argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-12-30
Topic: Health
Mary Watkins (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am by nature a libertarian, believing that individuals should, by and large, be responsible for their own behaviour. However, I fully support these regulations, and think that they do not go far enough given the current R rate and the Covid-19 challenges Nursing staff, of whom I am one, as your Lordships know, play an indispensable role in delivering health and social care services, and have gone far and beyond during this crisis. The challenges presented by Covid-19 have been exacerbated by existing and severe staffing shortages in our healthcare sector. We are now seeing the highest numbers of recorded cases of Covid-19 in the UK, with some trusts and areas reporting that they are at breaking point. With the added pressure of winter and unprecedented demand on the service, there are not enough healthcare staff to care for people across the system. These pressures not only exacerbate workforce issues but put patient safety at risk Having spoken to Dame Donna Kinnair, the chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, and having considered other briefings, including from the NHS Confederation, I believe that we need to introduce tomorrow night, as an emergency, some kind of curfew, so that people do not go out in pairs, meet others in pairs, or get alcohol from those off-licences that can open, in order to protect the few beds that we have available in the health service at the moment and ensure that we do not make things worse in the next 24 hours.
Ockenden Review — House of Lords, 2020-12-14
Topic: Health
Narendra Babubhai Patel (Crossbench, Unknown): I declare an interest, because I was privileged to work for over 35 years in a maternity unit, with brilliant midwives and doctors—I was a lead obstetrician—to which the events described in this report were totally alien. So we have another report on the failings of maternity services. The root cause of this, as found in previous reports, is the unquestioning practice of regarding all pregnancies as low risk and striving for a natural birth. Does the Minister agree that, for better outcomes for the mother and her unborn baby, society should expect a better working relationship between midwives and obstetricians, while recognising their individual professionalism? This report should be the starting point to making that happen. The Minister mentioned that both Royal Colleges were working together to bring this about. They might be the solution but, if they are not, they will be the ones who are blamed next.
UN Mission in Mali: Armed Forces Deployment — House of Lords, 2020-12-14
Topic: Defense
David Brownrigg Craig (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, is the Minister aware that more than 200 MINUSMA troops have been killed and others wounded? This deployment to a faraway country of which we know little is risky. For the record, and to reassure the families and loved ones of any UK casualty, will the Minister explain why deploying in Mali fully justifies these acknowledged dangers to our forces? Have our rules of engagement been agreed with the UN force commander?
Brexit: Proposed UK–EU Security Treaty (European Union Committee Report) — House of Lords, 2019-01-16
Topic: Defense
Peter Ricketts (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am a member of my noble friend Lord Jay’s sub-committee. I want to take issue partly with the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, when she says that the report we produced last July has now been largely overtaken. It has taken six months to reach the Floor of your Lordships’ House, and we are shooting at something of a moving target—I know the Royal Navy has always found that difficult—but it is still relevant.
Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-14
Topic: Health
Valerian Bernard Freyberg (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s helpful comments and the opportunity to debate these regulations. Over the last 10 years, we have seen strides forward in the fight against mesothelioma. Thanks to a great deal of political support and work by colleagues in this House—I pay tribute to the noble Lords, Lord Alton, Lord Giddens and Lord Wills—and by Mike Kane, Tracey Crouch and the late Paul Goggins in the other place, much has been done to raise awareness of the disease and to improve life for people affected by it Because of the long period between exposure to asbestos and the appearance of symptoms, it can be extremely difficult for people with mesothelioma to trace a liable former employer or insurance company. In recognition of this, the Mesothelioma Act 2014 was passed to ensure that victims of mesothelioma who were unable to trace a liable insurer could claim compensation from a scheme funded by a levy on insurers. I thank colleagues who supported the Act and who have helped keep mesothelioma on the agenda. Since the launch of the scheme, £130 million has been paid in compensation to around 1,000 people. Like other noble Lords, I declare an interest: my late sister Annabel contracted mesothelioma in her early 50s—she had two young children at the time—and was a grateful recipient of compensation from an earlier version of this scheme that the Minister highlighted in her comments.
Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-02-19
Topic: Health
Narendra Babubhai Patel (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, before addressing the amendments in my name and the names of my noble and learned friend Lord Judge and my noble friend Lord Kakkar—the clause stand part debate and Amendments 5 and 44—I welcome the Minister to the House and to her first experience of Committee. I sympathise with her, as she has to take this Bill through; she was not part of it from the very beginning, as it had already passed in the House of Commons. However, I have no doubt that she will do well I start by saying that if we were not in these times of uncertainty about leaving the European Union, this Bill—if it had been brought to the House in the state that it is in today—would have received the most stringent scrutiny and would have been drastically amended. However, because we do not want UK citizens who live in, work in and visit the European Union to feel the threat of not getting healthcare, we might be more constrained in the way we deal with this. I accept that this Bill is essential to serve the needs of UK citizens who live in EU countries and EU citizens who live in the United Kingdom, allowing them to benefit from the reciprocity of the current healthcare arrangements I have to say that, in all its clauses, this Bill is quite wide in its power and scope and goes way beyond what is required to deliver the EU arrangements. I could go on, but the House’s Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee laid it out much more clearly, and I hope my noble friend Lord Lisvane, who is on that committee, has something to say. He nods, so I am sure he will join in. I summarise what the committee said regarding the Bill: "There is no limit to the amount of the payments … no limit to who can be funded world-wide … no limit to the types of healthcare being funded … regulations can confer functions", anywhere in the world. The committee continued: "The regulations can delegate functions to anyone anywhere" That shows how wide the Bill’s scope is.
Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-02-19
Topic: Health
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support the amendments in this group. They go to the very heart of the human aspect of healthcare provision. If you have a sick child who needs to go to a cardiology clinic, you may well have other children, and you need to be able to look after all of them as well as focusing on the one who is sick. Anything that endangers the services that have taken years to set up and which are known to be working well will have a major downstream effect not only on individual patients but on all others in the family when you have cross-border flow When we talk about people who are already ill travelling, quite often they are going to major family events or reunions. They are not going just for the sake of having a nice holiday. To deny them the ability to travel because the cost of insurance is prohibitive or because they will not have reciprocal cover could have quite severe downstream effects on the mental health and psychological welfare of some of the people who have been affected by it. While these are probing amendments, they go to the heart of why we need to have things in place.
Human Medicines (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-03-07
Topic: Health
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): The Minister does not need to convince me; she needs to convince the industry. It is simply not convinced by the changes that have been introduced. These are the companies earning their living in this sector day to day. The Government have a lot of work to do to try to convince the industry that they have not damaged the exclusivity period for many of these biotech companies. They are the people who have done the briefing on this and the Government—not the Minister personally—have failed to convince them, just as they have failed to convince them by going back on the kind of assurances about no more bureaucracy that the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, gave to the industry in July 2017.
Access to Medicinal Cannabis — House of Lords, 2019-04-09
Topic: Health
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): Do the Government recognise that, whenever patients take part in a clinical trial, there will also be some patients who access the medication outside that trial? Are the Government establishing a confidential database to monitor the outcomes of every child who is prescribed a cannabinoid to look at its efficacy and any harms reported, so that we can get a cross-population database of the effects that could then feed into the evidence-accruing processes? It may be that a royal college such as the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health would be able to assist the Government by providing a confidential haven for such clinical data to be collected.
Breathing Space Scheme: Consultation Response — House of Lords, 2019-06-19
Topic: Health
Margaret Ford (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, like other noble Lords I greatly welcome the announcement made today and, in particular, the provisions and support offered to people with mental health difficulties and debt. However, when someone is in a crisis involving their mental health, they are probably at their least able or well-equipped to access the kind of advice that the Minister has described. Can he say whether there are plans in place to train and support health professionals in the NHS—particularly mental health professionals—to give support and advice to those who need to access the breathing space period?
Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-13
Topic: Culture
Michael Berkeley (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I will depart for a moment from the beauty of facts to perhaps more abstract philosophy. We have heard about the movement of people with respect to the creative industries; there is an important point to make here. I look back over a career that has taken me from being a chorister at the Royal Academy of Music to working at the BBC and the Royal Opera House, working with orchestras, dancers and singers. In each of those cases a very important contribution was made by the movement of people I believe that one of the most important aspects of intellect and civilisation—I am sure many Ministers on the Front Bench would aspire to these things—is curiosity. To experience the best aspects of curiosity, you need freedom of movement, freedom of ideas and the freedom to travel. I am privileged in the way my life has been staggeringly enriched by the movement of people, whether it is my ability to go to a concert in Vienna next month where my music will be played, and another in Budapest, or people coming here to perform. These are people from whom I have learned so much, people such as György Ligeti or Witold Lutosławski, with whom I studied. This movement of ideas and curiosity is vital to the intellectual and cultural health of our nation.
Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-13
Topic: Health
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): I return to the word "normally", to which the Minister drew attention. I recognise that in its judgment in the Miller case, the Supreme Court made it quite difficult for anyone to take a case before the court based on the use of the word "normally". Indeed, the convention itself is not justiciable. In a way, that shows the sense of the formula that is used in the Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill because that does not use the word "normally". It just states that the Secretary of State "must consult". If one is asking for consent, a higher level of co-operation is a useful qualification. "Normally" requires consent. But consultation is a sine qua non of proper legislation where the devolved Administrations are concerned. I would have thought that the formula in the amendment would not give rise to the same concern, which is why I suggest that the Minister considers very carefully whether, in this Bill, it would not be appropriate to adopt the same provision I appreciate what the Minister says about the consent of the Welsh Assembly, but it is a matter of some concern: the Scottish Government are particularly sensitive in relation to these issues and it would be a pity to say to the Scottish Government that just because the Welsh have agreed the Scots should just accept the provisions. They are making their own arguments based on what they know is important to them. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will pay very close attention to the point made.
NHS: Shortage of GPs and Nurses — House of Lords, 2019-05-08
Topic: Health
Questions: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to recent reports that there is a serious shortage of GPs and nurses working in the NHS.
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I declare an interest as the author of Medical Generalism, a report for the Royal College of General Practitioners some years ago. Do the Government recognise that while their moves to increase supply are admirable and welcomed by everyone, the problem is retaining staff? We have an increasing number of medical and nursing staff who, for reasons to do with taxation, their pensions and their revalidation processes, find that it is just not worth their while to carry on with the onward, uphill struggle to carry on providing services. I recently met some who have dropped off the medical register simply because the revalidation processes were just too cumbersome for them. These are good clinicians, whose skills are now being lost. Their skills are also being lost from the pool of people to teach the next generation of doctors coming through the system. These pressures are now having a knock-on effect in emergency departments, where waiting lists are going up inexorably, and we know that that is being reflected in the four-hour waiting targets. Talking to staff in emergency departments, they are routinely seeing situations that used to be unusually busy.
NHS Mandate — House of Lords, 2019-04-25
Topic: Health
Colin MacKenzie Low (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I want to raise not the timeliness of the mandate but its content. The noble Baroness will be aware of the problems of undercapacity in eye care services—which were documented by the report entitled See the Light: Improving Capacity in NHS Eye Care in England, produced by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Eye Health and Visual Impairment, of which I am co-chair—and that undercapacity is putting the sight of patients at risk. The first recommendation of that report, addressed to the Secretary Of State for Health and Social Care, was that eye health should be specifically included in the Government’s mandate for the NHS, to ensure that it is accorded a higher priority than it appears to enjoy at the moment. Will the Minister give me an assurance that this recommendation will be fully addressed when the new NHS mandate is finally published?
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-04-24
Topic: Health
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I have taken a slightly different view. I declare my interest as chair of the National Mental Capacity Forum, and I am grateful to my leadership group in that forum for their comments, constant advice and constructive criticism. I am also most grateful to the Bill team, the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, and the Minister for having listened. We have certainly given the Bill what we could term a bumpy ride. I think that needed to happen and do not apologise for it at all. From what I understand, the way the code of practice is now being developed will result in a far better situation.
Health Service Safety Investigations Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-10-29
Topic: Health
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I should like to take advantage of speaking in the gap to return to a point that the Minister touched on briefly in her opening speech. It relates to the position of the devolved institutions. The background to what I want to say is provided by Clause 40, which provides that, subject to subsections (2) and (3), the Act is to extend to England and Wales only. There is an exception for Scotland and Northern Ireland in relation to Clause 18, but that does not relate to the point I want to raise The National Health Service, thank goodness, extends throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. It does not require a great deal of imagination to suppose that incidents that require investigation could affect the safety of patients in Northern Ireland and Scotland as well as in England and Wales. Although the Bill is very careful in Clause 2(4) to say that the apportionment of blame is not the purpose of the investigation, the fact is that the reports under Clauses 22 and 24 will contain information that may be of close interest to those who are pursuing proceedings in civil courts—possibly criminal courts as well, but mainly civil courts, I think—seeking damages for things that have gone wrong That brings me to Clause 25 and the point I wish to draw attention to. Clause 25 provides that, subject to subsection (3), reports under Clauses 22 or 24 are not to be admissible in any proceedings which are determining civil or criminal liability. But that is subject to the ability of the High Court to order that they shall be admissible provided that the balance is properly struck, for the reasons set out in the clause. That clause extends to England and Wales only, not to Scotland and Northern Ireland. The matter of concern to me is that unless there is an equivalent provision in those jurisdictions providing that information contained in these reports is not to be admissible, they will be admissible. Unless there is a prohibition on it, they will be admissible according to the ordinary rules The noble Baroness said that memoranda of understanding were being entered into with the devolved institutions, but I would like to be reassured that it goes further than just an understanding. One requires hard legislation to follow the line that Clause 25 very properly takes in these matters. It may be that the Minister can assure us that the memoranda of understanding extend to an undertaking by the devolved legislatures that they will provide equivalent legislation. If not, there may be something to be said for extending Clause 25 to Scotland and Northern Ireland. One understands, of course, the problem of getting any legislation through the Northern Ireland legislature in present circumstances My point really is to be absolutely sure that the carefully constructed provisions in Clause 25 are matched in Northern Ireland and Scotland, as well as in England and Wales.
Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-07-17
Topic: Health
Francis Hare (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I welcome Amendment 7, as tabled by my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Empey, as a trustee of the mental health service for adolescents which is the Brent Centre for Young People in north London, as noted in my entry in the register of interests. That centre’s work has been in progress for 50 years; originally, it dealt principally with young people at risk of taking their own lives. The clinicians there tell me that they have never had a young person take their life while under treatment in that centre. They have described to me how when a young person meets a clinician who immediately understands where they are coming from and their concerns, it is immediately effective in assuaging the fears of the young person What I am trying to say is that where appropriate services are available, they can be very effective. It troubles me very much to hear that this strategy, developed in Northern Ireland, has been on the shelf for two and a half years because of the vacuum of power. I warmly welcome my noble friend’s efforts to highlight these points today. I hope that the Minister may have something comforting to say on the matter of young men, in particular, taking their lives in Northern Ireland because there has been insufficient action to address their needs.
Detainee Issues — House of Lords, 2019-07-18
Topic: Defense
Robin Janvrin (Crossbench, Unknown): I draw attention to my membership of the Intelligence and Security Committee. I take the forward-looking element of the Statement and welcome the publication of The Principles, which take into account the comments of Sir Adrian Fulford and many of the important changes that the ISC recommended. One point of interest is the reference to new principles coming into effect when the necessary training and guidance are in place. That implies, as I think is the case, that further guidance will be produced by agencies and the various departments. Will that guidance be made available to Sir Adrian or his successor and to the ISC?