argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Health and Social Care — House of Commons, 2015-06-02
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady is right. This week we saw the results of the international cancer benchmarks study, which showed that our GPs take longer than GPs in Norway, Sweden, Canada and Australia to diagnose cancers, and we still have a survival rate that lags. This needs urgent attention. The chief executive of Cancer Research UK is putting together a cancer strategy for the Government that I hope will address this issue. We will bring the results of that to the House.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2015-02-23
Topic: Defense
Questions: Further to that answer, will the Secretary of State update the House on his assessment of the recent militaristic threats of action in Ukraine by Russia?
Vernon Coaker (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Defence Secretary agree that episodes in recent months in which RAF jets have been scrambled to escort Russian bombers close to our airspace, aircraft from our NATO partners have been asked to help locate a suspected Russian submarine off the west coast of Scotland, and the Royal Navy has been seen escorting a Russian warship in the English channel are very serious and risk a very serious incident? Will he tell the House how is he meeting these ongoing challenges and assure us that gaps in our military capability such as the lack of maritime patrol aircraft do not hinder us in any way in responding to such events?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2015-02-23
Topic: Defense
Questions: Further to that answer, will the Secretary of State update the House on his assessment of the recent militaristic threats of action in Ukraine by Russia?
Vernon Coaker (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Defence Secretary for that answer. He will, of course, be aware of ongoing events in eastern Ukraine and concerns about the stability of other areas in the region. He recently talked of Russia seeking to "test" NATO, so, while our response needs to be calm and considered, it also has to make strategic sense. What is the Defence Secretary’s latest assessment of the implementation of the ceasefire agreement, especially in the light of the deadly incident in Kharkiv yesterday; and what role is Britain playing, as a leading member of NATO, to reassure our partners of the fortitude, resilience and involving nature of that alliance?
Ukraine — House of Commons, 2022-01-25
Topic: Defense
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): For reasons we do not need to go over just now, Germany has blocked some NATO allies from providing certain military assistance to Ukraine. What assessment have the Government made of that blocking? Where it is necessary for Ukraine to defend itself, will the UK Government and others ensure that it gets the maximum spread of capability we are able to provide?
Health and Social Care — House of Commons, 2015-06-02
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I absolutely do recognise that. One of my key priorities is to deal with the issues of GP recruitment and the GP contract, and to make general practice an attractive profession again. If we are to deal with prevention rather than cure, vulnerable older people in particular will need more continuity of care from their GPs, and we must help GPs to provide it None of those big ambitions will be achieved, however, if we do not get the culture right for the people who work in the NHS. One of the reasons that Mid Staffs—and, indeed, so many other hospitals—was in special measures was the legacy which, for too long, put targets ahead of patients. We should never forget that Mid Staffs was hitting its A&E targets for most of the time during which patients in the hospital were experiencing appalling care. In that context, Sir David Nicholson used the phrase "hitting the target and missing the point" Through the toughest inspection regime in the world, we are slowly changing the culture to one in which staff are listened to and patients are always put first. However, although we identify hospitals that are in need of improvement much more quickly, we are still too slow in turning them around. I know that the new hospitals Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), will be looking closely at that, and I warmly welcome him to my team. Like me, he believes it is wrong that we have up to 1,000 avoidable deaths every month in the NHS, that twice a week we operate on the wrong part of someone’s body, that twice a week we leave foreign objects in people’s bodies, that almost once a week we put on the wrong prosthesis, and that people die because they are admitted on a Friday rather than a Wednesday We will leave no stone unturned in our quest to make a seven-day NHS the safest healthcare system in the world. Nye Bevan’s vision was not simply universal access or healthcare for all. The words that he used at this Dispatch Box nearly 70 years ago, in 1946, were "universalising the best", which meant ensuring that the high standards of care that were available for some people in some hospitals were available to every patient in every hospital. Our NHS can be proud of going further and faster than anywhere in the world to universalise access, but we need to do much more if we are to complete Bevan’s vision and universalise quality as well. The safest, highest-quality care in the world, available seven days a week to each and every one of our citizens: that must be the defining mission of our NHS, and this Conservative Government will do what it takes to deliver it.
Ukraine — House of Commons, 2022-01-25
Topic: Defense
Martin John Docherty-Hughes (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The Prime Minister will get every support from the SNP Benches for defending national self-determination within Europe. Does he not agree that it is time that the UK Government sign a robust security and defence agreement with the European Union to replace that in the Lisbon treaty—most critically, article 42.7 of that treaty?
Health and Social Care — House of Commons, 2015-06-02
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman talks about appalling mismanagement. Why did we have that growth in deficits? We had it because those hospitals were, in the wake of the Francis report and the appalling tragedy at Mid Staffs, desperately trying to make sure they did not have a crisis of short-staffed wards. If there was any appalling mismanagement, it was when the right hon. Gentleman was Health Secretary; he left behind an NHS where there were too many wards and too many hospitals that did not have enough staff. We are doing something about that. That is not mismanagement; that is doing the right thing for patients.
Coronavirus — House of Lords, 2020-06-22
Topic: Health
Karan Bilimoria (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, it is very good news that the trials of dexamethasone have gone successfully and that other trials are progressing well; I hope that the vaccine trials will also yield success. However, can the Minister confirm reports that more than a third of care home patients have not yet been tested? When will all care home patients and staff be tested fully and regularly? Secondly, with the good news coming from the Prime Minister—we hope—of the economy opening up from 4 July, will widespread testing be available for businesses on top of the two-metre social distancing being reduced to one metre?
Coronavirus — House of Lords, 2020-06-22
Topic: Health
Nicholas Trench (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, in view of the large number of cases that have been confirmed at a meat processing plant in Anglesey and the likely reduction in social distance, will the Government seriously consider extending the mandatory wearing of face masks for people in enclosed spaces, including workplaces, for staff and customers in shops, and certainly for staff in restaurants and pubs?
Health and Social Care — House of Commons, 2015-06-02
Topic: Health
Heidi-Suzanne Allen (Conservative, Centre-right): Forgive me; I am new here and very confused. This seems very simple to me. At the election, I promised every person who voted for me in South Cambridgeshire that I would not join in with this negative campaigning, and as Andrew Lansley’s successor I feel that now is the time I should stand up. Is it not time to put the past behind us? The NHS has a fabulous leader in Simon Stevens. That man is standing up for the NHS and saying, "Let’s do this together." Okay, let us have a debate about where the £8 billion is coming from—that is a financial debate and I am happy to have it—but let us believe in the man who is standing up and saying we can do this together. Let us work as a team and let us listen to the man with the plan. It is him we should be talking about.
Vaccination Strategy — House of Lords, 2022-01-13
Topic: Health
Gillian Merron (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I pay tribute to the staff of the NHS, volunteers and others, who have made extraordinary efforts during the vaccine rollout to save lives and build a world beyond Covid, while a particular debt of gratitude is owed to the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, who is standing down from his role To drive up vaccination rates, there is a growing need to tackle anti-vax propaganda and stop intimidation and abuse. Will the Minister commit to a communications campaign to tackle misinformation, particularly focusing on places and people with lower rates of take-up? Following the Labour amendment to the policing Bill that was agreed last night in your Lordships’ House, will the Government now take the opportunity to fast-track buffer zones around schools and vaccination centres?
Health and Social Care — House of Commons, 2015-06-02
Topic: Health
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): Will my hon. Friend join me in welcoming the work of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, which is trying to change the way that emergency medicine consultants work in order to retain more of them in their particular specialty? At the moment, far too many of them leave that specialty, creating some of the problems that we see across the country.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-13
Topic: Health
Meghnad Desai (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, as an NHS patient but not an expert, I will say one small thing about inequalities. Given the way in which the NHS is structured, with no money paid up front and with excess demand and inadequate supplies because of budget shortages, it is forced to allocate treatment by queuing—and queuing, obviously, means that people have to wait There is a fallacy that somehow the poor have more time than the rich. In my experience it would improve matters immensely if, when appointments are given, there was less delay in the patient seeing the person whom they are supposed to see. I know that, right now, there are standard regulations that cover these matters, so that people end up waiting three hours. I have done that. But my time is not as valuable as that of someone poorer. You do not measure the value of your time by your income. So it would improve matters if the allocation of services were made using communication devices. This would waste less of patients’ time and help them better access services.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-13
Topic: Health
Richard Oliver Faulkner (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am very pleased to follow all noble Lords in supporting all the amendments in this group. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Thornton on the way in which she introduced the debate when moving Amendment 11. I will speak briefly to Amendment 66, which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and signed by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and me It was enjoyable listening to the noble Lord, Lord Young, taking a voyage down memory lane to more than 40 years ago, when he was a Health Minister. He could perhaps have added that we would have become a smoke-free country rather earlier, had his advice and proposals for tobacco control been accepted at the time, and had he not been removed from health on the instruction of Sir Denis Thatcher and given another role in government. He is and remains a pioneer, and I am delighted to be behind him with his amendments; we shall come to other smoking amendments later Amendment 66 would require integrated care boards to address the leading preventable causes of sickness and death, particularly smoking. The Bill as drafted fails to get to the root causes of health inequalities and will have only a limited effect. Our amendment would correct this oversight as far as smoking is concerned. In 2019, there were 5.7 million smokers in England, one in seven of the adult population. As the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, in England smoking is the leading cause of premature death, killing over 70,000 people a year and leaving 30 times as many suffering from serious smoking-related disease and disability.
Covid-19: Government Handling and Preparedness — House of Lords, 2021-06-08
Topic: Health
Sarah Virginia Brinton (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, in the national Carers Week, it is worth remembering that the 2017 report on Exercise Cygnus said: "Local responders also realised concerns about the expectation that the social care system would be able to provide the level of support needed if the NHS implemented its proposed reverse triage plans." It also recommended that local support should be developed and planned for social care and health. Was that recommendation put into practice? Were the concerns expressed by local responders borne out last year? Will the Government now publish their internal review of pandemic preparedness to ensure that the lessons have been truly learned?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2021-06-08
Topic: Health
Matthew Owen John Taylor (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, my 13 year-old son is a chorister at Truro Cathedral, where they have composed a song, "Gee Seven", which 25,000 children across this country and others will sing online to G7 leaders tomorrow. He says the thing that they want most is for the parents and grandparents of children in poorer countries that have not had access to vaccines to get the access that parents and grandparents have had in this country, so that those other children can feel safe about their families. Will the Minister and his colleagues think about that before vaccinating teenagers in this country, who are not at great risk? The COVAX programme is currently 192 million doses short of its targets for supporting poorer countries. Incidentally, if that is not enough morally, he might also consider that so long as we are not successfully vaccinating in these poorer countries, the chances of new and more dangerous variants coming to this country and causing deaths again are all the more likely.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-13
Topic: Health
Keith Bradley (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt, but I have been meaning to ask this question for a while. Will that also apply to students who currently study abroad and had their first vaccinations abroad, and who then come back to work in their home country? Will that be connected to the NHS app as well?
Charitable and Voluntary Sector — House of Lords, 2020-04-30
Topic: Health
Delyth Morgan (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I declare my interests as chief executive of Breast Cancer Now, the research and care charity, and as chair of the National Cancer Research Institute. In these uncertain times, medical research charities have been deeply committed to the national effort against Covid-19 as funders and patient support organisations. Action has been taken across the sector to deliver additional support services and, of course, to second clinical researchers to the front line of the NHS. The contribution of medical research charities is at risk now and for the future if charities do not have the vital funding at this time of heightened demand The impact of Covid-19 has been far greater than many charities could have foreseen and the consequences are far-reaching, as we know. Many medical research charities are reliant on fundraising, which is extremely challenging now. Many have had to protect their income and reserves by furloughing a significant proportion of staff, including research staff. Yet, worryingly, medical research charities really do look unlikely to be able to benefit from the support packages announced by the Chancellor recently. In 2019, these charities collectively invested, as we heard, £1.9 billion in the UK R&D set-up. Uncertainty around fundraising in a challenging economic climate poses a real threat to sustainable funding in medical research, since charitable investment is, as we know, critical to the success of the UK’s life sciences sector Will the Minister consider new ways that the Government can work in partnership with medical research charities to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on the research sector? Solutions will need to be tailored and focused on ensuring continuity of charity-funded research now, but also for the future—for cancer research, heart disease, long-term conditions and mental health. We need to kick-start the UK’s research ecosystem when we get through this. This will be of huge benefit to the economy. Of course, it is all about saving lives too.
Health and Social Care — House of Commons, 2015-06-02
Topic: Health
Jane Ellison (Conservative, Centre-right): That is another example of trying to weaponise the NHS. [Hon. Members: "Answer."] There were 700,000 more cancer patients treated in the last Parliament. Figures show that 12,000 more people are surviving cancer at the end of the last Parliament than were at the beginning. There were millions more diagnostic tests, for cancer and a range of other issues, so there is a great record here. We acknowledge—
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-06-25
Topic: Health
Ajay Kakkar (Crossbench, Unknown): I thank the Leader of the House for taking questions on this Statement. Although testing of symptomatic individuals and tracing their contacts represents an important approach to controlling the spread of Covid-19 disease in the community as lockdown restrictions are lifted, there may be an alternative approach: mass population testing to identify both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals carrying the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the community, with them being isolated if they test positive. Such a testing strategy would need to be delivered locally and to provide the results in real time to facilitate maximum workplace participation and consumer confidence. What assessment have Her Majesty’s Government made of the emergent technologies that could facilitate this population approach? What provision has been made for the necessary logistical arrangements that would need to be adopted to test the entire population on a repeated and regular basis?
Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-02-04
Topic: Health
David Blunkett (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I will not delay the House but I just want to reinforce the words of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and my noble friend Lord Watson. I had the privilege of speaking at Second Reading. On a day when the figures of young people being referred to the child and adolescent mental health services should disturb us all, the future of our generations—of our young people, our children and grandchildren, our nephews and nieces—and the importance of prevention and early intervention should be at the top of the agenda. I can see no reason why the Government would oppose this Bill.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-06-25
Topic: Health
David Brownrigg Craig (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, do the Government accept that, to avoid public misunderstanding and mistrust of their key statements about Covid-19, be they made in Parliament, No. 10 or elsewhere, they need to take much greater care to clarify more frequently whether any of the rules and guidance given by the national Government apply to the whole of the United Kingdom or only to England?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-06-25
Topic: Health
Sheila Clare Hollins (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, care home residents and people detained in secure settings were not mentioned in the Statement, but the mental health of all of them and their families benefits from regular social contact, both virtually and in person. That might be resource intensive but what attention is being given to the needs of these groups of people?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2020-06-25
Topic: Culture
Deborah Bull (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I welcome the Prime Minister’s reference to live performance, but it is just one element of the UK’s cultural ecology. I have seen very little over recent weeks to give me confidence that the Government fully understand the interdependences between buildings and people, and the roles of freelancers, diverse and disabled artists, community organisations and SMEs. Every day, we are seeing examples of arts organisations brought to their knees, and we risk decimation of one of our nation’s most significant social, cultural and economic assets. When will we see action to make good on the Secretary of State’s commitment on 8 June that he will not see our world-leading arts and culture destroyed?
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-04
Topic: Health
Jill Pitkeathley (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I declare an interest as a former chair of the Professional Standards Authority. I was happy to go down memory lane with my noble friend on the Front Bench When thinking about professional regulation, we always have to bear in mind—I hope the Minister will be able to convince the House that this is what the Government bear in mind—the protection of the public. It is never about the glorification or protection of a profession; it is always about the protection of patients and the public The Professional Standards Authority developed the concept of right-touch regulation, whereby you identify the problem before the solution, quantify and qualify the risks, get as close to the problem as possible, focus on the outcome and use regulation only where necessary. I draw the House’s attention to the very successful project of accredited registers, which the Professional Standards Authority has developed in order to have, as it were, regulation at a lesser level than the very tight regulation that is necessary for some professions. You should keep it simple; the system is far too complex at present. You should check—as we always must with legislation, but it seems to me that we do it far too seldom—for unintended consequences. You should also review and respond to change, and the Government are doing just that with the proposals However, I must echo the caution of my noble friend on the Front Bench regarding the new powers for the Secretary of State to deregulate as well as regulate professions. We know that the risk profile for different occupations changes over time and a more agile method of responding is sometimes necessary. I hope that is what the Government have in mind. However, I emphasise, and I hope the Minister will reassure me on this, that a commitment to keeping patients safe must guide any decisions made to deregulate professions. There must be a robust and independent process to ensure that decisions are made after a clear assessment of risk—and I emphasise "independent" If the Secretary of State has the power to abolish regulators by secondary legislation, will there not be a threat to the independence of the regulators? If they know that the Secretary of State can abolish them at a stroke, as it were, might they become too focused on pleasing—or, rather, on not antagonising— whichever Government are in power, instead of, as I have stressed, working always and solely in the public interest? I hope the Minister will assure the House that that is the Government’s intention.