argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Failures of the 111 Helpline — House of Lords, 2016-01-26
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for repeating that. I start by paying tribute to Melissa Mead and her husband Paul, who have fought to know the truth about their son’s death and who are now campaigning to raise awareness about the care of sepsis and how we can improve it. Clearly, the key is to learn lessons and take action in the immediate future. Ministers were warned about poor sepsis care back in September 2013 when an ombudsman report highlighted shortcomings in initial assessment and delay in emergency treatment that led to missed opportunities to save lives. Can the Minister say what action has been taken by the Government? Will he urgently meet the UK Sepsis Trust to discuss what needs to happen to raise awareness among GPs, the NHS and the public The Minister outlined the failures in the 111 response. He will know that the replacement of NHS Direct, which was predominantly a nurse-led service, with NHS 111 means that the service now relies mainly on call handlers who receive as little as six weeks’ training and where turnover among staff can be very rapid. Is he going to review the training that call handlers receive and will he consider increasing the number of clinically trained staff available to respond to calls The Minister will be aware that there are two other inquiries into NHS 111 failures at the moment: in the east Midlands and on the south-east coast. Can the public have confidence that the 111 service is fit to diagnose patients with life-threatening conditions?
Failures of the 111 Helpline — House of Lords, 2016-01-26
Topic: Health
Genista Mary McIntosh (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the noble Lord has pointed out—as those of us who have read about this case are aware—that the patient was a very young child. One thing that I find troubling about this whole history is that that fact appears not significantly to have influenced the way in which his case was handled. Is it not the case that there should be a default position in respect of very young children exhibiting symptoms where the precautionary principle should apply, whether in respect of prescribing antibiotics, referring to hospital or any other kind of presumption of the possibility of acute illness?
NHS: Trust Finances — House of Lords, 2016-02-01
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for repeating the Answer to the Urgent Question in the other place. If ever the inadequacy of the 2012 Act needed illuminating, the Minister has certainly done that today. The reality is that we have two separate regulators giving exactly opposite instructions to NHS trusts. The CQC tells hospitals that they are unsafe and should increase their clinical staff—I do not believe that one single report by the CQC has not said that they need to increase their clinical staff. On the other hand, Monitor and the NHS TDA tell hospitals to cut staff Like me, the Minister has been chairman of an NHS foundation trust. What on earth are the chairman and board meant to do when they receive this conflicting advice from the regulators, all dressed up in gobbledegook and ambiguity to cover the regulators against the nonsense they are coming out with? What does the Minister say to the King’s Fund? On Saturday, it said that, three years on from the report into Mid Staffs, "which emphasises that safe staffing was the key to maintaining quality of care, the financial meltdown in the NHS … means that the policy is being abandoned for hospitals that have run out of money" The Minister said that the settlement secured by the Department of Health in the spending review would sort out the financial pressures that hospitals are under. I know nobody actively serving on the front line of the NHS who believes that there is any chance whatever of that happening over the next five years. Monitor and the TDA have written to every hospital asking them to take urgent steps to regain control of their budgets, including headcount reductions. Was the Minister or the Secretary of State aware that that letter had been sent? Did it receive ministerial approval Finally, on the question of the £8 billion that the NHS was meant to have asked for, I point out to the Minister that the NHS did not ask for it; it was the NHS Commissioning Board, which is not the NHS. Again, I know of nobody of any repute in the NHS who thought that £8 billion was anywhere near enough. Would the Minister confirm that even the NHS Commissioning Board in its Five Year Forward View said that the £22 billion required in efficiency savings would be a huge stretch? Can he confirm the £5 billion identified by my noble friend Lord Carter? There seems to be a big gap between that £5 billion and the £22 billion.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Lords, 2016-06-27
Topic: Defense
John Reid (Labour, Centre-left): Since the noble Lord has no idea, I will give just one example, occurring and culminating on 6 August 2006: the attempt to bring down seven airliners—which, were it not for the powers in the Bill, would have resulted in 2,300 deaths on one day alone.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Lords, 2016-06-27
Topic: Defense
Meta Ramsay (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, because of time constraint and the long list of speakers, I intend to be as brief as possible in this Second Reading of a vital and very detailed Bill. I hope there will be plenty of opportunity to deal at greater length with issues at the later stages of the Bill I speak from a base of my own professional experience in government service, where I spent some time in this precise field of activity, as well as having served in my parliamentary life twice on the ISC and later on the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. Today, I would like to make a few general remarks about what are called bulk powers because, over the last decade or so, they have been absolutely essential to the three security and intelligence agencies—SIS, MI5 and GCHQ—and everyone agrees that they are bound to be increasingly important in the future Bulk data are information acquired in large volume, as the Minister explained so very well in his opening speech, and are used to provide vital and unique intelligence that is unable to be obtained by any other means. Bulk data are among the most important tools that the agencies have to help them identify security threats inside the United Kingdom and threats to UK interests and citizens abroad, including in the Armed Forces, to find links between targets of interest, to establish behaviour patterns and communication methods, and to monitor attack planning et cetera. The Minister confirmed in his opening speech that the Government are committed to a review by David Anderson to assess whether the bulk capabilities provided in the Bill are necessary. I understand that the review is expected to conclude in time for our consideration of Parts 6 and 7 in Committee, so I look forward to dealing with it all then I conclude with one brief personal comment. Like the noble Lords, Lord West, Lord Campbell and Lord Rooker, I have some serious reservations about the so-called double lock, which involves a judicial commissioner in the authorisation process. I am quite content to have judges in oversight and judicial review but I do not feel at all relaxed about letting judges into the authorisation process. Not for the first time in this House, I say with the greatest of respect to any noble and learned Lords here tonight that I really wonder where this cult of judge worship comes from. It seems to grab legislators, especially when they are dealing with intelligence and security affairs. However, I hope we can come back to and elaborate on this at future stages of the Bill. On the whole, it really is an excellent Bill and I wish it a smooth passage through this House.
Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust — House of Lords, 2016-05-03
Topic: Health
Margaret Eileen Joyce Wheeler (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for reading the response to the UQ on the CQC’s serious concerns about the safety of mental health and learning disability patients at Southern Health Trust. The whole House is deeply shocked by the inadequate and completely ineffective response to the Mazars review’s findings, following the tragic death of Connor Sparrowhawk over two years ago. The CQC’s stark assessment that serious risk to patients in ensuring their safety was still not driving the senior management or board agenda beggars belief in the light of the Mazars review and the CQC’s repeated concerns and warning notices. There are still no robust governance arrangements in place to investigate incidents and there is still a lack of effective arrangements to identify, record or respond to concerns about patient safety raised by patients, their carers, staff and the CQC. A particular concern is the continuing failure to act over important specific safety concerns about ligature risks in acute inpatient mental health and learning disabilities services and, given the terrible cause of Connor’s death, the board’s failure to give urgency to approval of the specific protocol for safe bathing and showering of people with epilepsy. Can the Minister assure the House that these will receive urgent attention by the new chair in his task of building new leadership and direction for the board and in an urgent programme of action for the trust Patients and their families need to see robust, urgent action and real accountability. When the Secretary of State responded to December’s UQ on Southern Health, he rightly said that, more than anything, people will, "want to know that the NHS learns from … tragedies",—[Official Report, Commons, 10/12/15; col. 1141.] such as these. That clearly has not happened, so I ask the Minister what guarantees he can give to current patients and their families in the care of Southern Health that they are safe. Where is the accountability, culpability and responsibility? Can the Minister tell the House about the content and timescale of the review of the adequacies of the trust’s leadership that the new chair has been tasked with undertaking? Finally, will he listen to the heartfelt pleas of victims’ families, campaigners and all those who are demanding a full public inquiry into Southern Health and into the broader failure in adequately investigating preventable deaths?
Policing and Crime Bill — House of Lords, 2016-09-14
Topic: Health
Richard Rosser (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I appreciate that later clauses will enable us to have a much fuller debate on mental health issues in relation to the new provisions in the Bill, related to the Mental Health Act 1983, and I do not want to trespass into that territory with this amendment The mental health concordat was agreed between the third sector, the police, local authorities and the NHS in February 2014. Included in its wording is that the bodies and organisations to which I have referred will make sure that they, "meet the needs of vulnerable people in urgent situations", and, "strive to make sure that all relevant public services support someone who appears to have a mental health problem to move towards Recovery" It then says that "jointly" they will hold themselves, "accountable for enabling this commitment to be delivered across England." There is no statutory basis for this concordat. Amendment 5 raises the question as to whether we should not put the concordat on some type of statutory footing in the Bill, since the collaboration agreements which are placed on a statutory footing in it cover parties that are covered by the concordat.
Policing and Crime Bill — House of Lords, 2016-09-14
Topic: Defense
Richard Rosser (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Minister not think that that would be desirable? A proposal by a PCC who sought to take over responsibility for fire and rescue services would, to state the obvious, involve collaboration between those two services. But as we have heard today from a number of noble Lords, there are already many examples of effective collaboration that go way beyond simply the police service and the fire service. If a PCC has a desire to take over responsibility for a fire and rescue service, surely it is legitimate to raise the question of whether more and better collaboration would not be achieved through other means. The greater collaboration provided for in the first part of the Bill, which we have already discussed, would potentially go over a much wider range of services, authorities and organisations than simply between the police and the fire service.
Junior Doctors: Industrial Action — House of Lords, 2016-04-25
Topic: Health
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am sure that there are many in your Lordships’ House, and perhaps people outside it, who rather regret that the noble Lord himself is not Secretary of State for Health as opposed to the present incumbent of the office. He has shown great sensitivity about this issue and, indeed, all others, and is widely respected here. However, is it not unfortunate that the Statement made this afternoon is somewhat disingenuous? It refers, for example, to the high mortality rates for people admitted to hospital at weekends—something which has been disputed in the sense that, to the extent that it exists, it is not necessarily connected to the issue of a seven-day service but rather a function of the emergency situation that many people face which is why they are admitted to hospital at that time Is it not equally somewhat disingenuous to refer to the recently announced further investment in the NHS as something that is directed at the issue which is the cause of the dispute? As has already been pointed out, the service has been denied comparable funding to that in previous years and is in a very serious condition up and down the country. I hope that the Minister can persuade the Secretary of State that it would not be a futile exercise, as he has perhaps suggested today, to accept the suggestion made by the group of four people from different backgrounds, including a former Conservative Health Minister who was also a doctor, to have a discussion about trialling the new scheme? As is so often the case in this House in other contexts, decisions appear to have been made without any proper assessment of the potential outcome. In this case, there is a very serious potential outcome both for the service and for patients. Will the Minister speak again to the Secretary of State to reflect the view, which I suspect is fairly widely shared, that the Secretary of State is making a mistake in not acting on the suggestion that has been made?
Community Pharmacy — House of Lords, 2016-10-17
Topic: Health
Clive Brooke (Labour, Centre-left): I know that my local chemist is very upset about what may happen to him. He talks about areas where money is wasted by the NHS and where efficiencies could be effected. Has the Minister had discussions with the representatives of pharmacists who have opposed this proposal, to see whether they can come up with ideas on how efficiencies can be achieved?
Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2016-05-23
Topic: Defense
James Donnelly Touhig (Labour, Centre-left): No, I would agree with the point made by the noble Lord. Indeed, for the benefit of the House, if there is any doubt, before I tabled the Question to the noble Earl, who was away at that time on a very important visit to Korea, I asked the MoD whether I would cause any embarrassment to our national security by tabling the Question—through the help of his colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton. I did not get a response, so I tabled the Question. I took steps to try to ensure that I was not in any way threatening our security by asking such a Question. While I recognise that there are cases for effective security, this dangerous doctrine is now becoming the rule, not the exception. I hope the Government will review this policy of deliberately keeping Parliament in the dark. The first duty of every Government is the well-being of our people. That begins with the defence of the realm, which is best achieved when there is consensus and agreement across the board on how best that can be done. But, while working with the Government as much as possible, the Opposition—not just the Opposition, but all Members—would be failing in their duty not to raise concerns where we see deficiencies and shortcomings. The criticisms we have made today are meant to be constructive and achieve a better outcome I say only this. I learned a long time ago in politics that it is not sensible to reject a good idea simply because somebody else thought of it first. I rather think that the noble Earl would agree with that. His big task now is to persuade the rest of the Government.
NHS England: Pre-exposure Prophylaxis for People at Risk of HIV — House of Lords, 2016-06-07
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister but this decision by NHS England not to commission and fund PrEP is a matter of great regret. In the UK there are more people living with HIV than ever before. Without any need for an evidence review, it is absolutely clear, without any uncertainty whatever, that PrEP has the potential to be a game-changer. It is proven to be effective in stopping HIV transmission in almost every single case. There is no need for an evidence review. It is simply a delaying tactic because of this absolutely disgraceful decision not to fund this drug. The Minister mentioned our record in relation to other countries. It is a matter of shame that this drug is being used extensively in other countries but is being denied to NHS patients without any justification whatever At some point the Minister will pray in aid the cost of new drugs. On a number of occasions I have asked him this question but he will never answer it—because, I suspect, the answer is too embarrassing. He knows that he is in the middle of a five-year agreement with the branded drug industry through which, if the cost of drugs goes over the base level plus a small allowance for inflation, the department receives a refund every three months. That agreement should enable new drugs to be funded, but that money is not being used to invest in those new drugs. If he says that this cannot be done because of cost, that is simply not true. I very much hope that the Government will reconsider this decision. It is utterly indefensible.
Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-06-28
Topic: Defense
Alan Thomas Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I would like to follow up the important points raised by my noble friend Lord Touhig and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, with some questions to the Minister, if I may. Can she tell us a little more about the cultural property protection unit that is already being established in the Ministry of Defence? What is its budget, and what assurances can she give us as to the future resources that will be made available to that unit? We know that there is always fierce competition for resources within the MoD budget and that periodically that budget is subject to a squeeze. Some people might see this particular function as somewhat marginal to the main purposes of the MoD—although I would assert that, for a civilised country, the purposes with which the unit is entrusted are extremely important—and the resources of that unit could be vulnerable. It would therefore be helpful if the Minister could tell us a little more about its scale, its functioning and its resources, and reassure us that it will continue to function at full strength Can the Minister also tell us how the lines of communication will work? How will the services and expertise of that unit be made available to people serving in the field, and not only those under the direct command of our own Armed Forces? In addition—my noble friend Lord Touhig raised this important point in the debate on two of his amendments—how will it be able to communicate to embedded forces: the people who are, "subject to UK service jurisdiction serving under the military command of the armed forces of another country"— and to "private military contractors" or individuals working "within private military contractors"? I have a memory that private military contractors, and perhaps Halliburton in particular, were guilty of grievous and appalling violations of cultural property in very important archaeological sites during the Iraq war, so how in practice does the Ministry of Defence expect to exercise its influence to prevent a recurrence of such disasters? This might be an unfair question to pose to the Minister personally, but if she is not yet briefed on it she may be able to write, or perhaps her noble friend Earl Howe would be good enough to write to us on these matters.
Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-06-28
Topic: Defense
Alan Thomas Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): What is the position of British service personnel embedded in the armed services of another country that has not signed the convention? If they found that the armed forces of that other country were about to do something in violation of the convention, what would be their position and obligations, and how would they receive advice from the authorities and commanders in this country?
Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-06-28
Topic: Culture
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): I am sorry that the Minister did not feel more enthused by the opportunity to do at least something in future on an international stage that will be bereft of European activities. She will surely have many gaps in her diary, since she is a doughty warrior in the European space—and here we are offering her on a gold plate a wonderful opportunity to make her name in cultural matters. I am, however, very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, for his support and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, for understanding the reasons behind the amendment. I still think that it is a good idea. My noble friend Lord Howarth agreed with it, although the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, sees problems wherever he sees words that might be used to delay his precious involvement in the Bill. I keep assuring him that we are not out to stop the Bill, but we would like to improve it, which is what lay behind the amendment. Reading too carefully the words on the Marshalled List would reveal that we had a bit of a struggle with the clerks to get anything in the amendment, and of course the noble Lord is right that it would not do what it sets out to do, but nor was it intended to—which is rather a bad thing to say. What we are trying to get at is that there is an agenda here. If we are to do this, let us do it properly and pick up some of the points that we understand to be defective in terms of full implementation of what we all want. If there is a way to do that at some future date, we perhaps should do it. In the interim, the point has been made and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.