hazylavender/hi huggingface dataset:
Date: 2023-04-26
Kemi Badenoch: My hon. Friend will know that the support we provide is based on need and not protected characteristics, so the decisive action we have taken has been to support households across the UK, while remaining fiscally responsible. We are delivering the largest ever increase in the national living wage, benefiting more than 2 million people--disproportionately women--and prioritising support for the most vulnerable families, increasing benefits in line with inflation, so that more than 10 million working-age families see an increase in their benefit payments.
Date: 2023-04-26
Kirsten Oswald: According to the Fawcett Society, the UK Government lag behind other European countries in making companies act to close the gender pay gap and they have failed to introduce mandatory reporting of pay differences based on ethnicity. If the UK Government are serious about driving down pay inequality, why will they not require employers to set out action plans to improve gender equality and why will they not mandate intersectional ethnicity pay gap reporting? If they are not serious and they continue to refuse to act, will they devolve employment law to Scotland so that we can do it ourselves?
Date: 2023-04-26
Kemi Badenoch: As I have said in almost every discussion about equality--and I am prepared to say again--mandatory ethnicity reporting is not the appropriate tool. Ethnicity pay gap reporting cannot be compared to gender pay gap reporting. Gender pay gap reporting is binary; ethnicity pay gap reporting goes across at least 19 groups. It is dependent on geography, among other things, as well as representation within the workforce. We need to do what we can to make sure that employers do the right thing, but the sorts of interventionist policies that the hon. Lady raises are not helpful and they make things worse. They obscure the data and do absolutely nothing to address the issues around ethnicity pay gap reporting that she describes.
Date: 2023-04-26
Stuart Andrew: The Equality Act 2010 covers a number of protected characteristics, including age, disability, gender reassignment,  marriage and civil partnerships, race, religion and belief, sex and sexual orientation. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities has written to the Equality and Human Rights Commission to understand whether the Act is sufficiently clear in the balance that it strikes between the interests of people with those different characteristics.
Date: 2023-04-26
Stuart Andrew: We are committed to maintaining the safeguard that allows organisations to provide single-sex spaces. It is important to uphold the principle of being able to operate spaces reserved for women and girls. The Government are committed to tackling harassment and abusive behaviour by all individuals and to ensuring that single-sex spaces are safe. The EHRC has published guidance on the legislation. That clarity is there to help those who provide those spaces; it does not change the legal position or the law.
Date: 2023-04-26
Stuart Andrew: Over the past few years, there have been at least 15 calls for various extra characteristics to be added. There has not been sufficient evidence for doing so, but we will always keep the characteristics under review. Let me make it very clear that this Government will absolutely do everything we can to tackle any issues around violence towards women and girls. We have been and will continue to be strong in our actions against those who seek to create harm.
Date: 2023-04-26
Richard Foord: Maggie from my part of east Devon is one of 11 million people in this country who have hearing loss. Maggie went to a well-known high street branch and explained that because of her hearing she is unable to use the phone. She was offered a 50-mile round trip to Exeter instead. In pursuit of the Equality Act, can the Minister explain what the Government are doing to ensure that banks and big businesses make reasonable adjustments for those with hearing loss?
Date: 2023-04-26
Stuart Andrew: I am sorry to hear the example that the hon. Gentleman gives about his constituent. Under the Equality Act, it would be indirect discrimination if  a service provider put in place rules or procedures that applied in the same way for everyone but had a disproportionate adverse effect on particular groups. I am more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss the issue and see whether further action can be devised for his constituent.
Date: 2023-04-26
Oliver Heald: Does my right hon. Friend agree that this goes hand in hand with Access to Work? Does he agree that it is important that those who assess for Access to Work grants should not be too much the generalist? They should have specific knowledge of the condition of the person concerned. I would be interested to know whether the Minister has any plans to explain how the situation might be improved, because I have had one or two complaints.
Date: 2023-04-26
Olivia Blake: Does the Minister agree that we owe huge thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) for her work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Black maternal health? Secondly, black women are four times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth and 43% more likely to miscarry. The Women and Equalities Committee's report highlights that the Government are failing to act. Ironically, the maternity disparities taskforce meets every nine months instead of every two months. Will the Minister commit today to setting a binding target and providing properly resourced solutions to end this scandal and these disparities?
Date: 2023-04-26
Maria Caulfield: I am happy to place on record my thanks to the hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), who does fantastic work in this place. I should point out that the figure is lower than that--it is now 3.5--but it is still too high, and we are doing record amounts of work to try to reduce it. Only last month the NHS published its "Three year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services" with the aim of ending disparities in pregnancy and childbirth, and the maternity disparities taskforce is currently looking into pre-conception care, because many of those disparities are embedded years before a woman becomes pregnant.
Date: 2023-04-26
Helen Hayes: Whether black women are 3.5 or four times more likely to die in childbirth, it is a shameful and inexcusable reality that that is the case in our country. The Women and Equalities Committee has been clear about the Government's own failings in this regard, criticising a lack of accurate data, a lack of funding for maternity services, a lack of consistency of care across the country, a lack of representation of black women in the maternity disparities taskforce, and a downplaying of the role of racism in the issue. When will the Government get a grip on this disgraceful injustice, with the urgency that it demands?
Date: 2023-04-26
Maria Caulfield: It is entirely wrong to suggest that the taskforce does not represent black women, given that Professor Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, its co-chair and one of the most renowned midwives in the world, is a black woman herself. She has been leading and driving forward this work, including work on local maternity and neonatal systems and the publication of equity and equality action plans; I am sure that the hon. Member has read the plan for her own area. Meanwhile, the Nursing and Midwifery Council is introducing standards including the expectation of cultural competence, NHS England is introducing workforce diversity and the "Getting to Equity" programme to ensure that aspiring ethnic minority midwives are promoted, and the maternal medicine networks are targeting black women in particular with the aim of improving their overall health during pregnancy. Significant work is being done in this regard.
Date: 2023-04-26
Anneliese Dodds: My understanding is that the figure for the black maternal mortality gap is actually 3.7, and that the gap is twice as likely to affect Asian women, while women living in deprived areas are two and a half times more likely to die than those in the least deprived areas. Scandalously, even before the pandemic hit, the number of maternal mortalities increased by 12% over the previous six years of Tory government. As the Minister said, the maternity disparities taskforce was supposed to be tackling this. May I ask her how many months elapsed between its last two meetings?
Date: 2023-04-26
Maria Caulfield: We absolutely recognise that these disparities have existed for decades, and we are the first Government ever to recognise that and to set up a maternity disparities taskforce to tackle the problems. We met on 18 April, and have set about introducing the toolkit that will enable us to look at pre-conception care. As we know, many women face disparities long before they become pregnant and long before they give birth, and it is tackling those pre-conception disparities that improves their outcomes.
Date: 2023-04-26
Anneliese Dodds: The Minister did not answer my question, I think because she knows the answer. The taskforce did not meet for nine months, then it was suddenly convened the day after a damning report had been published. No Government who were serious about this would allow enough time for a baby to be carried to term to elapse between meetings; nor would they scrap continuity of carer targets--not mentioned by the Minister--or omit serious action against maternal disparities from their women's health strategy. Labour would restore maternity services, training 10,000 midwives and nurses a year, paid for by scrapping the non-dom tax exemption. Why are the Government letting women pay the price for their failures?
Date: 2023-04-26
Maria Caulfield: The Government do not need to have a meeting to take action. We are working night and day to drive down these disparities, with PS165 million going into funding maternity services overall. There is PS95 million to pay for 1,200 more midwives and another 100 consultant obstetricians. I am sure the hon. Lady has read, page to page, the three-year maternity plan--
Date: 2023-04-26
Kemi Badenoch: Last week, we published a report on the substantial progress we have made in delivering our groundbreaking Inclusive Britain action plan to tackle unfair ethnic disparities. Just one year after we launched the action plan, we fulfilled 32 of the 74 commitments, including issuing voluntary guidance for employers on how to measure and address ethnicity pay gaps, and I will report  back to Parliament in 12 months' time on the progress we have made on delivering the remaining actions to build a stronger, fairer and more united society.
Date: 2023-04-26
Kemi Badenoch: I want to emphasise that the Government believe in the principle of individual liberty and in the humanity and dignity of every person, and in everything we do we want to make sure that we take the toxicity out of the debate. A lot of the demonisation is happening out there on social media. We have a responsibility to make sure that all trans people have that dignity and are looked after. In terms of other things we are doing, NHS England is working to expand clinical capacity in adult gender identity services by establishing new pilot clinics rooted in primary care and sexual health services. Four of those new clinics have opened since 2020 and a fifth is opening this year. They will be able to provide a lot of the healthcare that trans people need.
Date: 2023-04-26
Luke Evans: We know that between half a million and a million people in the UK are using steroids, particularly to improve their body image. Some studies show that this is even more prolific in the gay community, with usage up to six times higher than among their straight counterparts. Will the Department work with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department of Health and Social Care to commission a study of anabolic steroid use in the UK?
Date: 2023-04-26
Kenny MacAskill: The Ministry of Justice has made welcome changes on transgender prisoners, excluding those guilty of not only sexual offences but violent offences from the general women's estate, as well as those who are still physically male, and so accepting the vulnerability of females on the basis of sex at birth. Does the Minister accept the need, not just in justice institutions but across other Departments, for both single-sex spaces and single-sex services, based on the criterion of sex at birth?
Date: 2023-04-26
Tim Loughton: Yesterday, the Opposition grabbed a crude headline about teaching boys to have respect for women--an important issue, as I am sure the Prime Minister will agree--but given that the Leader of the Opposition apparently does not know what a woman is, that he will not stand up to defend women in his own party who voice views on women's rights and that, according to his own Front Bench, he failed to prosecute rapists when he was Director of Public Prosecutions, does my right hon. Friend think the Labour party is in any position to teach anyone about respect for women? And is irony dead?
Date: 2023-04-26
Keir Starmer: The former Chancellor not only said that they are a bunch of Tory vandals but that the country has faced a "self-induced financial crisis". That is those vandals. They like to pretend it was all just one week of madness last autumn, but the truth is that it has been 13 years of failure. Real wages--the money in people's pockets--have fallen by PS1,600 per household, and the Prime Minister's response was to impose 24 Tory tax rises in three years. How on earth does he think his low-growth, high-tax economy is working for working people?
Date: 2023-04-26
Rishi Sunak: Because of the action we have taken on the national living wage, which is at record levels, on pensions, on universal credit and on yesterday's generous cost of living payments, almost 8 million households are receiving direct support from this Conservative Government. We are supporting working people. Just this week, in the other place, we have seen the right hon. and learned Gentleman's party side with protesters and picketers. He should try backing working people.
Date: 2023-04-26
Rishi Sunak: Because of the actions we have taken--[Interruption.] Well, let us just go over it. A single mother working full time on the national living wage this year will get PS1,300 more support from this Government. A working couple on a low income with two children will get PS1,800. That is what delivering for working Britain looks like. But if the right hon. and learned Gentleman has any actual ideas for the economy, he should say so, because all I hear from the party opposite is more spending, more borrowing, higher inflation and higher interest rates. It is the same old Labour party.
Date: 2023-04-26
Keir Starmer: This is Mr 24 Tax Rises; I have never heard anything so out of touch as the answer that he has just given. It is not just about his refusal to take any responsibility for the damage the Conservatives have done through the crashed economy and the hit to living standards; it is also that he refuses to take the action that is needed. He could stop the handouts he is giving to oil and gas giants. He could scrap his beloved non-dom status. He could put that money back in the hands of working people and get the NHS back on its feet. That is what a Labour Government would do. Why doesn't he do it?
Date: 2023-04-26
Rishi Sunak: The record is clear. Look at it right now: record numbers of people in work, inequality lower, the number of people in poverty lower, and the  lowest numbers on record for those in low pay.[Official Report, 27 April 2023, Vol. 8MC.] The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about this non-dom thing. I think he has already spent the money that he claims he would raise on five different things, because it is the same old Labour party: they are always running out of other people's money. [Interruption.]
Date: 2023-04-26
Keir Starmer: The Prime Minister calls it "this non-dom thing". Let us be honest about what his refusal to scrap the non-dom status means. It means that at every possible opportunity he has voted to put taxes up on working people, while at the same time taking every possible opportunity to protect a tax avoidance scheme that helps his own finances. Why is the Prime Minister telling people across the country that their taxes must go up so that his can stay low?
Date: 2023-04-26
Rishi Sunak: The facts are these: the very wealthiest pay more tax and the poorest pay less tax today than they did in any year under the last Labour Government, and we have also boosted the national living wage, universal credit and pensions. Let us look at the rank hypocrisy of it. As we saw last week, when it comes to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's own special pension scheme--I said it last week, but I will say it again--it is literally one law for him and a tax rise for everybody else.
Date: 2023-04-26
Keir Starmer: Here is the difference: I would scrap the Prime Minister's pension giveaway whether it affected me or not. He refuses to scrap the non-dom status that benefits him and his family. I can see why he is attracted to "this non-dom thing". This Prime Minister is so removed from the country that he boasted that he did not know a single working-class person, so insulated from reality that he proudly told a Tory garden party how he had moved money from poorer areas and handed it to rich ones, and so out of touch that he looks at a petrol pump and a debit card like they have just arrived from Mars. Is it any wonder that he smiles his way through the cost of living crisis while putting other people's taxes up? Is it any wonder that he doesn't have a clue how food prices are hammering families across the country? And is it any wonder that under him people are paying more and more, and getting less and less?
Date: 2023-04-26
Rishi Sunak: Let us look at what has happened just this week to see where Labour Members have put themselves. On Monday, in the other place, they decided to side with extremist protesters. Just yesterday, they sided with polluters--[Interruption.] And tonight, we will see them siding with the people smugglers. Meanwhile, we are in the business of sending back the 1,000 illegal migrants from Albania, we delivered cost of living payments to millions of households just yesterday, and today we have announced that we have put 20,000 more police officers on the street. We are siding with the British people, Mr Speaker. That is what a Conservative Government do.
Date: 2023-04-26
James Grundy: Sixty years ago, Golborne Urban District Council wrote to the Government about the urgent need for a bypass for my   constituency of Leigh. Forty years ago, the central section of that bypass, the Atherleigh Way, was constructed, but to this day the bypass remains unfinished, leading to daily gridlock in some areas of the community. Will the Prime Minister support my proposals to complete the Atherleigh Way, and will he meet me to discuss them further so that we can get Leigh moving again?
Date: 2023-04-26
Rishi Sunak: As I outlined earlier, our priority in Sudan first and foremost was to evacuate our diplomats and their families, and I am pleased to say that we were one of the first countries to be able to do so. Since yesterday, we have been conducting a large-scale evacuation of British nationals. We have some of the largest numbers of British nationals on the ground and, rightly, as I am sure the whole House will agree, it is reasonable, legal and fair to prioritise the most vulnerable families, particularly those with elderly people, people with medical conditions and children. That is what we are in the process of doing, and I pay tribute to all those who are making it possible.
Date: 2023-04-26
Stephen Flynn: To be clear, and I think everyone in the House is aware of this, children in Sudan are already dying. Whether it is a Tory slogan to stop the boats or a Labour slogan to stop small boats, we need more humanity in this debate, rather than the race to the bottom that we see here today. Now that the Prime Minister has confirmed that there is no safe and legal route, will he confirm that it would therefore be his Government's intention to detain and deport a child refugee who flees Sudan and comes to the United Kingdom?
Date: 2023-04-26
Rishi Sunak: In fact, because of the efforts of our aid teams, we have invested almost PS250 million in humanitarian support in Sudan over the past five years. The hon. Gentleman always does this, but this country has a proud record of compassionately supporting those who need our assistance. Just over the past few years, we have welcomed almost half a million vulnerable people to our country, including many children. We want to make sure that we continue with that compassion, which is why it is precisely right that we make sure that our system is not exploited by those coming here illegally, and that is what our Bill will deliver.
Date: 2023-04-26
Luke Evans: Liberal Democrat-run Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council does not have an up-to-date local plan, so every day that goes by, we have speculative housing applications that put pressure on the infrastructure, such as GP surgeries, schools and roads. Locally, the Lib Dems say that it is due to the Government's  300,000 target, yet the Lib Dems have a target of 380,000. Will the Prime Minister change the law to ensure that communities such as Burbage, Barwell, Markfield and Market Bosworth get the infrastructure and protection they need for the houses that we need?
Date: 2023-04-26
Rishi Sunak: My hon. Friend is right to point out the hypocrisy of the local Liberal Democrats on that and to highlight the issue locally. The new infrastructure levy gives local areas the power to deliver the local infrastructure that he supports and wants for his area. He is also absolutely right to point out the importance of a local plan. Having a local plan is precisely what gives communities the power to ensure that development in their area happens the way they want it to, and the council is failing in its duty to do that for its communities by not putting forward the local plan.
Date: 2023-04-26
Liz Saville-Roberts: Incredibly, any traveller wanting to go by train from north to south Wales has to go via England. Linking Wales north to south would cost PS2 billion. The Prime Minister talks about running away with other people's money, but his Government are depriving Wales to the tune of PS6 billion by ruling that north-south England rail links such as HS2 somehow benefit Wales. Will he plead guilty to the great Welsh train robbery?
Date: 2023-04-26
Rishi Sunak: The right hon. Lady knows how transport matters are handled in Wales. We always want to work co-operatively with the Welsh Government to see where we can deliver jointly for people in Wales. We are actually investing record sums in communities up and down Wales through the levelling-up fund and the community ownership fund. We are happy to continue those conversations and many of those are transport projects. Hopefully, she will join me in saying that what the people of Wales do not need is the Labour Welsh Government's plan to ban all building of new roads.
Date: 2023-04-26
Fabian Hamilton: My constituent Ian Greenwood tragically lost his 12-year-old daughter in a road traffic collision that should never have happened. Ian is now campaigning for Leeds Vision Zero, which aims to end road deaths and serious injuries by 2040. We really have to make our roads much safer. Will the Prime Minister commit to giving local authorities sufficient funding to ensure that vehicle collisions can never take a young life again?
Date: 2023-04-26
Rob Roberts: The village of Northop Hall in my constituency has about 1,000 residents. Last year, Northop Hall Hotel, on the edge of the village, was bought, and there are now proposals to house 400 single male migrants in the building and in shipping containers stacked around the grounds. The village has one small shop, no transport links and a health board in complete meltdown. Can the Prime Minister facilitate a meeting for me and some local residents with the Home Secretary to hear the concerns of the local residents, who are worried that the Government are just not listening to them?