argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Health
Rachael Helen Maskell (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is making an excellent speech. This debate is concentrated on physical health, but if we look at workforce planning on mental health we know we are at a significant deficit. If we are talking about parity of esteem, surely Lords amendment 29 is absolutely imperative, so that we can start investing in the future of our mental health services?
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Health
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right and she will know of our party’s ambitious commitments, outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), to ensure that patients receive guaranteed mental health treatment within a month. That would be revolutionary. It will require investment and require recruiting the people we need to help provide that care, but this country is living through a mental health crisis on top of everything else. This has been a deeply difficult two years for our country during the pandemic. Many people bear not just the physical scars and ongoing physical health consequences of long covid, but the grief, the loss and the injury to their mental health and wellbeing caused by this deadly pandemic. Many of those people who are suffering mental health crises are the very people who are still turning up for their shifts in the hospitals, still turning up for their shifts in the GP surgeries, and still turning up at work to help care for others even though they are in need of care themselves Lords amendment 29 does not commit the Government to hire thousands more doctors and nurses, although they should. It does not commit to new funding for the NHS, although it desperately needs that. It does not even commit the Government to finally publish the workforce strategy the NHS is crying out for, despite the fact that the NHS has not had a comprehensive workforce strategy since the Labour Government’s plan was published in 2003. All we are talking about today is an independent review of how many doctors, nurses and other staff the NHS needs for the future. That is not just a view put across by Labour Members: it is supported by many Members right across the House, including the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey, who is a former Health Secretary. It is not the first time that he has helped to unite the sector, although I remember the days when it was sometimes united in opposition to, rather than in support of, his proposals I will say this, actually: when the right hon. Member for South West Surrey took over as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, I was really nervous about the prospect of a former Health Secretary effectively marking his own homework, but on this issue, he has shown a degree of honest reflection and has genuinely contributed his experience to the debate about the future of health and social care in this country. Not only has he been honest about where he fell short, and where other Conservative Ministers may have fallen short, but he is determined to make sure that we improve the quality of the health and social care debate in this House. I very much welcome his contribution to the debate about the NHS workforce challenge.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Health
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. If I am honest, I suspect that the Minister and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care also agree that Lords amendment 29 is needed. I suspect the truth is that they are not the ones blocking it. They are in a Treasury-imposed straitjacket from the Chancellor, preventing them from doing what they know to be necessary for the NHS, because the Treasury would rather stick its head in the sand and not acknowledge the scale of the challenge or the reality of the cost. It hopes that ignorance is bliss and that we can carry on as we are, and perhaps nobody will notice—even the 6 million people on NHS waiting lists.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Health
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend’s speech; he is addressing absolutely the issues that the sector faces. All of us support the NHS and want to see it thriving. Does he agree, however, that the challenge is about the Treasury and the Prime Minister and the lack of support and understanding from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor at this crucial time, when the NHS has gone through such a difficult period?
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Health
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): As you already are, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I could not resist The problem is that unless we face up to the scale of the workforce challenge, the Government simply will not deliver the shorter waiting times that patients need until they break out of their straitjacket. They should start today; otherwise, patients will be left wondering why they are paying more in taxes but waiting longer for care Government Members may argue that we do not need Lords amendment 29, because there is a planned update to "Framework 15", Health Education England’s 15-year strategic framework for workforce planning—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) cannot wait; she is watching her inbox daily, waiting for it to arrive. The truth is that this is inadequate. Previous iterations of the framework have not quantified the staffing numbers needed. The Secretary of State was recently unable to confirm when he appeared before the Health and Social Care Committee that the revised framework will set out the required numbers of staff. The truth is that the recent past is littered with promises of workforce strategies and frameworks that have either not materialised or failed to deliver the action needed Let me turn to the Minister’s claim that we have record numbers of doctors and nurses—it is today’s equivalent of, "You’ve never had it so good." We all know—he knows this very well—that the population is growing and ageing, and as it does so, we need the numbers of nurses, doctors and carers to keep up. This is a question not just of recruitment, but of retention. When I ask frontline staff, "What would make the single biggest difference to your morale? What would be the thing that keeps you going even though you are exhausted, stressed and burned out?", their answer is very simple: they just want to know that the cavalry is coming and that significant numbers of staff will be recruited to help provide the support they need. Their greatest fear is that the people who have slogged their guts out to get us through the pandemic will be left alone as they try to help the NHS to recover from the pandemic and from the problems that existed before it. If we are not careful, we will risk losing those staff, creating even greater pressures—a greater cost to patient care, a greater cost to patient safety and a greater cost in recruiting and training new doctors and nurses. With the best will in the world, and with the best training available at our brilliant medical schools, doctors and nurses take years to develop the skills and experience to make them outstanding clinicians. Those are the people we risk losing at this very moment While I have the opportunity, may I say to the Minister that I cannot understand why there are 791 medical school graduates who still do not have a junior doctor post? These people are qualified, they are ready and there is a shortage—get them to work!
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Health
Geraint Richard Davies (Labour, Centre-left): It is, of course, 125 years since the birth of Aneurin Bevan, who famously said: "Illness is…a misfortune the cost of which should be shared by the community" That cost, as the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) said, should not be borne by the victims of genocide, abuse or slavery, so I support amendment 48 and, indeed, amendments (a) and (b) I am the trade rapporteur of the Council of Europe in respect of safeguarding human rights, democracy and the rule of law. I very much hope that where there is abuse or slave labour, we pursue filtering out such imports from procurement in general. Curing illness should not be at the cost of creating illness and harm abroad Obviously we need security of supply. We have seen China use embargoes and trade sanctions against Australian wine and Lithuanian products, or whatever, so we need a safe supply, much of it home-grown, for when we face such a problem or a pandemic. I put it to the Minister that we need to look much more at generating production and procurement in the public sector. It is no good going to the pub landlord of the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) to get expensive PPE. We need both value for money and ethical sourcing Some of the proposals for integrated care boards involve corporations that have a vested interest. If we remove competitive tendering, waiting lists and costs would both go up. It is critical that we get value for money Looking at what happened in Wales during the pandemic, we find that the cost of PPE was, in fact, half the cost of PPE in England. The £1.1 billion given to Wales for test and trace was a Barnett consequential, but we spent only half of that, £533 million, because we used public sector procurement and production effectively Through a combination of ethical procurement and public sector provision, we can keep the light of the health service shining, we can keep the faith and we can build a stronger, more successful and cost-effective health service.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Health
Deborah Angela Elspeth Marie Abrahams (Labour, Centre-left): I want to ask the Minister about two matters. First, why are health inequalities not explicitly mentioned among the triple aims of the Bill? Secondly, on the membership of ICBs, I am sorry if I misheard, but I did not hear him discuss the amendment on how to avoid any conflict of interest involving private providers on those boards.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Health
Deborah Angela Elspeth Marie Abrahams (Labour, Centre-left): I would be grateful if the Minister answered my question about the triple aims, and the impact of not including in them an explicit reference to health inequalities. The Bill refers to health and wellbeing, but not to health inequalities. My main point is on the care cap. More than one in six of my constituents with dementia will not reach the cap, as it stands. The Lords amendments mean it would be one in five, so I would be grateful if the Minister could say exactly why he is prepared to let one in six of my constituents not reach the care cap.
Iran — House of Lords, 2019-09-25
Topic: Defense
David Arthur Russell Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I do not want to keep your Lordships from your dinners, but my noble friend Lord Marlesford was absolutely right: we are dealing with not just a Government but a whole number of factions, many empowered by electronic weaponry and electronic communications on a scale that did not exist even 10 years ago. It is a completely new situation. Do we realise that in this new situation talking about a war—"Shall we go to war?"—is an absurdity? In this digital world, a war settles nothing. Low-intensity and low-profile terrorism will continue indefinitely Have Her Majesty’s Government drawn two very important conclusions from this whole saga, including the attack on Abqaiq? First, the Saudi defences are incredibly weak, despite its enormous expenditure on conventional weapons, which will not do in this situation. Secondly, have we all noticed that the oil markets, although they spiked for a moment, immediately fell back, the reason being that the world oil supply has changed? Shale oil has changed everything and the significance of Middle East oil has been vastly reduced.
Ukraine Update — House of Commons, 2022-03-09
Topic: Defense
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): Hon. Members on both sides of the House will wish the Secretary of State well in his discussions with the Home Office—it is a hard nut to crack. I spoke with a constituent of mine over the weekend who has family in Irpin. When she asked me about a no-fly zone, I explained the situation to her, but the words came with some difficulty. Much as I support the position we are taking, when facing somebody who has family in a war zone, it is difficult to explain why we cannot intervene. She responded, "We need to be able to defend ourselves," and said that they want access to more weaponry which we can supply to them. I know the Secretary of State is providing Starstreak high-velocity anti-air missiles and that he hopes that that will fall within the definition of defensive weapons. Is that definition a difficulty in providing the support that people in Ukraine are asking for, and is it something that will have to be kept under review?
Defence Supplementary Estimate 2021-22 — House of Commons, 2022-03-09
Topic: Defense
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): It is worse than that. The Department used to hide behind European regulations, but now we are out of the European Union, we should be free to procure in the UK. I challenged the Minister before Christmas as to whether his Department was going to give a £10 million contract to Damen in the Netherlands for a special naval vehicle, and he said we should wait for the competition. Lo and behold, this week it has been announced that Damen has won that contract for a vessel that could have been built in this country.
Fairness at Work and Power in Communities — House of Commons, 2022-05-12
Topic: Health
Barry John Sheerman (Labour, Centre-left): I was reminded by my staff that I have been present at 42 Queen’s Speeches—this is the 42nd. May I say how concerned I am that the Government seem to be downgrading Parliament all the time? I cannot remember one of these debates without a Secretary of State on the Government Front Bench defending the Queen’s Speech and the elements within it. As a long-serving Member, their consistent and persistent downgrading of Parliament worries me very much indeed The Queen’s Speech is deeply disappointing. So many things have been missed out. I disagree with almost everything said by the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), except—Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sure you would like some bipartisan remarks—on the strength of our Army. I have stood up in this Chamber for a long time to say that it was dangerous to have fewer than 100,000 personnel in our armed forces. We are now planning to go down to 72,000 at a time when the world is a very worrying place and we have to take that very, very seriously indeed. It is what is missing from the Queen’s Speech that worries me so much One of the greatest challenges we have is health and social care. We have been promised, have we not, a Bill and firm Government action to do something about social care. I do not know about Doncaster in your constituency, Madam Deputy Speaker, but in Huddersfield one big problem in the health sector is that people are taken into accident and emergency and into hospital but cannot be released because there is no suitable supported housing for them in our communities. There has been nothing about social care and, on housing, nothing about building appropriate housing for supported living. That is a very big miss in this Queen’s Speech The other big miss is a moral miss. The fact of the matter is that all of us in politics know that our country has been in terrible trouble. Our constituents have had a tough time. They have had covid, years of austerity and now the higher cost of energy to heat their homes and the higher cost of food to fill the tummies of their children and other members of their families. That traumatic background is the truth of it. I was expecting a Queen’s Speech that said, "This is a national crisis. Let us get together and sort it." What is missing in this debate is honesty. We are promised lower taxation. All of us know in our hearts that somebody has to pay to put the country right and to do all the things we want in health and social care, and to rebuild the welfare state that was found wanting as we faced covid. This country has one of the lowest rates of unemployment benefit. People who never thought they would lose their jobs or be made unemployed were shocked when they realised how weak the support was for their family.
Executions in Saudi Arabia — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Defense
Nadia Edith Whittome (Labour, Centre-left): The UK Government have given the Saudi regime an estimated £20 billion in arms sales since the start of the war in Yemen, despite clear breaches of humanitarian law. It is extremely likely that British weapons have been used to kill civilians. In the light of the executions on Saturday, will the Prime Minister cancel his planned visit, and will this Government do what they should have done long ago and end arms sales to the Saudi regime?
Professional Qualifications Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2022-03-14
Topic: Health
William Roffen Esterson (Labour, Centre-left): The Bill is much improved following its passage through the Lords and the scrutiny carried out in this House, not least by the addition of new clause 1, which was tabled by the Secretary of State on Report and addressed at least some of the concerns expressed about the devolution settlement It is vital that there is a robust regime so that our professionals can operate effectively here and overseas and we can to address shortages in many of the occupations covered by the legislation, including those of nurses and vets, as we have discussed many times throughout the Bill’s passage. I plead with the Government to give the guidance to the regulators, the professional bodies and the professionals, so that the system that the Bill sets up is effective in creating mutual recognition agreements that will make a difference to the professions, with the resultant impact on the economy. The legislation will affect 205 professions and 80 regulators. It is vital that there is certainty as to who is included and that the list of who is covered is up to date, to the benefit of professionals and the economy I associate myself with the Minister’s remarks about the role of all those involved in getting the Bill through both Houses. My thanks go to the Clerks and my office for their help in the construction and tabling of amendments and support in respect of my speaking notes. With that, I thank all who have taken part in our debates.
Engagements — House of Commons, 2022-06-22
Topic: Defense
Christopher Philip James Elmore (Labour, Centre-left): May I associate myself with the Prime Minister’s comments in relation to the armed forces and other comments Has the Prime Minister ever considered the appointment of his current spouse to a Government post or to any organisation in one of the royal households? Be honest, Prime Minister—yes or no?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2022-06-22
Topic: Defense
Questions:   The UK is the global leader in social outcomes contracts, which can deliver public services in an array of areas, from healthcare to mental healthcare, employment, education and development aid. According to Big Society Capital, every £1 the Government have spent in this way has delivered £10 in further economic, social and fiscal value, including £3 in direct savings to Government. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the time is right for the Government to redouble their focus on this outcomes-led commissioning?
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): Can I join the Prime Minister in his comments about Windrush, and pay tribute to everyone who is serving and has served in our armed forces? Can I also pay tribute to everyone standing for election tomorrow and in particular the plucky Conservative candidate for Wakefield? He is standing, even though his own colleagues think he is so useless that they held a vote of no confidence in him. Does the Prime Minister hold any personal interest in seeing if the public will vote for a Tory who even his own side do not think is up to it?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2022-06-22
Topic: Defense
Questions:   The UK is the global leader in social outcomes contracts, which can deliver public services in an array of areas, from healthcare to mental healthcare, employment, education and development aid. According to Big Society Capital, every £1 the Government have spent in this way has delivered £10 in further economic, social and fiscal value, including £3 in direct savings to Government. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the time is right for the Government to redouble their focus on this outcomes-led commissioning?
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): It is Armed Forces Week. Under this Prime Minister, those serving our country are facing a real-terms pay cut. Why are his Government more focused on increasing bankers’ pay than the pay of those who are running the country?
Ukraine: UK and NATO Military Commitment — House of Commons, 2022-06-20
Topic: Defense
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): Today marks day 117 since Russia began its brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine. It is now a grim, grinding war of attrition. NATO’s Secretary-General warned last week that the alliance "must prepare for the fact that it could take years." Everything that can be done must be done to help to maintain the Ukrainian military’s morale, weaponry and personnel. The Government will continue to have Labour’s full support in the military assistance they provide to Ukraine In April, when responding to the Defence Secretary’s statement in this House, I urged the Government to move to supply "the new NATO weapons that Ukraine will need for Putin’s next offensive".—[Official Report, 25 April 2022; Vol. 712, c. 463.] In these last two months, what NATO-standard stock has been supplied from the UK to Ukraine, and how many new contracts for missiles or ammunition production have the MOD now managed to sign and start On Friday, as the Minister said, the Prime Minister offered to train 10,000 new Ukrainian soldiers every three months. This is exactly what is needed. Did President Zelensky accept Britain’s offer? Will these Ukrainian recruits be trained in Britain? Which other NATO nations will be involved in such training? As we mark the start of Armed Forces Week, the Labour leader and I had the privilege of visiting NATO’s maritime command and our UK Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood this morning. We wanted to thank our personnel for the service they give to our national and NATO commitments. However, there are serious growing concerns about the UK meeting its NATO commitments, with the failure to reboot defence plans in response to Ukraine, delays to a fully modern warfighting division until 2030, continued uncertainty over Ajax and, of course, further deep cuts to Army numbers The new head of the Army said in an internal message to troops last week that "there is now a burning imperative to forge an Army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle", so why are Ministers pushing ahead with plans to cut another 10,000 soldiers? When will they halt these cuts, and when will they start to rebuild the strength of the British Army to meet the threats that our country and our NATO allies face?
Ukraine: UK and NATO Military Commitment — House of Commons, 2022-06-20
Topic: Defense
Khalid Mahmood (Labour, Centre-left): I agree wholeheartedly with the Chair of the Defence Committee and the shadow Defence Secretary. Unless we are prepared to make a real investment in our Army and the weapons that are required, we cannot supply them to Ukraine. We are not supplying the long-term equipment required in order to attack the Russians coming in; what we are doing is holding back on supporting the Army, which is not good enough. When will we start to look at first of all supporting Poland with NATO to supply the big aircraft that are needed, and how can we move forward on that?