argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
National Health Service (Mandate Requirements) Regulations 2017 — House of Lords, 2017-09-06
Topic: Health
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I draw the attention of the House back to the resolution on the Order Paper moved by my noble friend. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, will forgive those of us on this side if we look sceptical because the reason that my noble friend, when he was Secretary of State, had to set the targets that he did was because of the record of her party’s Government over many years. If we are a little sceptical, it is because there is form on this Being a veteran of the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, like my noble friend, I recall that there were many assurances given about the legal framework that would make the reorganisation work, particularly on the importance of the mandate. Therefore, I would be most interested to hear from the Minister on the last part of my noble friend’s resolution, which calls on the Government to publish the advice that they have received on the legality of their actions. Did they seek advice about the legality of their actions, given that they had been so keen to have that legality exist during the passage of the Act that set this framework and, if so, what did that advice say?
Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-10-25
Topic: Defense
Denis Tunnicliffe (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we gathered through the debates that noble and gallant Lords were somewhat uncomfortable with the general thrust of the Bill, but for our part we accepted the Minister’s assurance that the senior management of the Armed Forces was behind it. We did our duty as the Opposition, which is to look at detail, seek assurances and propose amendments to make sure that the Bill will work fairly when it becomes an Act. I thank the noble Earl and his team for their courtesy, for the time he gave us, for wisely giving us some of those assurances and for wisely accepting a couple of our amendments. I also thank my noble friend Lord Touhig, who led our side until recently, for his leadership and I acknowledge the support we received from our own back office.
Counter-Daesh Update — House of Lords, 2017-11-07
Topic: Defense
Alan William John West (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I have a couple of very short questions. Does the Minister believe that we can identify all the returning fighters from Syria? There has been quite a lot recently about work done by Special Forces on iris recognition, and so on, which has not been accepted by the UK Border Agency. I would like confirmation that the Minister is sure that we will actually be able to identify these possibly highly dangerous people coming back from the country Secondly, a senior Royal Air Force officer has said that our fast jets will be returning back home now, and did not really go into ISTAR and drones. Again, will the Minister confirm that we will not move any of our military assets until we are sure that we have defeated them on the ground—in other words, destroyed the caliphate? I know that the whole issue of terrorism is different, but can he confirm that we will not start moving assets until we are sure we have done the work that is needed there?
Raqqa and Daesh — House of Lords, 2017-10-24
Topic: Defense
John Reid (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am sure the whole House welcomes the liberation of Raqqa, but deeply regrets both the physical and human cost of Daesh’s control of that area. Is the Minister in a position to say more about the breakdown and balance of the anti-Daesh forces now in control of Raqqa and that area, and anything about the co-ordination and co-operation between them for the future?
Space Industry Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-10-16
Topic: Defense
Richard Rosser (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for his reply and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for his valuable contribution to this debate. The Minister has indicated—at least I think this is a fair reflection of what he said—that he will reflect further on this issue. I would certainly have thought that if the transfer under Clause 8(3) will apply, it would be helpful if it said so. One would assume that the provisions of Clause 8(2) would also apply—that is, the parts about not impairing national security, being consistent with international obligations and not being contrary to the national interest. I take it from what the Minister said that he will indicate to us before Report whether the Government intend to make any amendments in the light of the amendment that I have moved I have a question on one point that I asked about at the end, which I appreciate is mainly a point of detail. For the granting of a licence, the consent of the Secretary of State is also required under Clause 8(4). If the regulator granting the licence is not the Secretary of State, is the intention that that would also apply in relation to a licence being transferred or is the Minister likely to come back on that when he has reflected further on the issues raised during this debate?
Data Protection Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-11-15
Topic: Defense
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): Amendment 124A, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, would amend Clause 24, which concerns national security and defence exemptions. Comparing the Bill to the 1998 Act, it appears to us that what is proposed is of a much wider scope. I would like to hear a justification from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, as to why we need this wider definition. If it is the noble Baroness’s contention that this is not the case, will she tell the Committee why the Government have not merely taken the words directly from the 1998 Act Amendment 124N does the same thing in respect of Clause 26. Amendments 124K and 148J are the same and seek to put into the Bill matters raised by the Constitution Committee. These amendments require the Secretary of State to, "specify in regulations the grounds of appeal for proceedings under subsection (3)" This seems to me perfectly reasonable, giving much-needed clarity, so I hope that the noble Baroness can accept my amendments in this regard, or at least agree to reflect on them before Report. I feel that the clause as presently worded is too vague, and that cannot be a good thing when dealing with these serious matters. The amendments also require that these regulations be subject to scrutiny by both Houses of Parliament through the affirmative resolution procedure, which is an important further layer of parliamentary scrutiny The final amendment in my name in this group is another probing amendment. It would delete the measures which limit the power of the Information Commissioner to satisfy themselves that the obligations under Part 4 are being observed. In addition, there are amendments in the group in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Paddick. I look forward to them explaining those further to the Committee during the debate. I beg to move.
International Investment — House of Lords, 2017-10-17
Topic: Defense
David Edward Lea (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, does the Minister agree that Boeing has for many years been a classic example of indirect support of the military-industrial complex—to use General Eisenhower’s phrase—in the United States through defence expenditure, R&D and so on, and that the same applies to high-tech industries generally? Therefore, is it not a fact that we have to scrutinise matters very carefully and take a robust view of our long-term strategic interest when it comes to the arguments that keep flying around across the Atlantic?
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2022-01-06
Topic: Health
John Reid (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, given the chronic shortage of lateral flow tests, can the noble Baroness confirm press reports over the Christmas and new year period that no sooner had one of the major distributors received 2.5 million lateral flow tests then it went on holiday for a week? Has there been any follow-up on that to discover whether that was an isolated incident, or has it been a recurrent pattern?
Covid-19: Vaccinations and Global Public Health — House of Lords, 2021-09-09
Topic: Health
Jeremy Purvis (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am not sure whether the Minister will be coming back to the UK and COVAX. He has been asked very specific questions: to confirm whether in fact the UK drew down 539,000 doses in June and whether we have in fact negotiated options for a further 27 million doses. He was asked whether the Government will confirm that they will not draw down those 27 million doses.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Health
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, Amendments 222 and 223, in my name, seek clarification about the private charges cap. Amendment 222 would prevent any foundation trust increasing its income from private patients unless this was agreed with the relevant commissioning bodies and the appropriate ICB. Amendment 223 would remove the power for NHS trusts and foundations to form subsidiary companies. When foundation trusts were introduced in 2003, they were restricted in the amount of private patient work they could carry out. That was, in part, to alleviate concerns that they might unduly focus on generating income from private patients rather than tackling the then considerable waiting lists. The compromise stood for many years and proved to be little hindrance, although there is one trust on record that declined to move to foundation trust status because it did have a large private patient income—I will leave it to the Minister to work out which one it was. Overall, the regulations have been sufficient to ensure that such activity did not grow and waiting lists came down. The restriction only ever applied to foundation trusts—not to plain old NHS trusts, although we all know that they are, of course, subject to the will of the Secretary of State in all things anyway The notion of independence was reinforced under the new settlement of the 2012 Act. That removed the restrictions and allowed, at least notionally, for a foundation trust to move to have up to 50% of its income from private patients. Although there were some claims that this would lead to a huge acceleration of private patient work, once again that did not prove to be the case Now we arrive at today. The new Bill is based on the assumption that the logic of competition between acute trusts is indeed minimised and that they should be more focused on general good, and less on autonomy and their own bottom line than on co-operation between different parts of the NHS in their locality. Logic suggests that in this new world we should once again look at ensuring that private patient work has no adverse impact on the core work of the NHS. These amendments are similar to those that were used to ensure that private interests cannot be allowed to influence the work of ICBs, and that that should be recognised in the Bill I have another three, very detailed pages, but I will spare the Committee those. I beg to move.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Health
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister and am very pleased indeed to hear about the review. However, we on this side of the House believe that the NHS should be the default provider of clinical services and, if it is not the only provider, it should be the predominant one in geographical and service terms. That means that there must be investment in the NHS, not in the private sector. It is that balance, which we must ensure is in this Bill, that has protected NHS clinical services in the past I will read what the noble Baroness has said very carefully, and I might need further reassurance in due course. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Social Care and the Role of Carers — House of Lords, 2021-06-24
Topic: Health
Elizabeth Barker (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I salute the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, as she makes her way off to her new defence portfolio. I want to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, in turning the House’s attention to the often forgotten part of social care: mental health social care I put it to the Minister that, as we sit here watching, as we have done for the past year, an unfolding mental health crisis with an unprecedented level of mental health problems in the general population, and waiting for the legislation following Sir Simon Wessely’s review and the Government’s response to it, now is the time, with popular support, to change radically the way in which we fund and devise mental health support. We need to ensure that adults of working age have access to skilled mental health support, to enable them to remain in work. We also need to do what my colleagues in Sutton local authority have done: find the money to support mental health staff in schools so that children can get through this challenging period with some resilience In mental health, it is often said that the NHS gets lots of resources and local authorities get lots of responsibilities. They do. They have huge responsibilities for commissioning mental health social care. At the moment, they are running those on resources that are pretty well exhausted. We need a system whereby people have quick access to emergency preventive support and to crisis support of the kind that we provide very well when we have resources; and whereby, when people have had episodes of acute care in hospital, their Section 117 aftercare, to which they are entitled, is actually there, and they are supported back into work. If we do not have that, we will simply have a generation of people who are not earning the capital to fund their future care needs when they are older I also want to do one thing that I do not think we have done today: acknowledge that communities of people of colour and LGBT communities are disproportionately hit by all this, as they have been disproportionately affected by Covid I finish by asking the Minister two specific questions. First, what assessment have the Government made of his department’s convened Mental Health and Wellbeing Advisory Group’s recommendation that we need £1.1 billion of investment in mental health social care budgets? Secondly, when will the Government publish their response to that group’s recommendations, after committing to review them in a mental health winter plan? If we leave this, it will become more than urgent; it will become an acute and endemic problem. We need to seize the time now to deal with it radically.
G7 and NATO Summits — House of Lords, 2021-06-17
Topic: Defense
Menzies Campbell (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I join in the congratulations to the Prime Minister, not least on his theatrical prowess, because yesterday he gave a very good performance of Dr Pangloss in the other place. I return to the point so ably made by the noble Lord, Lord West. Do the Government really appreciate that the ambitions contained in the integrated review and the agreement in Brussels for the "wholesale modernisation" of NATO will require a much larger defence budget than at present, including even the £16 billion promised by this Government over the next four years?
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-26
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am of course grateful to the noble Baroness but I am not sure that she has entirely dealt with the concerns expressed. Because the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, referred a lot to the GMC, I should just say that, although I am a member of its board, I am not acting here on behalf of the GMC at all The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and I signed the amendment and we both start from the basis of supporting digital transformation in the NHS, but we have always seen that it has to go hand in hand with the safeguards. That is why this debate is so important. We have heard powerful interventions from the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Harris, about why the police Bill had to be amended in relation to police access to patient information. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, referred to the issues for clinicians if they did not feel that the integrity of the patient confidentiality system was sufficiently safeguarded The Minister has basically said that we need not worry, because the NHS will only deal with information lawfully, and she went through some of the protections, including the fact that in the Bill there are conditions before the integrated care board can release the information. She referred to the data protection legislation, the GDPR, the special category given to health data about patients and the Caldicott principles. She went on to say essentially that my amendment would cause problems, because it would get in the way of legitimate information being given by the ICB, which might have an impact on patient care quality.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-26
Topic: Health
Brinley Davies (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, in speaking in support of my Amendment 150, the issue is simple. We have much to learn about ICPs; I associate myself with the remarks of my noble friend Lord Hunt My proposal is that the rules determining the membership of ICPs should be consistent with the rules for membership of ICBs. As the Committee will be aware, it has been agreed, with the amendment made in the House of Commons, that ICBs will not and cannot be controlled by the private sector, in any way. I believe that the Health Minister, Edward Argar, made the point of principle clear when speaking during the Commons Report stage. He said that "ICBs will not and cannot be controlled in any way by the private sector, as NHS-accountable bodies guided by the NHS constitution and with NHS values at their heart." Let us just remind ourselves that the requirement added by the Government to Schedule 2 is that an ICB’s constitution "must prohibit" a candidate being appointed to it if the person making the appointment considers, in the Government’s words in the amendment, "that the appointment could reasonably be regarded as undermining the independence of the health service because of the candidate’s involvement with the private healthcare sector or otherwise."—[Official Report, Commons, 22/11/21; cols. 119-61.] We might not agree with the wording adopted by the Government, as previously discussed, but the principle is accepted on all sides So, as with ICBs, we should have a parallel provision for ICPs. In this, I am simply following what the Minister said in relation to ICBs: he wanted "to put the matter even further beyond doubt."—[Official Report, Commons, 22/11/21; col. 116.] I emphasise "even further". The debate here is not really about the precise wording of any amendment; it is about the principle of extending to ICPs the same protection that, as has already been agreed, should be extended to ICBs I look forward to the Minister’s reply. It is possible that, given the way in which ICPs are appointed—on the one hand, by ICBs, which are already protected by the Government’s amendment to Schedule 2, and on the other hand, by local authorities—it might be suggested that the issue simply does not arise and that protection is already there. However, if only to put the matter even further beyond doubt, why not accept my amendment?
Telecommunications (Security) Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-19
Topic: Defense
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, veterans of the National Security and Investment Bill—I am not sure there are any—will recognise this amendment: it is exactly the same argument that was put forward then. The response from BEIS was to set up a unit, within BEIS, that the relevant Minister said would have the necessary clearance to review potential national security information. It was quite clear to those in your Lordships’ Chamber at that time that that group of people would not get to see the sort of information that the ISC is cleared to see. We are in the same situation now. The Minister will say that there are people in his department who, if necessary, will be able to see the relevant information. That will not be the case and to some extent, those in the Minister’s department making decisions that refer to national security issues will be flying a little bit blind. If this is not recognised, that is regrettable. This is a really important area of security, and decisions should be made on the best available information, with the best available people reviewing that information. The clue is in the name: this is the Telecommunications (Security) Bill, and it is the Intelligence and Security Committee that is best able to review that information. That is why I support the noble Lord’s Amendment 9.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-26
Topic: Health
Margaret Eileen Joyce Wheeler (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their many expert and very informative contributions. It has been a fascinating debate on a number of issues On specialised care services and rare diseases, I note the Minister’s comments and thank him for some of his reassurances, but there were some issues that he did not cover, particularly in relation to my noble friend’s Amendment 178. However, I welcome the dialogue that is taking place on these issues, and the recognition of their complexity, and am very hopeful that that will continue. We will take stock to see if anything else needs to come back on Report. I also thank my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley for her support on this issue In the general debate, noble Lords will, I am sure, follow up on the points that they made, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, just did. I thought the contributions of my noble friend Lord Hunt and the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, on the hospital food situation, really drove home the importance of this issue. We must make progress on it and move forward On the title "nurse", strong support was expected and we certainly got it from across the House. I hope that progress can be made. The issue will not go away, as the Minister knows, and neither will the determination of my noble friend Lord Hunt to pursue the issue of the availability of T3 for thyroid patients. We hope that progress can be made on that, because again it is a situation that a must be addressed. The noble Baronesses, Lady Masham and Lady Brinton, and other noble Lords made valuable points on the vital need for a licensing regime for non-surgical cosmetic procedures, again underlining the need for urgent, step-by-step progress, and demonstrating in particular why the current situation is unacceptable. Progress can be made. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, pointed out, it was seen in the recent Private Members’ Bill on Botox fillers. We need progress to be made, and steadily Finally, on the reference to when the review of the regulatory system will be completed—the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, also raised this—the issue was about timescales. We know there is a review. We are told that KPMG is on the case and has delivered its report, but we need timescales and action as soon as possible With those comments, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-26
Topic: Health
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my noble friend for tabling these amendments; I have added my name to both of them. They are about transparency and legitimacy, raising very important questions which the Minister needs to answer I go back to what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said at Second Reading, which I think my noble friend referred to. He said that "we have new provider collaboratives which, in fairness, is where the power in the NHS will lie. The Bill makes no provision for them in terms of transparency, openness or accountability."—[Official Report, 7/12/21; col. 1789.] I do not need to say any more than that. The Minister needs to answer that question, because it needs to be resolved before the Bill completes its passage.