argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions) (England) (No. 4) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-11-04
Topic: Health
Matthew Ridley (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I had wanted to spend my three minutes spelling out the potential alternative to lockdown, namely focused protection, because the Government have not taken it seriously enough. A staggering 45% of the UK’s Covid deaths have come among the 0.6% of people who live in care homes. That is where our efforts should be focused However, like others, I was so disturbed by what I have learned about the numbers used last Saturday to bounce us into lockdown that I must devote my few minutes to that issue. We were told that the virus is spreading faster than in the reasonable worst-case scenario. Like my noble friend Lord Lilley, I had to find out from Ed Conway of Sky News that the scenario was drawn up a long time ago in July and had absurd assumptions about the timing of the second wave. We were told that we could expect 4,000 deaths a day on a chart that did not even disclose where the projection came from. That is more deaths than have occurred on any day in any country, even those with vastly larger populations than ours The fatality rate of the virus is about 0.2%, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, said, and falling. Therefore, as my noble friend Lady Noakes said, 4,000 deaths a day implies 2 million infections per day, with the entire population infected within a month. That does not pass the common-sense test. What we were not told, and had to drag out of the secretive conclave of oracles known as SAGE, was that that was a nearly three-week-old projection that subsequently had been updated twice, producing much lower numbers which were ignored. The death toll was undershooting not just that model but all three projections shown on that graph. I echo the despair of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, at the performance of the models. They mostly still do not take into account matters such as the heterogeneity of infectiousness, whereby in each wave the superspreaders are depleted and the wave therefore crests, which is why Sweden now has almost no daily deaths, as my noble friend Lord Balfe said, after no lockdown It is not true, as my noble friend the Minister said twice in his speech, that the numbers are rising exponentially; they have not been for several weeks. Even by last weekend, and certainly today, it is clear that the second wave is peaking. Cases peaked in Liverpool, Nottingham, Newcastle and Manchester well over a week ago. As we have heard this evening, the King’s College data show that cases are now starting to nudge downwards nationally I have huge sympathy for the Government but, in the light of the failure to produce proper evidence for this measure, as my noble friend Lady Altmann said, the Government have every justification to pause this lockdown, with its inevitable products of further deaths from suicide, untreated cancer and heart disease and its miserable consequences of mental ill health, unemployment, bankruptcy and poverty, and go back and demand proper evidence-based graphs from SAGE.
Drones — House of Commons, 2015-10-15
Topic: Defense
Jeremy Paul Wright (Conservative, Centre-right): The role of the Law Officers in relation to military action overseas is to advise as necessary on legal questions, not to authorise the action. The use of drones in military action overseas does not of itself necessarily give rise to legal questions. The deployment of one form of equipment or another rarely does, in and of itself. Whether legal questions arise will depend on the operational context in which any form of military deployment was undertaken, and the reason for it.
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): Well, there will be further guidance on carol singing, I am assured, so the noble Baroness can keep an eye out for that On vaccines, obviously the safety of the public comes first. A Covid vaccine will be approved for use only once it has met robust standards. In relation to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, the Health Secretary has asked the MHRA to begin its assessment of this vaccine, and Pfizer/BioNTech has begun supplying data to the MHRA. But it is an entirely independent process, so that will be done in time. As I have said, we anticipate a number of safe and effective vaccines available in 2021.
Policing and Crime Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-09
Topic: Health
Jonathan Toby Harris (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we are in Committee and we can do what we like. The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, put the argument very clearly in relation to the number of deaths that occur as a result of people who have more drink in their blood than the limit she is proposing but less than the current limit. If those deaths could be prevented that would be a net gain.
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Michael Farmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, at great personal cost, as well as social and financial cost to the country, millions have now had Covid and therefore have antibodies. I am indeed one of them. Significant savings can be made by excluding anyone who has contracted the disease in, say, the last six months, from needlessly being traced, tested or required to isolate, including after returning from abroad. So what has been decided about such people and where they should come in the pecking order for vaccination?
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I reassure the noble and gallant Lord that a vaccine will be deployed across the whole UK. We are working closely with the devolved Administrations to ensure that it is deployed fairly. As I mentioned, the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation will advise on which vaccines should be used and what the priority groups are. The initial advice is that the vaccine should first be given to care home residents and staff, followed by people over 80 and health and social care workers, and then the rest of the population in order of age and risk.
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I hope that I have made it clear that we are working very closely with the devolved Administrations to make sure that these programmes and vaccines are rolled out. Obviously, the mass testing programme in England is the only testing programme, but we will be working with all the devolved Administrations to make sure that they have access to the tests and vaccines they need in order that we can all move forward together and, I hope, see some light at the end of the tunnel come the spring.
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very happy to again pay tribute, as the noble Baroness, the noble Lord and others have done, to the fantastic scientists who have worked on these vaccines and indeed who work across universities. I very much hope that the exciting developments we have seen at Oxford and other universities will encourage young people to think about this work as a career. It is incredibly impressive and challenging work, and I hope that some of the coverage and interest in it will encourage more people to think about it as a career, ensuring that we continue to have fantastic scientists working in this country.
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with the noble Lord, and that is exactly why we are offering all local authorities in tier 3 areas the opportunity to participate in the sort of programme that he has suggested. It will be called the kick out Covid testing challenge and will build on the positive results from the Liverpool pilot.
Armed Forces Pay — House of Commons, 2017-11-01
Topic: Defense
Conor Patrick McGinn (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Lady makes an important and interesting point. We have certainly tried hard in my constituency and the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens more widely to implement the armed forces covenant, but there have been issues with its implementation in Northern Ireland. I am sure we would all wish to see those issues resolved and its full implementation in Northern Ireland, as in the rest of the UK Despite the Government’s target in the strategic defence and security review to have 82,000 full-time fully trained troops, as of April this year there were just 78,000 soldiers in the Army. By any measure, that is an abject failure on the Government’s watch, and it was rightly identified as a key problem by the former commander of Joint Forces Command, General Sir Richard Barrons. The recent report by the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) confirmed that the Regular Army needs to recruit 10,000 people a year to maintain its strength, but managed to attract only 7,000 entrants last year Worryingly, alongside all that, the figures show that the numbers leaving the part-time Army Reserve, which we were told would be increased to meet the decline in numbers in the Regular Army, increased by 20% between 1 June 2016 and 1 June 2017. At about the same time, in the most recent financial year the reserve intake fell by 18%. The Government do not seem to have a strategy to turn these falling numbers around. In fact, their only solution so far has been to sack another 120 members of the armed forces personnel who serve as recruiters and replace them with civilians from Capita. I say gently to the Minister—as I said earlier, he is an agreeable chap—that he has a bit of a cheek on him to criticise our plans for recruitment and what we would do with the budget when he is taking money out of the pockets of armed forces personnel and giving it to a private company.
Armed Forces Pay — House of Commons, 2017-11-01
Topic: Defense
Conor Patrick McGinn (Labour, Centre-left): I do not wish to contravene the rules of the House by getting into a debate with the Minister, but I am not sure that he can express particular confidence that the target of 30,000 reserve recruits will be met. The Government started to publish the figures only after pressure from the Opposition several years ago. We will continue to monitor progress on that in particular, because although, like the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) said earlier, I am not a mathematician, I know that if we need to recruit 10,000 and we are attracting only 7,000 to the Regular Army, and we have not met the quota that we defined to meet national security needs through recruitment to the reserves, it is not going to add up. It is not going to add up for the armed forces, and it is not going to add for the British public.
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): The NHS Medical Director has made it clear that the NHS has carefully planned to make sure that we can deal with additional demand using, as the noble Lord has rightly said, the mobilisation of the Nightingale hospitals and through partnerships with the independent sector. They will ensure that this is rolled out as and when it is needed. I am sure that they will be cognisant of the situation in Blackburn and will be monitoring it very carefully.
Policing and Crime Bill — House of Lords, 2016-12-07
Topic: Health
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken on Report, I should quickly declare that I am an elected councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association The question of powdered or vaping alcohol was discussed in Committee, as my noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe mentioned, and his amendment would now classify it under the Misuse of Drugs Act. I must confess that I had never heard of powdered or vaporised alcohol before we debated this in Committee on 9 November. I have now of course heard that this alcohol can be put into fruit juice and other soft drinks; apparently, it can be baked and put into a whole range of products. I also thought that vaping was an alternative to smoking and had no idea that you can now apparently vape alcohol. I think we all agree that alcohol is a mood-altering substance, so I hope that the Minister can respond to these important issues. I take entirely the medical evidence given by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on how these products can get into your body and how quickly they can react. It is important that we look at this carefully and, if it needs to be regulated properly, at how that can be done.
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Philippa Stroud (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my noble friend for her response on Christmas—that it is a matter for all families to make educated judgments on their own risk. This is a much better way of leading the British people through a crisis. Given that there is strong evidence that infections peaked in the UK in the weeks before the lockdown in March due to voluntary action, in the weeks before the current lockdown nationally, and in most regions across all tiers—1, 2 and 3—due to the changing community perceptions of the virus, what intention do Her Majesty’s Government have to pivot to a strategy of public health messaging to improve adherence and enable voluntary, as opposed to mandatory, measures that empower citizens to take responsibility for their own health and the health of their families and communities?
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): Well, I assure my noble friend that the legal consistency of the new tiers—as I said, they are now standardised—will be complemented by targeted communications and public health campaigns to inform and influence behaviours to strengthen the sense of personal responsibility in behaviours that will be important to combat the spread of the virus over the winter, together with using local mass testing programmes, with local knowledge about how to encourage people to use them. All that will lead to the kinds of conversations and messaging that my noble friend talks about.
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): We have a central government unit that will be working on this, but also DCMS is working very closely with social media platforms to help identify false claims, exactly as the noble Lord said, about both the virus and the vaccine and, where necessary, promoting authoritative sources of information in their place. I assure the noble Lord that we are very cognisant of these issues and are working hard to make sure that the rollout of the national vaccination plan is accompanied by a public health strategy and message to make sure that people understand that we will always put the safety of the public first, and that any vaccine that is approved will have gone through an incredibly rigorous process to pass that hurdle, as the noble Lord will well know.
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Patricia Elizabeth Rawlings (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it is very encouraging news that vaccines will be available in 2021—a remarkable feat. We should all congratulate Oxford, which is not only supplying 100 million vaccines to our Government but is doing so on a not-for-profit basis. Is Pfizer, the supplier of the first vaccine to be announced, which is supplying us with 40 million doses, doing so on the same basis? More importantly, deal or no deal, as the Pfizer vaccine is, I believe, coming from Belgium, will there be import duties or tariffs?
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): Well, we have secured more than 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, as my noble friend rightly said, which is enough for about a third of our population, and in total we have secured early access to more than 355 million doses through a portfolio of promising new vaccines—so we are very well placed to take advantage of both the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines, which have now reached the stages they have, and other vaccines that will hopefully follow through on the back of their success.
Armed Forces Pay — House of Commons, 2017-11-01
Topic: Defense
Paul John Sweeney (Labour, Centre-left): It is reassuring indeed that the SNP spokesperson on defence matters continues to uphold the principle that young people should be allowed to join the armed forces and develop their careers in the service. That is most welcome Consider a serviceperson on the lowest basic rate of pay. When on 24-hour deployments—on exercise or operations—their basic pay could actually go down to a notional value of £2 an hour. Is that really the value of our armed forces when they are dedicated to that extent? Any plans to remove the increments associated with overseas service are totally unacceptable. We should bear that in mind when we consider appropriate rates of pay for our armed forces. We talk about the great opportunity that a career in the service provides, particularly for skills development, apprenticeships and trade opportunities.
Armed Forces Pay — House of Commons, 2017-11-01
Topic: Defense
Paul John Sweeney (Labour, Centre-left): We are making the point that, by virtue of that great opportunity for development, these people are very attractive to the private sector. When inflation picks up and private sector salaries respond, we will see increasing pressure on retention in the services, especially if pay continues to lag behind that in the private sector. We need to address the situation urgently if we are to continue making our armed forces capable.
Armed Forces Pay — House of Commons, 2017-11-01
Topic: Defense
Luke Pollard (Labour, Centre-left): In Plymouth, the private sector is already poaching some of the engineering grades in particular, and pay is one of the reasons why people are leaving the armed services to work in the private sector. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is the case?
Covid 19: Winter Plan — House of Lords, 2020-11-24
Topic: Health
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I would be very happy to have the vaccine injected into my body. I will let my noble friend eat his genetically modified potatoes, but I look forward to sharing a meal with him once again when he returns to the House once we are through this crisis.
Integrated Review — House of Lords, 2020-11-23
Topic: Defense
David Arthur Russell Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the battlefields of future warfare will lie increasingly right inside our societies and inside people’s minds? So, while these measures are obviously extremely welcome for our Armed Forces, in the Prime Minister’s own words, we must "upgrade our capabilities across the board".—[Official Report, Commons, 19/11/20; col. 488.] Will she also assure us that when the integrated review eventually appears, having looked further at our defence needs, it will fully reflect what the Trade Secretary calls the "Pacific mindset"—along with the "Commonwealth mindset"—since these are the areas where our key future alliances increasingly lie for security and defence, as well as for trade and investment?
NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans — House of Commons, 2016-09-14
Topic: Health
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am sorry that this is such an acrimonious debate. I welcome the principle of the sustainability and transformation plans, as they are a key opportunity to reverse fragmentation and to reintegrate the NHS, but we have to get it right. To turn this whole matter into just a game of moving the deckchairs on the Titanic is something that we would all regret in a few years’ time. We are talking about a place-based approach, which is very similar to what we have in Scotland. I absolutely welcome it, but the places must be right—they need to cover the whole population and the geography must make sense. That is in the relationships of the organisations that are there, but we have to think of things such as public transport. There is no point plonking a community in an STP if there are no connections to it. How these places are designed is really important, as are the partners that are in them. All of this should be about integration and re-integration from acute care through to primary care and local authority care. We need single pathways and wrap-around patient-centred care.
Investigatory Powers Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-02
Topic: Defense
Alan William John West (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, all my experience from three years as Chief of Defence Intelligence and three years as the Minister for Security and Counterterrorism makes me realise how crucial the Bill is for the security of our nation. The Bill has been worked through now over a long period. It has had amazing input, it has amazing cross-party consensus and it is really very important. We have just had 37 minutes of emotive discussion, most of which has nothing to do with the security of our nation. I am very concerned that this amendment might well have an impact against the Bill that none of us intends. I have heard people saying, "There won’t be any difficulty", but I am worried. If it does, that will be a problem for us. The Bill is too important for it to be delayed to a state where it is not implemented in time. I hear people saying, "That’s not a problem", but all my experience of government and of life is that things suddenly crop up. I will be much happier knowing that the Bill has been put to bed, because our nation will then be much safer.
Integrated Review — House of Lords, 2020-11-23
Topic: Defense
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I reassure the right reverend Prelate that this settlement puts the defence programme on a sustainable footing and will make sure that our Armed Forces can meet today’s threats at the same time as delivering on a once-in-a-generation modernisation. This £16.5 billion increase over four years is the biggest uplift in 30 years, and, as I mentioned, it cements the UK’s position as the largest defence spender in Europe and the second largest in NATO.
NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans — House of Commons, 2016-09-14
Topic: Health
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman. I think it is about care in the home for those who are able to have that and convalescence for those who require it; that, basically, is the step up, step down. In my health board in Ayrshire and Arran, we have rebuilt the three cottage hospitals. They are now modern, state-of-the-art, small units. That means that our population has less far to travel and that older people will not, in the end, need to come to hospital. Now, we are still in that transition; those units are not doing everything they have the potential for—indeed, we are a rural population. However, certainly in Scotland, there is much more recognition that we need intermediate care between people being at home and being looked after by their GP, and people ending up in a very expensive acute unit. It is not just about finance; any Member who has been in hospital knows they do not want to be there, and nor do our elderly population. These levels of care are therefore crucial, and it is important that that grows out of the STPs. I see that as a crucial opportunity for the NHS, which cannot be missed.
Integrated Review — House of Lords, 2020-11-23
Topic: Defense
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): As the noble Baroness says, we believe that this settlement gives a chance to break free from the vicious circle whereby we ordered ever decreasing numbers of ever more expensive items of military hardware. We have set out a number of projects that we will move forward across the Navy in particular but also with the RAF and others. We have also set out a very ambitious plan focused on using new technologies, AI, our new National Cyber Force and space. This is a broad package that we believe will truly help our Armed Forces modernise and be able to tackle the emerging and very different global threats that they are currently facing.