argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-01-29
Topic: Health
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Although people who work in an academic unit will be very aware of trials—a lot of trials are UK-wide, but European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer trials are Europe-wide and occasionally there are worldwide trials—people who work in district general hospitals, where there might be greater numbers of certain types of patients, are often less aware. Adding a listing of trials under any disease topic or area of clinical practice could be helpful in attracting clinicians to say, "I am aware that you can access a trial in Birmingham or Manchester." The measure might promote trials to the busy clinician who is not directly involved in academic research.
Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-01-29
Topic: Health
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I have two small points. First, personalised medicine, particularly for breast cancer, has been evolving for years. Right from when we could tell whether a cancer fed on the female hormone oestrogen or not, we were targeting the treatments towards patients. We have been moving that way and it will accelerate I know it is not the subject of the Bill, but I hope that the accelerated access review will consider in general how we get drugs to patients—a subject that we debate relentlessly in Westminster Hall. I see a negative feedback loop coming from among colleagues who used to be trialists, such as myself. We registered patients and did all the work to take part in research, but when the drugs were finally made available, the NHS could not afford them. We need a totally different way of accessing those drugs. The companies want to sell them, and we and patients want them.
Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-01-29
Topic: Health
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I think the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) has a much greater admiration for what a computer on a desk can access at that moment when a GP has a 10-minute appointment. What they are actually looking at is the patient’s records. They also have the ability to prescribe, but to track something down they would have to shut those systems down and go into something else, as with searching the internet. They cannot do that live, in front of a patient, and that brings up an important point. If the new system is meant to be used live, in front of patients, it will have to interact with the NHS computer systems, which someone can literally click on and use to look things up relatively easily, in the way we look things up in the BNF at the moment.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-06-15
Topic: Health
Philippa Stroud (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for the way in which he has worked tirelessly throughout this crisis. Tonight, I want to draw attention to an issue that has arisen under the health protection and coronavirus restrictions legislation, amendments to which we are debating today. It is an issue that I had hoped to see addressed in the amendment that we are debating this evening During the passage of the original health protection legislation, two amendments were laid in this House. These amendments were to allow abortion-inducing medication to be self-administered by pregnant women, within their homes, after one virtual medical consultation—a departure from the need for two doctors. These provisions were initially firmly rejected in the other place, with a statement by the Secretary of State for Health that "We have no proposals to change any abortion rules as part of the covid-19 response."—[Official Report, Commons, 24/3/20; col. 244.] Further remarks were made in this Chamber by the Minister, my noble friend Lord Bethell, that it is not right to rush through this type of change in a sensitive area such as abortion without adequate parliamentary scrutiny. The amendment to approve this procedure was therefore withdrawn by the Chamber However, a later response to questions I posed to the Department of Health said that the department had in fact taken the power and made this change. In doing so, the Government stated that the intention was to ease the pressure on health professionals during the Covid-19 pandemic by allowing registered medical practitioners to prescribe both pills for the treatment of early medical abortion, up to 10 weeks, from their own homes. This meant that women would be prescribed this medication without being seen by a doctor and without the gestation period of their child being verified The tragedy of this confusion is that it is women who have suffered. This confusion has led to poor health outcomes for vulnerable women, with known cases of complications, such as incomplete abortion and continued bleeding. This confusion has led not only to the suffering of women but to abuses and misadministration, with no way of knowing whether or not the gestation period was in fact under 10 weeks. There are nine known cases of women who were provided at-home abortion pills beyond the end of 10 weeks’ gestation, including one case where the unborn child was at 28 weeks’ gestation—four weeks past the legal limit, as set out in the Abortion Act 1967 Does my noble friend the Minister agree that, with the reopening of non-essential shops and the resuming of normal medical services, it is now time that the care of women by two doctors is restored in person? Will he agree that the next time these regulations are reviewed, this will be included within them?
Iraq Inquiry Report — House of Commons, 2016-04-14
Topic: Defense
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The right hon. Gentleman is quite right. People, and especially troops, want to feel that this place is not on auto-pilot. They want to know that it is living, functioning, thinking and reacting to lessons. As was said, to commit troops to a morass and refuse to learn lessons is an absolute abdication of the House’s responsibility.
Iraq Inquiry Report — House of Commons, 2016-04-14
Topic: Defense
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is very right. We expect the military to do its job when we commit it to war. I use the word "we", but I was not an MP at the time and, like most of the rest of the citizens of the UK and Scotland, I did not support the action in Iraq. When we ask the military as a collective to do a job, we should be prepared to do our job and deliver change if necessary. We should not run away or be scared of such decisions. We must remember that there was a Butler inquiry in 2004, which the Evening Standard branded a whitewash on its front page. When the Government thought that they could get inquiries of a certain type, they were quite willing to have them.
Iraq Inquiry Report — House of Commons, 2016-04-14
Topic: Defense
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. He probably knows that I am a great admirer of his thoughts and ideas. He makes a very good point about this perverse incentive that a Government can have to keep a war going to avoid an inquiry. Hopefully, that is not a reality, but given the machinations of politics, we can never know. There may be a desire to get over another couple of weeks or another month, or to kick the can down the road that little bit further. The can was certainly kicked down the road a decade ago. A pivotal thing changed between 2006 and 2009—the Prime Minister of the day changed, from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown. People can draw their own conclusions from that, but I do think that was significant. I will wait for the inquiry to see just how significant it was As hon. Members have said, we cannot have this Parliament running away from the reality of what it committed other people to doing. Ultimately, the Iraq war cost 179 UK lives. As the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) said, that does not take into account those who were wounded in body or mind, or the knock-on effects on families, loved ones, and those dealing with people wounded in body or mind. The war has taken quite a toll on people in the UK, and it has cost the lives of 4,800 allied soldiers. Sadly, those figures, terrible as they are, are dwarfed by those for civilian casualties in Iraq. The lowest estimate is 134,000, but the number is possibly four times higher than that. The war also created 3.5 million refugees. For goodness’ sake, there are lessons that we must learn about what we got ourselves involved in, and what we might do again if we do not have the courage to face up to what was done.
Iraq Inquiry Report — House of Commons, 2016-04-14
Topic: Defense
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; I agree with all he said. To that, I add the other fallout from the Iraq war, which, we must remember, was demonstrated against by more than a million people on the streets of the UK. If a million people were demonstrating, we can be sure that many, many more—several factors more—were in support of them. I add to that the creation of Daesh or ISIL in the camps of Iraq. There was a myth at the time that America went into Iraq because al-Qaeda was there; that was part of the myth-making in America around regime change. The reality was that al-Qaeda was not there until the Americans went in, and then the Americans created something far worse in those camps. The responsibility for what was done there—the loss of lives, the costs and the terror created—hangs very darkly over the Iraq war. That is something from which we must learn. We must ensure that we get this report published fairly soon, because time is of the essence. Time is the big factor here. Kicking the can down the road even further is not acceptable On 29 October 2015, the Prime Minister seemed to be very unequivocal on clearance taking two weeks, which is the point of this debate today. He said: "In relation to National Security checking, the Government will aim to complete the process as quickly as possible. As you know, National Security checking for the Savile Inquiry took two weeks to complete. It would certainly be our plan and expectation to take no longer than this, and we will look to complete the process more quickly." We need to do that for the families who are expecting closure. This inquiry should have started many years earlier In the debate of 31 October 2006, to which I referred, there was already frustration that it had taken so long to get the matter in front of this House of Commons. We used an Opposition day debate, but in those times, Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru Opposition day debates were few and far between. Thankfully, it is not like that today. This was before the creation of the Backbench Business Committee, which we should thank today.
Iraq Inquiry Report — House of Commons, 2016-04-14
Topic: Defense
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Those are interesting words from the hon. Gentleman. That brings us back to the Prime Minister’s statement that the national security checking for the Saville inquiry took two weeks, and that the expectation was for the Chilcot inquiry to take no longer than that. I expect—and it is the expectation of this Chamber—that the report will be published in the week commencing 2 May. We cannot have anything other than that The failure to publish this report has, I think, left us uninformed about other engagements that took place subsequently to Iraq. The UK’s military action since Iraq has, it can be argued, been a chaotic mess. That certainly seems to have been the case in Libya, where we led a bombing campaign costing 13 times more than the amount spent on the rebuilding of Iraq. Had Chilcot been published, we might have had some hard lessons set out in black and white to guide any Government planning any military adventures or interventions in the future to plan for the peace afterwards, not to leave a vacuum and not to leave an opportunity for terrorists to move in and destabilise a state. We were selling ourselves short and other countries particularly short when the launch of the report was delayed, and we are doing so now through the interminable delay to its publication Let me conclude with the words of a woman I greatly admire—Rose Gentle from Glasgow, the mother of the Royal Highland Fusilier Gordon Gentle, who was killed 12 years ago in Basra at the age of 19. She said that she was "disappointed" by the latest news from the inquiry, and added: "We thought it should be out a lot sooner than this. I thought it would be out by the end of the year, because they have everything there. It’s another let-down. It’s another few months to wait and suffer again." That was said on 29 October 2015, nine years after the initial debate on Iraq in this place. Bereaved parents such as Rose Gentle should not wait a day beyond the first week of May 2016 for the publication of the Chilcot report.
Iraq Inquiry Report — House of Commons, 2016-04-14
Topic: Defense
Christopher Charles Stephens (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken so far, including the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) who led the debate, teasing out the issues. He will be aware that on a number of occasions since I was elected to this place last May, I have raised the issue of delays to the publication of the Chilcot inquiry In my maiden speech I said that I was here to give a voice to the voiceless, because too often cynics view this place as somewhere where peoples’ voices are not heard. Today I express not only my view, but the view of my constituent, Mrs Rose Gentle, who lost her son Gordon in the Iraq war in 2004. Gordon Gentle was 19 years of age—19. Mrs Gentle and her family, like many military families, want answers to basic questions. Were those serving in our forces in Iraq provided with the proper equipment? If not, why not, and who is responsible? Have documents been hidden, and why have they been hidden? Why were our forces there in the first place For those military families like Rose Gentle and her family, this delay is like reliving an inquest. In Gordon Gentle’s case the inquest was cancelled on three occasions and concluded in 2009. Last year military families wrote to Sir John Chilcot to say that they wished to see the report published by the end of 2015, and if not, they would consider their legal options. In response, Sir John Chilcot threatened them with legal costs if they took him to court. What a disgraceful and insensitive thing to say to military families who have lost loved ones. What kind of behaviour is it that threatens those who have lost loved ones? What kind of behaviour is it that threatens those who have waited over a decade to find out what actually took place, and whether the military should have been there in the first place Rose Gentle’s reaction to the unnecessary delays is simple—disgust. Delays have been caused by so-called Maxwellisation. Delays are now caused, we are told, because of national security. Military families’ view is that all delays are now not trusted.
Iraq Inquiry Report — House of Commons, 2016-04-14
Topic: Defense
Christopher Charles Stephens (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Indeed, and I am sure the military families watching these proceedings will agree with the hon. Gentleman The length of time that this inquiry has taken has put undue pressure on military families, who want the truth. Those families are proud of their loved ones who served, but are disgusted with the Government and the Government process. That is the view of military families like Rose Gentle and her family. They feel that the military covenant has been not just broken, but shattered. They feel that their loved ones have been buried twice—once after their death, and twice by bureaucracy and evasion. The Prime Minister wrote to Chilcot asking for clear deadlines and publication. The Government cannot and should not allow themselves to be seen to be backtracking on the Prime Minister’s strong words. Further delays are not acceptable. Rose Gentle is an inspiration to many. She has done a lot of work to assist charities such as Soldiers Off the Street, a charity with an office in my constituency which looks after soldiers who have returned from the frontline and struggle to adjust to civilian life. Rose Gentle and her family have a simple request: it is time for justice for the military families who lost their loved ones serving in Iraq. The Chilcot report must be published in the first week of May 2016.
BBC: Diversity — House of Commons, 2016-04-14
Topic: Culture
Andrew Egan Henderson Hendry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): On the languages of the nations of the UK, does my hon. Friend agree that not only was it wrong of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to cut £1 million, which was 100% of the budget for BBC Alba, but it was particularly insensitive at a time when the Department was announcing £150 million for museums in London—although there is nothing wrong with supporting museums?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2016-03-23
Topic: Defense
Questions: I am sure the Prime Minister is as appalled as I am that incidents involving anti-Semitism are on the rise. Does he agree that all organisations, public and private, should root out anti-Semitism, without hesitation?
Angus Robertson (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): A defining characteristic of a democratic society is our trust in our institutions and democratic oversight by parliamentarians of those who work so hard to keep us safe. We have that oversight with our police and with our security services, but we do not yet have it with UK special forces under the Intelligence and Security Committee or the Defence Committee. Will the Prime Minister address that?
Syria — House of Commons, 2016-01-14
Topic: Defense
Deidre Leanne Brock (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I appreciate the fact that the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s advice to the Government is privileged, and rightly so, but will you do Parliament the courtesy of sharing your view on the legality of the current military action in Syria either now or in a statement?
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Health
Thomas Sheppard (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I have been told not to take an intervention A small minority do become rich, and if the Government want them to pay, they should introduce a progressive taxation system whereby people pay more when they start to earn those high wages. Instead, of course, they are cutting taxes for the highest earners in our communities. Nowhere is this thrown into sharper relief than in the situation of nurses and midwives. The abolition of grants for nurses and midwives will not only penalise the people who want to contribute to our national health service but undermine our NHS itself. Not for the first time, I am so pleased that in Scotland we have a Scottish Government who stand between the young people in that country and the mal intent of this Government here. We will not abolish grants for nurses or midwives. We will maintain maintenance grants. Most of all, we will keep tuition free and we will make sure that people are not saddled with the debts they are saddled with in this country. If ever there was a case for a measure not applying and not being certified, it is this, because I have more than 2,000 constituents directly affected and it is unfair that my vote will be disregarded.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2016-01-20
Topic: Health
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Oh, I am speaking to them and not begging at all. I wish to speak to the amendments that stand in my name, amendments 12, 13, 14, 15 and—along with Labour colleagues—amendment 5 We support the aims of the Bill to protect public health and to go after the big guys—the ones who are making a profit out of other people’s endangerment—rather than going after the individuals who decide to try these substances for whatever reason. In that respect, however, I do not think that we are quite there yet, which is why we have tabled our amendments.
Trade Union Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-23
Topic: Health
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister and am grateful for the contributions to this debate. The problem is that what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said flies in the face of what the Government have said. As I said in the debate on the previous group, they stated that the whole idea of this provision is to promote transparency so as to encourage employers to moderate the amount of money spent on facility time. That is the aim. It is not to increase the amount spent; it is to moderate and reduce it. It is impossible to see Clause 12 without looking at Clause 13. Clause 12 is the way into Clause 13. We will come to Clause 13 after the next debate and will have very serious questions to ask about how on earth the man in Whitehall who knows best can lay down a maximum amount of time that can be spent by a health and safety or learning rep in Newcastle working in a care home or whatever. It is beyond belief that that will happen Sadly, the point of this transparency is not to show how well these things are being done; it is an introduction to moderating the amount of time available to health and safety and learning reps, and it is a lead-in to the ability to cap that time under Clause 13. We will come back to make that point when we reach Clause 13 later this evening, because we are extremely worried about safety reps being caught by any cap on the amount of time that they can spend on that activity. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-03-16
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): I reassure the noble Lord that, as with the response to HIV some years ago, we will not allow any lacuna or gaps in the regulatory arrangements or any delays of the regulatory kind to stand in the way of our response to the virus.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-03-16
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Baroness makes an important point. I have received numerous, moving and important communications from those who own, run or support pubs, clubs, theatres and venues in this country. In response, I say that we have moved quickly, as the scientific evidence of this virus has developed quickly. This needs to be addressed by the DCMS; it is not within my purview, but I understand that it will address it.
Covid-19: Response — House of Lords, 2020-05-19
Topic: Health
James Bethell (Conservative, Centre-right): I am extremely grateful for the noble Baroness’s comments. Since she asks for my personal opinion, I would say that, no, the NHS was not overrun. It has been a huge achievement that the NHS has stood firm on its feet. Operationally, it has been extremely sound. It was never overwhelmed, either by Covid-19 or by other operations. The Nightingale hospitals were not needed in the end because the lockdown was adopted by the British public and the infection rate was reduced. That is a huge testimony both to the British people and to the NHS.