argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative, Centre-right): I will absolutely join my hon. Friend in congratulating St John’s volunteers, who have done a phenomenal job. They really rose to the challenge when we contacted them and said that we needed them. They delivered in spades. I thank my hon. Friend for all his words: this has been a massive team effort involving the health service, the public sector and of course the private sector as well.
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Ben Spencer (Conservative, Centre-right): I would like to thank my hon. Friend for the incredible vaccine roll-out; many lives have been saved by it. My question is about domestic vaccine passports, and I have to apologise because I get a bit confused by the nomenclature of what is being proposed. On the one hand, we have what I understand to be vaccine-only passports, which say simply that someone has been vaccinated and that that is all that counts. Then we have covid status certification, which can also include negative testing and proof of recent infection. Crucially, this is not just about whether someone has been vaccinated, because as I understand it, a lateral flow test negative result is the best evidence that someone is no longer infectious. Is my understanding correct that the proposal for the end of September is for vaccine-only domestic vaccine passports? If that is the case, why has that moved from covid status certification?
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to my hon. Friend for his question. I guess the reason for the shift by the end of September, when all 18-year-olds will have had the opportunity to get two jabs, is that testing provides a limited protective assurance and allows for the potential for self-testing fraud. The effectiveness of testing-based certification can also be undermined by a single incursion into a setting. Transmission, serious illness and hospitalisation are reduced using vaccination-based certification, even with incursions, so that is the thinking behind this. I reiterate that nobody does this lightly. We do not curtail people’s freedoms lightly; this is purely so that we can keep industries and sectors open and not have to close them down again if there is a super-spreader event.
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Holly Mumby-Croft (Conservative, Centre-right): Can my hon. Friend reassure residents in Scunthorpe that the very welcome booster programme will make full use of pharmacies and our fantastic vaccination hubs and, if possible, those routine contacts such as winter flu jab appointments and asthma checks, to ensure that we do not lose any GP appointment time over these much-welcomed boosters?
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is quite right to say that GPs need to do more than just the vaccination programme, the booster programme and the flu vaccination programme. We also have to recognise that they do an incredible job in protecting the most vulnerable from flu, and that they were the backbone of the covid vaccination programme. We are continuing to work with primary care networks, but we have enhanced the pharmacy offer as well. I will be able to set out more detail on that when we begin the booster programme.
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Duncan Charles Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry to press the Minister on a hot topic, but although I understand the need for limited and specific use of vaccine passports—perhaps in nightclub settings, which are particularly risky, as he has said—the admission yesterday that the proposal had been expanded to include larger venues and gatherings is really beginning to concern my constituents, especially when we have vaccinated around of 80% of the population. Will this be a high water mark for their use, and when will the criterion potentially end?
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend has heard me say today that no one embarks on this lightly, and it is not in the Prime Minister’s DNA to curtail people’s freedoms. It is purely so that we can have sustainable continuation of an open economy that we would introduce such programmes. I do not know—if anyone claims otherwise, they are foolhardy or foolish—when we can definitely say that the virus has transitioned from pandemic to endemic status.
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative, Centre-right): In the original consultation on social care conditions of deployment, which we eventually introduced and have discussed today, part of the feedback was that we should consult on the wider health service, including frontline healthcare workers. By the way, I commend both social care and healthcare workers because the majority of them have come forward to be vaccinated. Indeed, more than 94% of frontline healthcare workers have had both doses. We will bring forward a consultation on this, because there is a duty of care for those looking after vulnerable people in hospitals or care homes to be protected against covid.
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Jack Edgar Brereton (Conservative, Centre-right): Delivering covid booster jabs alongside flu vaccinations presents additional operational challenges. Will my hon. Friend do everything possible to co-ordinate these jabs, to ensure that we have very high uptake and to ensure the jabs arrive in Stoke-on-Trent in good time?
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is right to highlight that there is a group of older patients who received both doses with a three-week dosing interval, not a 12-week dosing interval. They will be our priority when it comes to boosters. The data from Cov-Boost is imminent, as I said earlier. The system is ready and primed to go as soon as we have that data, so that we boost the most vulnerable, including the group to which he refers, as quickly as possible to offer that additional protection.
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Robert Butler (Conservative, Centre-right): During the summer I visited the "Grab a Jab" van in Aylesbury, which proved especially popular with younger people. Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating everybody involved in rolling out that vaccination programme and in encouraging all 16 and 17-year-olds in the Aylesbury constituency to get their jab so that they can live a full life, whether studying, working or just having a good time?
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative, Centre-right): I certainly urge all 16 and 17-year-olds to come forward to get their jab and the protection and freedoms that go with it. I thank the "Grab a Jab" team in Aylesbury for all the work they have done.
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Michael Jon Wood (Conservative, Centre-right): The strongest incentive for getting the vaccine is obviously to protect yourself and your loved ones. Although the risk of covid to secondary school-age children may be low, the risk to those they live with could be much higher. Will the chief medical officers consider offering covid vaccines to 12 to 15-year-olds who live with immunosuppressed or other extremely clinically vulnerable people in their household?
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative, Centre-right): My understanding is that, for 12 to 15-year-olds who are healthy, the chief medical officer is looking at the impact on them specifically, whether it be their mental health or the other impacts of disruption to education. He is consulting widely with local directors of public health and the Royal Colleges.
National Insurance Contributions Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Defense
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry that I was not party to those discussions, but perhaps I can contribute as an ex-serviceman and a former armed services Minister. It is in the first 12 months out of the armed forces when a serviceman finds themselves in a completely different arena. I understand this. In my first six months, I re-joined the armed forces because I could not settle and I could not find the right sort of employment. That was the sort of help our veterans needed then and that is exactly what this part of the Bill does today.
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): With your permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will elaborate later in a speech, but the crucial thing about when the law was changed was that it was about the prescribed medical use of cannabis oil by a specialist consultant, not a GP. It was not about a spliff behind the bike sheds or anything like that; it was prescribed medical use that saved children’s lives. I agree with the hon. Lady that it is a disgrace we are still here today, debating it.
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Alberto Castrenze Costa (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for access to medical cannabis under prescription, having taken over from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning). One of my constituents, Maya, is nine years old and has a rare form of epilepsy. Her family are having to pay up to £2,000 a month for medical cannabis, despite the revisions of the guidance. I thank the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), who is in her place, for the good work she has already done, and I am very grateful for the correspondence that she and I have exchanged, but does the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) agree that the Government can do much more, particularly on liaising with clinical commissioning groups to get this medicinal cannabis to the children who need it?
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Adam Afriyie (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for making such a powerful presentation with great passion. Does she share my frustration—I am sure she does—that the debate around medicinal cannabis is often confused with people who just want to smoke dope and drop out? It frustrates me enormously, because people such as Murray, Karen and Jorja are all suffering from life-threatening, debilitating illnesses and we are talking about precise, prescribed medical treatments. Unless we can quickly sort out the authorisation of medical practitioners to continue to prescribe to these existing children and patients, we will be in a very dark place.
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Alberto Castrenze Costa (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Member for giving way for a second time. On that point, one thing I have discovered in the debate is the lack of confidence in the medical profession. In fairness to the Government, they do not have a role at all in enforcing the medical profession’s prescription of medication. Does she agree that the medical profession ought to listen to her and others in the House tonight, put its shoulder to the wheel and encourage its members to listen to the science and help those children across the country who need the medication badly?
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for being generous. Fortunately, we have time to debate this massively important subject this evening, which is what it deserves. The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), who co-chairs the all-party parliamentary group that I used to chair, is that specialist medics out there are writing the prescriptions, but they are being blocked and regularly threatened by other senior people in the medical profession. They are told, "Even though you are the expert and that would save a child’s life, if you do this, we will stop you." It is right that it is not a politician’s job. The will of the House is very important, as I will come to in my speech, but if the top-expert clinicians are writing prescriptions, some of which are honoured by the NHS—I will also come to that—and they are being blocked by other medics, somebody has to step in and sort the mess out.
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Adam Afriyie (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is making a powerful and passionate speech, and I thank him for his work in the Home Office and in pushing this through. Does he share my frustration that in many other countries around the world, including Germany, manufacturing is coming up to speed and producing well-defined products that could be exceptionally helpful, but because of the impasse we have here among the medical profession it will prove almost impossible to introduce those products here even though, based on the evidence we have, they are perfectly safe?
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): We are not reinventing the wheel, as my hon. Friend says: we started this but are now lagging behind the rest of the world. The product is slightly different—the oil has different forms of THCs in it. The Minister used to be my Parliamentary Private Secretary all those years ago—how the mighty fall, and how the mighty have risen up the greasy ladder—and she is passionate about trying to help on this, but it is not about Epidiolex; it is about the particular product being prescribed actually working, and it is normally to do with the levels of THCs I think this problem might be to do with the terrible word "cannabis" that we use in this country. This is not anything to do with cannabis, really; I wish we could invent another name for it and just say "oil with TCHs in it", because that would eradicate much of the fear that there is at present—and it is not just fear, it is dangerous to the argument.
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I completely agree on the medical profession and know exactly where the Home Office stood when I was at the Department. I would love to say that the whole of the Home Office and my civil servants in the narcotics part of it were thrilled by what I said in Westminster Hall all those years ago, but I can assure colleagues that they certainly were not, to say the least; fortunately, I had covered my back with the Home Secretary We need to move on from this, however. This is not about reform of the 1971 Act. It is about whether there is a group of children who we know get benefit from this, and whether, as we all know from our constituency postbags, there are other conditions that could also benefit from this type of oil with a THC product in it. That is where we are struggling We need to roll back this debate and talk, as I did at the start of my speech, about children—children who deserve the best possible start in life and just happen to have been born with a medical condition that the medical profession, in its infinite and great wisdom, has not quite got an answer for. This product is part of the answer, although it only alleviates the condition. As parents have said to me on many occasions, it does not take away the condition but it does let the children live a life as close to normality as possible; it is not normal, because it involves dropping oil on a little boy or girl’s tongue on a daily basis, but it is as normal as we can get.
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady was a brilliant co-chair with me for all those years; we agreed on most things even though there is a tiny number of things we do not agree on. The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I have a constituent who has now turned 18, although it is not the THC but another medical component that particularly helps her. People come out of the care of one part of the health service and there is a little bit of a transition period but there is very little research on the evidential base going forward, and we need to do that research Let me touch for a second on what has been said to me by senior medical people in the Department of Health and Social Care. They said, "We need to do trials, Mike. We need to use placebos. We need to find out whether this actually works or whether it doesn’t work." What parent on this planet is going to take their child off a medication that actually works, with the risk that they may get a placebo, have a seizure and die? Is that where we are in the 21st century, really and truly We had a statement earlier from the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi). We are a world leader in doing medical things. We have done things in this country around the vaccines that no one dreamed possible, yet we are talking about giving placebos—and those people were serious. I can tell the House that the parents were very serious, too. I cannot repeat some of the comments I got from some of the parents, but they quite rightly said—I will speak politely on their behalf—"Not in a million years." Let us put it in those terms I know that the Minister will do her level best, but this is not about the Government taking over Epidiolex. Yes, they need to pay for research—I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) about that—and research in this area could change the whole way that pain is addressed and perhaps get us away from using so many opioids, but this is actually just about having trust in the expert who has written the prescription for a child who may well die if he does not get that oil with the THC component on prescription.
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I alluded earlier to the narrow-mindedness of people who have taken an oath to protect people and protect children. No one, I would have thought, goes into the medical profession to hurt people, but at the end of the day, we have a group of children—not thousands, but a small group—whose parents are crying out, "Please listen to my specialist. Please listen to me, as a parent trying to save my child’s life."
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Alberto Castrenze Costa (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my right hon. Friend for the good work that he did as my predecessor on the APPG. Does he agree that, given that there is such a small number of children across the country who suffer from severe forms of epilepsy, a temporary measure would be for the Government to be bold and simply cover the cost of private prescriptions until we develop the proper framework, along with the science that demonstrates conclusively the efficacy of this medicine?
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I could not agree with my hon. Friend more strongly. That was what we did in the Home Office, which is why Alfie and some of the other children got their prescriptions paid for by the NHS. We set the committee up and we did it. I say again that I feel personally guilty, because we worked in all good faith to get the issue across to the Department of Health and it still has it, and those parents feel guilty, because they feel that other children should be having the benefits that Alfie is getting Surely, given the will of this House, the will of the Government, the will of previous Prime Ministers, the cross-party support, the fact that the previous Health Secretary came and met the parents here in the House and made them a commitment, and the fact that the Home Secretary who changed the legislation is now the Health Secretary, it must be a no-brainer. Let us look after these kids.
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Michael Penning (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry to come back in because I did speak at length, Mr Deputy Speaker. Some of the medics have tried all the other medications. Many of those, as I alluded to in my speech, are completely off-label, were never intended for this and have not worked, but they are willing to block the medical use of cannabis oil with THCs. Why?
Medicinal Cannabis — House of Commons, 2021-09-06
Topic: Health
Crispin Jeremy Rupert Blunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) on securing the debate and on her brilliant timing in doing so on an evening where we can debate not only the narrow issue being focused on by the wonderful campaign End Our Pain—the plight of these epileptic children. I do not have one of those children in my constituency, but a number of us do, and by goodness, if I did, I absolutely would be championing their cause. However, this discussion also needs to take place in the context of the whole debate about medicine and how we need to improve our nation’s and people’s access to medicines that work My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) was behind me on the day that I asked the urgent question that followed the march and the petition that we presented to Downing Street. It was when he leaned over to me in the Chamber and said, "We don’t agree about very much, Crispin, but I support you on this," that I realised that what I would have regarded as the Taliban, as far as drugs policy was concerned, had come on side. With enthusiasm, we embraced my right hon. Friend’s help because of his influence with the Prime Minister. Having worked with him, I will not disguise the fact that we come from a very different place on wider drugs policy; he managed to get me a splash in The Sun when he was taking the Psychoactive Substances Bill through the House, which was my moment of notoriety in the Chamber. However, the context of what we are considering today is a drugs policy in the United Kingdom that is nothing short of catastrophic We need to work towards creating institutions that can advise the Government with evidence, authority and expertise. The truth is that we have proceeded with drugs policy for more than five decades on the basis not of evidence, but of reputation and what people think—exactly what my right hon. Friend was saying about the implications of the word "cannabis" and what people adduce to it. We have not proceeded on the evidence.