argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2021-02-22
Topic: Health
Grahame Mark Morris (Labour, Centre-left): I would like to cover three areas: inequality, covid-secure workplaces, and, briefly, cancer services, which I raised with the Prime Minister during his statement this afternoon I was rather concerned, following the Prime Minister’s statement, that the Government may not have learned the lessons from their previous mistakes, in that there is a direct and undeniable correlation between covid-19 and inequality. The many heat maps that have been published over the past year showing covid infections, hospitalisations and fatalities have illustrated the close correlation between covid prevalence and areas of deprivation and high inequality. Indeed, in recent days a worrying trend has emerged of a high covid infection rate in some of the communities that I represent in the Easington constituency. While infection rates across County Durham continue to fall, there are higher rates in Peterlee East and Horden compared with other areas One reason is that in many cases the poorest have no option but to continue to work, even in conditions that are not covid secure. Those in insecure employment or on zero-hours contracts—agency workers, for example—do not have the finances or security that they need to self-isolate. The poorest are facing greater poverty if the Government do not listen to the likes of my own trade union, Unite, which is calling for them to retain the £20 uplift in universal credit and for the uplift to be extended to the legacy benefits—a call supported by many organisations, including the charity, Macmillan Cancer Support. Remarkably, there are many instances of workplaces that staff believe are still not covid secure. PCS union members at the DVLA headquarters in Swansea are balloting for strike action today after senior managers and ministers, some of whom appeared before the Transport Committee, which I serve on, have consistently refused to listen to their concerns. This is despite the fact that there have been over 550 covid cases in recent months and we have seen the tragic death from covid of one staff member We need to change our approach to cancer services and the need for a dedicated cancer budget. The cancer backlog after the first wave could be 50,000 patients, and we could emerge from the pandemic with a backlog of 100,000. We all want a safe and orderly return to normal, but one of the biggest obstacles throughout this pandemic has been the Government’s inability to follow the science and their turning a deaf ear to criticism.
Department of Health: Funding — House of Commons, 2017-02-28
Topic: Defense
David Michael Gauke (Conservative, Centre-right): Although, as you say, Mr Speaker, there may perhaps have been a slightly tenuous link with the question, it was still a predictable question from my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth). We are delivering on the 2%-plus expenditure commitment on defence, and we are increasing defence spending in real terms. Again, it is important that we have a strong economy so that we can properly fund our defence.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2021-02-22
Topic: Health
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): People with learning disabilities have been marginalised in health and care for decades. We know from the learning disability mortality review that people with learning disabilities have a life expectancy 20 years lower than the general public. Now we know that, during the pandemic, people with learning disabilities have been even more at risk. After adjusting for age, people with learning disabilities are six times more likely to die from covid than their peers. Despite that, the Government have not given people with learning disabilities the protection and support they need in the pandemic. It took months for people with Down’s syndrome to be added to the clinically extremely vulnerable list, and Ministers still do not fully accept that people with learning disabilities are more vulnerable to covid than their peers Only those people with a severe or profound learning disability indicated on their GP record are currently eligible for a vaccine in cohort 6. A Public Health England report on deaths from covid in people with learning disabilities details the fact that GP records are not sufficient to reach all people with learning disabilities who are at risk. It said: "The great majority of people recognised as having learning disabilities in schools are not recognised as such by health services in adulthood. Those missed… are known to have poor physical health, including higher rates of obesity and diabetes, putting them at increased risk of death from COVID-19." This means that people may be being denied the vaccine they need because of a postcode lottery in medical record keeping. The learning disability mortality review programme report on covid deaths told us that deaths were not limited to people with severe or profound learning disabilities. Can the Minister tell us that the Government will update the vaccines delivery plan to make clear that all people with learning disabilities should get the vaccine as part of cohort 6 It is also deeply worrying to hear that people with learning disabilities may have been denied life-saving medical treatment for no reason other than they have a learning disability. The Care Quality Commission found that inappropriate "do not resuscitate" orders may have led to potentially avoidable deaths during the first wave of the pandemic. That was rightly condemned, with both the CQC and NHS England making clear that "do not resuscitate" orders based solely on someone’s learning disability should not be used, but there are reports that this practice has resumed. It is clear that the CQC does not have the powers it needs to address this, so will the Government agree to suspend all "do not resuscitate" orders applied to people with learning disabilities during the pandemic until a full review can be carried out? Access to healthcare and treatment is a human rights issue and an equality issue. It is past time that we took action to ensure that people with learning disabilities get the same access to the healthcare and treatment they need as their peers do.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2021-02-22
Topic: Health
Janet Jessica Daby (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to speak in today’s debate. I extend my thanks to healthcare staff and volunteers up and down our country for their invaluable help with the roll-out of the vaccine. I say that especially to everyone at Downham healthcare centre in my constituency, where I saw the roll-out in action, and it was managed superbly In this debate, I will raise concerns about the position of the NHS. The NHS is in crisis. Intensive care units are still overflowing with seriously ill patients who have coronavirus. Doctors are having to make crucial decisions, and many patients with other illnesses are not able to have their appointments. Prior to the pandemic, I spoke in the Chamber—physically, not virtually—about the nursing shortage. Before covid hit, the shortage of nurses was 100,000, and it was getting worse due to the lack of Government funding for student nurses and the uncertainty for nurses coming from the EU to live and work in the UK. We still have an enormous lack of nurses in hospitals, and there is also a lack of care staff to work in care homes Existing staff are overworked and underpaid, and the pandemic has exposed the decline in our health services after a decade of Tory cuts. Furthermore, areas of NHS hospital services are being privatised and given to private contractors, when the work can be done just as well by NHS staff when the money is reinvested into the NHS The National Audit Office has shown that the total accumulated debt of NHS providers was almost £11 billion in March 2019. While the Chancellor announced a 10-year plan for NHS support in January 2019, not all healthcare professionals have found this adequate. There are no plans to cover the cost of workforce training and expansion and, crucially, the cost of public health work It is purely the efforts of all those staff in the NHS—the doctors, nurses, porters, cleaners, cooks and administrators —that have kept and keep our NHS going, but they need more. We need a health service that is thriving and not struggling to survive. We need a long-term recovery plan that closes the financial holes, and we must prioritise mental health services, which are known as the poor relative to the NHS. Mental health services and CAMHS are needed more than ever as the country begins to recover from the effects of the pandemic, and I truly hope that the Health Secretary and his Ministers are listening to what needs to change and will act on it.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2021-02-22
Topic: Health
Margaret Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): Coronavirus has had a profound impact on all our lives. The UK has had the worst death toll in Europe, and there have been more than 120,000 covid-19 related deaths. In Wirral, more than 850 people have lost their lives, leaving thousands of people grieving Today, the Prime Minister announced his plan for the easing of lockdown measures in England, and of course we all want life to return to normal as soon as it is safe, but the number of those with covid is still high, and so are infection rates. There is much the Government must learn from their failings. They were too slow to lock down at the start of the pandemic. They failed and continue to fail to make sure that people on low incomes get the financial support they need to isolate, and they also failed to quickly put in place an effective test and trace system In a debate last March, the Opposition spelled out the fact that almost 2 million workers on low incomes and 5 million self-employed workers did not qualify for statutory sick pay and that the level of payment was too low. We called on Ministers to address that as a matter of urgency. Now, as then, those who need to isolate must be able to do so without fear of how they will pay the bills. The Government ignored our call, and it took them until September to introduce the £500 Test and Trace support payment, yet the Resolution Foundation has said that seven in eight workers will not qualify for it. Ministers have had nearly a year to get this right. Why are they still getting it wrong The Government have failed, too, on test and trace. I wrote to the Minister on numerous occasions calling for local authority public health departments to be given the data they needed. The Government dragged their heels all the way and prioritised giving money to private companies to implement a centralised system. Ministers have been obsessed with outsourcing and spent almost £2 billion of public money on giving crony contracts to their Conservative friends and donors The dedication and commitment of NHS and care workers throughout the pandemic have been heroic, yet the Government have chosen this time of immense stress for all of them to publish a White Paper on proposals for major changes in the way health and social care are delivered in England. NHS England ran a consultation over Christmas and new year when health and care workers were either working round the clock or taking a few days’ break. It is wholly unacceptable for the Secretary of State to go ahead with such huge changes while we are in the middle of the biggest public health crisis our NHS has ever faced and while staff are exhausted. So I call on him to pause the whole process until all covid restrictions have been lifted and to carry out a full consultation with the public, setting out clearly what those proposals mean for patients and staff. To do anything less would be an insult to NHS workers, care staff and every single person who believes in and relies on our national health service.
Contaminated Blood — House of Lords, 2018-01-29
Topic: Health
George Young (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given by the Minister for the Constitution to an Urgent Question in another place. The Statement is as follows: "The contaminated blood scandal of the 1970s and 1980s was an appalling tragedy that should never have happened. Victims and their families have endured so much pain and hardship and they deserve answers about how this could have happened. I am grateful to the honourable Lady for bringing this issue to the House today, and for her leadership, alongside the honourable Member for Worthing West, Sir Peter Bottomley, of the all-party parliamentary group, which has done such consistent and constructive work on this issue As honourable Members will know, following the Prime Minister’s announcement in July last year that there would be an inquiry into these terrible events, the Department of Health launched a consultation on what the form and scope of that inquiry should be. I would like to thank all those who contributed to that process: we understand how difficult and painful describing these events must have been. The responses to that consultation were carefully considered by Cabinet Office officials. As a result, we confirmed that the inquiry would be statutory, established under the Inquiries Act, and we moved the sponsorship of the inquiry from the Department of Health to the Cabinet Office Before Christmas, we announced that the inquiry would be chaired by a judge. We have asked the Lord Chief Justice to provide us with a nomination. We hope to announce the name of that judge very soon. Once the appointment has been announced, the Cabinet Office will have early discussions with the chair about setting up the inquiry, and will encourage the chair to quickly hold further consultation with the affected communities over the inquiry’s terms of reference Finally, I want to reiterate again that I, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, and the Prime Minister are determined that those affected by this appalling tragedy will get the answers they deserve".
Contaminated Blood — House of Lords, 2018-01-29
Topic: Health
George Young (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the noble Baroness, and I am very sorry to hear that she lost a nephew as a result of this tragic sequence of events. I looked at the Haemophilia Society website earlier today, and I did pick up the controversy that she has just referred to. I think it will be an important, but not exclusive, witness and giver of evidence to the terms of reference, and I am sure that the chair will be aware of the anxieties that the noble Baroness has just referred to. We want to ensure that all those who want to give evidence are able so to do. I hope that the chair will take the advice of many of those who gave evidence that there should be a regional dimension to this inquiry. People should not have to come to London if they want to give evidence.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2021-02-22
Topic: Health
Michael Lee Amesbury (Labour, Centre-left): It has now been 338 days since Australia closed its borders; 909 Australians have lost their lives since then. It is 335 days since New Zealand closed its borders—a policy which has meant that only 26 people have lost their lives. It is 340 days since Taiwan closed its borders; it has managed to prevent the virus killing more than nine of its citizens. But it was only 380 days after the virus had arrived at our shores that the UK Government brought in just a partial hotel quarantine, and it has come too late to save the almost 121,000 people who have died—people’s loved ones: people’s fathers, mothers, grandparents, brothers and sisters. Given that we have one of the highest death rates in the world and one of the worst economic downturns out of all the G7 countries, does the Minister truly believe that the Government have handled the crisis well Earlier today I spoke with Ryan, who manages the Queens Head pub in Frodsham in my constituency of Weaver Vale. Ryan, like many people up and down the country, wants to be optimistic about the road map out of this lockdown. He has nothing but praise for our local NHS, GPs and volunteers, who are doing a remarkable job with the vaccine roll-out for groups 1 to 4 in my constituency. He is, however, concerned that today’s announcement lacks the economic reassurance that his business and others like it need. Will the furlough scheme be extended, as well as the business rates holiday and reductions in VAT Those constituents who are in low-paid work, many of them key workers—the very people we clapped every Thursday some time ago—cannot afford to self-isolate. The Government need to step in, step up and reform the £500 isolation payment, and how about sickness pay too? The 3 million people who have been excluded from any support since the start of this pandemic must finally be given a lifeline. The only VIP lane of fast-track support that every Government Minister should be focusing on is our citizens—their lives and their livelihoods. It is vital that the Government get the next few months right, to ensure that this lockdown remains our last.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2021-02-22
Topic: Health
Siobhain Ann McDonagh (Labour, Centre-left): I will use my short time to emphasise the critical importance of accurate information on local surge testing. At 5 o’clock on 1 February, the Health Secretary announced that the South African variant of coronavirus had been discovered in part of my constituency and that all residents of the CR4 postcode would be tested. By 5.15 pm, my inbox was full. The actual area being tested, Pollards Hill, covers a quarter of the postcode, but residents in Mitcham, Lavender, Cricket Green, Longthornton, and even Colliers Wood and part of Tooting, all rightly expected that they too would be tested. They heard terrifying warnings that they must stay at home, using tins at the back of the cupboard, despite no additional national lockdown rules applying Uncertainty spread rapidly right across CR4. Schools prevented vulnerable and key worker children from attending; nurseries and childminders closed; key workers stayed at home; Hotpoint refused to visit homes and repair washing machines, and Boots in Sutton refused to do eye tests for CR4 residents. People felt they were under house arrest even though they were not in the area to be tested While I sincerely thank each and every Pollards Hill resident who took a test—and I am grateful for the extraordinary operation conducted thanks to local volunteers, the New Horizon Centre, the NHS and Merton Council staff—I cannot stress more strongly to the Minister the importance of clear and accurate communications from the Government I also say to the Minister that people will take a test only if they can afford to self-isolate. Some 70% of people who should be self-isolating are not doing so. That is not just a chink in our armour but a gaping hole in our defence. Those on low incomes and in insecure work often cannot do their job from home and, quite simply, they will not get paid unless they go to work. In order to take a test, they need to be confident that they will have the money to feed their family and pay their bills The more people spreading the virus, the more cases we have; the more cases we have, the more families who lose a loved one and the longer the lockdown and its consequences continue. A successful track and trace system is vital if the road map outlined today is to be met—and Minister, everybody wants it to succeed.
Covid-19 — House of Commons, 2021-02-22
Topic: Health
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): Three minutes is barely enough time to do justice to the Government’s mishandling of the pandemic, the vaccination programme excepted, but I will do my best From the outset, as the old adage goes, the Government failed to plan; the result they faced, failure. Precisely a year ago, the Prime Minister failed to attend not one, not two, but all of the first five Cobra meetings. Then there was the revelation that the previous Conservative Government had undertaken Exercise Cygnus, modelling and predicting the consequences of a pandemic, back in 2016. It was ignored, as were the calls by the scientists to lock down hard and early. Sadly, this Government do not do due diligence; otherwise, they would have followed the leadership and example of Sheffield City Council and its excellent locally delivered test and trace system. Instead, the Government blew £21 billion The farce that has been the Government’s handling of PPE underlines that failure to do due diligence. UK companies such as Tecman and Contechs in my constituency—brilliant, agile small and medium-sized enterprises—can supply PPE. They are supplying it to Europe and elsewhere, shipping all they are manufacturing, while the UK Government source from China and Turkey at higher cost. Meanwhile, frontline NHS and care workers are denied FFP3-grade masks. This from a Government who claimed that staff were overusing PPE in the first few months of this crisis, and denied for the first eight months that the public needed to wear masks. Is it any wonder the public do not trust this Government Thankfully, the Government took options on vaccines. Credit to them for that, but the success of the roll-out is down to the universal healthcare provided by our fabulous NHS, and the use of our primary care networks and people such as Sukhi, Nick and Ollie driving local delivery. I now hear that, having finally realised that the NHS, and not Deloitte, Serco or others, was critical and central to meeting that challenge, the Government have appointed a private company to run their mega-lab in Leamington. I ask the Minister why While there is hope of arresting the health crisis, the Government need to do more to help businesses through the coming months, with more certainty. We do need dates, whether for extending the furlough scheme, for maintaining and simplifying grants, as called for by the Federation of Small Businesses, or for the extension of the business rates holiday or the cut to VAT on hospitality. There must be support for the 3 million self-employed excluded from Government programmes It is not enough to claim that there is light appearing. The Government need to provide protections for public health and the economy to secure and make certain our recovery, and they need to prioritise vaccinations for our teachers if they are really serious about schools returning.
Personal Independence Payments — House of Commons, 2017-02-28
Topic: Health
Justin Paul Tomlinson (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the fact that the Government are now, rightly, spending a record amount to support those with long-term health conditions and disabilities. If the Government were to decide to increase that amount yet further, surely that should be done in conjunction with charities and stakeholders, utilising their expertise, rather than on an ad hoc basis dictated by the courts?
Personal Independence Payments — House of Commons, 2017-02-28
Topic: Health
Rishi Sunak (Conservative, Centre-right): It is clear that different medical conditions will have different impacts on people’s living and mobility. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we must recognise this simple fact if we are to continue to target resources on those who are most vulnerable and most in need?
Personal Independence Payments — House of Commons, 2017-02-28
Topic: Health
Damian Howard Green (Conservative, Centre-right): I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the very good work he has done in his time in the House on mental health. He is absolutely right. A core tenet of PIP’s design is the principle of equivalence between physical and non-physical conditions. The whole House ought to welcome this move. It is why, as he has explained, it is a better benefit than DLA. Rolling PIP out in this way and attempting to improve the assessment process in the way we are is the best way for us to help people with all kinds of disabilities, specifically those with mental health conditions.