argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2016-05-10
Topic: Health
Questions: The Havant Men’s Shed movement has created community workspaces across my constituency, helping to boost mental health and wellbeing, especially for older residents. Will the Minister join me in congratulating the movement on its work and come to Havant to open its new building?; During March, at one of my local trusts the A&E ambulance target was missed for 937 patients, and more than 4,000 patients waited for more than four hours in A&E. Staff and management agree that this is a trust in crisis, with many wards staffed to less than half the minimum safe staffing levels. Patient safety is being compromised every day. Will the Secretary of State please stop passing the buck and act to stop the downgrade of Dewsbury and Huddersfield hospitals, because it is clear that our local healthcare is in absolute crisis?; Last month, Coperforma took on the patient transport contract for Sussex. Unfortunately, since then there have been unacceptable and serious delays for some very sick and elderly patients. May I have assurances that the Department of Health will follow up this issue?; In my corner of Essex, there is a primary care crisis: demand for GP services is rising, the supply of GPs is falling and many surgeries are simply no longer accepting new patients. What assurance can the Minister give me that we will definitely get more GPs, and when will we get them?; My constituent Archie Hill and his parents, Louisa and Gary, were really excited when, on 15 April, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommended that the drug Translarna—a breakthrough drug for children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy —should be funded by NHS England. Hon. Members can imagine what happened when, on 4 May, NICE unexpectedly announced that it required extra time to come to an agreement with NHS England. What is going on? We thought this drug had been cleared. Time is of the essence, because the boys affected are eligible for this drug only if they are still walking. Can we please look into this issue, and can we please go back to the original timetable? After all, these boys have had to wait several years to get to this stage.; Other EU countries charge us £650 million a year more for the health treatment of our citizens abroad than we do for the treatment of their citizens here. Is that because we cannot charge them, or because we have not got our act together?; Wigan A&E is expected to take a third of the patients turned away from Chorley A&E owing to Chorley’s unplanned closure, yet it has a similar ratio of staffing vacancies. What extra resources are being given to Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust to help it to cope with this crisis?
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): As my hon. Friend knows, I have done a shift as a porter in that hospital and seen for myself just how much it needs the extra investment to transform its facilities. I will happily look into the matter for him, and I am keen to see it progress as fast as possible.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2016-05-10
Topic: Health
Questions: The Havant Men’s Shed movement has created community workspaces across my constituency, helping to boost mental health and wellbeing, especially for older residents. Will the Minister join me in congratulating the movement on its work and come to Havant to open its new building?; During March, at one of my local trusts the A&E ambulance target was missed for 937 patients, and more than 4,000 patients waited for more than four hours in A&E. Staff and management agree that this is a trust in crisis, with many wards staffed to less than half the minimum safe staffing levels. Patient safety is being compromised every day. Will the Secretary of State please stop passing the buck and act to stop the downgrade of Dewsbury and Huddersfield hospitals, because it is clear that our local healthcare is in absolute crisis?; Last month, Coperforma took on the patient transport contract for Sussex. Unfortunately, since then there have been unacceptable and serious delays for some very sick and elderly patients. May I have assurances that the Department of Health will follow up this issue?; In my corner of Essex, there is a primary care crisis: demand for GP services is rising, the supply of GPs is falling and many surgeries are simply no longer accepting new patients. What assurance can the Minister give me that we will definitely get more GPs, and when will we get them?; My constituent Archie Hill and his parents, Louisa and Gary, were really excited when, on 15 April, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommended that the drug Translarna—a breakthrough drug for children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy —should be funded by NHS England. Hon. Members can imagine what happened when, on 4 May, NICE unexpectedly announced that it required extra time to come to an agreement with NHS England. What is going on? We thought this drug had been cleared. Time is of the essence, because the boys affected are eligible for this drug only if they are still walking. Can we please look into this issue, and can we please go back to the original timetable? After all, these boys have had to wait several years to get to this stage.; Other EU countries charge us £650 million a year more for the health treatment of our citizens abroad than we do for the treatment of their citizens here. Is that because we cannot charge them, or because we have not got our act together?; Wigan A&E is expected to take a third of the patients turned away from Chorley A&E owing to Chorley’s unplanned closure, yet it has a similar ratio of staffing vacancies. What extra resources are being given to Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust to help it to cope with this crisis?
Lucy Allan (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the Secretary of State for working so tirelessly to get the BMA back to the negotiating table. Will he confirm that Saturday pay for junior doctors will be at a 30% premium, which is above that for any of the hard-working midwives, nurses, firefighters, paramedics and so on in my constituency?
Key Stage 2 Tests — House of Commons, 2016-05-10
Topic: Health
Huw William Merriman (Conservative, Centre-right): As a parent who has a child who will do key stage 1 this year and another doing key stage 2, I find it absolutely outrageous that an individual has put my child’s chances at risk with this leak. Does the Minister agree that it would be better for the Opposition to bear that point in mind rather than playing politics with children’s testing?
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): That is very tricky, because there are two scenarios where we can go to war. One is quite straightforward: somebody attacks us and we get on with it, because we are given no choice. The other is a situation such as that under discussion, where we have reason to believe that something horrible could happen and the question arises of whether we should intervene One of the most problematic aspects of the Chilcot report is its statement that military action was "not a last resort" and that the peace process could have been given longer. The reality is that, unless an attack is launched on us, we can always go on talking for longer. I cannot think of any point at which it would be possible to say, "We have to launch an attack now because there is no prospect of continuing to try to find out without taking military action." The right hon. Gentleman talks about this House having to assess the intelligence, but I am not sure that that helps us too much. We can never be certain that what we are assessing is the whole picture, because sometimes, as those of us who have served on bodies such as the Intelligence and Security Committee will know, there are sources of intelligence that cannot be revealed. Therefore, to present raw intelligence to the House, without being able to say that there is other intelligence not being presented to the House, leaves the House in an anomalous position.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
John Charles Baron (Conservative, Centre-right): I have great respect for my right hon. Friend, as he will know. However, I suggest that, on this issue, it was not just about intelligence sourcing from here. The United Nations inspectors at the time were pleading for more time because they could not find the WMDs upon which premise we were going to war. We should have listened to them as well. Ultimately, the reason they could not find the WMDs is that they did not exist.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, but the problem that the inspectors and we would always have faced was summed up by something that was said at the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly. I was going to quote this later, but I shall do so now. On 21 August 2003, I attended the Hutton inquiry. In the course of giving evidence, Nicolas Rufford, a journalist, made a statement about a telephone conversation that he had had with Dr David Kelly in June 2003. Dr Kelly was, of course, a weapons expert, and knew all about the difficulties of detecting weapons stockpiles if they were hidden. In the course of that telephone conversation, Dr Kelly said to Mr Rufford that "it was very easy to hide weapons of mass destruction because you simply had to dig a hole in the desert, put them inside, cover them with a tarpaulin, cover them with sand and then they would be almost impossible to discover" So the question that we come back to once again is: if Tony Blair had come to this House and more honestly highlighted the question marks against the reliability of the intelligence, would he be as excoriated today as he has been? Let me be counterfactual for a moment. Let us suppose that some stocks of anthrax had been discovered and there had been a secret cache. Would we still be saying that the people who took the decision in 2003, on the basis of what clearly was an honest belief that Saddam Hussein might have deadly stocks of anthrax, were wrong? I have no hesitation in saying that although the Government may have exaggerated—and probably did exaggerate—the strength of the evidence they had, I believe that they genuinely expected to find stocks of these weapons.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): The answer to the second question is easy. What happened during those 13 years was the appearance on the international stage, in September 2001, of a group that had been around for a long time but had not previously succeeded in killing 3,000 people in the heart of New York and Washington DC. [Interruption.] Therefore, the issue at question, as we often hear quite rightly said in debates about international terrorism, was that the traditional policy—the technique of containment, which is usually the best technique to deal with rogue regimes that have weapons stocks—could no longer apply under the circumstances. It was feared that if an international terrorist organisation was, for any reason, supplied with a substance such as anthrax, rational deterrence would be ineffective in preventing the organisation from using it, no matter how suicidally.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Tobias Martin Ellwood (Conservative, Centre-right): Given the role that my right hon. Friend plays as Chairman of the Defence Committee, I wonder whether he could qualify the statement that he has just made, which caused a reaction in the House. He suggested that somehow the events of 9/11 created a different scenario in Iraq. Does he not agree with me that in 2003, al-Qaeda was not present in Iraq, and therefore the relationship between 9/11 and Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, cannot be made?
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I am nervous about opening up a new front for my right hon. Friend, but some of the deaths in Iraq were clearly of our soldiers, and Chilcot said that there were some "serious equipment shortfalls when conflict began" Two of my constituents died in action in Iraq—Sergeant Roberts died because he did not have the right body armour, and Flight Lieutenant Stead died because his Hercules did not have the proper suppressant foam fitted. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should never, ever, again send our armed forces into combat without properly equipping them for the task in hand?
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
John Charles Baron (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not think that we are saying different things. I am not suggesting that there was intentional deceit. What I am suggesting is that many of us in this place did not question sufficiently the evidence that was before us. The report from the Joint Intelligence Committee was full of caveats and holes, yet we relied on the Prime Minister’s interpretation, which was given in his foreword to the report I fully respect Members’ views as expressed on that fateful evening itself. If one cannot trust the Prime Minister, standing at the Dispatch Box making the case for war and, perhaps, privy to intelligence that we have not seen, it is a sad turn of events. However, I must return to the fundamental point that we should have questioned more, because there was a firm lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and such evidence was the premise for war. We must not forget that central consideration The reason the United Nations inspectors were pleading for more time, by the way, was that they could not find any weapons of mass destruction, and they could not find them because they did not exist. We should remember that it was the UN that was asking us to give it more time. The problem was that, at that point, we were marching to a military timetable.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
John Luther Mercer (Conservative, Centre-right): Absolutely. I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. We have come an extraordinarily long way. The processes at the time were simply unacceptable. Under this Government and this and previous Defence Secretaries, we have made real progress, but she is right that we do not want sympathy. We want a little more empathy and understanding of what we are doing. There is sometimes too much sympathy. We sign up and are proud to do so, but we do not expect to be ill- equipped or to be part of a mission that is ultimately badly planned and resourced Let us never lose the courage to speak truth to power—no matter our rank or position in life. Let us remember with humility the courage and sacrifice of our servicemen and women in Iraq. Let us make sure that we learn the lessons for the hundreds of thousands who lost their lives on either side, civilian or military. The human race can only evolve if we learn, and I sincerely hope we do.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Robert Alexander Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): I have the utmost respect for the right hon. Lady for all the work she has done over the years to try to get evidence against this regime. It is incredible work, and I pay great tribute to her. I have one question. I have never really understood where the chemical weapons went—where did they go?
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): I was not planning to intervene as I have made my speech, but—this is one of the knock-on effects of the matter we are discussing today—by the time we got to that vote we knew perfectly well that if we had passed that motion, the bombing would have started that weekend. All the planes were ready to go, and I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman is, if I may gently say so, naive enough to believe anything else.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): The Secretary of State has just listed the membership of the National Security Council. While it is revealing that all the intelligence services are individually represented, it is a fact that all the armed forces are represented only by the Chief of the Defence Staff. Will he give consideration to the Defence Committee’s suggestion that the Chiefs of Staff Committee could serve more usefully if it was constituted as the military sub-committee of the NSC?
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): I heard my right hon. Friend’s speech earlier today, in which he made that point at some length. I caution him against over-complicating the structure we have and setting up sub-committees of it. The armed forces are represented through the Chief of the Defence Staff, who attends not only the NSC, but the officials’ meeting that precedes it.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, particularly for his kind words. I am now serving my fourth Conservative Prime Minister; I do not think I have quite matched my right hon. and learned Friend’s record, but I am closing in on it. I will not be drawn on the possibility of serving yet another, given that my right hon. Friend the new Prime Minister has only been in office for a day. She and I did sit together on the NSC, as well as in Cabinet, and one can always look at these things again. It is not for me to instruct the new Prime Minister on how to run her Cabinet, but I will certainly ensure that my right hon. and learned Friend’s suggestion is passed on The NSC is a significant improvement on what went before it, in my right hon. and learned Friend’s time in government, and it is certainly an improvement on the kind of sofa government that the Chilcot report exposes. The NSC does not operate in a vacuum. The National Security Adviser, who attends it, is now a well-established position in Government, supported by a strong team, and the NSC and the adviser are supported by a structure of cross-government boards and sub-committees, to which the Ministry of Defence makes a full contribution. To answer the point raised by the Chairman of the Defence Committee, there is no shortage of ways in which the views of the chiefs are brought forward in that structure.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): I see a slight contradiction in the Secretary of State saying that it would over-complicate the machinery of the National Security Council if the heads of the armed services were allowed to form one of its sub-committees, given that there is evidently no shortage of other sub-committees. The fact remains that it is easier for politicians with bees in their bonnets to sweep aside the views of the Chief of the Defence Staff as a single individual, which appears to have happened in the case of Libya, than it is for them to sweep aside the views of the heads of the armed forces collectively. I wish that the Secretary of State would not be so resistant on this point.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): As I have said, the heads of the armed forces are represented on the National Security Council by the Chief of the Defence Staff, and the Chief of the Defence Staff who has been serving up to now is certainly not likely to be disregarded by the politicians who sit on the committee. Both he and his successor—I hope that the House will welcome the arrival of the new Chief of the Defence Staff today—are well able to hold their own against the politicians.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): I think that the Secretary of State has laid to rest the canard that the NSC operates without expertise, but I should like to reinforce that point. It is evident from the 2010 example of the strategic defence and security review that we on the NSC conducted, and from subsequent events, that expertise from the greatest experts in the country is frequently heard and always available to the NSC. Such expertise also populates the significant briefing papers that go before the NSC and informs the judgments that it makes.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): I can confirm that that is exactly the position. There is no shortage of briefing for members of the NSC. They are able to bring that expertise to the regular meetings of the council and to question the experts who are present. The recent strategic defence and security review shows how a cross-Whitehall approach is being implemented in practice and leading to better decision making.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Defense
Michael Fallon (Conservative, Centre-right): I shall talk about the lesson on the importance of planning for reconstruction in a moment. I just want to finish this important point about the machinery of government The Ministry of Defence has revamped its strategy and policy making with the institution of an annual defence plan that reflects the outcomes of the strategic defence and security reviews, with senior leaders in the Ministry being individually held to account for their role in delivering it, and a defence strategy group, chaired by the permanent secretary and the Chief of the Defence Staff, to address how Defence can best contribute to delivering defence and security policy objectives.