argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-14
Topic: Health
James Michael Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the Bill, particularly its intention to better integrate health and social care in England. As vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on obesity, I am pleased to see the introduction of restrictions on the advertising of high fat, salt and sugar products online, and on television before 9 pm. I would, however, emphasise the need for a level playing field between the two. As a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, I endorse the findings of our inquiry into the preceding White Paper, especially its comments on social care provision and workforce planning. I hope that these matters can be addressed as the Bill, and indeed the year, progresses The Bill also provides the opportunity to address some of the disparities in healthcare provision across the United Kingdom. Further to my constructive engagement with colleagues at the Department, I hope that the Minister for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), will consider four key proposals First, we should mandate the collection of an agreed set of UK-wide directly comparable data on NHS performance and outcomes, for clinical and research purposes. I am already engaging with the Office for National Statistics on how that could work in practice, and believe that the Bill could have an important enabling role to play. Secondly, data interoperability must be improved. It is unacceptable that the health service in Wales often cannot communicate in a fit-for-purpose way with services in England, and vice versa. Thirdly, my direct experience of working in the NHS leads me to feel strongly that inspection, safety and audit mechanisms should be introduced at a national level to ensure a minimum standard of care for all British citizens. Those who are managing inferior services must be able to learn lessons from more effectively run areas and, ultimately, be held to account Finally, I hope that the Bill can be used to provide people with equal access to and choice of secondary and tertiary healthcare services across the country, regardless of where in Britain they live. My constituent Ian Kightley was diagnosed with cancer in 2015. As a result of his treatment, he developed problems with his vision and required cataract surgery in both eyes. Like so many in north Wales, when he was advised of a two-year waiting list he was forced to pay for private healthcare, which he was able to do only through fundraising. Only in the last week, while working as a GP, I saw patients who had been advised of two-year waits solely for their first out-patient clinic appointments at Glan Clwyd Hospital This Bill provides a vital opportunity for us to level up healthcare and ensure that all our constituents can access the best treatment as soon as possible.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-14
Topic: Health
Paul Bristow (Conservative, Centre-right): I draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests I want to focus on two main areas of the debate: the role of patients in accountability and transparency; and tariffs—the way in which we pay for procedures and care. I support the Bill, but I hope that we have the means to address the deep-rooted cultural issue of regarding patients’ views as less valuable than those who work in our national health service. Before I was elected, I was often involved in advocacy campaigns. Patient groups would want to challenge NHS England’s commissioning policies or service specifications. These policies govern the technologies and procedures that are used to treat conditions, but the patient groups would find the decision-making processes totally impenetrable, as would the clinicians and health policy experts advising them. What chance do individual patients and relatives have to make their voices heard? The same impenetrability applies to clinical commissioning groups. Patient access to established procedures and technologies is blocked by local policies, but people have to be dedicated to find these policies on convoluted websites or page 178 of a 256-page document. For example, CCGs regularly restrict patient access to hip and knee procedures for patients with a body mass index of over 30. Extraordinarily, some CCGs allow procedures only for patients who have a BMI of less than 25. I would confidently predict that that would disqualify the vast majority of hon. and right hon. Members, and we should call it out for what it is, which is rationing Such rationing was routine before covid created massive backlogs in NHS waiting lists in some CCGs. Transparency and openness is the solution to these problems. A formal role for patients on ICS boards, a formal role for patients in the development of commissioning policies and creating a national appeals board for challenging commissioning decisions are all ideas that I hope Ministers might consider as the Bill progresses Finally, on tariffs, national tariffs are not perfect but they do incentivise providers to treat as many patients as they possibly can. The Bill states: "NHS England must publish…‘the NHS payment scheme’"— a document "containing rules for determining" the prices to be paid in future, including, for example, for hip and knee procedures. Tariffs have led to hip and knee procedures and other procedures being done at volume and at scale, certainly, at least, when commissioners agree to pay for them. High volumes of elective procedures have been a good thing and the current elective backlog is probably the biggest challenge that the NHS faces coming out of the pandemic, so whatever ends up in that document, it needs to be clear, transparent and provide incentives for high-volume procedures to be carried out at pace and at scale.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-14
Topic: Health
Peter James Guy Aldous (Conservative, Centre-right): Generally, the Bill is to be welcomed as it seeks to promote collaboration and the integration of local health and care services. It aims to give local people, local clinicians and those running local NHS and care services more control over the way that health and care services are delivered. The King’s Fund highlighted that the Bill will remove "clunky" competition rules and make it simpler for health and care organisations to work together and deliver more joined-up care to more people. That said, it is important to recognise that the last 16 months have been very challenging and very exhausting for those working in health and care, and in many respects, the last thing that they now need is yet another NHS reorganisation. Groups such as the BMA have concerns and I urge the Government to look at those closely in Committee I wish briefly to highlight two issues. First, I urge the Government to retain the existing boundaries, with the Waveney area remaining in an ICS with Norfolk. To change the boundaries to make them coterminous with the two counties would be highly disruptive and an unnecessary distraction, and it would demotivate hard-working staff. It would place at risk the health integration that has taken place in the area in recent years. To achieve better collaboration with care services, it is better to build on the existing foundations rather than to dismantle them. In many respects, boundary wars have been going on behind closed doors for the past seven to eight months, though I am grateful to both the Secretary of State and the Minister for listening to my concerns in recent weeks. I urge them to retain the status quo Secondly, the health issue that has taken up most of my time in recent weeks is NHS dentistry—or rather the lack of it. Many of my constituents are in agony and local NHS dentists urgently need the funds to see more patients. We are gradually moving towards a short-term solution, but it has taken far too long. In the longer term there needs to be greater accountability; dentists need to have a voice on integrated care boards; dental budgets should be protected; and steps must be taken to tackle the staffing crisis In conclusion, the Bill provides a statutory footing to ways of working that are in many respects evolving naturally. However, there are potential pitfalls, particularly —from my perspective—the changing of ICS boundaries, which I urge the Minister to avoid at all costs.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-14
Topic: Health
Philip Martin Dunne (Conservative, Centre-right): I am pleased to support the Bill. It is the first significant reorganisation of healthcare in recent years, and only the second since the Conservatives came into office following 13 years of Labour Administrations who reorganised the health services nine times, so we should not be taking lessons from the Opposition on the timing or the fact of putting things right The Bill is very substantial legislation that learns lessons from the way in which the NHS has had to work during the covid pandemic. In particular, the flow-through of patients discharged out of the acute sector as a result of much closer working with social care and local authorities is an integral part of creating the new integrated care boards. I very much welcome the fact that they are being established on a statutory footing and that there will be representation from local authorities and a role for health and wellbeing boards to provide local oversight. That is an essential step to allow the healthcare economy across our communities to collaborate effectively, and to remove some of the artificial barriers I will touch briefly on three other points. On the measures proposed for reconfiguration, we in Shropshire have been at the wrong end of a protracted reconfiguration process for our acute hospitals. Streamlining the process by which decisions are made will benefit patients. In Shropshire, it has taken several years to reach the point at which decisions can be made, and at every stage obstacles are put in place that add to delay and uncertainty. As a consequence of that, it is hard to attract staff to a system not working as well as it should, and the system has gone into special measures. The provisions to streamline difficult decisions are therefore very welcome Secondly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, said, the Bill is somewhat light on workforce, but it does include key measures to speed up the ability of physicians trained in other systems to be welcomed into the NHS or to return to the NHS and if they have retired. I urge Ministers in Committee to look carefully at what can be done—
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-14
Topic: Health
Anne Marie Morris (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the Bill, and I particularly welcome its aims and objectives to provide the best possible health and care to everyone in this country. However, to achieve that, things must change in the legislation. It must have explicit provisions for mental health, not just physical health. It must also include provisions for children’s social care, not just adult social care, and provide for the commissioning of not just medical services, doctors, nurses, infrastructure and hospitals but medicines and devices, which we know have been crucial in the fight with covid How are we going to do that? First, we need to include parity of esteem clauses—one for mental health and one for social care. We need to define what we mean by parity of esteem, which will be a first: what are we going to put in? Not just money; what processes will we promise to deliver? What healthcare outcomes are we looking to deliver? We need the same for mental health and social care—both are deserved As others have said, we need a proper workforce plan, but it must cover not just health but social care, and it must look specifically at how we will deal with recruitment. How will we deal with the career path in future? How will we look at training and retention for the future? There should be an integrated plan, not one for health and one for care. Our nurses, for example, work across both systems We need to provide for the commissioning of medicines and devices. Currently, it is a postcode lottery. The previous legislation on medicines and devices covered licensing, but not commissioning. Patient choice depends upon forming that system so that everyone gets access to the medicines approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Currently, that is not the case We must positively review the big-picture strategy. What do we need? What are the skills we need for health and care? We must look broadly, not narrowly. We must look at what greater role our pharmacists can play. How can we improve our training so that people have more general skills that we can use in a pandemic such as this, so that everyone in the health system can be used? To support that, we will need to rework the membership provisions for the ICBs and the ICPs. We will need to amend the data regulations to ensure that they can go beyond the boundary of the NHS, and we will need to look at our medicines directory—the sister of the devices registry—to ensure that it includes information from research through to patient experience. There is much to do; it can be done. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-14
Topic: Health
Theresa Anne Villiers (Conservative, Centre-right): I confess that I am wary of NHS reorganisations, but as Sir Simon Stevens told the Health Committee, this one is almost unique in being primarily a response to a series of requests from the NHS to Parliament. In delivering a more integrated health and social care system, the Bill will implement a number of proposals in the NHS’s own long-term plan and crucially, as other hon. Members have said, the Bill is accompanied by the commitment to raise NHS funding by £33 billion—the largest cash increase in its 73-year history I would hope that, in putting the integrated care systems on a statutory footing, Ministers will give them a strong mandate to conduct and fund research. The pandemic has shown the vital importance of research. Not only did the Oxford University scientists deliver a world-leading vaccine in record time, but their recovery trial established dexamethasone as the first effective treatment for covid, saving thousands of lives The report that I co-authored for the Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform sets out a blueprint for a new regulatory architecture for clinical trials to replace the EU clinical trials directive. The Bill could be an opportunity to take those reforms forward, along with our ideas on a more modern approach to health data. These plans would improve the chances of discovering better treatments for life-threatening diseases and could unlock huge economic opportunities, capitalising on the abilities of our world-leading scientists and universities As many have said, the Bill must be used to improve workforce planning. As demands grow on the NHS, we must continue to expand capacity, and we cannot do that unless we are training and recruiting the people we need. In particular, we must have more GPs so that our constituents can get the care that they need when they want it. GPs are currently under unprecedented demand pressure. I urge the Minister to ensure that the Bill gives GPs a strong voice in the new structures to ensure that local input is given to those new structures. Supporting the NHS will always be a key part of the work that I do as MP for Chipping Barnet, because I know how important it is to my constituents. Knowing that the NHS is there when we need it is one of the greatest advantages of living in our United Kingdom. The covid emergency has reinforced that a thousand times over, and I take the opportunity to pay tribute to the staff of our NHS and thank them for their courage, dedication and professionalism.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-14
Topic: Health
Robert John Blackman (Conservative, Centre-right): I strongly support the Bill. However, although it contains strong measures to combat obesity, there is none to tackle smoking, which is the leading cause of preventable premature death, including cancer. I declare an interest as chairman of the all-party group on smoking and health. The report we proposed suggested that we implement the "polluter pays" levy that the Government promised to consider two years ago. The Bill is the ideal opportunity to introduce such a levy. Analysis by Cancer Research UK shows that we will not achieve the Government’s aim of a smoke-free England until 2035—the Government target is 2030, so years later—in our poorest communities, so there is no time to waste. We must get on with the job In the Government’s recent paper on public health, they accepted that they have a responsibility not only to help people improve their own health, but to go further when it comes to industries that are based on addictions such as smoking. The Bill is the ideal opportunity, and I urge the Government to consider the recommendations laid out by the all-party group and table them as amendments in Committee, so that we tackle the most deadly addiction in our society We need to combat not only smoking rates but the long-standing, unacceptable health inequalities that exist across the country. The plan needs to be comprehensive, but it will not be effective without sufficient additional and sustainable funding. A smoke-free 2030 fund, using the industry to pay for it, but without industry interference, could pay for the comprehensive measures that we need to reach that ambitious target across all socioeconomic groups On the plan to combat obesity, there is a measure that will be harmful to many of our media companies, but it will not hit some of the social media and online companies. That runs the risk of having a two-stage process. Perhaps we could consider having limits at weekends to limit the impact of junk food advertising on TV when our young people are watching Overall, however, this is a good Bill. We should support it, and we should support our national health service that has brought it before us today.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-14
Topic: Health
Derek Gordon Thomas (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome this Bill, and I pay tribute to my NHS managers and social care managers in Cornwall. They have been straining at the bit for a long time to integrate more effectively and more successfully, and the Bill will help them to formalise that integration and do a good job of it In the short time I have, I want to talk about the patient’s perspective. We know that diabetes, for example, costs the NHS and social care a colossal amount of money, and we also know that across the UK we have pretty much all the tools, treatment, care, support and devices so that someone with diabetes can manage their condition and live, as much as possible, a full and good life. We also know that, because of the current situation, that care is not joined up and is not universal across the country. I hope the Bill delivers, for diabetes, a joined-up, clear pathway from diagnosis—I welcome the emphasis on prevention, too—through their lifetime, as they manage this lifelong condition. The Bill enables them to get every bit of support and care and every device they need to live full lives, to manage their care and to take an active part in society as a whole I am talking about people with diabetes because I chair the all-party parliamentary group on diabetes, which I should have declared, but the Bill also provides a blueprint for all sorts of lifelong conditions that enables people to live their lives successfully in their community.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2021-07-14
Topic: Health
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): She did In response to the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), I am again grateful for her comments and happy to accept her kind invitation to join her on a visit to Scotland The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made a very important point. In doing so, he rightly paid tribute to the work in this space done by my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) with her recent private Member’s Bill. As the Secretary of State said, either he, I or the relevant Minister will be happy to meet him to discuss it further. My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti) was right to talk about the need for local flexibility. That is what we are seeking to do The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) asked more broadly about public spending constraints after 2010. He is brave, perhaps, to mention that. I recall the legacy of the previous Labour Government, which the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) summed up pretty effectively in saying, "I’m afraid there is no money." On social care, which a number of hon. and right hon. Members mentioned, we will take no lessons from Labour. In 13 years, after two Green Papers, a royal commission and apparently making it a priority at the spending review of 2007, the net result was absolutely nothing—inaction throughout. We are committed to bringing forward proposals this year. Labour talks; we will act The NHS is the finest health service in the world. We knew that before the pandemic, and the last year and a half have only reinforced that. It is our collective duty to strengthen our health and care system for our times. I was shocked, although probably not surprised, that the Opposition recklessly and opportunistically intend to oppose the Bill—a Bill, as we have heard, that the NHS has asked for—once again putting political point scoring ahead of NHS and patient needs. For our part, we are determined to support our NHS, as this Bill does, to create an NHS that is fit for the future and to renew the gift left by generations before us and pass it on stronger to future generations. We are the party of the NHS and we are determined to give it what it needs, what it has asked for and what it deserves. I encourage hon. Members to reject the Opposition amendment, and I commend the Bill to the House.
Mandatory Vaccine Passports — House of Commons, 2021-09-23
Topic: Health
Questions: With reference to his Department's “COVID-19 Response: Autumn and Winter Plan 2021”, if his Department will publish scientific evidence in support of the efficacy of mandatory vaccine passports.
Nigel Adams (Conservative, Centre-right): And I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on a magnificent display in Chorley over the last week. I think that if there were to be an election there, the majority would be in six figures following such a splendid occasion. Chorley turned out for it The Cabinet Office conducted a review of covid status certification, which found that its use would have a public health benefit, on the basis of evidence gathered from bodies such as the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies and from the events research programme. Analysis of the ERP conducted by Public Health England found that certification should reduce the likelihood of someone transmitting highly infectious amounts of virus to large numbers of attendees. The autumn and winter plan published this month set out the Government’s position, which is that we will keep mandatory certification in reserve in case it is required to help prevent unsustainable pressure on the NHS and to enable venues to remain open more safely.
Mandatory Vaccine Passports — House of Commons, 2021-09-23
Topic: Health
Questions: With reference to his Department's “COVID-19 Response: Autumn and Winter Plan 2021”, if his Department will publish scientific evidence in support of the efficacy of mandatory vaccine passports.
Nigel Adams (Conservative, Centre-right): We have published brief summaries of the evidence in the autumn and winter plan, which is publicly available on gov.uk. As I said earlier, we are keeping vaccine certification in reserve in case it is required to help prevent pressure on the NHS. We hope that it will be unnecessary, but the responsible thing to do is prepare for all eventualities.