argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Henry Halfon (Conservative, Centre-right): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Since 2010, my staff have worked in the lower basement—otherwise known as the dungeons—of the House of Commons. On a number of occasions since 2010, they have had valuables and computers stolen, and I have had my valuables stolen when they have been kept there. I have raised the matter with the authorities several times, but little has been done. There has been a recent theft in which valuables were stolen not just from my staff but from other staff, and those other staff have approached me. My staff have also come in in the morning to find somebody sleeping under a desk and clothes just thrown in the middle of the floor. When I raised that with the authorities recently, one suggestion to deal with the issue was for staff to move into the offices of MPs It is unacceptable that my staff’s privacy should be invaded in that way and that there are constant thefts of valuable things, even when they are locked in drawers. We keep getting told to lock stuff in drawers, but things are already locked away. Something should be done about that, there should be proper security, and my staff and the others who work in the basement should be protected.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Law and Crime
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the right hon. Gentleman. I have known him for probably 25 years, so I understand the sincerity as well as the seriousness of purpose with which he addresses the Chair. I note that a number of the matters have been reported to the police and—I say this is in no contentious spirit, but on the basis of advice that I received during his point of order—in respect of at least some of the matters of which it is said we did not have knowledge we need a proper and comprehensive report. Certainly, reference to Members sleeping in offices—
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Government Operations
Bernard Christison Jenkin (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting and relevant point, although it is of course true that all this legislation came in via secondary legislation in the first place and Parliament will have considerably more control over the secondary legislation that amends it than we currently have over the method that created it. I would imagine, as I am sure he does and the Government do, that Acts of Parliament will become more important, particularly if we want to make sure that this is not challengeable in the courts, as secondary legislation is much more vulnerable to challenge through the courts than primary legislation.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman may agree with me that if there are deficiencies in the way EU law has been imported into our law, the last thing we want to do is to perpetuate them by keeping the uncertainties after we have gone. Yet schedule 5 raises a number of uncertainties, which this House would do well to address.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Brexit Secretary was rather lucky when he appeared before the Select Committee, because having agreed to produce papers, he got out of it by sticking to a narrow definition of "impact assessment"? It was semantics that enabled him to get away with just producing the new documents, which he had hastily produced in the past few weeks, containing bland descriptions of where we are. As the originals are important documents, as these questions have been looked at and as we were told a summary had been sent to the Prime Minister, does the hon. Gentleman agree that the House’s motion meant that whatever documents the Government had that bore on the subject, they should have been produced? The Brexit Secretary should not have been allowed to get away with saying, "Strictly speaking, they’re not impact assessments."
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): I only want to help the hon. Gentleman. Does he think it would have been a lot easier had the Exiting the European Union Committee asked the Secretary of State for the impact opinions that he may well have had?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): During last Wednesday’s debate, I specifically asked whether the Bill was first drafted before the June general election. My view—I do not know whether my right hon. and learned Friend shares it—is that this Bill was all about delivering a quick and hard Brexit, and the reason for these extraordinary powers is that they were needed by Ministers to execute that process in quite a short period of time. Does he think that there is any merit in that?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): I think I might be a little kinder to my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench, because it seems to me that at the time the Bill came into being, the Government still thought that it was all that was required to take us out of the EU. I think that that is where its genesis and origin lie. In actual fact, one of the supreme ironies is that for all the heat that has been generated—we have carried out some proper scrutiny as well, but certainly, last Wednesday, there was a lot of heat—much of what we are doing here might well turn out in practice to be completely academic. In fairness to the Government, once they were landed with this immense problem, I am not sure that they were wrong to proceed in this way, but it just so happens that that is where we are going to end up. However, that is not a reason why we should not pay attention to the powers that the Government are seeking to take—we do have to pay attention to them.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Government Operations
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): I will give way to my right hon. Friend in just a second, because I do not wish to speak for very much longer For that reason, I do hope that a bit of focus can placed on schedule 5. I do not have any amendments tabled. I am not about to create difficulties for the Government or to divide the House on schedule 5, but I will, if I may, just ask a question as we approach Report, because I cannot believe that this will not be looked at in the House of Lords. It would be quite nice for the Christmas period to be used for quiet reflection on just how wide these powers are and whether, yet again, the Government might, on reflection, be able to circumscribe them a little bit, so that they appear to be slightly less stark in terms of the power grab that they imply. That is quite apart from the fact, to come back to my first point, that the exception in paragraph 2 giving Ministers the power not to print strikes me as very, very odd.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the Henry VIII powers, as he calls them, in the Bill are much more modest than the Henry VIII powers in the European Communities Act 1972 that it replaces? This is about only transferring existing law into UK law. Where and when we wish to amend, improve or repeal, that will require a full parliamentary process, which it did not need when it came from Europe.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): I understand my right hon. Friend’s point. Of course, I am mindful of it—it has been raised on numerous occasions during the passage of the Bill—but the system that we had to follow as a result of our EU membership implied that that law, having been agreed by the Council of Ministers and translated into directives, had direct effect in this country and was then applied, not usually through primary legislation but by means of secondary legislation, or indeed directly sometimes. I understand all that, but it does not provide a justification for taking unnecessary powers in trying to effect our departure As I said, there is something a bit odd about schedule 5. There must be legal certainty, so why are the Government taking for themselves a power to create legal uncertainty if they so wish? Let us be clear about this: if guidance is a matter of Executive discretion, it is a very unusual state of affairs indeed. There is guidance and guidance. There may be general guidance that Parliament might give as to how it intends retained EU law to be treated. I do not have difficulty with that. Indeed, I think that it may be something that we will have to do. As we have discussed—my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset and I were in agreement about this—we think that Parliament might want to explain how it wishes this matter to be approached generally. That, if I may say, is a rather different thing from saying that Ministers can suddenly wake up one morning and decide, "I want the law to be interpreted in a different way on some specific matter, and I am going to lay a statutory instrument before Parliament that will enable me to do that." It is a very unusual thing to do, and the Government must be in a position to justify it. It slightly troubles me that the law can be tinkered around with in this form. Obviously, Parliament can decide what it likes about changing law. Occasionally, we change laws by statutory instrument, through regulatory change, but it is not something that we should do lightly.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Government Operations
Bernard Christison Jenkin (Conservative, Centre-right): Clause 13 is confined to the publication and rules of evidence. The schedule itself is about publishing what is retained direct EU legislation. Can my right hon. and learned Friend describe to me what latitude the Government would have that could do so much damage, or be so capricious, within the powers of the Bill, and can he give an example of what would be so damaging and outrageous?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Law and Crime
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): As I have explained, this is a Henry VIII power, so within the period in which this power is operational—this is on my reading, but perhaps my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench will correct me—a Minister of the Crown may, by regulation, essentially change the way in which retained EU law is handled by requiring "judicial notice to be taken of a relevant matter, or…provide for the admissibility in any legal proceedings of specified evidence of…a relevant matter" That is a very extensive power. Effectively, it gives a power to rewrite how legislation should be interpreted.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): The examples could be endless—[Interruption.] Well, if there is an established rule by which, for example, EU law is currently being applied, a Minister could say that, in future, that should be disapplied because notice should not be taken of its previous application.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): I do actually agree with the hon. Lady and, I am afraid, disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). Of course, membership of the EU implies a pooling of sovereignty, but the decision-making process by which law has been created in the EU is one that is done not by faceless bureaucrats, but by the Council of Ministers. There is absolutely no doubt about that at all—
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not wish to be dragged off into some new polemical argument. My hon. Friend says in secret, but, if I may say, we are signed up to hundreds of treaties other than that with the EU in which we pool our sovereignty to come to common positions with our fellow treaty makers.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I do not want to get dragged into revisiting the way in which the European Union works. The European Union has many flaws, and there are many issues on which I have seen fit to criticise it during my years in the House—including, sometimes, the way it goes about its business. Having said that, this constant conflation of the two issues when we are carrying out scrutiny of what will be domestic legislation is, in my view, not helpful. We need to focus on what we are doing. If we do, we will come up with the right answers.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Richard Michael John Ogilvie Graham (Conservative, Centre-right): I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that we should be trying to bring people together, rather than separating them. In that context, will he explain his definition of Brexiteer? He used the word earlier in the phrase "more extreme Brexiteers". In his definition, is every Member who voted for article 50—I think that five sixths of the House did so—characterised as a Brexiteer?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Richard Michael John Ogilvie Graham (Conservative, Centre-right): Again, just for clarification, Members who voted for article 50 are not Brexiteers, but presumably those who did not vote for article 50 are also not Brexiteers. Therefore, none of us is a Brexiteer; or are we actually all Brexiteers and just trying to resolve the issue?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Bernard Christison Jenkin (Conservative, Centre-right): There are right hon. and hon. Members who say they want to honour the result of the referendum, but who actually want the European Union to carry on controlling our laws. I call them Brexinos—people who want Brexit in name only. There may well be a majority of them in this House, but that would not be respecting the result of the referendum, would it?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): Is the hon. Gentleman not guilty himself, however, of attempting to interpret what the vote was for? On the ballot paper was the issue of whether to leave; the rest is down to negotiation. So, surely, his position is as absurd as that of anyone who says they know these things. He does not know. He knows only one thing: that the British people voted to leave. The rest is for negotiation.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can skip that and go to the point that was in that pamphlet, which made it clear that when people were asked what their primary reason was for voting to leave, it was "Take back control"—control of our laws, our borders and our money. He can debate that as much as he likes, but the public knew about that when they voted.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): I want to speak briefly on new clause 21 and amendment 348. I also want to make some points in response to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), because I agree with him on half of what he says and not on the other half. I will keep that stored up for the end to try to persuade him to stay; otherwise, I am sure that cups of tea may beckon for many I think that new clause 21, tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie), is the great confession that we have been waiting for from the pro-Europeans in this House. The new clause has been given the support of some of the most luminous pro-Europeans known to the nation: the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), and that great panjandrum of pro-Europeanism, the distinguished gentleman the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable). All have signed this new clause. It says what we Eurosceptics have been saying all along: that the European Union produces its law in a form of gobbledegook—stentorian, sesquipedalian sentences that nobody can ever understand—and that when it is brought into British law, it should therefore be brought in in a plain English translation. The title of the new clause is "Plain English summary".
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with my hon. Friend’s description, actually. Does he agree that a lot of these things are almost as bad as the drafting of the Finance Bills that the Government bring before the House of Commons year after year?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): I am extremely grateful for the humility being shown by my distinguished right hon. and learned Friend, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who admits that some of the Bills brought forward by his own former Department are incomprehensible to the lay reader. It is a broader problem of legislation, but it has been a particular problem of European legislation. That is why I have some sympathy for the new clause. As EU law is brought into UK law, which is widely accepted as the right starting point for when we leave the European Union, the Government ought to seek to do it in a form that is intelligible and easy to understand. This is one of the areas where I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, who said that that is one of the principles of the rule of law. As we do this, we should of course be sticking to principles of basic constitutional fairness It is glorious that the second argument of the Eurosceptics has been accepted in this new clause. The first argument is the basic one of taking back control, but the second is that the fundamental nature of the way in which the EU created law, and the whole body of the acquis communautaire, was not comprehensible to most people, was not subject to satisfactory democratic control, and was a bureaucratic monster that rolled on and on regardless.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): It is not expensive help. That is quite wrong. As the hon. and learned Lady knows, the £1 billion is less than was spent in Northern Ireland in the last Parliament. It is quite right that a Unionist party should help to form a Unionist Government Humble Addresses fell out of favour because they simply could not be got through. We need to look at how the Government responded to the Humble Address. My initial reaction was that the Government had not fulfilled the terms of the Humble Address, because it was not initially clear that the impact assessments did not, in fact, exist. The first indication was that the Government were nervous about producing information —they never said "impact assessments"—that might undermine the negotiating position. That seemed a sensible point to make, but not one that could conceivably override a Humble Address, which took precedence over it As the information was presented to the Exiting the European Union Committee, it became clear that the Government had been as helpful as they possibly could have been in producing information that had not, in fact, been requested by the Humble Address, which asked for something that did not exist. I think that technicalities in this field are important, and it is rational for Governments to follow them I happen to think that that is a lesson for the Opposition. If they are to call for Humble Addresses, they must make sure that those Humble Addresses are correctly—even pedantically—phrased to ensure that they are asking for something that really exists. I feel that the hon. Member for Sheffield Central was being unfair when he criticised the Government for failing to produce information that did not exist. The Government did as much as they could to produce the two folders—the 800 pages—of sectoral analysis. When we look through the record, we see that that is what the Government always admitted existed. The Government were careful to answer questions by referring to sectoral analyses, even if the questioner asked for impact assessments. That, I think, is where the misunderstanding developed that such impact assessments existed.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): I did go to see the documents, as a member of the Exiting the European Union Committee. I was lucky; I was not told that I had to hand over my mobile telephone, my secret spyglasses or whatever other kit I might have borrowed from James Bond and brought with me so that I could try to take these secret bits of information out to the wider world. I did not have to suffer the great indignity that some other hon. Gentlemen have suffered. I was allowed to sit down and plough through the documents I must confess that on that afternoon, I would have been happier reading a P.G. Wodehouse or a similarly entertaining document. I also confess that there was not a great deal in the bit that I read that could not have been found out by somebody with an able researcher or competence in the use of Google. None the less, the information had all been brought together in a usable fashion in one place, and it was an analysis of the sectors covered. It may not have been exciting, it may not have been the read of the century and it may not have won the Booker prize. None the less, it was a detailed sectoral analysis and it more than met the requirements laid down by the Humble Address, which asked for something that did not exist.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: International Affairs
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not agree with the hon. Lady. I think the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), made the situation clear from the Dispatch Box. He said in no uncertain terms that there were not impact assessments, but there were sectoral analyses. Dare I say that there are none so deaf as those who will not hear? I think the House did not particularly hear that those impact assessments did not exist, and therefore rode over the information that was given from the Dispatch Box.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-20
Topic: Macroeconomics
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is moving away from the Humble Address, which asked for impact assessments, not assessments of the economy by sector. He is asking about another piece of information, which he is quite entitled to do. It is perfectly legitimate to ask for that information, but it in no sense represents a breach of the Humble Address; nor is it covered by amendment 348. Does the hon. Gentleman wish to intervene again? No?