argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Scotland Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-22
Topic: Health
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): Before the Minister sits down, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who I thank for his intervention, made clear that we were not at all questioning the Scottish Parliament’s ability to take this decision. I very much trust Scottish women to get their views heard strongly, although, as the Minister says, it has been officers, officials and Ministers having those debates so far, not the people who are mostly involved, who are of course women The question that I asked is one that we all need answers to, regarding funding: should there be a difference in whether the NHS funding will cover women who travel between the two jurisdictions when those jurisdictions have different laws on this? I do not expect the Minister to be able to answer that tonight but, given our experience in Northern Ireland, I think that this is a really big issue. If he cannot answer tonight, I hope that he will write to us before we reach this part of the Bill on Report.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right about kissing. Kissing is wonderful but potentially dangerous. I share with the Chamber that we have had detailed conversations about kissing, shaking hands, fist-bumping and all manner of social intercourse. The analysis and guidance from the CMO is clear: it is the touching of your own nose that is the real problem. The average person touches their own nose between 70 and 100 times a day. That is why we focus on the message about washing hands. If your hands are clean, it does not matter how many times you touch your nose; but if they are dirty, whether that is through shaking hands, touching a door handle or whatever, the germs are there and can be conveyed. That is why we focus on that.
Immigration Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-01
Topic: Health
Margot Aline (Labour, Centre-left): I am sorry to intervene again, but "indefinite" does not mean that people are there for ever. It means that people do not know how long they will be there, and that is what has had the terrible psychological impact on people. From that perspective it is "indefinite", because there is no clear time limit that gives people certainty and hope.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): We are grateful for the work of the noble Lord, Lord Broers, which is well known. The epidemiology of this virus is not yet fully understood. We do not understand whether it will respond to traditional and conventional antivirals in the way that other viruses have. To date, there is no evidence that the usually stockpiled conventional antivirals will necessarily be effective. For that reason, I cannot provide a direct answer.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the pressure on 111 has risen over many weeks. It was identified as an incredibly important part of our response to this pandemic at a very early stage. Thank goodness we have 111; without it GP surgeries would really be struggling. I can assure the House that massive resources have gone into providing additional support.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, there is an enormous amount of detailed information on the Public Health England website. I will be glad to forward the noble Lord a link if needed. I completely share his profound desire to know all the details of how the virus behaves, but at this stage we simply do not have that information. It is not being withheld; there is no secret to this. The behaviour takes time to be analysed and pinned down. Our scientists are working incredibly hard to get that information and it will be shared as soon as we have it. I share his frustration about the fake news and data; different people are using different numbers and there are clearly people muddying the waters. The Government are organising significant investment in resources to tackle fake news.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
David Arthur Russell Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, coming back to the nature of the virus, has my noble friend noticed Chinese health officials’ reports that 14% of patients discharged from hospital after recovering from the virus later test positive again? Even if 14% is an exaggeration, has that tendency been noted and is there validity to the claim?
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): These stories have been seen. They are not fully understood. It is possible that those thought to have recovered did not actually recover—that their symptoms were subclinical and there may have been an issue with the original testing.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): In all these matters, the Chief Medical Officer guides the Government’s decision-making. We are looking at the modelling done by SAGE—the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies—which guides our decision-making. It has sophisticated computer analysis, which all this information is being plugged into, and that helps inform the decisions that we make about the guidance on isolating and social distancing. It is not possible to lay out today exactly what guidance we will issue or what decisions we will make in the weeks or months to come, but when those decisions are made they will be broadcast with energy through public communications.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
Matthew Ridley (Conservative, Centre-right): Can my noble friend advise us on the accuracy of the screening tests? Do we know whether there is a degree of false negatives, where people test clear but in fact have the virus? Are there any false positives, where tests show that people have the virus when they do not? For example, they might have a different kind of coronavirus—one of the common cold ones.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): This question arose in the debate last week and I followed it up with the Chief Medical Officer. As far as I understand it, there is no issue with the testing. It is possible that some people seemingly recover—their symptoms fade from view—but they are still infected with the virus. We are working hard to understand how this works.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Baroness is absolutely right to emphasise the question of diagnosis. I know from my own experience that the delays that people experience create huge anxiety and prevent them making the important decisions they need to make for themselves and their families about how to do the right thing—self-isolating if necessary and making provisions for their other family members. A ferocious race is under way at the moment. The Government have instructed six private companies, which are all seeking to build exactly what the noble Baroness describes: a bedside testing kit that can be rolled out across the country to provide swift, on-the-spot diagnosis. We are hopeful that that will come shortly. On handwashing, I too have travelled in Africa and know exactly the kinds of provisions she talks about. The advice from the CMO is that we are not there yet but nothing is off the table.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Viscount is right; I have also read the reports of sanitiser shortages. I wish I was in a position to reassure the House that we could somehow guarantee that there was enough sanitiser in the country for the next six years. I am not sure whether that is either reasonable or possible. However, I can tell noble Lords that the CMO’s guidance is clear: washing your hands with soap and preferably hot water is much better than using sanitisers.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): Public Health England is leading the search and British scientists are playing an incredibly important role. However, the guidance I would give the House is from the CMO: the heaviest impact of this epidemic is likely to be within weeks, whereas the search for a vaccine is likely to take at least months and possibly years.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord is right to refer to this. I cannot give him an exact inventory of the stockpile. All I can share with the House is that, partly because of our no-deal preparations, the warehouses are bursting with medicines and medical equipment. This is an inadvertent but not unwelcome aspect of the situation we are in.
Covid-19: Care Homes — House of Lords, 2020-05-20
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the issue the noble Baroness raises was recognised in the very early stages. The problem of itinerant staff who move from one resident or patient to another was always going to be one of the most difficult to tackle. They perform an absolutely vital role in the care of non-domiciliary patients. That is why we put more money in to pay for more staff, provided PPE for the staff who were working and continue to upgrade the testing arrangements for both staff and patients, to ensure that they are protected.
Covid-19: Care Homes — House of Lords, 2020-05-20
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The statistics which the noble Lord refers to are correct. It is probably more appropriate to compare the British care home statistics with those in Europe rather than Asia, which had previous experience and different models. With regard to care home testing, not everyone needs to be tested every day. Not every care home has an outbreak, and we must focus our resources on those that do. Regular testing may be necessary for them, but it is not correct that, for example, 2.5 million people need to be tested every week. That is not the advice from the scientists or the CMO. We want to focus our tests where Covid-19 has been found, and we must use our testing resources to expunge the disease from those locations.
Covid-19: Care Homes — House of Lords, 2020-05-20
Topic: Health
Rosalind Altmann (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, care homes tell me that they are still being required to take residents from hospital who may have Covid-19. May I ask my noble friend whether scientific and medical advice supported the guidance issued in the action plan of 15 April that, prior to discharge into care homes, patients must be tested but will be discharged "pending the result", despite spare capacity in the NHS? Will the Government urgently consider altering that guidance?
Covid-19: Care Homes — House of Lords, 2020-05-20
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the guidance has been reviewed by the CMO, and we stand by it. I can confirm that all patients leaving hospital for care homes are, as a routine, tested. When they arrive at a care home, they are treated as if they might have Covid, and they are put into an area of isolation, until either the test has come through or their diagnosis has been confirmed. This is a way of protecting care homes, and it is necessary to continue the traffic of people from hospital to care homes, in order to have the beds available for those who need them more.
Covid-19: Care Homes — House of Lords, 2020-05-20
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord is more expert on the history of public health than I am, but I do not doubt the story that he talked about. I reassure him that Covid has definitely made us all think again about the very clear priority that local public health provision must and will provide. I would like to pay testimony to those public health officials—public health directors, environmental health officers, infection control officers—who play, and are currently playing, a huge role in controlling the epidemic.
Covid-19: Care Homes — House of Lords, 2020-05-20
Topic: Health
Nicola Blackwood (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I congratulate the Government on publishing the data behind their assessment of the Roche and Abbott ELISA tests. The transparency is welcome, but given the latest evidence on how asymptomatic cases affect transmission and how challenging infection control has been in care homes, can the Minister say whether care workers and care home residents will now be prioritised for antibody as well as PCR tests to give them the best data to improve infection control?
Covid-19: Care Homes — House of Lords, 2020-05-20
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend Lady Blackwood is quite right that the Roche and Abbott antibody tests are a great step forward. It shows how diagnostic technology is progressing very quickly. We are determined to use all the benefits of modern technology in the fight against Covid. Our announcements on antibody testing in the NHS, in the care service and for key workers will be announced shortly. When it is, I assure her that NHS and social care workers will be on an equal footing.
Covid-19: Social Care Services — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
Rosalind Altmann (Conservative, Centre-right): I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, on securing this debate and on her powerful introduction. I will focus on social care for the elderly and I draw attention to my interests in the register. I recognise the unprecedented challenges faced by the DHSC and know that it is easy to criticise, so I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on initial action taken to distribute PPE free of charge for use by private social care providers. However, we cannot deny that the Government’s initial approach prioritised the NHS over social care, following the traditional attitude that treats social care as a second-class Cinderella health service—out of sight, out of mind We also need a wholesale shift in the approach to elderly people. Lumping everyone above a specific age into one group, implying that all older people are infirm, is dangerously misguided. Will my noble friend confirm that government policy will not discriminate purely on age grounds when it comes to exiting the lockdown? The physical and mental health impacts of isolation and inactivity are at least as damaging for old people as for other age groups. As others have said, we knew from the start that older people who are infirm were most at risk. We knew where the most vulnerable were: in care homes or receiving home care. Yet there were no special measures for the protection of staff or residents, priority testing, PPE or treatment. Elderly deaths outside hospitals are being revealed only belatedly Regardless of short-term failings, we have opportunities to improve things for the future. Will my noble friend reassure us that the Government are now devising urgent plans for radical care reform? If time does not permit today, perhaps he could write to me. In particular, what is his department doing on the following five points: first, integration between and staffing for national health and local care provision, ensuring parity of esteem between the NHS and social care; secondly, taxpayer funding for basic personal care, and incentives for individuals to save to provide a higher standard or earlier access to care than can be offered by the state, as we do for pensions; thirdly, immigration rules that prioritise workers desperately needed by care providers; fourthly, attention to the viability of care providers so that the future of vulnerable elderly citizens is not at risk from the collapse or bankruptcy of highly indebted providers; and, fifthly, focus on the prevention of care needs, funding incentive measures to help people to stay safe at home and avoid needing social care in later life?
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend Lord Lucas is quite right about IP, although I bear testimony to the private companies and major corporations which have reacted incredibly generously and enthusiastically by supporting the Government during this crisis. Our supply chains absolutely need to be reviewed. Resilience is clearly more important now than it has ever been. When we look at the way in which our medical, pharmaceutical and device supply chains are put together, they will look quite different in years to come.
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Baroness is entirely right. Serum offers an encouraging opportunity, not least because it is a proven technology. The national blood transfusion service has been asked to start investigating how to collect serum, and a grant for the purchase of new machines to help that has already been made.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-10-18
Topic: Health
Margot Aline (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I want to make one simple point in support of Amendment 2, although it probably relates to Amendment 9 as well. In discussing the previous group of amendments, we talked about the mental and emotional health of children, and the Government’s amendment was about the promotion of mental as well as physical health. I cannot think of anything that could do more to undermine the mental health of children than to be torn away from relationships that are really important to them. Therefore, in the interests of making a reality of government Amendment 1, I hope that the Minister will feel able to accept Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel.
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, addresses a very difficult problem. The programme we are looking at, announced earlier today with the change to our guidelines, is the testing of asymptomatic carers and residents in care homes. It is a natural and growing concern that the disease may be present in an asymptomatic form. We are determined to get the infection out of our care homes and the NHS.
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
Andrew Robathan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, this lockdown is hugely damaging to the country, particularly to the future prosperity and education of our young people. Nobody knows, as the Minister has just said, how many people have had or have this ghastly virus and recovered. Many suggest that it is several million, possibly many millions. If that is the case, it leads to another suggestion: the mortality rate may be less than 1%. Some say—I am not an expert on this at all—that it is as low as 0.1%. If that is the case, what implications would that have on the Government’s policy of balancing the future well-being of this country and its people with dealing with this ghastly health crisis?
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord, Lord Robathan, makes a fair point. I reassure him that we are investing in a massive 20,000-person surveillance by the ONS to get to the bottom of the mystery which he describes. Every piece of evidence we have from every country around the world suggests that the number of people who have been through the disease is a tiny proportion of the population, and that the amount of recovery and antibody immunity in the country is likely to be in single figures. This is one of the great challenges of the virus and the situation it presents to us.
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, is right that our present guidelines state that those arriving in Britain should isolate if they have symptoms and seek a test from a hospital if it develops seriously. It is clear to me that the way we travel around the world is set to change dramatically in the future, but the CMO has reviewed our airport and port guidelines. He is happy with them, and the evidence suggests that this is not currently a source of new infections in the UK.
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
Rosalind Altmann (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, may I press my noble friend on treatment, particularly with convalescent plasma? As I understand it, other Governments are urgently looking into this. France has put its medical staff into LFB. Have we put any pressure on BPL, which is the only fractionating company available in the UK, to produce pure, hyperimmune immunoglobulins, rather than the whole plasma, so that we can start parametric testing of IVIG and injections of convalescent plasma in the pure hyperimmune form?
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
Alexander Randall (Conservative, Centre-right): The Statement rightly reinforces the message that non-Covid NHS services are open for patients. Would my noble friend agree that it is important to give parents confidence that essential vaccinations, especially MMR, should not be ignored and that they should speak to their GP for further advice and support?
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
Richard Balfe (Conservative, Centre-right): In the Statement, the Minister referred to the need for people who have other medical needs to still contact their GP. In Cambridge, where I live, the opticians, chiropodists, dentists and surgeries are all closed, with different fierce notices on their doors. When the isolation requirements are lifted, could the Government make it a priority to get these vital medical services open again and get doctors back into surgeries, not at the end of the telephone? Perhaps we could at least teach them that Zoom exists.
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Defense
David John Maclean (Conservative, Centre-right): As my noble friend the Minister has just said, in January the NHS had to deliver half a million PPE items to 233 hospitals. It now has to deliver 1 billion items to 58,000 health facilities. The experts in logistics are the military, as we saw from the brilliant No. 10 briefing by General Carter yesterday. Will the Government now hand over complete control of distribution to the Armed Forces? Will the Minister comment on reports that the much-vaunted EU purchasing scheme has not delivered a single item of kit to any EU country?
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): I would like to take my noble friend to Skipton House in London’s Elephant and Castle to see the very large room where there is a combination of the diplomatic skills of the FCO, the trade skills of DIT and BEIS, the military skills of the Army and the clinical skills of Health. Seeing all those different skills and abilities work together to deliver the kit that our health workers need is a really impressive sight. That collaboration is the secret to success.
Rough Sleeping — House of Lords, 2020-02-27
Topic: Health
James Stopford (Conservative, Centre-right): Excellent, my Lords. The right reverend Prelate is quite correct that I should draw attention to the amazing work done by these various groups. Most local authorities consult with the voluntary sector, the police, outreach workers, substance misuse agencies, faith groups, mental health agencies, drug and alcohol treatment teams, and local residents and businesses. It is important that this is done on a local basis because, as I said before, local people know their area and know the individuals involved.