argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2021-06-08
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): I pay tribute to my noble friend. He was an early bird in championing the vaccination of social care workers. He has made his point clearly and has definitely influenced policy in this area. I would like to reassure him that it is simply not the case that nothing has been done. A review is going through the matter at the moment. This is not something, I am afraid, that could be implemented by government fiat; it is important that we go through the process, not least to maintain people’s trust. One of the aspects of the successful vaccine rollout is that we have not behaved abruptly. We have not sought to admonish or to demonise anyone who is hesitant about taking the vaccine. Instead, we have sought to engage, and that is the reason why we are going through an extremely thorough review and engagement programme. I completely understand my noble friend’s frustration that this cannot be done more quickly, but I would like to reassure him that, on balance, this is the way in which to get the task done in the most impactful and effective way that we can think of On choral societies, I completely sympathise with my noble friend’s point. I was at Garsington Opera on Sunday, and my spirits were lifted by the sound of the singing in that wonderful place. I have only the assessment of the PHE officials to hand; it has become clear that the dangerous presence of aerosols in the air has been the really effective transmission mechanism for this dreadful disease. It is just an unavoidable and inescapable truth that people singing their heads off will fill a room with loads of infectious aerosol, and that is the reason why this decision has been made. It is regrettable, and I understand the consequences and I have been contacted by many who are concerned and affected by it. But I would like to reassure my noble friend that it has been done for the best reasons and for, I believe, very strong scientific reasons.
Elderly Social Care (Insurance) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-16
Topic: Health
Patrick Cormack (Conservative, Centre-right): Well, my Lords, this Bill may be many things but, in response to the noble Baroness who just spoke, irrelevant it is not I never thought that the apostle of privatisation would propose a measure of nationalisation to your Lordships’ House; he came clean on that, of course, but my belief is that my noble friend Lord Lilley—I am pleased to call him a noble friend—has done the House a great service. When she spoke, the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, reminded us how urgent this matter is. Incidentally, how good it is to see her among us in the Chamber. She has been assiduous on the screen but is much better in the flesh. She underlined the urgency If you want to underline the urgency still further, it is nothing less than a disgrace that the brilliant report produced by the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and presented to Parliament on 20 April last year, has yet to be debated in your Lordships’ House. I hope the acting Whip will take note of that and say that we want to deliver a collective rocket so that it can be debated in this House. It is right that it should be debated, alongside the ingenious set of proposals from my noble friend Lord Lilley The one thing we cannot escape is that this is an urgent crisis. We have to forsake some of our notions and shibboleths, because when my noble friend Lady Altmann said that this matter should be rolled in with the National Health Service, I believe she was absolutely right. Why have we not faced properly the problems of the health service? I rabbited on about this in the other place and have done so in your Lordships’ House. We have to face up to the fact that we cannot afford the National Health Service unless we have a special tax or charges on certain things for able-bodied working people, often earning high salaries, or a combination of the two. If we are to have a world-class health service, across the board—we have been reminded this year of how much we need it, and of the wonderful dedication of those in the NHS; how richly they deserve their GC—and world-class social care, it has to be paid for. I believe it has to be paid for by special tax or charges. I favour a combination of both My noble friend has performed a signal service by bringing this Bill before us. I hope it receives a Second Reading, so we can go into more detail in Committee.
Organ Tourism and Cadavers on Display Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-16
Topic: Health
Mohamed Sheikh (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, we must change the United Kingdom’s connection with unethical and unacceptable organ transplantation and harvesting. Successful organ transplants are an outstanding achievement. Such medical procedures, carried out with proper safeguards, save lives. I wholeheartedly support the practice. I am the president of the Conservative Muslim Forum, which has over 1,500 members. We are holding a meeting in September to explain the organ donation system in the country and how organ transplantation harvesting through force and financial coercion and without proper consent being obtained is totally unacceptable. This Bill, from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, intends to discourage Britain’s involvement in these practices. We must all give it our utmost support We appreciate that there are people who are in vulnerable situations and who are targeted or exploited for the value of their human tissue. In certain parts of the world, this practice is more common than in others. United Nations human rights experts are extremely alarmed by reports of organ harvesting in China. A tribunal chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC found that in China, the practice of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has gone on for several years. The Uighurs and Falun Gong practitioners have been particularly subjected to these inhumane practices I have spoken on this issue in your Lordships’ House previously and I had hoped that it had stopped. The practice of purchasing human organs places a price on somebody’s body or on their value as a human being. This is a violating of humanity, and ethically and morally wrong. Furthermore, this Bill will provide accountability. Patient-identifiable records should be initiated so that we can identify UK citizens travelling for these procedures. The system is shrouded in secrecy. This Bill will introduce suitable and effective regulations to identify the culprits who engage in these practices. Although the United Kingdom’s involvement may be small, this extensive trade is worth millions of dollars. Gangs and traffickers operate all over the world, exploiting people in underdeveloped countries to obtain organs for profit and without any proper aftercare I agree with the proposal set out in the Bill that appropriate consent should be made mandatory for cadavers that are imported and displayed in the country. The physical and financial coercion involved in sustaining this practice is inhumane and should be stopped. Through this Bill we can prevent the practice growing and close existing gaps in our legislation.
Organ Tourism and Cadavers on Display Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-16
Topic: Health
Ian McColl (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for presenting this valuable Bill. Of all the different operations that I used to do, kidney transplantation was the most exciting. When the vein and artery were connected to the donor kidney, it would spring to life. As a contribution to good Anglo-French relations, I pay tribute to France: the French kidneys were the best of all because they would start functioning immediately by peeing on the operating table. The reason for this was said to be French wine being a good diuretic. As there was always a shortage of kidneys, there was a European system for sharing in order to have the best match for each patient. Unfortunately, this shortage led to abuses of all kinds. On many occasions, live donors were paid to give their kidneys, for a relative or a stranger. It later transpired that genuine consent was often not obtained. Later, the horror of the Chinese practice of forcibly taking kidneys from prisoners came to light. The numbers involved have shocked the world, but is the world going to repeat its failure to take action against the Nazi atrocities, which also included horrific medical experiments on prisoners? Instead of an effective response to China, the West continues to allow it to buy up our industries, enabling the Chinese Government’s plan to dominate and control the world. When will the world wake up and take effective action On medical devices, it is worth saying that the medical profession has a history of reluctance to put foreign materials into bodies. The surgeon who pioneered the use of metal plates and screws to fix fractures was threatened with removal from the medical register. Another example was an eye surgeon, Harold Ridley, who was carrying out a standard operation for cataracts in 1949, simply removing the cataract and sewing up the eye. A medical student who was watching the operation suggested that perhaps the cataract should be replaced with an artificial lens. What the surgeon said at the time was not recorded, but he kept the suggestion in his mind and, the following week, he noticed a piece of plastic from a smashed windscreen in a pilot’s eye—but there had been no reaction to it. So began artificial lens implantation. In spite of great opposition, it was finally accepted 25 years later. New inventions are often opposed. Careful evaluation is essential to allow and promote good new developments as well as to stop harmful ones.
International Travel Rules — House of Lords, 2021-07-22
Topic: Health
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): I am unable to provide any insight to my noble friend as to what might happen in the future in terms of countries moving from one group to the next, but we look at a range of factors when making these decisions. Of course, we are reliant on the joint biosecurity centre for producing a risk assessment of the countries and territories. The factors that the JBC risk assessment considers are very varied. They include the genomic surveillance capability within the nation, the Covid-19 transmission risk and the transmission risk of variants of concern. A range of measures is incorporated into reaching these decisions.
International Travel Rules — House of Lords, 2021-07-22
Topic: Health
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): I am happy to provide some more information to the noble Baroness. GISAID data suggests that the beta variant accounts for around 5% of cases in France, with data earlier in the month suggesting it could be as high as 9%. This data does not include La Réunion. It includes Corsica, which is included in the quarantine policy, and Monaco. This data for the beta variant compares to similar data from Spain and Greece of less than 1%, so that it why we are concerned about France. It has nothing to do with La Réunion. That is why we took that decision. I cannot say at this time when that process will come under review. Of course, we would love to have people travelling to France again, but it was the right decision taken on the information available.
International Travel Rules — House of Lords, 2021-07-22
Topic: Health
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): We have ongoing conversations with all the devolved Administrations, because this is so important. I recognise the noble Lord’s point: if you are travelling to Northern Ireland, chances are you may be coming through one of the large airports in England. It is very important, but we must recognise that health policy is devolved. However, we have every intention of working as closely as possible with the devolved nations and ensuring that our interventions are as aligned as possible.
NHS Update — House of Lords, 2021-07-22
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am also enormously grateful for the contribution of NHS staff at all levels and from all parts of the United Kingdom. This pay settlement is based on the recommendations of the pay review body. We said that that was the mechanism we would follow, and we are following it; in that respect, we are doing what we said we would. I reassure the House that recruitment to the NHS is extremely strong. We are hitting our targets on the recruitment of 50,000 nurses and our targets for GP trainees and in other parts of the NHS.
NHS Update — House of Lords, 2021-07-22
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord has my profound commiserations. It is an extremely tough and nasty disease, as he rightly points out. Even for those who have had two jabs, if they get the disease it can still be a really horrible experience, which he has at this moment He is not quite right, though, on the mixed messages. We have been crystal clear from the very beginning, even before the first vaccine arrived, that the vaccination was not going to be a panacea in itself. It will not prevent all people from getting all Covid diseases for all time, immediately. These things are incremental. The societal impact of the vaccine is to drive down the infection rate to the point that R is below one; that is the objective. But, in the meantime, those who have had the vaccine not only remain infectious but can be heavily symptomatic, and I am very sorry for the position he is in. Incidentally, that is also true of the flu vaccine; it is not a 100% vaccine, but it does an enormous amount to break the chain of transmission and to reduce the spread of flu on exactly the same basis.
NHS Update — House of Lords, 2021-07-22
Topic: Health
Alan Haselhurst (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, if more people anxious to show their support for our magnificent NHS staff would see being vaccinated and wearing masks in crowded places as a smart move on their own part, would they not also see it, crucially, as sending a signal of support to all those in the NHS?
NHS Update — House of Lords, 2021-07-22
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, my noble friend hits the nail on the head. Not only is getting vaccinated and wearing a mask in the right settings a sign of support for NHS staff, it is a sign of support for the whole of society. We depend on each other during this pandemic. When someone catches the disease asymptomatically and spreads it to someone else, they hurt all of us. We all have to be careful to take our tests when we are going into a position of risk, to wear our masks when we are close together and, of course, now that the vaccine is available to all over 18 year-olds, to ensure that all the people we can persuade have taken two jabs.
NHS Update — House of Lords, 2021-07-22
Topic: Health
Richard Balfe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, while I am sure that we appreciate the work done by NHS staff, I remind noble Lords that it was NHS staff in the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford who put a "Do not resuscitate" notice on my good friend Caroline Jackson’s bed without her knowledge—she found out about it only much later. I have asked the Minister about this. The last Written Answer I got said that a report would be produced "in due course". Can the Minister ensure that these notices are rigorously reviewed before they are put on people’s beds and certainly not, as in the case of Mrs Jackson, put on the bed without her or her husband or anyone close to her knowing that it had been put there? Not all NHS staff are perfect.
NHS Update — House of Lords, 2021-07-22
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): As my noble friend will know, I know Dr Jackson extremely well from the old days and heard her story with great regret. I took the story back to the department and played it into the system, as I told him I would do. A report is being drafted and I can reassure my noble friend that it is being taken seriously. The clarification of guidelines has been sent to all wards and there has been additional training for staff put in the position of needing to consider and engage with loved ones on this issue. However, may I push back against my noble friend? It is not right to try to generalise about staff on this point. I have the highest regard for NHS staff. In the very large majority of cases, they have worked extremely well in difficult circumstances in these situations and they are owed our respect for that.
NHS Update — House of Lords, 2021-07-22
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have heard the noble Lord on this point two or three times and he makes the argument extremely well and persuasively. As he knows, a huge budget of the NHS goes on the workforce; essentially, the NHS is a mobilised healthcare workforce. It is intrinsic to the success of the NHS that we manage our workforce correctly. There are substantial workforce transformation programmes in place at the moment, including the People Plan, and a huge recruitment drive is going on, including the creation of a much clearer employer brand, which has landed very well among the workforce generally. However, I take the noble Lord’s point. I am not the workforce Minister but I will take it back to my colleague Helen Whateley in the department and ask her for her consideration.
NHS Update — House of Lords, 2021-07-22
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have followed it up. We have invested a huge amount in our statements. This takes up a large bandwidth for our broadcasters and of the advertising budget of the Cabinet Office and the department—we could not have spent any more money on advertising than we have done to try to get our messages across. However, some of these messages are difficult to understand and sometimes difficult to accept. We all wish that the vaccine was as clear-cut and emphatic as are the vaccines for polio or the other blockbuster vaccines. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, just described, and as poor old Sajid Javid is currently feeling, two jabs do not guarantee that you will not be infected and infectious. However, neither of them is in hospital and neither of them is suffering from severe disease. The message is nuanced: the vaccines work, will reduce transmission and will help us to get this country out of the disease, but people will still have to proceed with caution, isolate when they are in contact with those with the disease and protect themselves from transmission with masks and social distancing.
NHS Update — House of Lords, 2021-07-22
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend gives me an opportunity to raise one of my main ambitions for the health service, which is clearly outlined in the life sciences vision. She is right: we catch too much cancer at stage 3 or 4, when there is sometimes not much that we can do, and anything that we do will be very expensive and make only marginal differences. That is not the same in all countries and it is not good enough in this country. That is why we need to invest in diagnostics and preventive medicine. We need to reweight our health system away from clinical interventions on lumps and bumps at a very late stage. We need to interact with patients at a much earlier stage of their disease. Only in that way will we be able to afford the healthcare system that this country deserves and to give people longer, better lives.
Mental Health of Children and Young Adults — House of Lords, 2019-05-16
Topic: Health
Janet Royall (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. That was a splendid summing up and it has been an excellent debate. I leave believing this is a priority for the Government, but I am still worried. We have had so many powerful speeches today and testaments to personal experiences. Many charities have been mentioned, and I pay tribute to them and, likewise, to the many brilliant projects taking place with the universities in Manchester and the schools in Birmingham. There is so much happening, which gives me great optimism and hope. We have come a long way, as so many have said, and it is great that mental health is not the taboo it used to be. But far too many people are still suffering problems. I know that the Minister wants to do more, but we are all terribly impatient. Perhaps by working together we can make things move more quickly. There is so much more we could and should do. I am glad the Minister agrees with my noble friend about education and what we should be doing to make schools more joyful places, with more creativity and time for children. Our children need a happy, safe environment wherever they are, including in their schools, so I hope the Minister will work closely with her education colleagues and convince them they should be listening to her There has been more investment, and I suggest we need more investment to ensure that all these initiatives are not piecemeal pilots. They are not meant to be, as we want joined-up initiatives across the United Kingdom so, if any of our children are suffering, wherever they are, they will not be suffering in silence. If they need diagnosis or treatment, they will get that and it will be superb quality, wherever they are I feel relatively optimistic at the end of this debate, and I am glad and grateful to all noble Lords for highlighting these issues that are of such importance to individuals, and also to the future and well-being of our society. Thank you to everybody who participated.
House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings — House of Lords, 2021-05-20
Topic: Health
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal. As we meet today, we are still in the grip of a global pandemic that has significantly impacted all our lives and the working of our Parliament. The first national lockdown began on 23 March 2020. Two days later, when our House adjourned early for the Easter Recess, it was far from clear to anybody how or when we would return. That we were able to return after Easter, as scheduled, on 21 April was thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the staff of the House.
Arrangement of Business — House of Lords, 2021-06-15
Topic: Health
Thomas Ashton (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I would like to make a short statement about a change to our business tomorrow. Following the Prime Minister’s announcement that there is to be a four-week pause at step 3 of the Covid road map, new health protection regulations have been made and laid before Parliament today. To give the House the opportunity to debate these new regulations before they come into force, and following discussions through the usual channels, we will take that debate as our last business tomorrow, after the Second Reading of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill. A speakers’ list is open now and noble Lords will have until 6 pm this evening to add their names. We will also arrange for a copy of this information to be sent to Peers by email.