argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
UN Mission in Mali: Armed Forces Deployment — House of Commons, 2020-12-09
Topic: Defense
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): I very much welcome this deployment, as I think everyone here does. In the ’90s, Britain was one of the largest troop-deploying nations for UN peacekeeping forces and now we are not. This is 5% or thereabouts of what Bangladesh, the largest troop-deploying nation and one of the poorest countries in the world, contributes. While the money the Government have agreed to invest in our armed forces is welcome, it does not include an increase in personnel and it does not include an increase in reservists—in fact, the opposite. Will the Minister look at changing some of that, and will he consider the fact that troops might help to stop violence but they do not bring peace? Development does, so what are the Government doing to make sure development money pours into this country so that our troops can leave it stable?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2020-12-02
Topic: Health
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): I pay tribute to everybody who has got us this far, and we will work with all of them to get us where we need to go next. This has to be something that we all pull together to deliver as quickly and safely as possible over the next few months. I have made that offer to the Prime Minister before, and I do it again It is in that vein that I turn to the next question, which is about public confidence in the vaccine. That is a real cause for concern, because it is going to be crucial to the success of getting this rolled out across the country and getting our economy back up and running. As the Prime Minister knows, we have the highest regulatory and medical safety standards in the world, but it is really important that we do everything possible to counter dangerous, frankly life-threatening disinformation about vaccines. The Opposition have called for legislation to be introduced to clamp down on this, with financial penalties for companies that fail to act. Will the Prime Minister work with us on this and bring forward emergency legislation in the coming days, which I think the whole House would support?
Coronavirus Vaccine — House of Commons, 2020-12-02
Topic: Health
Stephen John Doughty (Labour, Centre-left): This is hugely welcome news. As well as paying tribute to the scientists, I pay tribute to all the teams in our local health boards who are preparing to deliver the vaccine—particularly Fiona Kinghorn and her team at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board—and the armed forces who have been involved in the process. They have done an absolutely incredible job over the past few weeks to be ready for delivery The Secretary of State said, crucially, that this is a UK-wide effort; will he give a cast-iron guarantee that not only this tranche of vaccines but future tranches will be available on a completely equitable basis throughout the United Kingdom, so that we can bear down on this virus in every part of our country?
Coronavirus Vaccine — House of Commons, 2020-12-02
Topic: Health
Geraint Richard Davies (Labour, Centre-left): Last Tuesday, the Prime Minister reassured me that Government guidance would stop non-essential travel out of areas in tiers 2 or 3 into less-infected areas. However, in fact the guidance says that "if you live in a tier 2 area, you must continue to follow tier 2 rules when you travel to a tier 1 area." That means that someone can travel from higher-infection areas to lower-infection areas, including to Wales. Will the Secretary of State update the guidance to comply with the Prime Minister’s advice and stop non-essential travel from higher-infected to lower-infected areas ahead of the vaccine?
Coronavirus Vaccine — House of Commons, 2020-12-02
Topic: Health
Rachael Helen Maskell (Labour, Centre-left): I also congratulate the scientific community on their achievements today. But will the Secretary of State look with precision at the York model of delivering contact tracing? It has been a phenomenal story. Precision of contact tracing interviews has reduced the rate right down. They need the information on day one, not after 48 hours, which is being held back, but they also need to ensure that they get payment and support for people isolating. It works, so will the Secretary of State now follow that model?
Coronavirus Vaccine — House of Commons, 2020-12-02
Topic: Health
Mary Elizabeth Twist (Labour, Centre-left): Last week we celebrated Carers Rights Day, and today they are not included on the priority list issued by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. They do a huge job in looking after some of our most vulnerable people. Will the Health Secretary look again at that decision?
Coronavirus Vaccine — House of Commons, 2020-12-02
Topic: Health
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State talks a lot about partnership at local level. Two weeks ago, his Department contacted the local public health directors and asked them to draw up plans for care home testing. Last week, his Department sent out a letter directly to care homes, bypassing those local directors of public health, to introduce testing in those care homes. Why was the approach changed? How will the data from that testing in local care homes be fed through to local directors of public health to do local tracing?
Coronavirus Vaccine — House of Commons, 2020-12-02
Topic: Health
Angela Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): Two injections per person for everyone in the country is going to take an awful long time. The Prime Minister was hoping that it would be done by Easter. Does the Health Secretary share that timetable or will he publish another one? Is he planning on making this vaccine available again next year, since we do not know how long immunity lasts, and covid is likely to be endemic and with us for some time to come?
Public Health — House of Commons, 2020-12-01
Topic: Health
Maria Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): I will. The hon. Gentleman talks about Nightingale hospitals, but there are not enough staff to staff the Nightingale hospitals. We would have to take them out of the hospitals that they are trying to give some relief to. That is why they are not being used.
Public Health — House of Commons, 2020-12-01
Topic: Health
Emma Louise Lewell-Buck (Labour, Centre-left): We are in a never-ending cycle of national and localised lockdowns and restrictions that are not working. The daily death toll remains high, and hundreds continue to die every single day. Infection rates are ever-shifting, and people are seeing their sacrifices and the impact on the liberties and freedoms in the wider community not yielding the results they were promised. This Government have squandered any goodwill they had and lost the confidence of the country and many in this place. I voted for the current lockdown through gritted teeth. It was to give the Government one last attempt to get the virus under control and sort out the shambles that is test, track, trace and isolate. They have failed. Thousands of contacts continue to be missed. As a result, thousands of people continue not to isolate and the virus continues to spread. Instead, the Government have used this pandemic as an excuse to bung our taxes to their mates, reaching new levels of chumocracy It is clear now that the Government are void of any proper strategy. Their mixed messaging and ever-shifting rules and regulations have caused confusion, so public health measures put in place are not being given enough time to embed properly into our everyday behaviour. I have repeatedly asked the Secretary of State and various Ministers what will be different this time that will mean that these new local lockdown measures will work. Each time I get the answer, "Mass testing." Yet this mass testing is now community testing, as it transpired that there is no actual plan at all about how to carry it out, and it is still not in place. The long-awaited cost-benefit analysis was poor, but we do not really need it. We can all see what is happening to the economy. We can all see the impact this is having on loneliness, mental health, poverty, and delays in cancer treatments I do not accept that voting against these measures today is letting the virus rip. It is saying to the Government, "Come back with something else. Come back with something better and more acceptable." We need a more sensible approach: one where we can live with the virus in the safest way possible, and that gives clear public health messaging; indicates how areas can move between, and in and out of, tiers; gives proper, equitable financial support to each area; protects the most vulnerable; and does not trash our economy I know that this is not easy for any of us, and we are grappling with a virus that, quite frankly, we still do not know enough about. But I also know that what is currently being done, and what we are about to repeat, has not worked and I do not think will work this time. Today I will be voting against these measures because I absolutely must do what I feel is best for my wider community.
Public Health — House of Commons, 2020-12-01
Topic: Health
William Roffen Esterson (Labour, Centre-left): I am very pleased that my constituents in Sefton Central are now in tier 2, because they were in the old tier 3. What I want to say today is that the experience of my constituents, who live in one of the six boroughs of the Liverpool city region that are in that position, leaves clues about what has worked and what has been missing I start by saying thank you to my constituents and the people of the city region for their hard work, their solidarity and the way they have come together to reduce the infection rate; thank you to the NHS staff in our hospitals in particular, who have reduced the number of people in hospitals with covid illness; and thank you to our council staff and to the military for administering the mass testing pilots and, in the case of the council staff, for taking on some of the responsibility for contact tracing too As I have said, the experience leaves clues about what has not worked as well. Mass testing is not the whole answer by any means. It is part of the reason we are now in tier 2 instead of tier 3, as is the fact that we went into tier 3 so early, but it has taken 2,000 military personnel to administer mass testing. Where are the military personnel to deliver this, whether it is called mass testing or community testing, elsewhere? That mass testing has only been in the city of Liverpool, not in the other five boroughs. My constituents have been able to access it when they have gone into Liverpool, but not in our own borough The experience in the poorest areas has been that the lack of financial support has stopped people self-isolating because they have not been able to. The Government must address that if they want people to be able to self- isolate. The same is true of people who are self-employed, freelancers or people who run their own firms who have run out of money and have not had support since March. This must be addressed if we are to get through to the vaccine, which is really what these regulations are about—giving us a way forward The regulations will only work if they are supported by a proper test, trace, isolate and support regime. That must see the financial support I have mentioned, but it must also end the delays in getting the contacts from the centralised call centres to local government and feeding them back in, because at the moment that communication problem is causing delays. It is one of the contributory factors still to the fact that 500,000 people a month are not being contacted. If these problems are not addressed, I am afraid we still face the bleakest of midwinters.
Public Health — House of Commons, 2020-12-01
Topic: Health
Lilian Rachel Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): My constituents have, with very few exceptions, done what was asked of them. They have made immense sacrifices, playing their part in getting infection rates down to protect our community and our hospitals, but they feel that the Government have not done their bit—they have not used the lockdown to fix test and trace. We know that public health teams can do better, but Ministers must give them the resources to deliver. The Government also have not ensured that when people are told to self-isolate, they can afford to do so. Ministers must extend eligibility for the £500 support payment to users of the NHS covid app and look again at the level of statutory sick pay The Government have not done enough to support businesses and their workers, especially those that still cannot reopen under the new tier 3. It cannot be right or fair that tier 3 areas get the same support as those in tiers 1 and 2, or that some self-employed workers and small businesses are still excluded from support altogether. Our cafés and restaurants, and especially our pubs, are suffering. Despite all their investment in covid-safe measures, they remain closed at what would normally be their busiest time of year. The Government must step up and give them the help they need, or I fear that they simply will not reopen at all, and some places will lose their vital community facilities My constituents are deeply disappointed that, despite a huge fall in cases, Nottingham remains in tier 3. They want to know what we need to achieve to come out of tier 3 when it is reviewed on 16 December. People need to feel that the allocations are fair—and they do not—and they need clarity about what we are aiming for, rather than a constant moving of the goalposts We also need clarity about the restrictions themselves and the evidence on which they are based. Nottingham is home to the National Ice Centre. Our city is famous for its past Olympic champions, but it is also the training ground for the gold medallists of the future. Why are ice rinks classed as leisure and entertainment venues and forced to remain closed when other indoor sports facilities are allowed to reopen? What about 10-pin bowling? The sector does not qualify for 5% VAT because HMRC says that a bowling alley is a sports facility, but unlike gyms and leisure centres, it is not permitted to open Bowling alleys have invested in measures to ensure that their venues are covid-secure, and they are not the only ones. Nottingham Playhouse has spent £80,000 on implementing measures to secure "See it Safely" status. The team has worked really hard to give Nottingham families their traditional panto trip, but now they are closed, even though not a single case of covid in the old tier 3 originated in a theatre. Will the Minister please rethink that restriction?
Public Health — House of Commons, 2020-12-01
Topic: Health
Matthew Toby Perkins (Labour, Centre-left): The weight of opinion that has been heard today should make the Government think twice about the direction they are taking. The fact that the Prime Minister had to come here today armed with an assurance that the thing we are voting on will be changed in a couple of weeks should tell him that he has got it wrong Asking Members of Parliament to choose between following exactly the approach that the Government are taking and having no restrictions at all is the height of irresponsibility. A number of Government Members have said that they cannot support the Government’s approach but are not advocating no restrictions at all. As I said to the Prime Minister earlier, in Chesterfield our rate is now down to 118 per 100,000. The rate in London is considerably higher than that in many areas. We are told that the Prime Minister intervened to prevent London from going into tier 3 because he did not want the economic cost, but he was happy for that economic cost to be paid by restauranteurs, pub owners, café owners elsewhere and all those workers whose jobs are jeopardised by this approach I do not believe that the Government’s approach on tiers is joined up or that it enjoys public confidence. I do not believe that the public think it is fair or believe that the tier system is being done on the basis of the medical evidence; they think it is being done on the basis of the Government wanting to keep London in a different tier Tier 2 is focused on the hospitality sector, but there is little evidence that it is the cause of the major outbreaks. There has been too little strategy on testing and tracing in schools. We have seen care homes, hospitals and workplaces without a strategic joined-up approach. When the leader of the Liberal Democrats asked whether people who were told that they would be able to stay with elderly relatives over Christmas could get a test if they want one, we were told that they should get one only if they have symptoms We have a testing regime that is not fit for purpose and a tier system that does not enjoy public confidence. The support package for the hospitality sector is edging up day by day—there is another thousand quid here—but it is inadequate in the context of the losses that the sector faces over the Christmas period. The package is changing the whole time, which is a sign that Government realise that they have not got it right. What about all those other businesses that are not closed but support the hospitality sector, such as those food service companies that supply to hotels and restaurants, and the drinks providers that supply pubs? A whole array of businesses are jeopardised by the Government’s approach, which is why I will not be supporting it tonight.
Public Health — House of Commons, 2020-12-01
Topic: Health
Angela Eagle (Labour, Centre-left): In this pandemic, the Government have always been behind the curve—too slow to take the necessary decisions, too slow into lockdowns and not making the right decisions in a timely way—which has led to this terrible double whammy of one of the highest per capita death rates in the world and the largest recession in Europe. There seems to be no forward-looking strategy to get ahead of the virus and the kind of issues that we know from the modelling are going to come up. Inadequate support has been provided to those who need to be supported. Instead, we have heard vainglorious announcements about moonshots and world-beating systems, and then a failure to deliver on that kind of boosterist language; there has been hyperbole and not enough delivery There has been a lack of trust in the rules, not least because they keep being changed; there are eight different iterations of the furlough scheme. There is no certainty with Government support, because they cannot stop fiddling and changing it, sometimes within weeks of announcing it. That has caused uncertainty and cynicism, and it is hard not to come to the conclusion that in the Prime Minister we have the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. This Government need to lead by example, so Dominic Cummings should have been sacked immediately for ignoring the lockdown rules, and that would avoided an awful lot of cynicism that came in the aftermath of that terrible decision The Government need to reward good behaviour, not punish bad, so they need to enable isolation by paying proper sick pay and supporting those who have to isolate. The £500 payments are not adequate, and they are running out in some areas of the country, with no guarantee that they will be increased. They are barely reaching one in eight of those who have to isolate. This gives people who cannot afford to self-isolate an incentive not to download the app, not to take the tests and to hope it will be okay. The Government need to work with the grain of public requirements, necessities and behaviour, not against it The Government need to tell the truth, not to keep the truth from us in this assessment we have had, which is full of weasel words. The Government also need to show moral leadership: stop setting up VIP lanes for Tory donors and their mates and spending £18 billion of public procurement on this. The Government need to help the 3 million excluded people, who do not want to hear that £200 billion has been spent on the economy when they have not seen any of it and are in desperate need. The Government need to be honest and up front, and then they will get support.
Public Health — House of Commons, 2020-12-01
Topic: Health
Alexander Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): Thanks to the hard work and dedication of everyone who lives in my constituency, we have been able to bring down the number of cases by half in the past couple of weeks. Despite those huge decreases, Tory failures to take the right action as far back as March meant it was inevitable our area would end up in tier 3 when we exited the lockdown The number of cases in Stockton is now nearly double the national average, and we are a long way from where we need to be. In a covid briefing last week, a Health Minister, who was clearly trying to be honest and open, said it was unlikely that our area would be brought into tier 2, even after the two-week review. I do not know whether the Prime Minister’s view is on that, but he must know that these tier restrictions will be with us for a while longer A glance at my inbox this morning revealed a multitude of emails, including from people wanting to visit their granny in a care home and on the desperation of businesses crying out for clarity and proper financial support and the devastating impact on young hockey players’ mental health, who want their ice rink to reopen. There was an email from a family who run a small pub and who have been serving our community since 1981. They are worried they will not make it through the winter, even if we did enter tier 2, because they do not serve food. The Prime Minister’s £1,000 does not, as he claimed, recognise how hard they have been hit, particularly when the average weekly profit of a wet pub in a rural area is twice that figure, and more than five times that figure in an urban area. What about the letter from the mother sick with worry for her daughter, who, when she became self-employed, set up a limited company on the advice of her accountant? She is now excluded from accessing support from the self-employment income support scheme. Hundreds of thousands of people in the same position have been demanding action since March, and still nothing. The gaps in support are stark, and many more have been pointed out in the House today. However, they have been pointed out to the Government for many months, yet they still refuse to take action to close those gaps Across the Tees valley, we have already lost 12,565 extra jobs since the start of the pandemic, and the Government’s failure to provide full and sustained financial support to businesses in tier 3 will surely mean that more good jobs in our community will be consigned to the scrapheap. Once again, this Tory Government have failed to put in sufficient protection and support for businesses. For every job that has been announced locally over the past three years, we have lost five in the past six months. We have to look to the hospitality sector in particular and the people who find themselves out of work and give them the support they need. The Government have failed my constituents at every turn in this pandemic, and sadly the handling of support for those in tier 3 is just another failure to add to our tally.