argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Lords, 2021-01-27
Topic: Health
Jennifer Jones (Green Party, Left): My Lords, when she introduced Amendment 21, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, talked about alcohol abuse and gave several examples of the distress that it can cause not only to the people involved in the relationship but also to the children. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, also mentioned alcohol, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, talked about the symbiotic link "between substance abuse, mental health issues and domestic abuse".—[Official Report, 25/1/21; col. 1495.] The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, pointed the finger squarely at the Government, blaming them for many of the problems that crop up simply because of their cuts to the funding of addiction services I come at this from a slightly different perspective. The Green Party recognises that, in the majority of cases, the limited use of drugs for recreational purposes is not harmful; it actually has the potential to improve well-being and even enhance human relationships and creativity. However, most harmful drug use is underpinned by poverty, isolation, mental or physical illness and psychological trauma—in these cases, harmful drug use can cause a vicious circle. As such, the Green Party focuses on minimising not only drug abuse but the social ills that lead to it—so we take a health-focused approach to it This group of amendments, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, is an important step towards minimising harms caused by problem drug abuse. My reading of them is that they focus on both abusers and survivors so that we can address the issues in a much more holistic and comprehensive way. The Bill will have a gaping hole if it does not properly address the complex relationships between domestic abuse and harmful drug use. The Government have shown willingness to adopt positive amendments and improve the Bill, so I hope that Amendment 21 and the others in this group will find favour with them and that we will see something come back on Report.
Medical Innovation Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-01-23
Topic: Health
Bernard Francisco Ribeiro (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, many noble Lords will remember the disasters that occasioned the introduction of laparoscopic cholecystectomy in the 1990s. Quite a few patients suffered as a result of the innovation of our surgeons playing with a new instrument, new tools and a new operation. At the time, I was secretary of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland. In recognising the problems, we introduced a voluntary register of all surgeons undertaking the procedure and got a very good response. Admittedly, it was not compulsory and not every surgeon introduced their data to it, but the net effect was that when we analysed our data we were able to identify where many of the problems lay. That led to further research and proper control trials in the procedure. We were able to turn to that from an innovation used by a succession of surgeons as and when they felt necessary, without any good evidence on how best to use it. On that basis, and mindful of the benefits that we saw in the 1990s, I would very much support some form of register to ensure that, if an innovation is introduced, we have the information, can go back and refer to it again, learn from the mistakes and improve the outcome.
Medical Innovation Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-01-23
Topic: Health
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): Perhaps I may deal briefly with the question posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, who asked whether the Bill would apply to patients receiving private treatment. The answer is yes. Any departure from the accepted range of medical treatments for a condition, whether that patient be receiving NHS or private treatment, would be covered under the Bill The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, would change the test of negligence under the Bill. If accepted—and assuming that the appropriate professional requirements were created—the amendment would require a doctor to comply with any professional requirements as to registration of the treatment; that is, to register the treatment with a scheme for the purposes of taking a responsible decision to depart from the existing range of accepted medical treatments for a condition. In other words, registering details and results of an innovative treatment on a data-capturing scheme would form part of the steps that a doctor has to take under the Bill.
Draft Mental Health Bill Committee — House of Lords, 2022-07-19
Topic: Health
John Eric Gardiner (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): That the Commons message of 12 July be considered and that a Committee of six Lords be appointed to join with the Committee appointed by the Commons to consider and report on the draft Mental Health Bill presented to both Houses on 27 June (CP 699) and that the Committee should report on the draft Bill by 16 December 2022; That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following members be appointed to the Committee: Barker, B., Berridge, B., Bradley, L., Buscombe, B., Hollins, B., McIntosh of Hudnall, B That the Committee have power to agree with the Committee appointed by the Commons in the appointment of a Chair; That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records; That the Committee have power to appoint specialist advisers; That the Committee have leave to report from time to time; That the Committee have power to adjourn from place to place within the United Kingdom; That the reports of the Committee be printed, regardless of any adjournment of the House; That the evidence taken by the Committee shall, if the Committee so wishes, be published; and That the quorum of the Committee shall be two.
National Health Service — House of Lords, 2015-01-08
Topic: Health
Leslie Turnberg (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their wide-ranging and well informed contributions. I have learnt a lot. I clearly cannot comment on every noble Lord’s contribution, but I particularly wanted to say how pleased I was to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, who is back in her place and in fine voice Clearly, we were never going to solve all the problems of the NHS today, but I believe that this debate has been a useful contribution as we ease our way into the next election. The next Government will have to level with the public, who are very supportive of the NHS, and grapple with the issue of how we might cope with the conundrum of paying for a service that becomes more complex as every day goes by Of course we should become more efficient, but I am reminded that Aneurin Bevan, when the NHS began, thought that as we cured and prevented more diseases the service would get cheaper. However, every year it seems to have got more expensive, and as we cure one disease, another disease pops up. It is an unfortunate fact that the mortality rate among humans is almost 100%—exactly 100%. On that happy note, once again I thank all noble Lords for their contributions and look forward to the next Government’s actions as a result.
Medical Innovation Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-01-23
Topic: Health
Robert Maurice Lipson Winston (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, briefly, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath as well. I was reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, of laparoscopic surgery. Of course, we gynaecologists were doing that 20 years before the noble Lord was and we did not have as many deaths. Having said that, what the surgeons did with laparoscopic surgery and recording those events was really important in bringing down the complication rate and the haemorrhages that occurred. That is a very good example and the noble Lord is to be thanked for bringing it to the House. It is exactly what would be covered here I would be astonished if the Government seriously opposed this amendment. I was very unconvinced by the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, in the previous stages of the Bill. She did not seem to take on board exactly what we were trying to say about the need for keeping proper records, which is important in all sorts of ways. If you keep a record and it is done under this Bill then you are effectively legally protected. For that reason if no other that would be important, but in any case we have to build up the knowledge of our experience. We do that automatically in the laboratory. Every single thing we do in the laboratory, whether negative or positive, we record in our laboratory books. If we do not, we are not doing good science or science useful to the public. Here in innovative medicine, we are—whether we like it or not—doing a form of science because we are exploring our knowledge about what a treatment means. That is what science means. I urge the Government to support the amendment. I feel very strongly about this. If the Government were reluctant to support it and my noble friend Lord Hunt were to divide the House, I would certainly join him.
Copycat Websites — House of Commons, 2015-01-08
Topic: Health
Margaret Anne Begg (Labour, Centre-left): In fact, I was recently online to renew my European health card. I discovered that most of the top Google search results were sites that made people pay, but a lot of consumers do not realise that they can get the card free. There is an urgent need for the Government to take action to ensure that at least Government-provided services are clearly signposted on websites so that people know they are on a genuine website and not one that will rip them off.
Covid-19 Response — House of Commons, 2020-04-22
Topic: Health
Caroline Lucas (Green Party, Left): On contact tracing, I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State is working with experts in digital ethics because if it is not run transparently by a public company with code open to public oversight and data anonymised, people will not trust the system and it risks failing. Does he agree that only a community-led process of human contact tracing can provide the fine-grained and reliable data that such an app would depend on? Will he learn the lesson from the over-centralised organisation of the testing approach and instead adopt a more decentralised approach for contact tracing, using local environmental health officers and PHE’s regional outbreak management teams?
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Health
Molly Christine Meacher (Crossbench, Unknown): The scientists who are advising me say that all the deaths have possibly been a result of banned substances which may be psychoactive or controlled. Four or five may possibly have been due to legal substances that had not yet been banned. A ban is not the way forward on that issue.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2021-06-15
Topic: Health
Nicholas Baines (Bishops, Unknown): My Lords, regardless of matters of hindsight, does the Minister agree that prolonging the restrictions might be justified for certain reasons? I do not demur from that, but the prolonging of inconsistencies is a serious impediment to public adherence to the rules. You do not have to look very far to see where the discipline broke down a long time ago. For example—this is not special pleading; it is just at the forefront of my mind—you can sing in a pub but not in a church. This is what brings the rules into disrepute, and therefore people do not agree with them Secondly, can the Minister say something in response to Michael Gove’s reported comments about acceptable death rates? We have learned to live with acceptable death rates from flu and other seasonal diseases. Will the Government do some work on what might be an acceptable death rate from Covid in future and be up-front with the country as to what that might be? I think we can take it.
Assisted Dying Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-10-22
Topic: Health
Martin Warner (Bishops, Unknown): My Lords, I feel constrained to begin with a theological view, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, challenged us to do. It is simply this: in the Christian view, God does not inflict evil on people. Indeed, the man God, Jesus Christ himself, sharing our life, experienced the evil and suffering of the cross in order that we, in the darkest moments of death, might find hope and the recovery of life in heaven. I believe that, in this debate, we have been treading on sacred ground as we have listened to personal stories, and we have done so with reverence Most of all, I want to speak about the wider context of vulnerability and to do so from the experience of the parishes where I have served; for example, the sex workers in the back streets of Plymouth, the largely black and Asian communities in Leicester, and the bedsits and overcrowded flats of Hastings, home to people with severe mental health issues and/or drug dependency. At the point of facing terminal illness, such people would reveal overwhelmingly that they have no family, and few friends or responsible partners to assist them through reaching the point of final death. Indeed, in many cases, they have had no experience of being given autonomy or power over their lives; at the end of their lives, they are woefully ill prepared for taking responsibility for their death The sanctity of life is central to Christian faith. It is also a view held with honour and conviction by people of other faiths, as we have heard. The Church’s sense of responsibility for all people stems from this conviction—responsibility especially for the vulnerable when they face death too often alone, but, at the moment, with the fundamental bulwark of protection in the law. This was a point made powerfully by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and, more recently, the noble Lord, Lord Herbert Many contributors have raised significant doubts about the level of trust in the capacity of the judiciary and the medical profession to meet the extraordinary demands of disadvantaged communities when terminal illness and incapacity face them. The call from the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, and others for urgent and sustained investment in palliative care would be a positive and worthy outcome to this important debate on a Bill whose humane intentions I respect profoundly but which, I believe, would lead to unintended consequences and which we should not let pass.
Covid-19 Update — House of Commons, 2020-11-10
Topic: Health
Caroline Lucas (Green Party, Left): A constituent’s father is in a care home. He is non-verbal and relies on touch to communicate. She says: "I have not been able to hug my dad for over eight months. I have not been able to hold his hand. I have not been able to…take his youngest grandchild to meet him." Eight months into this crisis, will the Secretary of State urgently set out the scope of his pilot keyworker-status scheme, accelerate its implementation and tell us when a combination of regular rapid testing and personal protective equipment will allow my constituent to safely hold her dad’s hand again and put an end to this slow torture?
Covid-19: Vaccinations — House of Lords, 2021-01-13
Topic: Health
Manzila Pola Uddin (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, anyone questioning the horror of the disease and the pressures on the NHS need look no further than outside their local hospitals, as I did, notwithstanding that questions on efficacy, information and choices are the fundamental right of every patient. The Minister will know that the Bangladeshi community has a very high vaccination compliance rate, but in this case there has been quite a lot of confusion. Can he yet again confirm that sufficient bilingual material is being made available to the community, and will he agree to meet with me and some experts on this issue?
Agriculture Bill — House of Commons, 2020-10-12
Topic: Health
Caroline Lucas (Green Party, Left): The Minister will know that Lords amendment 11 is based on one that I tabled, which the Lords supported. I think she misrepresents the amendment. It is perfectly clear that it would be possible for the Government to bring forward regulations to specify exactly the minimum distances. It is no coincidence that Lord Randall himself has said how important it is that this amendment is passed to protect human health. That is what we need to do. The Government could go away and design the regulations, but this is the overarching amendment to achieve that.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2021-02-04
Topic: Health
John Woodcock (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, further to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Winston, on antivirals, I raise the issue of monoclonal antibody production. The work of the Government in establishing an enduring manufacturing capability and rollout capacity for vaccines is deeply impressive. Why, then, do they appear to be stepping back from the push to rapidly manufacture antibodies, which was a core part of Kate Bingham’s Covid strategy?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2021-07-08
Topic: Health
Brian Mackenzie (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): My Lords, I ask the noble Lord the Minister, in his usual courteous and helpful manner at the Dispatch Box, to provide answers to points raised yesterday with the Prime Minister in another place. In his usual way, the Prime Minister answered by asking yet another question, which of course earned another rebuke from the Speaker. If infections are allowed to rise, perhaps to 100,000 per day, how much are hospital admissions likely to increase and how many deaths may result? Why are the changes regarding isolation not taking effect until 16 August, with all the disruption to businesses in the interim?
Maternity Services in Morecambe Bay — House of Lords, 2015-03-03
Topic: Health
Narendra Babubhai Patel (Crossbench, Unknown): The noble Lord is absolutely right. That is why I said that the review must address how to make maternity services safer and not address any of the demarcation issues. I work with midwives. Midwives taught me—I have said that before in this House—so there should be no issues between different professional groups, whether they be nurses, midwives, doctors, neonatologists, anaesthetists or whoever.
Maternity Services in Morecambe Bay — House of Lords, 2015-03-03
Topic: Health
Susan Lilian Primrose Cunliffe-Lister (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, what will happen if the 18 recommendations are not put into practice? Will they apply to all hospitals across the country? The maternity service at the Friarage Hospital, Northallerton, which is my local hospital, has recently been downgraded to midwives only, to the anxiety of the local people who live in a very rural area. I hope that the noble Earl can give some assurances on safety as there are so many worried people and there will be more after this report.
Jimmy Savile: NHS Investigations — House of Lords, 2015-02-26
Topic: Health
Elizabeth Barker (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, there is one fact about this excellent report on a very difficult subject which is so obvious that it is in danger of being overlooked. We are talking here about events within the NHS and specifically about events within NHS organisations which had among their staff people who, due to their professional expertise, should have been able to spot the signs of abuse, as they are experts to whom people turn for treatment when they have been abused. I am not talking about the BBC; I am talking about the NHS. Repeatedly they did not see it or did not speak about it. That makes me draw an uncomfortable conclusion which goes to the heart of a couple of the recommendations—that is, that it is possible, even in the best of organisations which exist for the best of reasons, for there to be a culture so powerful that people can ignore things which are bad almost to the point of disbelief Therefore, when the Government consider their response to all this, I ask them to look at recommendations R5 and R8 in the lessons-learnt section. Those recommendations talk about trusts having a review process of their own procedures. They also make reference to the local authority designated officer and the role that he or she might play. I put it to the Minister that, in order to break a culture of silence, it must be possible to bring in a reference to an external expert. If victims and staff had access to such a person as a backstop, it would be a very important means of ensuring that we never saw organisations operating in this way again.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Health
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I waited until this moment to speak because it seemed unfair to comment on the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, without his having spoken to it first. I have some sympathy with what the Labour Party is proposing, but I prefer Amendments 4 and 6 proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for the very reason that she articulated. The market for new psychoactive substances and that for other substances covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act cannot be treated as separate. The whole reason for the existence of new psychoactive substances is the controlling of other drugs. There would be no need for people to develop so-called legal highs if they could get the high legally from controlled drugs. It is essential that the annual report includes exactly what the noble Baroness proposes: an assessment of the impact on health and the social harms brought about by the Misuse of Drugs Act and this Bill The noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, gave a long list of things that could be included in the report. If everything he suggested was included, it might not only put the Government off producing the report but put me off reading it or trying to wade through it. I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, that post-legislative scrutiny of a Bill such as this by a Joint Committee of both Houses would be appropriate, but it should not mean that there should not also be an annual report, because things are changing so quickly. We have heard from other noble Lords about how different drugs come into mode and out again. We therefore need an annual assessment of whether the legislation is still fit for purpose.
UK's Nuclear Deterrent — House of Commons, 2016-07-18
Topic: Defense
Caroline Lucas (Green Party, Left): As the right hon. Gentleman will know, a multilateral process is currently taking place at the United Nations. More than 130 countries are negotiating, in good faith, for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Government’s refusal even to attend, let alone take part in, that process raises serious questions about their commitment to a world without nuclear weapons?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2015-01-07
Topic: Health
Edward Samuel Miliband (Labour, Centre-left): As far as I can see, the Prime Minister is not apologising to patients; he is blaming the patients. The pressures on A and E are not just happening on his watch, but are a direct result of decisions he has taken. When he decided to close almost a quarter of walk-in centres, was it not blindingly obvious that if people could not go to a walk-in centre, it would have a big impact on A and E?