argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-10
Topic: Defense
Vernon Coaker (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for his response to a very moving debate. I particularly welcome the contribution from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, with his background in the Armed Forces and the work he has done on this issue over many years. I found it very moving. I have never had the opportunity of meeting the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, but I think all of us respect, remember and honour the work he did with respect to Hong Kong. The fact he has come here tonight to listen and contribute to this short debate will be noted by everyone in this House, even those who are not here. He is to be commended for that, if I might say so. I also welcome the contributions from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough. Again, their points were made very well Maybe I am an optimist or maybe it is the time of night, but I detect some movement from the Government on these issues; it would be churlish not to welcome that. On Amendment 185 in respect of Hong Kong veterans, the Minister said—he will correct me if I get this wrong—that there is an expectation that there will be an announcement on this by the end of this calendar year. One hopes that that does not mean December 2022. I am not being sarcastic; one hopes that this will happen as soon as possible, but we note that he referred to the end of this calendar year. The Hong Kong veterans and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, will have heard that, but all of us would ask that this happens as soon as possible and does not slip to December. I am not being sarcastic or churlish in saying that; everyone will want to know that that will be the case We also heard about the issue of unit costs for Commonwealth veterans applying for indefinite leave to remain, and that the Government are looking to come forward with something in respect of that at the earliest opportunity, whatever that means—in the not too distant future, I hope. I think that the Minister said that what it means in practice is that we might come back to this issue on Report. Maybe by then the Government will be able to say something about it In this short debate, the Government have shown that they have listened to what has happened. To be frank, it has taken longer than it should, but we are seeing some movement. Ministers here are to be congratulated on any part that they have played in that, as are other Members of this House. We all now want to see this move forward and happen quickly, because it is doing the right thing by those who have done the right thing by us.
Organ Tourism and Cadavers on Display Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-03-04
Topic: Health
Gillian Merron (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Hunt on this very welcome Bill. It is a pleasure to see the issue debated so well and regularly in this House. As my noble friend knows, he has the full support of these Benches in his endeavours. UK citizens must not be permitted to support the international organ tourism industry, where those organs are sourced illegally. I hope to see an end to the display of human cadavers in cases where the displayers have not obtained the consent of the deceased to do so. On so many levels, the issues with which this Bill deals are totally unacceptable, and I am glad that this Bill gives your Lordships’ House the opportunity, as we also had last night, to consider how to take action. This is a moral imperative, and my noble friend can count on continued support from these Benches As we approach the end of this Third Reading, I thank the Minister and your Lordships’ House for the time spent on and engagement with this issue. I wish the Bill every success.
North East Ambulance Service — House of Lords, 2022-05-23
Topic: Health
David George Clark (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we really must learn the lessons, having witnessed this cover-up in one of the most deprived parts of the UK. I say to the Minister that he should not look at the case, for example, of the ambulance drivers in isolation. Will the Government announce now that they are prepared to have a proper workforce plan for the NHS?
European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-01-15
Topic: Health
Sarah Ludford (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Before the noble Viscount sits down, can I point out that the reputation he just mentioned, as the greatest country in the world in which to develop medical and other research, has been acquired while we have been in the European Union?
Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2022-05-18
Topic: Defense
John Davies (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I endorse the very powerful arguments produced by a number of colleagues, such as the noble Lord, Lord Lang, in favour of our spending more money on defence and taking defence requirements in this country rather more seriously than we have in the past I have been transfixed over the last few weeks, as I imagine many others have, by the extraordinary courage and selfless self-sacrifice of the Ukrainians, who found themselves victims of an attack by Russia. It is a real David and Goliath story, which, so far, has had the right ending. But we must make sure that it continues to have the right ending. It is very important that Ukraine retains its independence and existing borders—though innocent, it has been made to suffer by having territory taken away from it—and that it continues to be a major force in the western world. As soon as possible, if it wants to, it should be allowed to become a member of the European Union and NATO. I greatly look forward to that happening. I think the Ukrainians would take it very much amiss if there were any attempt on the part of their western allies to delay their entry into those organisations, which they thoroughly deserve to be part of after conducting themselves as they have in the last few weeks. I hope it will be fine, but I am still concerned that people are talking about making special concessions to the Russians—not upsetting them too much or humiliating them and so forth. If they are humiliated, it is entirely their fault. No one asked them to invade Ukraine, so we should not have too much sympathy with that This has been a very good debate. We have managed to make it clear that all is not well in the defence of peace in the world. It is very important that we keep these things under very close review and continue to keep the Government alert to the need to pay attention and contribute properly to the cost of defence. If you do not have any defence, you invite attack and its consequences, with which we are all too familiar.
European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-01-21
Topic: Health
Judith Anne Jolly (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, we have had an interesting debate that has not, for the most part, been about Clause 41 or the legislation itself, but about health. I guess that that was always what would happen. I am quite happy to withdraw the amendment.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-07
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I have two amendments in this group—Amendments 154 and 155—though they are rather different from those discussed in the debates that we have just heard. I declare my interest as the president of the Hospital Caterers Association We have heard a lot about the risk of obesity, but we also know that many patients coming into NHS hospitals come in with nutritional issues, where good food and good nutrition could very much help them on their way to recovery. The research has indicated problems where patients are not feeding properly We are very grateful to Ministers for the meeting we had with the Hospital Caterers Association and the National Association of Care Catering, with the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. We are very grateful too that Clause 161 sets out specifications for hospital food standards There are just two quick points I want to make. First, it is a great pity that we do not have a similar process in relation to the care sector—care homes, in particular. One of the amendments relates to that: we want to see the provisions extended to the care sector. We also want to ensure that staff working in the care sector are suitably trained and that there is a suitable framework to ensure there is a high level of professional staffing My second point relates to the National Health Service. Although lip service has always been paid to good standards of hospital food and nutrition, unfortunately the boards of NHS organisations have often found it difficult to provide the resources to enable that to happen. The suggestion in my first amendment is, in fact, that a board-level director should be appointed to oversee this to ensure that the standards laid out as a result of the Bill, when it becomes law, will be put into practice. Alongside it go similar provisions in relation to ensuring that we have high-quality staff who can take advantage of a focused approach to training, which, at the moment, has been missing because a lot of the national infrastructure for training for staff in the NHS in the ancillary services has been neglected I hope that, following the discussions we had with Ministers, the noble Baroness will be able to be positive in relation to this tonight.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-22
Topic: Health
Deborah Wilcox (Labour, Centre-left): Good mental health is fundamental to thriving in life. I knew it from the other side of the tracks. My dear, late mother suffered greatly with mental health throughout her life, so I grew up and grew old trying to deal with it. It made me much more aware of what it means. I always used to say that if my mother came into school or wherever wearing a plaster cast on her arm, they would know that she had a broken arm. However, they did not know that she had a broken mind. At times it was extremely challenging. It made me a better person, more understanding and very aware of mental health issues More than one in 10 children aged 10 to 15 say they have no one to talk to or would not talk to anyone in school if they felt worried or sad. This is the same proportion of children who have a diagnosable mental health problem. Research shows that 50% of mental health problems are established by the age of 14 and 75% are by the age of 24. Young people in the UK today are dealing with high levels of stress due to a variety of issues.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I lend my support to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on Amendment 8 and to my noble friend on Amendment 37. This issue about the mental health of students and pupils is very important. I have no doubt that the Minister will argue that mental health is subsumed within "health", and therefore that there is no need for this, but sometimes you do need to give absolute clarity to parts of society that mental health must be a greater priority than before, and this is a very useful way of doing it. The Minister was involved in the passage of the Health and Care Act of blessed memory, which some of us were involved in. It struck me that when we were talking about the membership of ICPs and ICBs—integrated care partnerships and integrated care boards—I do not think we explicitly discussed whether the education sector would be around the table. Could the Minister look into whether there is some way of encouraging that the education sector is listened to? It seems rather like the police service in that it is being asked to pick up a lot of the issues that arise partly because our mental health services are so fragile at the moment, particularly for young people and adolescents, as we know. I do not wish to add more burden to heads and schools but this will bear thinking about. I hope there will be some collaboration between the Minister’s department and the Department of Health.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Lords, 2022-04-04
Topic: Health
Jonathan Toby Harris (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I intervene briefly in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the remarks made by my noble friend Lady Lister. In doing so, I declare my interest as chair of the General Dental Council. In that capacity, I had a meeting with the British Dental Association earlier today, not specifically about this issue, but the British Dental Association is still very exercised by it I again pursue an issue I raised on Report, to which I have not seen a satisfactory response: the precise terms under which consent will be known to exist in respect of certain scientific procedures being carried out. For example, if there is to be a dental X-ray, will freely given consent be obtained from the individuals concerned? By "freely given" I mean not under duress. The reality is that young people who are fearful of not having their rights accepted are hardly likely to give their consent willingly. Can the Minister tell us exactly how we can be reassured that that consent will be freely given and that it will genuinely be the case that if somebody does not give consent that will not be in some way held against them elsewhere? The reason why this matters is that for a professional, whether a dental professional or any other professional, to carry out a medical procedure, including a dental X-ray, without that free consent is unethical and against all professional standards. It is an extremely important point Can we also have clarity about whether it will always be an appropriate professional who will carry out the necessary scientific assessment? If, for example, someone employed by the Home Office or some other agency carries out an X-ray or whatever without being an appropriate professional, that is a criminal offence. I would really like clarity on whether the Government have thought through these ethical and professional issues in terms of these clauses and in rejecting the amendment passed by your Lordships’ House that was moved on Report by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger.
Charitable and Voluntary Sector — House of Lords, 2020-04-30
Topic: Health
John Kevin Sharkey (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I declare my interests as chair of the Association of Medical Research Charities and of the Specialised Healthcare Alliance, a coalition of over 100 charities representing patients with rare diseases. I will make two points The first is about charity-funded medical research. Medical research in the UK depends very significantly on charity funding. Last year, AMRC members contributed £1.9 billion, about half of all public funding. However, Covid-19 has reduced charities’ incomes very significantly, and this is turning into a large reduction in research spending, probably at least £250 million for 2020-21. Already, more than half of AMRC’s members have stopped, paused or delayed the majority of their clinical trials and studies, affecting around 126,000 patients who should be taking part but now cannot. Medical research charities may not benefit from the charity support package announced by the Chancellor because they do not provide commissioned frontline services. These charities urgently require emergency bridge funding so that they can maintain their contribution not only to the Covid-19 frontline, but also to the many other critical ongoing and planned research projects, in which this country often leads the world My second point concerns rare disease charities, which provide vital and often unique support to the more than 3 million people in the UK who will suffer from rare diseases during their lives. These charities are often small, and they have seen income fall as the pandemic continues. They need urgent help but are concerned that they will not qualify under the guidelines announced for the charity support package. The Government are finalising the details of support packages for charities; I urge them to take into account the needs of medical research charities, the small, rare-disease charities and the millions who depend on them, when deciding who gets what support.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-01
Topic: Health
Brinley Davies (Labour, Centre-left): I want to reiterate a couple of points on this issue that I made at earlier stages of the Bill. I welcome all these amendments, and I am glad about the movement from the Government and that they have recognised the issues raised. Obviously, the key issue here is funding, and a move to better funding for mental health services within the health service is clearly important. It is also important that mental health is referred to in the legislation, and good that the standards have some statutory backing I have to express one concern: waiting times and access are important in and of themselves, but they are not a direct reflection of the standard of care. We need to do more work to understand how we can measure the standard of care being delivered by our mental health services. I have mentioned the issue of the differential mortality. I am sure that there are other issues, but mortality is something that I know a little bit about; those other issues could be brought in so that we directly assess the output as well as the input These amendments are important and will address the way in which mental health services suffer because of a lack of esteem. However, they are only treating the symptoms of this lack of esteem. We need to understand a lot more about why mental health, in all sorts of subjective ways, has not achieved a parity of esteem within medical culture as a whole. It is a deep-seated problem which needs to be addressed. The money and standards are important, but we need to understand a lot more about this differential level of esteem and how it can be addressed at its heart—not just by addressing the symptoms.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-01
Topic: Health
Gillian Merron (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, if the role of your Lordships’ House is to improve the Bill, I feel that this set of amendments will achieve this. I am grateful to the Minister and his officials for responding to the points which were made so powerfully in Committee and in meetings outside this Chamber. The range of amendments will take us further The Minister talked about the introduction of transparency and accountability, which are key in the efforts to improve the provision of mental health services. However, of course, improving transparency and accountability is not an end in itself; it is purely a way of getting us to the right place. What will be important is what this delivers. A step along the way to improving mental health services is definitely being made, but there is an awful lot more to do. For example, the Centre for Mental Health estimates that some 10 million additional people, and that includes 1.5 million children and young people, will need mental health care as a result of the pandemic. It would of interest to understand a little more about how the Government intend to make progress on this once the Bill receives Royal Assent. Will we see a recovery plan in the area of mental health services, backed by a long-term workforce plan, something which we will return to later On the policy to bring practice into line with aspiration, and on the funding for and redoubling of effort towards achieving parity, while we are talking about this on a national level, it would also be helpful for the Minister to clarify that it applies to all areas of the Bill’s implementation and that the new bodies set up by the Bill will be expected to treat mental health equally from the outset. For example, it would mean ensuring that the decisions about resource allocation, capital spending, waiting times and priorities were all taken on the basis that mental health must be valued equally with physical health The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, was right to point out that we do not start in a neutral position, because we know that waiting times are considerable, standards of services need massively to be improved and the workforce needs to be strengthened in order to deliver those services. It is therefore extremely important that the Minister in putting forward these amendments undertakes to see the job through, so that we do not just have transparency and accountability for their own sake but we deliver for the many millions who will rely on those services.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-01
Topic: Health
Hilary Armstrong (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I apologise; when there are so many amendments in one group I can never work out just when people who are moving subsequent ones further down the line, as it were, ought to rise I will speak to Amendments 63, 65 and 67, and begin with an apology that I was not able to be here to speak to those in Committee. I too had a positive test, although I have to say that I had no symptoms. None the less, I was self-isolating, and therefore was not able to be present in the Chamber I welcome the amendments tabled by the Government. I chair the Public Services Committee in this House. In our first report, we looked at public services through the mirror of Covid. We noted and reported, and indeed debated in this Chamber, the significant uncovering or rediscovery of the extent to which inequalities in our society affect people’s health. I am pleased that the Government are responding with some of their own amendments.
Charitable and Voluntary Sector — House of Lords, 2020-04-30
Topic: Health
Claire Tyler (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, as we have heard from other noble Lords today, the basic conundrum facing charities is very stark. At a time when demand for their vital services has soared, their resources—both people and money—have plummeted. It is a perfect storm The charity Relate, of which I declare an interest as vice-president, has had to furlough around 50% of its counselling workforce. Age UK, which reported an 88% surge in calls in one week, has furloughed 70% of its staff. This comes at a time when the relationships of those cooped up at home are coming under enormous pressure. Many older people seeking help are in great distress about how they will access food and medicines, as well as about financial worries and loneliness. Mental health charities report a surge in demand, both from people with existing mental health problems and from those who have lost their incomes and vital social support networks. Charities providing bereavement services report having to close their services, which provide a lifeline to grieving families in great distress, just as they are most needed Charities and volunteers across the land have been stepping up to help communities deal with the devastating impact of the pandemic. As we have already heard, charities have lost out on some £4 billion due to the lockdown measures. The Chancellor’s £750 million support package, while clearly a step in the right direction, is nowhere near enough to prevent good charities across the country closing their doors. As we have already heard, many charities are not eligible. The same applies to the Government’s job retention scheme and business continuity loan scheme, whose criteria exclude many charities When responding, can the Minister please say what plans the Government have to establish a stabilisation fund to secure the long-term future of the sector? Will the Government reconsider allowing charity staff who have been furloughed to volunteer back with their organisation to assist with fundraising and other vital direct services? Will the initial £5 million mental health response fund be extended, given the pandemic’s impact on the nation’s mental health?