argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
NATO Brussels Summit 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-07-16
Topic: Defense
Alan William John West (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, has a good point: I have said previously in this Chamber that we are no doubt deluding ourselves. We have a sense of complacency. Experts, lay men, the Back-Benchers of both Houses and the HCDC itself have all said that we are spending insufficient money on defence, and talking about the extra things that NATO can do and how it can help is nonsense if we cannot even pay enough money to support our own defence forces. However, my question does not relate to that; my question relates to what was said about defence and security agreements with the European allies as we move forward with Brexit. Is it true that, once we leave the European Union, in any operation such as Atalanta off the Horn of Africa, the most senior post that any British officer will be able to hold is that of lieutenant-colonel, whereas at the moment British officers command many of these operations? What are the implications of that?
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-05
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister, although I am reeling from the shock that he thinks that I called for a second Second Reading debate to take place on a Clause 1 stand part discussion I of course agree that the current system is not fit for purpose. I agree with the Minister and with the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and other noble Lords. I agree with the need for a streamlined system, but it has to be the right system. I say to the noble Baroness that one of the briefings that I received was from 39 Essex Chambers, which is pretty expert in this area. It was a very interesting piece by Victoria Butler-Cole which sets out seven changes to the Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill that the courts are likely to make unless Parliament gets there first We have to be very careful that in wishing to support the Government to get a streamlined process through we do not build in mistakes and errors that, rather like the Cheshire West decision, will lead to the court, and then to further legislation. In her piece, Victoria Butler-Cole says that the Court of Protection has a record of rejecting capacity assessments conducted by consultant psychiatrists with years of training in mental health and specifically in relation to the MCA. The Bill permits care home managers to assess capacity in this context. There is no way that will withstand scrutiny by the court, and there are likely to be even more cases in which assessments of incapacity are overturned as care home managers with little or no relevant training are required to carry out what can be a complex task. That seems to me to be the problem I know that this has to be signed off by the local authority. The impact assessment makes it clear that in the vast majority of cases that will be a desktop exercise. That does not fill me with confidence that these assessments will be scrutinised effectively by local authorities which themselves are very hard pressed. That is why I think that, when it comes to the detailed amendments, this is a very important part of this legislation. We need to be very careful to ensure that this is going to work effectively On training, the noble Lord has made some very welcome comments, but I refer to the fact that there is an annual turnover of 27% in this sector among the people who are going to have to do this work. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, that I was trying to be polite. This is a very vulnerable sector, with low-paid people who have low qualifications being asked to deal with issues to do with the fundamental liberty of people in this country My gut feeling is that it will not do. This cannot be left to care managers. The Government will have to look again at the Law Commission’s assumption that local authorities would do the work. I of course do not wish to prevent Clause 1 standing part of the Bill.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-09-05
Topic: Health
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): These Benches support the amendment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and others have said, the reference to unsoundness of mind is offensive to those with learning disabilities, dementia and brain injuries and their families. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, has just demolished all the legal arguments for including the phrase in the Bill, and indeed a lot of organisations, including the Royal College of Psychiatrists, say that it out of place in today’s society. The GMC argues that it is not clear what added protection or benefit is achieved by using the term. VoiceAbility says that "unsound mind" is not used in modern psychiatry and that it could lead to debate in disputes. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will be as agreeable about this amendment as he was about the last one.
Single Source Contract (Amendment) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-07-09
Topic: Defense
Denis Tunnicliffe (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for presenting the regulations. Part 2 of the 2014 Act and the subsequent Single Source Contract Regulations 2014 are supported by these Benches. Unfortunately, I have lived through every bit of their creation and evolution. The key thing is: are they effective? The way to judge their effectiveness is, first, to understand the mechanisms, which the Minister has been invited to expand on, and, secondly, to look at how extensive they are. Does the Minister have at hand how much is being spent on equipment and infrastructure in a typical year, say, 2017-18? How much of that is single sourced? I believe the answer is nearly half. What proportion—and this is the key issue—are qualifying defence contracts? I wonder if he has similar figures for contracts with BAE The Explanatory Memorandum says that three of the five categories are "working well", meaning that they describe the exclusions clearly. Two relate to land, I believe, and the third to government-procured equipment. Three are new or modified. The first, Regulation 7(b), is where there is international co-operation. The modification is that there should not be an exclusion if all parties agree. I have great trouble working out why parties would want to agree, because the mechanism is designed to give the Government, the SSRO, the MoD or whoever a better understanding of what is happening in the contract, giving them rights to challenge the suppliers. Why would anybody want to agree to this? Have any firms actually agreed to this The second modification relates to "intelligence activities". This is clearly a case of unintended consequences because all intelligence activities are currently excluded. This turns it on its head to require only those contracts that are a risk to national security to be automatically excluded. Paragraph 7.9, I think, of the Explanatory Memorandum effectively defines "risk to national security"; that is, reports that would normally be required by the SSRO would contain information above a certain security level. Am I right in that understanding? Am I right that the key test will be the security level of the information that the SSRO would naturally demand if they became qualifying contracts? Otherwise, how is national security defined and who defines it The final modification relates to what one might loosely describe as novation. That does not give me any pain at all The key question about the modifications is: how many more, or what greater proportion of, single-source contracts will be brought into the ambit of the Single Source Regulations Office by these changes? Will the number be trivial or substantial? My final question relating to the order is: when will the MoD respond to the other SSRO recommendations Lastly, I have a question that is completely out of order. I point out to the Minister that the NATO summit is, I think, on Wednesday and Thursday. Will he give some indication of when he will give an overview of the defence modernisation programme promised before the NATO summit?
Civil Liability Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-06-12
Topic: Health
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I shall speak very briefly to the amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. There is not, I think, a great deal of difference across the House on the need to ensure that there are proper medical reports and that the MedCo website should be used. The amendments would allow the Government to employ others with medical qualifications, in addition to MedCo, if that was thought to be helpful. Our amendments expressly state that there must be appropriate medical evidence of injury. The amendments are fairly straightforward: we do not dissent from those of the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and we hope that the Government will look sympathetically on the amendments here.
Afghanistan Update — House of Lords, 2018-07-11
Topic: Defense
Denis Tunnicliffe (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, and join him in paying tribute to those who have served in Afghanistan. We remember in particular the 456 service personnel who died and those who have suffered life-changing injuries I too believe that Afghanistan is a better place as a result of our efforts. We have achieved this through co-operation with our NATO allies. Nevertheless, a further commitment of 440 personnel is significant, and it is our duty to probe this. Noble Lords will understand that 440 on the ground will involve many times that number, as personnel are trained, deployed and rested It is appropriate to pause at this point. We will be sending people into harm’s way, and we civilians do not really understand what that is like. This place is enriched by the number of people who have done that; we even have one who has been in harm’s way. Afghanistan is a dangerous place, and NATO personnel were killed in the early days of these training missions. I wonder whether the Minister can give us a sense of the risk involved by telling us how many NATO personnel have been killed since the end of NATO ground operations, which I believe was at the end of 2014 I shall now turn briefly to the Chilcot inquiry, if I may. I am told that it contained 2.4 million words, but I felt that it really had only two key recommendations: first, that the decision to commit military personnel should be taken by due process; and secondly, that before taking the first step one should have a plan for the second and subsequent steps On the first step, can the Minister explain the process by which the decision was made? Who was involved? Was the FCO or DfID part of the decision? Was the Prime Minister? What criteria were set to measure success? How were the risks to our troops’ lives assessed? Can the Minister assure us that the risks are indeed minimal, and that there are no scenarios in which our people will be drawn into combat operations Secondly, how long will the deployment last? Is there an end date, or at least a set of criteria to measure success and, hence, lead to withdrawal? Have all scenarios been considered We all hope and pray that the mission is successful but, sadly, history is littered with limited military interventions turning into full-scale war. Can the Minister assure us that in no circumstances will that be allowed to happen? I have complete faith that our people will be able to help the Afghans fight more effectively, but could the Minister give us more detail on the training that will be provided? Will it be complemented by softer essential skills such as policing, particularly with respect to corruption, and governance? Will the further input to produce those skills come from the FCO and DfID, or will our allies provide the resource?
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-15
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for that invitation. Amendment 50ZA refers to circumstances in which the pre-authorisation review is not undertaken by an approved mental capacity professional. Paragraph 18(2) of Schedule 1 sets out the circumstances where that applies, stating that the AMCP will be brought into play where, "the arrangements provide for the cared-for person to reside in a particular place, and it is reasonable to believe that the cared-for person does not wish to reside in that place, or … the arrangements provide for the cared-for person to receive care or treatment at a particular place, and it is reasonable to believe that the cared-for person does not wish to receive care or treatment at that place" Paragraph 20 of Schedule 1 sets out what the person carrying out the review needs to do, "if the review is not by an Approved Mental Capacity Professional", but it does not say who should do it. I want to raise this issue with the Minister. Clearly, there is concern that it may not come to the attention of the responsible body that the cared-for person does not wish to be treated in a particular place or receive a particular form of care or treatment. We could go back to the architecture of the Bill. We think that it puts too much authority in the hands of the care home manager who, in many cases, has to unlock the door to allow these concerns to be raised. Given that some people should be assessed with their review undertaken by an AMCP, but this will not happen, it is important to know the circumstances under which the review would then take place Essentially, my amendment is a probing one. The pre-authorisation review referred to in paragraph 20 of Schedule 1 does not have to be done by an AMCP, but Amendment 50ZA says that the person who undertakes it should at the very least, "be qualified as a medical practitioner, nurse, social worker, speech therapist, occupational therapist or other profession as may be specified in regulations" That covers the point made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, that those professions are regulated. It is important for us to be clear. Some people may fall through the net and not be seen to qualify under paragraph 18(2) of Schedule 1. Therefore, the people doing the reviews who are not AMCPs must have enough professional standing to identify problems that might arise. I hope that the Minister, who is in a concessionary mood today, will agree to look at that.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-15
Topic: Health
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 31 and 48 from the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly. Apart from supporting the amendments and regarding the approved mental capacity professional as an issue of great importance in the Bill, I did so to be able to ask a few questions It might be simply that I do not understand, but my concern is this: how will the person who cannot object, but who needs to object, do it? The Bill states that people can automatically access the approved mental capacity professional if they object, but what happens for the person who cannot object but probably ought to? Who decides that a person’s family or those around them will be consulted to make sure that, if there is a need for an objection, it is heeded, which then puts them in the right place to access the AMCP? Those concerns have been expressed by lots of our colleagues in different ways. It is still not clear to me how that will happen. How will that person be protected under those circumstances?
Defence Fire and Rescue Project: Capita — House of Lords, 2018-06-21
Topic: Defense
Denis Tunnicliffe (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer. I have to admit to being little short of amazed by this award. Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph said: "An assessment by financial analytics experts from Company Watch, which is used by the MOD, gave Capita a risk score of 10 out of 10. The higher the figure, the greater the perceived level of financial distress. Published on June 6, the report also measured Capita on a separate metric, a so-called health score, which plunged to just three out of 100" All in defence know the appalling mess Capita made of the Armed Forces recruitment programme, which has been saved only by the Armed Forces duplicating the work Capita should have done. Surely Her Majesty’s Government—of the party that is supposed to understand business—understand that the Capita business model is bid low, exploit the contract to its limit and cut costs remorselessly. How will Her Majesty’s Government ensure that the inevitable cost-cutting will not result in the death of members of the Armed Forces?
Long-term Plan for the NHS — House of Lords, 2018-06-19
Topic: Health
Jill Pitkeathley (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, in the Statement the Minister referred to full integration between health and social care. Does he mean full integration of services, work force and budgets? If so, is he confident that it can be done without the kinds of reorganisation that all of us dread?
Drugs Licensing — House of Lords, 2018-06-19
Topic: Health
Robert Maurice Lipson Winston (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, perhaps I may take odds with my noble friend Lord Rosser on the Front Bench because there are times occasionally when members of the Opposition should congratulate the Government on what they are doing. This is a good decision which is urgently needed. To be fair to the Government, 20 years ago I chaired the Science and Technology Select Committee when we had an inquiry into the medicinal purposes of cannabis and, before our report was even published, the then Home Secretary in a Labour Government refused to take any notice of what we had said and published his comments in the newspapers. So we are making progress here It is good to see that the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, is also on the Front Bench with the Minister because this is an important issue which the Department of Health should also consider. I am glad that there is joined-up government in this consideration Given my experience from that committee, it might be worth while looking at our original report, which is still relevant. The people that we saw again and again who were suffering from these terrible conditions were absolutely clear that they did not want to get high. They were all suffering from spasms and other problems and wanted relief of their serious symptoms. That can be regulated through the medical profession because, after all, sensible medical practitioners have access to all kinds of drugs which, if used wrongly, are dangerous I hope the Government will continue with their plans and that the review will not take an age to complete.
Drugs Licensing — House of Lords, 2018-06-19
Topic: Health
Frank Ashcroft Judd (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I feel that we should certainly put on the record our appreciation of the steps the Government are taking. I declare an interest in this because for some time my daughter and her partner worked with drug addicts. They would never leave me in peace on the issue of how soon we could move to an understanding in our society that drugs are primarily a health issue, not a crime issue. They used to berate me about the amount of resources used for anti-criminal activity and how they could have been deployed so effectively in positive work, not least education in and around the subject I should like also to put on the record our deep appreciation of the courage of the parents and families who are standing by these two boys, but I hope that we are now beginning a process which will have its own self-generating logic within it so that we can reach a more enlightened and effective—that is the important word—policy on drugs and their use in medical treatment.
Modernising Defence Programme — House of Lords, 2018-12-18
Topic: Defense
Desmond Browne (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I woke this morning to the news of the transformation fund of £160 million. Clearly, that was what the MoD briefed last night from this Statement because that was what the Secretary of State wanted the media to focus on—and they have done, for most of today. So I too will focus on this in your Lordships’ House. Since the Statement was first made, the MoD has briefed further that the fund will be used in part to look at artificial intelligence and its uses in a series of new programmes, as well as—this is the phrase that I understand was used—tackling threats to submarines. These must be new threats. The Statement itself expresses another ambition for it, saying: "This fund will be available for new innovative military capability which allows us to stay one step ahead of our adversaries" This seems a heroic ambition for £160 million. I say that because, in 2014, Google paid £400 million for a University College London spin-out called DeepMind. The 2017 accounts of that business show that Google DeepMind staff costs are in excess of £200 million a year. So it does not seem that £160 million will go very far in that challenging environment In order that your Lordships’ House and others who will have to do so can assess what this money will be used for and whether that is a justifiable use with any significant result, can the Minister explain—either today or in writing—what series of new programmes this money will be deployed to develop? What are these new threats to our submarines that need to be tackled and are not already accounted for in the MoD budget?
Modernising Defence Programme — House of Lords, 2018-12-18
Topic: Defense
James Donnelly Touhig (Labour, Centre-left): In the Statement we are told that the Government wish, "to improve markedly the way we run Defence", and that: "Based on our work to date, we expect to achieve over the next decade the very demanding efficiency targets we were set in 2015" Can the Minister remind the House of how much money the 2015 defence review said would be saved by efficiency savings and over what period? How much has been saved to date? Have any service personnel been deployed to work in the MoD to fill vacancies caused by civil servants leaving because of efficiency savings achieved to date?
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill — House of Lords, 2018-12-17
Topic: Health
Alan William John West (Labour, Centre-left): Everything the noble Baroness is saying supports the importance of Prevent, which I think all noble Lords would agree with. That is not really the issue. What we are saying is that, given that it is really important, does it not make sense to have a review to look at whether we can make it even better?
Gatwick Airport — House of Lords, 2018-12-20
Topic: Defense
Alan William John West (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, our military and GCHQ have also developed techniques to identify the frequency very rapidly and either jam it or take control of the drone and land it. Is this ability being given more broadly to various airports? How is this being done? Clearly, we have not taken any action for a number of years to try to resolve this issue.