argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I did not say that because we are not going to do it. As we have had an intervention from a Welshman, let me tell the hon. Gentleman a rather inconvenient truth about what is happening in Wales. Last year, A&E performance in Wales was 10% lower than in England, and Wales has not hit the A&E target for eight years. We will not let that happen in England I noticed that the shadow Health Secretary quoted a number of people, but one that he did not quote was the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. I wonder whether that was because of what it said about Wales this week. It said: "Emergency care in Wales is in a state of crisis…Performance is as bad, if not worse, as England, in some areas." There we have it: in the areas in which Labour is in control, these problems are worse.
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I would just like to make another point about Wales while we have the privilege of having someone here who aspired to lead the Labour party, as the current leader of the Labour party is no longer in his place. Something that Wales and England have in common is the need to ensure that, if we want alternatives to A&E, people are able to see their GPs. I have said many times that people wait too long to see their GPs. In all honesty, I think that the GP contract changes in 2004 were a disaster. The result was that 90% of GPs opted out of out-of-hours care. But we have been putting that right. Now 17 million people in England—about 30% of the population—have access to weekend and evening GP appointments. More than that, we have committed to a 14% real-terms increase in the GP budget by the end of this Parliament. That is an extra £2.4 billion and we expect that to mean an extra 5,000 doctors working in general practice.
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
David Henry Rutley (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady is making an important point, and I welcome the tone that she, unlike the shadow Secretary of State, has brought to this debate. She makes the point that the integration of care—social and health—is important, but does she agree that, with further devolution to the sub-regions and major cities in England, there is a huge opportunity to move forward that agenda south of the border?
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Simon Hugh McGuigan Burns (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady is absolutely right. There was a wage freeze for those who were earning more than £20,000 a year, but that was in keeping with the policy throughout the public sector, which included Ministers and other Members of Parliament The important point is that it was possible to achieve that saving by a variety of means. One of them was a pay freeze, but others were improving the delivery of service, cutting out inefficiencies and ineffective ways of operating and getting rid of nearly 20,000 surplus managers, so that the NHS could concentrate on enabling clinicians, nurses, ancillary workers and everyone else to work on patient care. That is the right way forward, and we cannot give up on it. We must continue to think about where we can make savings.
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): The point that I was making is that my local authority also faced significant cuts and had to make choices. It chose to prioritise adult social care as the single most important service that it delivered, so it had to make difficult cuts in other areas. However, the choice to put adult social care at the top of the list of priorities was the right choice six years ago and remains the right choice today. If councils chose to put adult social care at the bottom of their list, that was not the right decision There is no acute A&E department in my constituency, but it is served by A&E departments in Gloucester and Cheltenham. I visited the new chief executive at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and met some of the staff in the A&E department—the hospital has had its challenges—and she is working hard with her management team on turning around the performance of A&E, which has not been up to scratch. I talked to her about the processes they are putting in place, and I am confident that, with the hospital’s hard-working staff and improved leadership, they will be able to hit the targets that the Government have asked them to meet.
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Alexander John Gervase Chalk (Conservative, Centre-right): I joined Gloucestershire police on a night shift last Saturday, and I went to Gloucestershire royal hospital A&E, too. I saw professional and compassionate staff offering care in no doubt pressured circumstances. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the current STP process in Gloucestershire must be the occasion to enhance capacity elsewhere in the county and that that must include bolstering and enhancing A&E provision at Cheltenham general hospital?
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Andrea Marie Jenkyns (Conservative, Centre-right): I begin by objecting to the exaggerated language used over the weekend by Mike Adamson, the chief executive of the British Red Cross. What he said does a huge disservice to our hard-working healthcare professionals in the NHS. Such language was ill-thought-out, sloppy and irresponsible. The Red Cross does some fantastic work, as I am sure both sides of the House agree, but as a registered charity it is legally obliged to be apolitical. If Mike Adamson cannot remain neutral, I suggest that he examines his position carefully As a member of the Health Committee and chair and co-founder of the patient safety all-party group, healthcare is extremely important to me, and I am proud to be a Conservative Member of Parliament under this Government. It is thanks to this Government and this Health Secretary that NHS funding is at record levels The Government are committed to delivering a seven-day NHS and to expanding access to GP surgeries and hospital-based consultants at evenings and weekends. This winter, the NHS has made more extensive preparations than ever before. As the Secretary of State mentioned earlier, in the run-up to the winter period, there were over 1,600 more doctors and 3,000 more nurses than just a year ago. That is a record of which to be proud, and it would not have been achieved had we had the Opposition party running our national health service As chair of the patient safety APPG, I am pleased to say that the Government have introduced a new Ofsted-style inspection regime for the Care Quality Commission to improve patient safety. Hospital infections have been halved since 2010, with the level of MRSA down by virtually 50% and clostridium difficile by more than 50%. It is this Health Secretary who has taken the lead on this issue and put patients at the heart of the NHS Record numbers of people are being treated in our NHS and there are pressures on the service, but it is not this Conservative Government who are a threat to the NHS. If we look at the appalling situation of the NHS in Labour-controlled Wales, we will see that funding is being cut. As the latest statistics show, the NHS in Wales is failing to meet the four-hour A&E targets by a wide margin. It is clear to see who is rarely the defender of our national health service and who would cut investment In conclusion, it is this Government who are increasing spending on our NHS, who are focusing on improving patient safety and who are dedicated to providing the best possible service.
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Alexander John Gervase Chalk (Conservative, Centre-right): In 2015, the head of the NHS, Sir Simon Stevens, said that the NHS needed £8 billion. It was this party that committed to fund it; the Labour party did not. If the hon. Lady is so keen on funding the NHS, why did the Labour party not pledge to do so back in 2015?
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Andrew Edmund Armstrong Selous (Conservative, Centre-right): What I am focusing on is what we can do to keep ourselves healthy and to reduce the demands on the NHS by behaving responsibly, and that is what I want to put the emphasis on That is important because a quarter of adults are obese, as are 14% of children between the ages of two and 15, and 18% of children in lower income households. Those figures should shame us all, and that is why I intervened on the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) and mentioned the daily mile, which was brought in by St Ninian’s Primary School in Stirling. We need to see more of that and, frankly, a strengthened obesity policy My daily newspaper at the moment is the China Daily—it happens to be delivered free to my office. I was intrigued to see that students at universities in China actually have to take a physical fitness test lasting 50 minutes at the beginning of each new semester or they will not be given a graduation certificate. I am not necessarily suggesting that we introduce that here, but we should look around the world to see what other countries are doing to promote the health of their populations—to keep them fit and healthy—and to reduce the pressure on health services At the other end of the age spectrum, we need to do a lot more to keep older people fit and healthy, as many of the issues with social care would be greatly lessened if older people were able to stay healthier into later life. I am proud to be associated with the Buzzards 50+ organisation in my constituency, which helps older people to take regular exercise at our local leisure centres. In Andorra, which I mentioned earlier, that is normal for the whole population. Older people in their 70s and 80s will regularly take part in water aerobics classes and go to the gym. When a BBC correspondent went there a few years ago, women in their 70s taking part in these exercises said, "There’s no point in spending your retirement shut up at home. What’s more important than keeping yourself fit? If you don’t keep your body moving, you won’t keep your mind in shape." Frankly, we need a lot more of that type of activity in our own country to lessen the pressures on our social care system.
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Maria Colette Caulfield (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not. I must make progress and others want to speak It was not unusual for my hospital to declare a major incident because we could not take any more patients. It was not unusual for us to take on the extra work when neighbouring hospitals declared major incidents. The truth hurts, but that is what has happened over my 20 years of working in the NHS and what has happened over the past few days of this winter crisis. It outrageous for Labour Members to suggest that it is something new. They are in denial if they believe that it has not been happening for many years The Labour Government was so fixated on the four-hour rule that managers used to bully us and tell us which patients would get a bed based not on clinical need, but on the need to meet a target that was about to expire. I want to tell the House a story. One night I was working in a busy A&E when an elderly gentleman was admitted. He had fallen at home and broken his hip and had to be nursed on a trolley in the middle of a busy corridor. The four-hour target was looming, and at three and a half hours he called out to me and said, "Nurse, I desperately need to go to the toilet." I had no cubicle to put that man in. He could not get off his trolley owing to his broken hip. The best that I could do under that Labour Government was to wheel a curtain around him and he went to the toilet there in the middle of a busy hospital corridor, with his war medals on his chest. Now, he got to a ward within four hours—his target was met—but that was not good care. If Labour Members think that it was and think that this is a new problem, they have buried their heads in the sand.
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Daniel Leonard James Poulter (Conservative, Centre-right): I commend my hon. Friend for making a balanced speech and for rightly saying that meeting targets does not necessarily equate to delivering good healthcare, although they do have their place. Does she agree that one of the biggest challenges is the consistent inability of a number of A&Es across the country to recruit middle-grade doctors? That is one of the biggest problems that has not been addressed to date.
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Philip Martin Dunne (Conservative, Centre-right): I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) and to be able to close this debate. I thank all 34 hon. Members for their contributions, some of whom—mostly those on the Government Benches—managed to rise above party politics and make some constructive comments I join my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in thanking the 2.7 million staff working in our NHS and social care system. As the Prime Minister said earlier, we recognise that they have never worked harder to keep patients safe, with A&Es across the country seeing a record number of patients within four hours in one day last month Regrettably, after five and a half hours of debate and criticism from Labour Members, we have heard little, if anything, about how to provide solutions to the challenges that our A&Es face Once again, the Opposition have touted more funding as their only answer to solve public sector challenges. In fact, they have pledged to raise corporation tax eight times, promising an unspecified amount from an unspecified source. That will not help our NHS and it will not fool the public. There is much to do to protect the system and ensure a sustainable future, but it is this Government who have plans in place to get through this extremely challenging period and sustain the NHS for the future The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), spoke for about three quarters of an hour without making a single suggestion about how to solve the problems that face the NHS—not one. He should have stayed to listen—he may have done and I apologise if I did not pay enough attention to his presence in the Chamber The former Health Minister, the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton), asked specifically for community pharmacists to be paid for providing minor ailments services. I am pleased to be able to tell her that that is precisely what we are doing. The Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), was discussing that only this morning in Westminster Hall, and I regret to say that not a single Labour Member was present to hear what he had to say. [Interruption.]
NHS and Social Care Funding — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Philip Martin Dunne (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not give way. The hon. Lady did not give way and I have a very short time left in which to speak Compared to when the Conservative party came into office in May 2010, in 2015-16 there were 2.4 million more A&E attendances. That is in the context of a much busier NHS overall. The NHS is delivering 5.9 million more diagnostic tests. Some 822,000 more people are seen by a specialist for suspected cancer and 49,000 more patients start treatment for cancer every year compared with the year before we came to office. It is therefore the case that a Government of any colour would be faced with the same problems, but it is this Government who have committed to funding the NHS’s own plan for a sustainable future. Had we followed Labour’s plans, the NHS would have £1.3 billion a year less, which is equivalent to 13,000 fewer doctors or 30,000 fewer nurses We remain committed to the vital four-hour A&E promise for those patients who need to be there. We are proud to be the only country in the world to commit to all patients that we will sort out any urgent health need within four hours. Only three other countries—New Zealand, Australia and Canada—have similar national standards, but none of theirs is as stringent as ours Today it is the Conservative party that is the party of the NHS. That is why we pledged more than Labour did and why we are delivering more funding with a higher proportion of total Government spending going into health in each year since 2010. Funding for the NHS will rise in real terms by £10 billion by 2020-21 compared with 2014-15. That sum is front-loaded with £6 billion being delivered by the end of this year, as the NHS asked for. It was this Government who established an independent NHS with an independent chief executive. It was this NHS that came up with its own plan and we were the only party to back it. We agree that the NHS and social care face huge pressure and, yes, there is more for us as a Government to do. However, we entered winter with a more comprehensive plan than ever before, and we have confidence that plans are in place to cope with the current pressures we face—winter, A&E and delayed discharges—and to sustain the system for the future I conclude by saying a huge thank you to the 1.3 million staff in the NHS and the 1.4 million people who provide social care. They are the ones who continue to make this possible. We are aware of the pressures they are under, especially during winter. We have increased the number of doctors and nurses, as the Secretary of State said earlier, especially in A&E, and we have launched plans to recruit more doctors and nurses. Without them, we would not have a national health service that provides such a high level of care.
A&E Provision: Shropshire and Mid-Wales — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Lucy Allan (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. I tried to secure a debate with a very similar title. Does he agree that the Telford clinicians have an absolute right to express their views, just as the Shropshire clinicians do? The fact that they did not come to the same view is no indication that the Shropshire clinicians came to the wrong view.
A&E Provision: Shropshire and Mid-Wales — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Daniel Robert Kawczynski (Conservative, Centre-right): As I said earlier, of course they have the right to do so. Let me take this opportunity to acknowledge the work my hon. Friend has done since she became a Member of Parliament to campaign for Telford, and to campaign very strongly and effectively on this issue without being overtly political or personal, unlike some other people. I will come on to talk about the CCG a little later I reiterate that my concern is for us all to put our cards on the table. We all went along with the Future Fit process. The decision could have gone against Shrewsbury. Ultimately, the decision has been made to have the urgent care centre in Telford and that the main A&E service should be provided by Shrewsbury. That decision could have gone the other way. It could have gone to Telford, and we would have lost out. At the end of the day, it should not be about winning or losing—that is the biggest problem My right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) has talked about the pillow fight that has gone on between Shrewsbury and Telford ever since he became an MP. Over the past 11 years, I have lost more sleepless nights over the constant fighting between Shrewsbury and Telford about hospital services than over anything else. At the end of the day, we are one county and we must fight collectively as one county for all the people of Shropshire, and of course for our friends across the border in Wales.
A&E Provision: Shropshire and Mid-Wales — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Owen William Paterson (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend on landing this debate. He is absolutely right. This bickering between Shrewsbury and Telford has dogged my nearly 20 years in Parliament. I thoroughly back Future Fit because it provides a solution that benefits everybody. I like the idea that the two existing A&Es carry on doing 80% of their current work, albeit—possibly—having been renamed as urgent care centres, while we get a £300 million emergency care centre. Some of my rural areas look to Shrewsbury, some look to Telford, but we will also gain from urgent care centres being built in the rural areas. What is utterly exasperating for my constituents is this indecision. We have had three years and £3 million spent, and still no decision. I am delighted that the Minister is listening so carefully and I very much hope that at the end of the debate we will have a clear recommendation for a decisive mechanism to deliver the will of the local commissions.
A&E Provision: Shropshire and Mid-Wales — House of Commons, 2017-01-11
Topic: Health
Daniel Robert Kawczynski (Conservative, Centre-right): I could not agree with my right hon. Friend more, and I pay tribute to him for the work he has done on this over the last few years. I would like the Minister to intervene to ensure that the process allows for a decision. In our case, all six members of the Shropshire CCG voted for the proposals and all six members in Telford voted against. I am very concerned—I want him to take this away—about this. What sort of a process is it when we can get a tie? There needs to be a casting vote or perhaps some independent third party who can arbitrate in such a hotly contested issue where the two local CCGs cannot come to an agreement. So I would like to hear from him on that I appeal to constituents from the whole of Shropshire and mid Wales to lobby Telford Council, to get behind the concept of us all working together, as my right hon. Friend said, and to lobby the Government more effectively for more resources, rather than fighting one another in a rather parochial way over where these services are going to be. Let us not forget how close these two hospitals are to one another. We are not talking about 50 miles, 30 miles or 20 miles. Somebody might correct me if I am wrong, but I think they are only 13 miles apart. We ought to be thinking about how to improve and modernise the provision of healthcare for all the people of Shropshire and mid-Wales and listening to the proposals of the medical experts, who have done so much work to put these proposals together.