider the voting system for this place. The Labour party has got itself into a difficult position on that. We look at the electoral geography and we wonder how we can achieve an equitable solution that would give us the chance of a Labour Government now and again. The situation will get even worse if the newly gerrymandered constituencies are brought into being A change of this sort must be achieved through consensus and by convention. That is how we have done everything under our unwritten constitution in the past. I am afraid that to go down this route with such an obvious partisan advantage for one party, when only that party supports the change, is reckless and cavalier.
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Jonathan Neil Reynolds (Labour, Centre-left): I think that it is a disgrace, and I think that any fair-minded Conservative MP would say that Let me pose this question: by what measure can the new Standing Orders be revoked? We can clearly say that this House would have no authority to revoke the Scottish Parliament unless we followed a similar procedure to the one by which it was created. A referendum created the Scottish Parliament. I believe that we would at the very least need to have a referendum to decide whether it should cease to exist What is the process by which these Standing Orders could be changed? For instance, could a simple majority of the whole House, including Scottish and Welsh MPs, revoke the Standing Orders to get a result? Conservative MPs are nodding their heads. Could they not see that such an event might inadvertently trigger a constitutional crisis the like of which we have not seen for 100 years? These things have to be thought through, and there must be support and consensus for them. Such a process can be hard and slow, but look how long it took to get the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly. That is the kind of process that needs to be followed Frankly, what we are doing today, with a debate of only three and a half hours, is not good enough. As someone who is genuinely and honestly sympathetic to the cause of needing to look again at how we do these things in the House and, frankly, who is fairly convinced by the core argument behind it, I cannot in any way vote for the motion. It is imperative for Conservative MPs to understand that they are risking the integrity of this country. Quite frankly, I am astonished at the recklessness they are showing today.
Standing Orders (Public Business) — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: Government Operations
Melanie Onn (Labour, Centre-left): I respect the wide range of views shared in this lively debate, and I take on board the Conservative manifesto commitment, but sadly I do not believe that these proposals will deliver the promised empowerment in Parliament or encourage further engagement in Parliament by the people to whom they made that commitment I want to say something about the perception the general public have of this place. I believe they largely have little understanding of exactly what goes on in here. Perhaps we might all agree on that at some point. The differences between a Bill, a statutory instrument and a money resolution are lost on most people. In fact, I and my colleagues who joined in May are still learning the intricacies of Parliament’s processes. Indeed, there are some more experienced Members who still have to be reminded of parliamentary procedure, as we saw with the Business Secretary earlier this week The transparency of the legislative process is of utmost importance within our democracy. We have a duty to ensure that the procedures are as clear, simple and intelligible as possible, so that the public can properly hold us to account for our actions. By adding extra stages to the passing of a Bill, the Government’s proposals will make the process unnecessarily complex and bureaucratic, and in doing so, they are making it harder for the public properly to engage with the legislative process England needs a strong voice in Parliament. There is no debate on that point. The English people deserve a greater say over the issues that affect them.
Burma — House of Commons, 2015-10-22
Topic: International Affairs
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): I am very pleased to see you in the Chair, Mr Speaker, as the parliamentarian who has done so much to further the cause of Burma and her people. I also thank the Minister for coming to the House to respond to the debate. He has had a busy day. He must be the first Minister to respond to both an urgent question and an Adjournment debate on the same day It has been two years since our visit to Burma and there are just 17 days to one of the most eagerly anticipated elections in Burma. I want to raise the growing concerns that the elections must be free and fair by international standards. They are being held against a background of increasing sectarian and racial tension. I hope the Minister will reassure us that he considers the elections to be free and fair, alongside the fact that we have trade agreements with the Burmese Government I want to deal with three main areas—the political prisoners who are still in jail, the disfranchisement of the Rohingya and breaches of election law—as well as human rights, which underpin them all. There is not universal suffrage as we know it. Some 25% of the current quasi-civilian Government are military and will not be taking part in the elections. We have already had some compromise. There has been no constitutional change, even though it was called for, to allow everyone of Burmese descent, or who was born in Burma, to stand in the presidential elections On political prisoners, the United Nations says journalists are being jailed again. Amnesty International has put the number of political prisoners at 91, but says the figure could be higher. Burma Campaign UK, which has people on the ground, says the figure has risen to 157, with 1,500 activists and peaceful protesters awaiting trial, some on charges linked to previous protests—for example, detained student leader Phyo Phyo Aung and more than 100 other peaceful student protesters are facing charges. Naw Ohn Hla, a peaceful human rights protester, was charged, six years after supporting farmers and others in land disputes, with causing a religious disturbance for saying a prayer at the Shwedagon pagoda. Mr Speaker, you will remember we rang the bell of peace at that pagoda. All she did was say a prayer.