argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Ukraine — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend heard me raise the plight of a mother and daughter who are waiting to flee Kherson. They will not leave and go to Poland until their visas are sorted out, even though it is so dangerous there and despite the offer of sponsorship. Does he agree that, although it is heart-warming to see the response of the people of the UK, we do not want to see it wasted? Does he agree that we must see emergency protection visas for those fleeing Ukraine who want to reach the UK, with the biometrics and security checks done en route?
Ukraine — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Anna Rhiannon McMorrin (Labour, Centre-left): Absolutely. It is incompetence, and I have seen the same incompetence with the lost applications of families that my constituents are sponsoring. Sarah, for example, is sponsoring a Ukrainian family with a severely disabled son. They are unable to flee to a refugee camp and outside Ukraine because of their son’s needs. They are stuck living with the daily horrors and the sirens. They are putting their lives on the line and waiting for visas that the Home Office lost. A constituent in Old St Mellons sponsored a mother and a baby, but an error meant that only the mother was granted a visa I speak to families desperate for help, and frankly I am furious at how difficult this Government are making it for vulnerable families, women and children to seek sanctuary when they have been forced to leave their homes, their loved ones, their brothers and their husbands—everything they know and love, they have left behind. We are facing the biggest refugee crisis since the second world war, yet the UK’s response stands in stark contrast to that of our European neighbours. We are refusing to match the EU’s decision to offer Ukrainians sanctuary and instead are offering a limited scheme that seeks to match families and individuals online like some twisted dating app. That is what I am hearing from my constituents. When I intervene to try to help those families and my constituents who have sponsored them, the response I get from Home Office officials is to email me back, asking me to stop contacting them. I am sure many of my colleagues have received that very same response Last week, I asked the Prime Minister if his 1,000th day would be his last. He lost his temper and told me that he was leading the way in standing up to Putin, but all I see are warm words and empty soundbites, and a Prime Minister more desperate to save his own skin than the lives of Ukrainians. As a world leader, the UK needs to be using its influence to bring about greater international support for Ukraine and set an example in welcoming refugees fleeing Putin’s heinous crimes, but the Prime Minister and his Government are at the moment failing in that task We are at a turning point in history—a turning point for our generation and our children. This war will touch every part of our humanity if it is not stopped and if we do not do all we can to prevent as much human suffering as possible. My constituents stand ready to support the Ukrainian people in need—why won’t this Government? Please, let us not be on the wrong side of history.
Ukraine — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Anna Rhiannon McMorrin (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I just want to emphasise the point I also made in my speech. I am sure my hon. Friend would agree—and I think the Foreign Secretary needs to hear this—that the families here welcoming and wanting to welcome Ukrainian families into their homes are only able to match with Ukrainian families struggling to flee from war through Facebook groups, which is a shocking attempt at managing this situation.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Paul Christopher Blomfield (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister will recognise that, when we last debated the Bill, the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), pointed out that one alternative for dealing with the asylum backlog is investing in the current system The central premise of this Bill is that, as an alternative to irregular routes, there should be safe and legal routes. Aside from the specific programmes for Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong, will the Minister spell out clearly to the House what legal routes are available to asylum seekers?
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): Last week, the Home Secretary told the House that our asylum system is "broken". Yesterday, her Minister, who is sitting before us today, again stated clearly that our asylum system is "broken". We on the Labour Benches completely agree, but what Conservative Members seem to continually miss is the fact that the Conservative party has been in power for 12 years. The problem is that they never stand up and take responsibility; they always try to blame others—the civil service, the courts and even the media. It was revealed this week that the Home Secretary banned the Financial Times, The Guardian and the Mirror from the press delegation accompanying her to Rwanda. That was a truly Orwellian move—cancel culture at its worst The truth is that, with every decision this Government make and every ill-conceived scheme they put in place, they make fixing our broken asylum system ever harder. The first of these failures is on the asylum waiting lists. Under this Home Secretary, the Home Office is processing 50% fewer cases than five years ago—the result: 37,000 asylum seekers languishing in expensive hotels, costing the taxpayer an eye-watering £4.7 million per day. Labour would invest to save by increasing the number of caseworkers and decision makers so that processing times and hotel bills are radically reduced. [Interruption.]
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker It is in this context that we are supporting Lords amendment 7F today, which would give the 60,000 asylum seekers on waiting lists the right to work, to be reviewed after two years, thereby reducing the burden on the British taxpayer and boosting the Exchequer Secondly, during his negotiations with the EU, the Prime Minister completely failed to replace the Dublin III regulation, which means that we can no longer return refugees to the country in the EU where they would have first sought asylum. Numbers have increased because this Conservative Government lost control of our borders by losing our long-held power to send people back.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): Well, of course, but they are not doing that. The reality is that if we had a returns agreement in place, which this Prime Minister completely failed to negotiate, that would be the deterrent effect that we all want to see. The deterrent effect of a returns agreement would be so much stronger than the threat of being offloaded to Rwanda, because it would mean that every small boat refugee would be returned rather than just a tiny percentage, which is the most we can hope for from the Rwanda deal.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): I can tell the hon. Gentleman that it will be a hell of a lot more than what will be returned under the Rwanda scheme. He knows that it is forecast that 23,000 people will seek to make that dangerous journey. The Rwanda scheme will not even scratch the surface. That is the reality. The only way to deal with this problem is through a proper removal agreement Only the Labour party can reset the UK’s relationship with France and the EU, and from there strike a robust removal agreement that would truly act as a deterrent against the criminal people smugglers by breaking their business model. A Labour Government would also engage with Europol and the French authorities to create effective co-operation in the pursuit and prosecution of the criminal gangs who are running the people smuggling and human trafficking, rather than the constant war of words with our European partners and allies, which is all we ever get from this headline-chasing Government. Cheap headlines are all they care about, as everybody on the Labour Benches knows Thirdly, absolutely none of the Government’s safe and legal routes seems to work. The Afghan citizens resettlement scheme is not even off the ground. The Syria route has been ditched. The Dubs scheme for unaccompanied children has also been cancelled. The Ukraine scheme today had a queue three hours long in Portcullis House of MPs’ staffers fighting for Ukrainians on behalf of their constituents, because the visas simply are not getting processed. Somehow, the Home Secretary has managed to turn an inspiring tale of British generosity into a bureaucratic nightmare. Labour would make safe and legal routes work, which in turn would strike another blow against the people smugglers.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Mixed Topics
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman will know that the Home Secretary’s top civil servant has said that the Rwanda scheme will not work as a deterrent and it delivers no value for money whatever for the British taxpayer. What matters is what works, and that scheme will not work.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman has clearly not been paying attention. I set out Labour’s plan last week. I have just told him about the returns agreement and giving more resources to caseworkers and decision makers. If he would care to listen to the rest of my speech, he may not need to make another meaningless intervention Fourthly, in respect of the Government failures that I touched on earlier, the Bill is emblematic of the Home Secretary’s tendency to make the challenges of our asylum seeker system even harder to overcome. She claims that the Rwanda offloading plan will solve the challenges that our immigration system faces, but her Minister for Refugees dismissed the plan as impossible just a week before the announcement, saying: "If it’s happening in the Home Office, on the same corridor that I’m in, they haven’t told me about it…I’m having difficulty enough getting them from Ukraine to our country. There’s no possibility of sending them to Rwanda." Up and down the country, the British people are counting the cost of this Government—£4 billion of failed or overrunning defence contracts under this Prime Minister since 2019 alone; £16 billion of covid fraud; and a £7-a-year increase on energy bills without any meaningful support whatsoever—and now British taxpayers are told that they have to foot the bill for this pie-in-the-sky Rwanda plan, which will cost at least three times the amount we currently spend on asylum seekers, and possibly even 10 times more.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Kim Michele Leadbeater (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that the proposal to ship asylum seekers to Rwanda is not only extremely expensive but almost certainly ineffective? It is also inhumane. The evidence from Australia shows that offshore detention often has a massive impact on the mental health of people who are already vulnerable, and can lead to self-harm and suicide if no adequate support services are available. How can we, as a fair-minded and generous nation, stoop to this?
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): What I would contend—[Interruption.] I am going to tell him. What I would contend is that with the Rwanda plan the wheels are going to fall off the bus very soon, so we will not need to answer that question. It will completely fail. Rather than chasing headlines, the Minister should be doing the nitty-gritty work of negotiating a returns agreement, giving resources to caseworkers and sorting out safe and legal routes. It is about not the razzle-dazzle of Daily Mail headlines but getting the job done. At Home Office oral questions yesterday, the Minister could not answer a single question that I asked him about the cost of the Rwanda plan. I asked him: how many refugees does he expect to send to Rwanda each year? The Prime Minister says "tens of thousands"; is that correct? What will the cost be per single refugee going to Rwanda? What will the £120 million sweetener being paid by the UK to Rwanda actually be spent on? How many asylum seekers can Rwanda’s detention centres house at any given time? Finally, given that the top civil servant at the Home Office refused to sign off on the Rwanda plan, citing concerns over value for money, when will the Minister publish a full forecast of the costs?
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): We have made it absolutely clear that the plan is going to fail, as the Home Office’s top civil servant said, so the question will not arise. We will not need to deal with it; the wheels will fall off the bus. We certainly would not be spending £120 million on a press release The Rwanda offloading plan is not only a grotesquely expensive gimmick that is unlikely to deter people smugglers in the long-term, but deeply un-British. Dumping this challenge on a developing country 4,000 miles away, with a questionable record on human rights, raises serious concerns about whether this legislation complies with the UN refugee convention. That is why we will back Lords amendment 5D Another deeply un-British part of the Bill was the idea that the rubber dinghies could be pushed back out to sea. Yesterday, we witnessed the Home Secretary’s latest screeching U-turn—this time reversing a particularly unhinged part of the legislation. The Home Secretary’s pushback policy was almost completely unworkable, as she was told by the Border Force, by the French, by the Ministry of Defence and even by her own lawyers. As we learned from court documents published yesterday, she had actually agreed that pushbacks could not be applied to asylum seekers in the channel, but she tried to keep that secret so that she could keep up the bravado and tough talking. We hope that she will correct the record I have already pointed out—
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you for your wise counsel, Madam Deputy Speaker I have already pointed to the work and refugee convention amendments, but we also need to address differential treatment. Lords amendments 6D, 6E and 6F provide that a person can be a tier 1 refugee if they have travelled briefly through countries on their way to the UK, as somebody from Kabul or Kyiv would have to, or if they have delayed presenting themselves to the authorities for a good reason. They would also require compliance with the refugee convention and state that family unity must be taken into account. The Government should get behind the amendments. What in them can there possibly be to disagree with The channel crossings have been taken out of the Home Secretary’s hands and handed to the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy. The Ukrainian refugee scheme has been handed over to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. This Sunday, the former director general of borders and immigration called for a new immigration Department to remove responsibility from the Home Office. With her Department now effectively in special measures, will the Home Secretary not just for once do the right thing and accept the amendments today, so that we can begin to repair some of the damage done by this deeply counterproductive legislation?
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-04-26
Topic: Immigration
Bethan Winter (Labour, Centre-left): I rise to speak in support of Lords amendments passed earlier today. It is clear that, even today, Members of the Lords have made efforts to table new text to find a route to conclude debate on this Bill. Let us remind ourselves that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has warned that the Bill undermines the 1951 refugee convention and that its policies would risk the lives and wellbeing of vulnerable people I wish to support, in particular, Lords amendment 5D, moved by Baroness Chakrabarti, who has worked tirelessly in her opposition in tabling significant amendments to this horrendous Bill. This amendment sets out that the provisions of this part of the Bill must be read and given effect in a way that is compatible with the refugee convention I express my concerns about the Bill’s compatibility with our international obligations, particularly following the announcement of the memorandum of understanding between the Home Secretary and the Rwandan Government. Senior legal representatives have commented on that agreement, including Stephanie Boyce, the president of the Law Society of England and Wales, who recently said that there are "serious questions about whether these plans would or could comply with the UK’s promises under international treaty" We all know that the Government’s proposal of pushbacks of boats in the channel has been abandoned this week in the face of legal scrutiny in the courts. I put on record my thanks to the Public and Commercial Services Union—the trade union of Home Office staff, including Border Force staff—and the charities Care4Calais, Channel Rescue and Freedom from Torture for taking on this legal challenge. As PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka, a fellow Welsh person, said: "This humiliating climbdown by the government is a stunning victory for Home Office workers and for refugees. There is little doubt that lives have been saved." This action has demonstrated that the Government’s bluster about a legal basis for the pushback policy was just that. Are we now meant to take at the Home Secretary’s word that the "New Plan for Immigration" and the horrendous, inhuman, unethical Rwanda policy are just as legally watertight? Forgive me if I am sceptical.
NHS Dental Care Services — House of Commons, 2022-06-14
Topic: Mixed Topics
Questions: What steps he is taking to improve the availability of and access to routine NHS dental care services in (a) Weston-super-Mare constituency and (b) England.
Michael Lee Amesbury (Labour, Centre-left): Kathryn Townsend got in touch with me about her son Max, who has severe complex sensory issues and learning difficulties. He waited up to two years for an appointment. In that time, several rotten teeth have had to be removed. Conservative Governments have had 12 years now to get things right. When will the Minister get an urgent grip of the situation?
HM Passport Office Backlog — House of Commons, 2022-06-14
Topic: Immigration
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): I beg to move, That this House censures the Minister for Safe and Legal Migration, the hon. Member for Torbay, for his handling of the crisis at Her Majesty’s Passport Office; and directs him to come to the House, no later than 20 June 2022, to apologise for the tens of thousands of people who have waited more than six weeks for their passport I will start from the outset by saying what this debate is not about. It is not about the hard-working staff who have been so badly let down by the management and the Government. There are countless examples of the fact that the infrastructure that holds our country together is creaking—indeed, in some cases, at breaking point. There can be no doubt that the frankly shambolic state of the Passport Office is an example of the systemic failure that has been designed and delivered by successive Conservative Governments since 2010, because by the time covid hit us in early 2020, a decade of underinvestment had left us with our defences down, lacking resilience and ill prepared for an external shock such as a global pandemic. NHS waiting lists were already at record highs and there were already more than 100,000 staff vacancies. A steady stream of Conservative Chancellors had failed to grow the British economy in line with western competitors, thus depriving the Exchequer of an eyewatering £12 billion of potential income that could have helped us through the pandemic—or indeed £30 billion if the growth trajectory that was established by the last Labour Government had continued Manufacturing had been at best ignored and at worst actively undermined by successive Conservative Governments, with 230,000 job losses in manufacturing since 2015 alone, thus leaving our country staggeringly overdependent on China for everything from personal protective equipment to lateral flow tests, and culminating in the disgraceful spectacle of the Government wasting £8.7 billion of taxpayers’ money on PPE that did not even meet the required safety standards. A toxic Tory decade of incompetence and indifference left us in early 2020 with a high-tax, high-inflation, low-wage and low-resilience economy, so that when the pandemic struck, we were left stranded in the storm without so much as an umbrella for protection But the catalogue of failure that left us in the lurch when covid struck has been matched only by the litany of errors that characterised the Government’s chaotic approach to planning for the end of lockdown restrictions.
HM Passport Office Backlog — House of Commons, 2022-06-14
Topic: Immigration
Margaret Olivia Hillier (Labour, Centre-left): Speaking as the last passport Minister for the Labour party, we saw the problem coming when the banking crisis hit, with a dip in passport applications, and had a plan for what would happen. This Government seem to have no plan and understanding that after two years of no travel there would be an increase in passport applications. Does my hon. Friend not think that the Government were asleep on the job?
HM Passport Office Backlog — House of Commons, 2022-06-14
Topic: Immigration
Stephen Nathan Kinnock (Labour, Centre-left): The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. There are holidays, weddings and funerals, but there are also direct impacts on people who have needed to go on work assignments abroad. There is the seafarer that she mentioned. There are so many examples of why, when public services are failing, that directly undermines productivity in the private sector. That is why this debate is so important in terms of our economy. This brings me to a very particular catalogue of failure delivered by the Home Office and a Home Secretary who is completely out of her depth. Under the current Home Secretary, the Home Office is simply not fit for purpose. Crime is up by 18% while prosecutions have collapsed. The six-month asylum waiting lists have hit 73,000 because the number of asylum decisions made under the Home Secretary has halved, costing the taxpayer £4 million a day in emergency hotels alone. The Passport Office delays are causing sleepless nights for thousands of families nationwide So today Labour Members will be voting to demand an apology from the Minister to the British people for the abject failure of the Passport Office to meet the standards that it has promised and that the taxpaying British public expect and deserve. The Government had two years to prepare for a spike in passport applications once travel restrictions were lifted. Ministers were warned repeatedly about the possible backlog but they failed to plan and so inevitably failed to deliver. Indeed, the Government’s own data shows that the number of full-time HMPO staff has dropped by 681 over the past five years. After a really tough couple of years, British families deserved a well-earned break, but thousands have missed out.