argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2021-01-07
Topic: Health
Michael Berkeley (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I will ask the Minister two slightly uncomfortable questions. First, it is always very important, when one tries to set an example, that we look at ourselves. Does the Minister feel that, in terms of attendance and mask wearing, we in the Chamber and at Westminster are setting the right example? Is there anything we could do better My second point is this. I have been reading a book, Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic, by Dr Rachel Clarke. Anybody who read this book would think twice about breaking the rules. I want to go further than the Government in some aspects. For example, the fact that going to a party or organising a party might mean you get a £60 or £500 fine should be seen in the light of the fact that it could cause a porter, a cleaner, a nurse or a doctor to visit not merely ICU but the mortuary. If people thought about this more carefully and the penalties were much more draconian, they would think twice about their behaviour. I am shocked that people might get a fine of £60—a parking meter fine—for going to a party, spreading this pandemic and putting so many lives at risk.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2021-01-07
Topic: Health
Karan Bilimoria (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, it is absolutely essential that we put the health of our citizens first. The economic impact of the new restrictions is significant. We have to ensure that firms have the cash flow to make it through and that they have a clear line of sight that the support will continue, including the furlough scheme possibly being extended until June. I can say as president of the CBI that British business stands ready to play its full part in the vaccine rollout, increasing massive rapid testing and acting flexibly to support employees, particularly with regard to their mental health The vaccines Minister, Nadhim Zahawi, said that 99% of deaths could be stopped by vaccinating the top nine priority groups laid down by the JCVI. The Government have said that there is no shortage of glass vials, for example, and AstraZeneca and Pfizer have said that they can supply vaccines fast enough. The Government have set the target of 13.9 million people to be vaccinated by 15 February, yet the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change recently issued a report saying that the UK could have access to 3 million doses a week by the end of January, 4 million a week by the end of February and 5 million a week by the end of March, so it must have the ability to distribute those. It should be all hands on deck: hospitals, healthcare facilities, car parks, warehouses, offices, everything, including the Armed Forces, which were brilliant with the Nightingale hospitals, and, as I said earlier, businesses—we are all standing by to help. I want to ask the Minister about airport testing. Nine months after business and the aviation industry were crying out for testing on arrival and before boarding planes, the Prime Minister has finally admitted this week that measures will be brought in. Tests need to be taken 72 hours before departure, as is done in many other countries. Heathrow’s chief executive, John Holland-Kaye, has said that there should be a common international standard. For the first time, Paris has overtaken Heathrow. Let us act on this quickly now.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2021-01-07
Topic: Health
David Brownrigg Craig (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I believe that these measures are necessary. I welcome the fulsome support of opposition parties. The weeks ahead are going to be punctuated by further bouts of depressing news. The more that individuals stick to the guidance and instructions, the better. However, as more and more individuals are vaccinated, as I was nearly four weeks ago, there will be growing interest in how the lockdown rules will be changed or relaxed. The Government have made clear and, indeed, trumpeted the importance of vaccination as the route out of lockdown and the damage being done to the economy and society It will soon be essential to announce the relaxation of policy. It will presumably lie somewhere between the two extremes—continuing lockdown for all, including those vaccinated, and permitting those who have been vaccinated to return to normal life—but decisions about when and which parts of the economy and education should be opened up will be complex. This must not be a matter for last-minute announcement and muddle. The need for government guidance is already clear; it needs addressing and announcing now, or as soon as data is available, and, I hope, with an agreed approach by all devolved Administrations. It is for the Government to be seen for once to be on the front foot, ahead of the game, to let us all know—and those vaccinated in particular—when we can play our "get out of jail" card for freedom.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation and Linked Households) (England) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2021-01-07
Topic: Health
Susan Lilian Primrose Cunliffe-Lister (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, the four-tier regulations have been overtaken by the England-wide lockdown. Suddenly, from being in tier 2, we in North Yorkshire found ourselves in lockdown, with so many difficulties and insecurities to cope with. With the devastating news yesterday that 1,000 people died in 24 hours, people are realising how serious the problem has become The hope is that vaccination will get on top of this disastrous epidemic. The instructions given when having the Pfizer vaccine are clear: "You will receive two injections, given 21 days apart. Protection against Covid-19 disease may not be effective until at least seven days after the second dose." The Government are now saying that the injections should be given three months apart. This is against the recommendations of the manufacturers and the World Health Organization. Vulnerable elderly people are concerned and confused. What a muddle. Also, many trained medical people have offered to give injections but have been put off by the ridiculous, bureaucratic forms they are asked to sign I congratulate the laboratory workers, who are often forgotten, on working so hard in a short time to produce these vaccines, and thank them for doing so. So many people are working, and the volunteers should also be congratulated.
Wuhan Coronavirus — House of Commons, 2020-01-23
Topic: Health
Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the Secretary of State for the comprehensive update. We know that scientists are already working hard to find a vaccine for this newly identified strain of coronavirus. Given the importance of vaccines in combating serious diseases such as this, does he agree that education about vaccines is more important than ever in this age of disinformation? What conversations has he had with colleagues to combat fake news on vaccines?
Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-04-13
Topic: Defense
Michael Boyce (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 6. The Bill sets out to make better provision about legal proceedings for our Armed Forces when they are or have been engaged on overseas operations. The Bill’s significant emphasis on presumption against prosecution as a way of relieving some of the stress of legal proceedings implies that that solves the problem. However, it is the investigation and reinvestigation process that is so debilitating and wears people down. Prosecution may even come as a form of relief. It is important to bear in mind that even when the presumption is in place, there is no total lifting of the threat of prosecution after five years. This can still happen if the Attorney-General sees fit However, that is all by the way. As I have mentioned, the investigation process needs to be addressed to ensure that it remains relevant, that a watchful, supervisory eye is kept on the process so that it does not drift, that there are timelines with which investigators have to comply and that reinvestigations are launched only after the most careful judicial oversight. Amendment 6 sets out to cover all these points, as was so well articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. For that reason, it has my support.
NHS (Government Spending) — House of Commons, 2015-01-28
Topic: Health
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): Labour Members are absolutely committed to saving the national health service from the fate that would befall it should the hon. Gentleman’s party have a further five years in office. We will absolutely not apologise for fighting tooth and nail to do what we can about, for instance, the staffing crisis that the NHS also faces.
NHS (Government Spending) — House of Commons, 2015-01-28
Topic: Health
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): Before I give way to the hon. Lady, I shall tell her what is happening with staffing in the NHS. The NHS is now spending a further £500 million a year on agency nurses. Six thousand nurses who were trained in the UK have left the country and gone elsewhere, and 4,000 nurses are coming from overseas to try to back-fill some of those places. We are spending a fortune, day after day—far more than we ought to be—on these more expensive agency nursing staff. I know that as Chair of the Health Committee, the hon. Lady has a view on agency nursing within the NHS. Is she really content with the situation?
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-22
Topic: Health
Michael John Storey (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): For the first time, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in many of the things that she said. This is a first One thing I want to add is that the Covid lockdown certainly created real problems. However, you can go further back and say that the recession created a situation whereby local authorities had massive cuts to their budgets. For example, my local authority in Liverpool lost a third of its budget, and services such as CAMHS just went. The resource was not there We all understand that young children’s mental health is hugely important, but we have not really thought it through. I do not mean this as any criticism at all. Governments will say, "Yes, we’ve got this scheme going, we’re doing this and we’re doing that", but I would much prefer it if we completely understood what provision we needed to provide in all our schools and then made sure that it was absolutely Rolls-Royce. I would rather we said that, in every single primary and secondary school in England and Wales, we will ensure that somebody referred to CAMHS is seen within 10 days. Currently, we cannot do that. On Monday, we took evidence from a group of parents regarding, I am sorry to say, alternative provision. A very young, single parent talked us through how she had waited never mind days but months to get referred to CAMHS. Let us do just one small thing at a time and be successful in it The second thing I want to say, which my noble friend Lady Brinton mentioned, is the importance of linking up with health. We are not very good at this. I remember that health was the real problem for the education, health and care plans in the Children and Families Act. Getting health to work with education was an absolute nightmare, so good luck on that one. I do not understand why that is the case I turn to Amendment 171Y. Noble Lords will be sorry to hear that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has had to catch a train back to Cardiff, so she asked me whether I would read out her speech—am I allowed to say that?
Wuhan Coronavirus — House of Commons, 2020-02-03
Topic: Health
Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): The Secretary of State will recall that during his last statement to the House on the Wuhan coronavirus I raised the importance of vaccination. At the time, he said that "it is unlikely that a vaccine is going to be available—there is not one now—so that is not the route we should be looking at"—[Official Report, 23 January 2020; Vol. 670, c. 436.] He has since announced that the Government are investing £20 million in speeding up development of a vaccine. Of course this is welcome, but what has happened in the last 10 days to change his mind and his assessment, and what is the realistic timeframe in which the public can expect to see a vaccine developed?
Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-04-13
Topic: Defense
Michael Boyce (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, Amendment 13 is about the six-year time limit imposed by the Bill on those who have been engaged on overseas operations, and the ability of such servicepeople to bring any grievances against the MoD after that time. As we have already heard, this would have the perverse effect of limiting the rights of individual service personnel by restricting their access to legal remedies for harms caused by their employers. This would not apply to their counterparts not engaged on overseas operations In Committee, the Minister’s comment that, based on past statistics, this might apply only in a very small number of instances was specious. The Armed Forces are all of one company and thus should all be treated the same. Even if only one person were to be affected, he or she should not be discriminated against. It cannot be just for such situations to be allowed, so I support Amendment 13.
Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-04-13
Topic: Defense
Graham Stirrup (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 13, to which I have attached my name. Its purpose is to ensure that service personnel are not debarred by time from pursuing claims against the Government for harms suffered on overseas operations. It seems strange to me that a Bill with the avowed purpose of providing government reassurance to service personnel seems intent on preventing those very personnel from seeking redress from that same Government. This may not be the intention, but it is one of the potential consequences of the Bill as it is currently worded In responding to a similar amendment in Committee, the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General for Scotland, argued against it because it would have very limited effect. At Second Reading, the Government said that some 94% of service personnel and veterans who brought claims relating to events in Iraq and Afghanistan had done so within six years. He later confirmed that this figure included those who had brought a claim within six years of the date of knowledge. My response is to repeat the question that I posed on that occasion, and which was never answered: are we to assume then that, had the proposed timescale been in effect, the Government believe that it would have been acceptable for the other 6% to lose the opportunity to pursue their cases?
Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-04-13
Topic: Defense
Roger Thomas (Crossbench, Unknown): I thank the Minister for her pragmatic approach to this. I entirely agree with the analysis of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, that the real issue was Article 5 and the right and ability to detain on the battlefield. There was a real problem there and, with respect to the Government, they were right to consider it. The unfortunate thing is that they chose the wrong route. I do not think that they considered carefully enough the decisions of the Supreme Court in Al-Waheed and Serdar Mohammed. But, if a problem remains, I am sure that it will be looked at sympathetically because, for the protection of our troops, it is necessary to take a realistic view of the ability to detain on the battlefield or in close proximity to it. Again, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, for his clear analysis of this, and the Minister, for her wise decision.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Health
Sarah Virginia Brinton (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I intervene briefly and echo the support for all those who have spoken about the problems with the powers of the Secretary of State. I come back to a point made slightly earlier about the lack of detail in the Bill, which does not provide a framework for what should follow in regulation. Some of us who have followed the health brief throughout the Covid era know this all too well I will just give noble Lords one example of where things went wrong. Nothing gave any guidance to the Health and Safety Executive about how its responsibilities would be carried out. There were Covid enforcement powers for local authorities, Covid enforcement rules for the police and everything else, but whenever anyone went to the HSE to ask it what they should be doing, there was no role for it at all. In fact, on at least two occasions Ministers brought back regulations because they were not working in the field. One might say that in a pandemic mistakes will happen, but because there had not been a framework in the Coronavirus Act it was not clear what the Government were trying to achieve by those objectives The worry is that Bills keep coming to your Lordships’ House with so little detail in them—this may be the most recent and most egregious example—that it will be impossible to safeguard everything, and even for this House to do its job should we get to scrutinise them properly, because we just do not have the framework that the front of the Bill sets out for us.
Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-04-13
Topic: Defense
John Houghton (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I speak in this debate to support the amendment moved by my noble friends. I do so because it is the closest to resolving, or at least ameliorating, the problem—and it is a problem, as many have rehearsed. It is essentially a practical one, relating to training, leadership, command oversight, operational reporting and improved investigative capacity and competence I fear that I remain convinced that the resort to legal exceptionalism which this Bill contemplates, and which appears to have initiated so much of the debate in the House, is an ill-considered course of action. It will make our service men and women more, not less, exposed to the challenges of the law. Law, in the context of this debate, is not simply the legislative framework within which war is conducted; it has become a weapon of that war. In the jargon, it is a new vector of attack. By way of emphasising my point, while this Bill has been maturing, we have seen the product of an extended review of the country’s security, defence, development and foreign policy. The results have been the integrated review paper and the companion MoD document, Global Britain in a Competitive Age These are both excellent pieces of work and speak to the radically different character of future war. At the heart of both documents are the themes of systemic and enduring competition between nations, between political systems, across multiple spheres. The documents emphasise the lack of clarity over where the threshold of conflict sits, the impossibility of differentiating between peace and war, home and away, friend and foe. They speak of the far greater reliance, in future, on technical advantage, automated processes, autonomous systems. They move the comprehension of conflict beyond the recent sense that it is periodic, adversarial, away fixtures.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-08
Topic: Health
Sarah Virginia Brinton (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): May I very briefly add to that? This is not just a matter for the Government; it is also a matter for the Chief Whip in the timetabling of Report. We had exactly this problem with the Health and Care Bill. We suddenly discovered a lot of detail on Report which should have been visible to us in Committee. As a result, Report took much longer, and the House sat until 1 am or 2 am on certain days. I hope the usual channels are looking at the detail of this because it will affect Report stage.
NHS (Government Spending) — House of Commons, 2015-01-28
Topic: Health
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): That is the sort of ideological stain that has pervaded the NHS policies of recent years. We must recognise that, should the Conservatives win the general election, we will see more of the same. That is the course the NHS will pursue. Not just that, but the Government breach the NHS constitution time and again on safeguards, waiting times, ambulance responses and cancelled operations. The squeeze on resources will force patients increasingly to pay for private treatment It fell to the generation after the second world war to build the NHS. It fell to Labour in 1997, after 18 years of Conservative neglect, to save the NHS. Today, it once more falls to Labour to rescue the NHS and rebuild it for the 21st century. The choice is stark: a tangible and fully funded 10-year plan to boost investment in our NHS with Labour, versus more decline and more of the same from the Tories, as they dismantle the NHS by stealth. It is beyond doubt that the NHS as we know it cannot survive another five years under the Tories, because once the NHS is gone, we will never get it back.
Wuhan Coronavirus — House of Commons, 2020-02-11
Topic: Health
Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): The Secretary of State has fielded various questions on the timescales for a vaccine. If I may be so bold, the chief medical officer told MPs last week that nothing less than a year should be promised for the development of a vaccine or treatment. Does he agree, therefore, that this is very much a long-term solution and that we must redouble our efforts on the public communication campaign on preventive and self-isolation measures?
NHS (Government Spending) — House of Commons, 2015-01-28
Topic: Health
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): To focus on the detail and take the politics out of this issue, I think that the Minister said that the clinical negligence bills have not gone up under this Government compared with those under the previous Administration. If he wishes to repeat those words, I am sure that his officials and others will correct him. Does he really think that there are no further clinical negligence liabilities under his watch?
NHS (Government Spending) — House of Commons, 2015-01-28
Topic: Health
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister, because I was going to mention my last year in office. Would he care to inform the House what the bill for management consultancy in the NHS was in 2010 and what it is now?
NHS (Government Spending) — House of Commons, 2015-01-28
Topic: Health
Luciana Clare Goldsmith (Berger) (Labour, Centre-left): It is always important to hear the Government talk about parity of esteem. In practice, however, we have seen many examples in the past year where that has not actually applied, whether that is NHS England’s decision to apply a cut to a mental health trust that is 20% higher than for all other trusts, or the figures we saw this year showing that child and adolescent mental health services have been cut by £15 million. Is it not just warm words to talk about parity of esteem, when in reality people have to travel hundreds of miles to access in-patient care or not get any treatment at all?
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Lisa Cameron (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I understand that the inquiry has focused on patient risk, but has there been any analysis of the impact on patient waiting times, which are also extremely important for patient care? Exactly how many patients have waited longer than they should have for treatment?