argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-12-15
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for his description of affairs, which, as ever, is as thoughtful as we would hope. However, I clarify and disagree with him in that correlation and causation are not the same things. I chose my words extremely carefully: there is a correlation with higher transmissibility, but there is no evidence that this is caused by the variant; I want to be crystal clear about that. I pay tribute to colleagues at the Sanger and at COG, the genomics collective that is doing the work on tracking down the science of the new variant. Their insight is profound and they will be playing into the decisions about whether any judgment on the variant should play a role in the decisions about any future restrictions.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-12-15
Topic: Health
Robert Hayward (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister accept what I deem to be the position in relation to the younger generation: that they are suffering from lockdown fatigue and are not responding to government messages? I suggest that, rather than having government Ministers and some scientists conveying the message of the importance of acting responsibly, they consider along with Jonathan Van-Tam somebody like Marcus Rashford, Rio Ferdinand or Harry Kane to convey the message that we are failing to get across? In association with that and the comments that have been made elsewhere, can the Minister tell us whether he has any information, in light of the FDA’s announcement, as to whether the Moderna vaccine will be recognised in this country in the near future?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-12-15
Topic: Health
Andrew Robathan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, during all these restrictions and over the lockdown we had for one month, which ended on 2 December, we have been told that the Government are following the science—the "unstoppable force of science", to quote the Secretary of State in yesterday’s Statement. However, in late September SAGE recommended circuit breakers of two to three weeks, which Wales imposed for 17 days until 9 November; it now has coronavirus rates that are nearly three times those of England. What confidence does the Minister have in the scientific advice he is given?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-12-15
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): I completely accept the point made by the noble Baroness. It is incredibly frustrating that the exact communities which have often seen some of the highest mortality rates are also those which are sceptical about the vaccine. This is one of our biggest challenges; it has been for months and will continue to be so. I pay tribute to colleagues at the Department of Health and the Cabinet Office who have done a huge amount in working with specialist media—radio, magazines and online forums—to target exactly these communities. They have used advertising and direct engagement with the presenters to put the message across, often in local languages, and this has proved increasingly effective.
DHSC Answers to Written Questions — House of Lords, 2020-11-25
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the very large number of questions which have been put to the Department of Health is completely unprecedented. We had 577 in the whole of 2019. So far in 2020 we have had 1,783, of which 799 have been answered on time and the rest are late. I apologise for that; it is a matter of huge regret. I ask for the forbearance of the House, as the pandemic has put enormous pressure on the department The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, quite correctly alluded to one aspect of the answering of questions: the questions themselves often address novel challenges. Traditionally, we get questions about things that the department has been doing for years and years, where it is easy to pluck out an answer from the database or from the encyclopaedia of answers. The noble Baroness gave a good example of a question where it is difficult to elicit an answer. I know the exact question she referred to, because I have sought really hard to provide an answer to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. The question of how many swabs have not been returned by post is much more complicated than it might look. There are different types of swabs; different schemes—ONS, REACT, clinical trials—send in the swabs. Inconveniently, they do not pool all the answers. Also, some swabs may sit on a bench or in a cupboard at a house for a long time and it is not possible to know when they are, or are not, sent back I cite that as an example of the kind of challenge that we have faced in answering questions from noble Lords. I am not trying to detract from the inconvenience of questions not being answered on time, but I assure the House that we have put in considerably more resources. We have upgraded the quality of the people who are answering the questions and have an absolute commitment to trying to answer them on time.
DHSC Answers to Written Questions — House of Lords, 2020-11-25
Topic: Health
Andrew Robathan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I do not underestimate the pressure under which the Department of Health has been put and pay tribute to my noble friend for the number of times that he comes here to answer Questions. However, the data behind this virus is hugely important. I put down a Question asking about the number of NHS workers—doctors and nurses—who have been killed by the virus. The answer that came back was: "We don’t know". Surely, we must know this. I have also asked a question in this Chamber, not a written one, about what the strategy is without vaccinations. A vaccine has now come, but we must know what the strategy is. Are we going to go into another lockdown if the infection rate rises again? Perhaps the Minister can answer that now?
DHSC Answers to Written Questions — House of Lords, 2020-11-25
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, matching the data on deaths with the HR records of the NHS is actually very difficult. It cannot be done easily, or even accurately. Our strategy is crystal clear: to protect the NHS, keep the schools open and encourage the economy while we wait for the vaccine to be deployed.
DHSC Answers to Written Questions — House of Lords, 2020-11-25
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I regret enormously that the noble Lord feels that we have, in any way, avoided the facts. We are absolutely committed to learning the lessons of Covid, which will be profound. I note that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State was in front of the House of Commons Select Committee on health for two and a half hours yesterday, answering exactly those questions. It was an illuminating and important discussion and I very much hope that this House will have an opportunity to do the same.
Coronavirus Vaccine — House of Lords, 2020-12-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): I remind the noble Lord that the criteria sent out by the JCVI is extremely simple and mainly driven by age, so the selection procedure is very straightforward. He is right that the distribution of the vaccine is limited by both the size of the vials and the need for cold storage. That is why there will be an emphasis on hospitals over GP surgeries. That represents a challenge in places such as rural areas that may be distant from hospitals, but I reassure him that the deployment team is doing all that it can to ensure that no one is left behind.
Coronavirus Vaccine — House of Lords, 2020-12-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, difficult decisions have to be made by everyone in this. The JCVI has looked very carefully indeed at the challenge of how to prioritise this vaccine, taking representations from a large number of groups. Ultimately, its priority is to protect life and the NHS, and its clear decision has been to have a prioritisation based on age because this is the greatest driver of mortality.
Coronavirus Vaccine — House of Lords, 2020-12-03
Topic: Health
Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend, the MHRA and everyone associated with producing this vaccine in such record time; it is a great tribute to our health service. I will focus on the fact that the flu jabs for the over-50s are still being distributed, and there is a reluctance among some—perhaps as many as two-thirds of the over-50s—to take up the flu vaccine, as they would like to wait for the Covid vaccine, which, of course, defeats the purpose of offering them the flu vaccine. Is this something that my noble friend is aware of, and is it something that he could address? I echo the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Clark, and ask that specific regard be had to the challenges of administering the vaccine in rural areas. Will my noble friend use, as far as possible, the dispensing doctors in this regard? I pay tribute to them and the work I do with them.
Coronavirus Vaccine — House of Lords, 2020-12-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, as few will be surprised to know, the rollout of the flu vaccine has been hugely successful this year; the take-up has been massive. I am not aware, from the stats that I have seen, of any slowdown in the take-up of the flu vaccine, but the point my noble friend Lady McIntosh makes is understandable—I am happy to check it out. I also encourage anyone who is thinking about deferring the flu vaccine until they get the Covid vaccine to think again because it is a massive priority to get vaccinated for both The noble Baroness and I have talked before about dispensing doctors, whose role is very important. There is a challenge with the distribution of the Pfizer vaccine because of cold storage and the large number of shots in each vial. I am not sure whether that means that rural dispensing doctors can play the important role that they might do at this stage of the distribution, but I reassure the noble Baroness that they will play a role in the national distribution as it pans out over the next few months.
Coronavirus Vaccine — House of Lords, 2020-12-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the noble Lord’s challenge and completely endorse his point that tracing will remain important. Not everyone will take the vaccine initially; it will not be available to everyone for months, as the Deputy Chief Medical Officer made plain in his briefing earlier today. Tracing remains a really important feature of our fight against this disease. However, I respectfully suggest that his information is a little out of date: the amount of collaboration on tracing between the national and local efforts, particularly with DPHs such as the one in Cumbria, has come on in leaps and bounds, even in the last few weeks. From my briefings and meetings with DPHs, I know that they have been provided with an enormous amount of data, support and access to tracing resources in order both to bring their local intelligence and insight to bear and to support the national tracing effort. I applaud all those DPHs who have stepped forward in this way, and I am very hopeful that the local-national combination on tracing will pay massive dividends.
Coronavirus Vaccine — House of Lords, 2020-12-03
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Baroness is right about the NHS volunteers. We would very much like to work with those who stepped forward. Their move was extremely welcome and kindly meant. However, the deployment of the vaccine is a precise affair. We are relying on people having to put in long hours—often not at their own discretion or convenience. Volunteers may well play a role, but the backbone and functional aspect of the deployment will rely on professional staff I appreciate her conundrum about the military. It is a delicate dilemma. I do not want to live in the kind of country where we turn our back on the military because some people might feel uncomfortable at the sight of uniforms on the streets. We need to build trust with communities. I want to use this moment of the vaccine to build a bridge of trust between those whom the noble Baroness reasonably described and the military. We must not make the mistake of disrespecting the military by turning them away from this important task.
Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-10
Topic: Defense
Robin Granville Hodgson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank all those who have taken part in this short debate and, in particular, I thank my noble friend for her very helpful reply Just to deal with a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I was not expecting there to be a detailed crawl through every single CCA. Clearly, that would be inappropriate, but an overview would be appropriate because, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, pointed out, we do not want a situation where we have no information or too much information. We come back to the issue that has been at the back of many of our conversations during Committee: how do we find the right balance between ensuring that those who look after our safety are protected and ensuring that there is a sufficiency of transparency so that they feel the pressure to behave properly at all times I will read very carefully what my noble friend said about what is already proposed and what is already in legislation. I said that this was a probing amendment and therefore, for the time being at least, I beg leave to withdraw it.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-11-30
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend is entirely right about the hospitality sector. It is a sector that we care about greatly and we recognise how hard hit it has been. None the less, we have to be considerate of the fact that the best epidemiological studies suggest that this is an environment where infection hits hard, so we are trying to hit the right balance between the two. As for local areas and trying to be more precise and focused in our tiering, that sounds like a sensible suggestion. However, we experimented with it quite thoroughly during the summer, and I remember standing here at this Dispatch Box week after week running through tweaks to various local tiers, only to find that the virus very quickly leaped from one area to another. It is a frustrating fact that the virus spreads from city to surrounding rural area and from one town to the next with alarming speed. It is also true, as discussed in response to the earlier question, that for communications it is important to keep things simple. For those reasons, we are not envisaging a change to the tiering structure at the moment.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-11-30
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to remind the noble Lord that earlier today we published a fulsome programme of community testing. I would be very glad to send him a copy of it, because it lays out exactly the plan he has just described; I am hopeful that he will celebrate its publication. He is entirely right that infection rates have come down in Liverpool—not just because of mass testing but it has made a contribution—and I pay tribute to the mayor and people of Liverpool for their approach in recent months.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-11-30
Topic: Health
Andrew Lansley (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the Faculty of Public Health and the directors of public health have expressed reservations about what they described as the distraction of the mass community testing programme in relation to the requirement to support the vaccination programme. Can my noble friend give them and me some reassurance that the vaccination programme will be an overarching priority for resources and that the testing of symptomatic cases and of essential workers, to which he referred, is a priority for the testing programme? Can he also say whether there is a realistic level of resources to support the community testing programme to which he has twice referred positively?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-11-30
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, although I am only a humble Health Minister, I do believe that the frameworks we are recommending are in the best interests of the economy. If the NHS cannot cope, if trust breaks down in society, if people stay at home and will not shop or go to hospitality, and if people are laid off then the economy suffers. If the pandemic and the presence of Covid, as a driver of behaviour in our society, rolls over for month after month, then we will be the long-term sufferers of economic decline. That is the reason why we believe that the tiering and community testing is essential, and that is why we support these measures.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-11-30
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble and gallant Lord makes a fair point. We looked at the very scenario that he describes, but ultimately our priorities are to save life, protect the NHS and keep schools and the economy going. The best way of doing that is to prioritise the elderly because there is a direct correlation between illness from Covid and age. The best way in which we can protect society and the economy is to ensure that those who are oldest get the vaccine first.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-11-30
Topic: Health
Michael Farmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, just 10 days ago, Professor David Eyre of the University of Oxford reported that, for most people, being infected with Covid-19 protects against reinfection for at least six months. He said: "This is really good news, because we can be confident that, at least in the short term, most people who get COVID-19 won’t get it again." Washington State University research found that just one case out of the multiple millions worldwide suggested that waning antibody levels or a poorly developed immune system to Covid could put people at risk of reinfection. I am aware that studies need to be replicated, but this good news seems to be a very well-kept secret, ignored on the official government web page on the relevance of antibody tests. What would give the Government confidence that potent antibodies linger beyond at least six months in the majority of cases and how small would the tiny minority of proven cases of reinfection have to be in order for them to say that this risk is a price worth paying for society to begin to get back on its feet?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-11-30
Topic: Health
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, could my noble friend comment on reports in today’s press that four hospitals only, in the whole of England, are busier than last winter? Could he explain how on Saturday Michael Gove warned that, unless the latest regulations were implemented, every hospital in England risked being overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases? Before our debate tomorrow, could he publish the modelling on which this assertion was based?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-11-30
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I saw the press reports to which my noble friend refers. I remind him that their suggestion that we should be running our hospital system at 99% capacity during a pandemic is not reasonable. It would put our flexibility to deal with any increase in infections over the winter months in an incredibly precarious state. Running at around 88%, which is the current rate, is pragmatic. It would take very little for the 600,000-plus group of people who carry the Covid infection at the moment to have an impact on those bed numbers before the NHS was overwhelmed. That was the point that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster made, and I thought he made it very well.
Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-01
Topic: Defense
Michael Morris (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, in many ways, subsection (5) of Clause 1 could well be the most important part of the Bill. I should make it clear that I support MI5. Its focus and dedication to working in the national interest is second to none Criminal activity has to be limited and defined, but the most difficult area is defining the methodology. Who should give clearance? I am not convinced that a judge, however senior, necessarily has the right experience. In my judgment, we need someone with specific experience in this challenging area. In reviewing this matter, we should look at what other countries do, particularly the USA and Canada, as other noble Lords have mentioned. Both appear to be pretty successful in this area. I am not qualified to make a judgment on that, but I should be interested, too, in what Australia does. Reference has been made to a close friend of mine, the late Desmond de Silva, who carried out marvellous work for the UN in Northern Ireland. In that context, he produced a framework of control, which needs to be looked at because it includes areas that merit serious consideration Part of what we are considering is the future security of our country, which brings me to the integrated review of foreign defence, security and development policy announced recently in the other place. I shall quote from the penultimate paragraph, which states: "I can announce that we have established a National Cyber Force, combining our intelligence agencies and service personnel, which is already operating in cyberspace against terrorism, organised crime and hostile state activity. "—[Official Report, Commons, 19/11/20; col. 489.] It is clear to me and, I imagine, your Lordships that life in the 21st century will be quite different from anything we have yet experienced Against that background, the control proposed in Amendments 46 and 73 may be the way forward. They need refining and the contributions of my friends, the noble Lords, Lord Butler and Lord Carlile, should be considered. Noble Lords should make no mistake: this is a crucial area for the future security of our country.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-12-01
Topic: Health
Andrew Robathan (Conservative, Centre-right): Leave out from "that" to the end and insert "this House declines to approve the draft Regulations because no adequate impact analysis of the social, economic and health costs of the restrictions to address the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to the benefits of those restrictions, has been laid before Parliament."