argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Andrew Campbell Bowie (Conservative, Centre-right): I am agreeing with the hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman; I am trying not to get into that debate. What I am saying is that it could be better in Scotland. The SNP has been responsible for more than 10 years for the NHS in Scotland and it is missing its own targets and the service is underfunded. When SNP Members come into this Chamber to harangue, castigate and berate this Government for the record investment they are giving the NHS south of the border, perhaps they should look closer to home and sort the problems in Scotland, where they are failing to meet their own targets I know that Members from all parties, and especially on the SNP Benches, care deeply for the health and wellbeing of the Scottish people, as do I, but I ask them to bear in mind the record of the Scottish Government when they attack this Government, who are investing record amounts in the health service. I ask them to join me in welcoming the record boost to the block grant and calling for the NHS in Scotland to be funded to a level equivalent to the funding we are putting in here in England I welcome the Bill and hope that when the Scottish Government receive the unprecedented boost to the block grant made possible by Conservative decisions, they spend it wisely and where it is needed, fix the health service where it is broken up north, and invest in our healthcare workers, so that throughout the United Kingdom—in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland—we can have an NHS that all the British people deserve.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Thomas Patrick Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): This is the second time I have addressed the House since my maiden speech. I wish to touch on the important issue of NHS funding and the need to ensure that my constituents in Ipswich get the best possible deal. I welcome the Bill, which will give our NHS the biggest cash increase in its history. The money will support the delivery of our NHS long-term plan and the 40 new hospitals, 50,000 more nurses and 6,000 more doctors that we promised in our manifesto. Of course, all that will be built on solid Conservative economic foundations. I will work hard to ensure that Ipswich receives its fair share of the funding, which is so important because the disparities between Ipswich and East Anglia and the rest of the country are real and often pronounced. CCG funding per patient is more than £100 lower in Ipswich and East Suffolk than the average in England. We must keep an eye on the funding formula to ensure that areas including Ipswich get the funding for the services they need. That includes GP services, in respect of which our GP-to-population ratio has fallen behind and many local residents say that they struggle to get an appointment when they need one In this Parliament we have a unique opportunity to make a real difference to parts of the country that have felt left behind. I will do everything I can to ensure that that message is heard loud and clear.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Dean Russell (Conservative, Centre-right): The key part is understanding the single patient view—how we best use it, and where that data is held and stored. I am very confident that privacy and the risk described by the hon. Gentleman will be very high on the Government’s agenda. I am in no doubt about that My point is that we should look at how we can break down the barriers so that we are not generating fear through people having a lot of concerns about where their data is going to go. We do need safeguards, but we also need to look at technology as the way forward so that we can, for example, reduce cancer risks because we spot the ailments earlier. That is really powerful. We used to swallow tablets to get better; now we can use them in the Chamber and elsewhere, to check out apps and find out more about improving our own health I am very fortunate that Watford is getting a new hospital at Watford General in the coming months and years, but as part of that project we need to look at where we head next, what that means, how we can use technology and how we can provide freedom for everybody to have ownership over their single patient view, and take those ideas forward.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me be clear from the start that the Conservative party is clearly the party of the national health service, and the British public have trusted us with it for another five years as from December. The crucial point made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, which I think is worth repeating, is that people can add noughts here, there and wherever they like, but new spending can only come from a firm, solid and growing economy. People can make all the promises they like about what they are going to do, but if the economy tanks, those promises are made out of pie crusts. I think that is why the British people have entrusted us with the health service I very much welcome the Bill, and hope that I can influence the Minister and his colleagues to think about where some of the new money can be spent. Let me canter through the North Dorset wishlist, if I may. For too long, health at the centre has ignored and underplayed the importance of rural community hospitals.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): I would not be seen dead in my hon. Friend’s patch. I have enough issues with my own There are two community hospitals in my constituency: Westminster Memorial in Shaftesbury and the excellent Blandford Community Hospital. I am a friend of both, and both friends’ organisations do a huge amount of vital fundraising work. The Minister is well apprised of the important role such hospitals play, particularly in rural settings after discharge from A&E, just before people can go home. Community hospitals need support and fresh attention Likewise—I am pleased that the Department prioritised this earlier in the year—community pharmacists play a huge and important role. I am told by our CCG that it is almost a cardinal sin to even consider this, but I would love to see a representative of the community pharmacies on the boards of each CCG, by mandate, because they have a vital role to play in our NHS family. As the previous chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on multiple sclerosis, may I also urge a greater rapidity with regard to the prescribing of medical cannabis? NHS dentistry needs a fillip. I am often contacted by constituents about this—indeed, I was contacted by a lady from Stalbridge the other week who has now been trying to get on an NHS dentist waiting list for two years. That is simply not good enough when dental health is coming under pressure Speaking with another APPG hat on, I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is alert to the need for a speedy renewal of the health grant for those suffering as a result of thalidomide. That takes place in 2022-23. We all know the story of thalidomide; I am not going to rehearse it. We owe the victims of that scandal our support, and I hope that the grant will be renewed, either from new money from the Treasury in the comprehensive spending review or from the current NHS budget This is an opportunity to think about the future of the national health service, as my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) said. We would all hold it in even greater esteem if all of us, as patients, were alert to the cost—the actual cost—of our medicines and our treatments. There would be far fewer medicines flushed down the loo and far fewer appointments missed if people knew the true cost to them, as taxpayers A number of hon. and right hon. Members have referenced the need to bolster preventive health still further. There is far more that we can do. Very often, the NHS is a national ill-health service; it merely picks up the problems that a more proactive preventive agenda could have solved. In that regard, I make a plea, in particular, for bowel cancer and prostate cancer—indeed, for the male cancers generally, which often get overlooked.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): I do. The stasis of the past few years, as we have wrestled with and resolved the issue of Brexit, has almost pushed everything else out of public attention and political action. I rather hope that now, having got Brexit done, we can move on, with a comfortable majority, to deliver on exactly these things. Forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I should have declared an interest, although non-remunerative, as a trustee of a bowel cancer research charity Representing North Dorset, a heavily rural constituency, I know that we are all alert to—I do not think anybody has the solution to this in short term—how we are going to address the demographic time bomb of huge numbers of rural GPs retiring.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): Will my hon. Friend forgive me if I do not? I just want to make two final points because I know that other people wish to speak We need to focus resolutely on delivering GPs in rural areas and trying to find innovative ways to make general practice in a rural location attractive, with a very clear career path. If we do not, it will be a continuing problem and all our constituents will suffer. Mental health is an issue, irrespective of age, that is often exacerbated in a rural setting due to isolation and loneliness. We must tackle that. My hon. Friend the Minister is now rushing for a separate sheet of paper to take a more detailed note of what I am calling for—wishing, I am sure, that I had not been called to speak in this debate Every Member of the House will have their pressing concerns. There will be an awful lot of overlap in the Venn diagram of pressure on the Department. However, this is a golden opportunity. Let us not just fritter it away on what is easy, but do the long-term thinking to find sustainable, sensible solutions to some of our health issues and problems in rural North Dorset and across the country—and then the Minister and his team will be thanked.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (Conservative, Centre-right): Regrettably, we have had one or two cases where that has been repeated. The ambulance service has had a huge investment of 70 new vehicles, and I think 140 new staff are being trained as paramedics right now, all of which is very good news. The rurality issue—it is so often not taken into account when it comes to funding—has all too often been forgotten by Governments of all colours. Dorset has been at the bottom of many funding pools for a long time. On behalf of my constituents and all the constituents in Dorset, I implore the Minister, who is patiently sitting on the Front Bench, for a little bit more attention and just a tiny bit more money. That would make all the difference.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Richard John Holden (Conservative, Centre-right): I support my hon. Friend and neighbour in her campaigning for Bishop Auckland hospital—I am behind her 100% on that. Will she also mention the support that she will be giving me for our rural services, particularly Shotley Bridge hospital, which needs an urgent rebuild as well?
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Dehenna Sheridan Fareham (Conservative, Centre-right): Absolutely—that is exactly why I talked about making sure that we make the most of our existing infrastructure. I would love to work with my hon. Friend on that, too I am committed to fighting the tide of the removal of services wholeheartedly, because Bishop Auckland hospital is a lifeline for my constituents, especially those in our rural communities. At the weekend, I attended the local NHS trust consultation on moving the award-winning stroke rehabilitation unit. It would move to an overcrowded hospital and be combined with a busy, stressful acute ward that is not conducive to recovery. Frontline staff have contacted me to express their opposition. The public are expressing theirs and I was proud to stand up at the meeting and express my opposition and how I will fight against the ward closure I am really grateful to my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary for meeting me to talk about this issue, and I will continue to work with him to ensure that part of the increased funding provided in the Bill will go to Bishop Auckland hospital and enable it to become the local focal point of healthcare again. Bishop Auckland residents should know that I will fight tooth and nail to save our services and restore our A&E. The Bill will certainly help in that fight, and I am delighted to speak in favour of it.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Craig Mackinlay (Conservative, Centre-right): I am delighted to see you in your place, Mr Deputy Speaker; it is the first time we have been in the Chamber together since you were elected—congratulations to you I am pleased to support the Second Reading of the Bill, which displaces any doubt that the Conservatives’ commitment to the NHS is absolute. It will be cast in legislation, and the budget will rise way into the future. The Bill reflects what we have: an ageing population; even more advanced, very expensive machines, which one has only to go round a modern hospital to see; procedures that were not even thought about just a generation ago; and pharmaceutical products that are advancing and by their very nature expensive. In the future, the NHS will be even more important. As we advance into an age of gene and DNA mapping, insurance providers will know the conditions that we are likely to have in 40 to 50 years’ time—we may not want to hear about some of them. The NHS will be much more at the heart of everyone’s healthcare However, I have concerns about throwing money out unless there is proper administration and great care about looking after it. I fear that NHS trusts may simply reach out again for the locum hotline and that the money will not be spent where it ought to be on the frontline. In South Thanet, we have an issue with GP numbers—just one GP per 2,500 of population. That is among the worst figures in the country: the average is one per 1,600. It is little wonder that our A&E departments find themselves under stress. The GPs issue is complex: it is about retention, early retirements and morale. We have tried to implement an international recruitment scheme, but it has not gone as well as many of us would have hoped I am particularly worried about procurement. A couple of years ago, I launched an extensive freedom of information request aimed at NHS trusts and clinical commissioning groups, police and fire authorities, and even universities, across the entire country. I published the results with The TaxPayers’ Alliance in January 2018. I asked a simple question: how much did they pay for a ream—500 sheets—of 80 gsm photocopy paper, which every institution uses by the pallet load? Any one of us could probably go to the high street and pick up a ream for £2.50. The average NHS trust procures 25,000 reams a year I found that the highest price paid by a CCG was Wokingham CCG at £5 a ream; the lowest price—very well done—was paid by Haringey CCG at £1.62. The lowest price paid per ream by an NHS trust was £1.40, by Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust; the highest was £4.65 by Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust. That was a simple issue to ask questions about, and one wonders what else is being procured badly. How much are trusts paying per kilowatt-hour for electricity? What do they pay for their telecommunications, their medicines and everything else?
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Craig Mackinlay (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a good point. How much do trusts spend on recruitment consultants? There is a whole panoply of expenditure on other things that the NHS, as a very big procurer, could get at competitive, keen prices My hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) made a good point about the cost of medicines and repeat prescriptions. That has to be a major issue: across the country, £20 billion a year—nearly one sixth of the NHS budget—is spent on medicines, many of which are on free, repeat prescription. My wife, a pharmacist in the community, far too often sees bags full of expensive drugs come back to the pharmacy after the demise of a loved one. They have to be thrown away, and the money is completely wasted. We need to ask some difficult questions about the NHS. Let us not try to throw more money at it in the hope of a better outcome, because we need to be rather more clever. Great as it is—it has become a national institution, greatly loved—the NHS does not always do things perfectly.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Craig Mackinlay (Conservative, Centre-right): Obviously the hon. Gentleman takes a great interest in Scotland. This is a debate about England, but I think there should be a serious debate in every part of the country about whether the NHS is operating as we would operate if this were our own business, and I think that in many areas of procurement, whether the item in question is paper, telecommunications or power, the answer will be "Probably not." I have benefited from a couple of interventions adding to my time, but I will end by saying this. As I said earlier, the NHS does not always do things perfectly, and in that regard I reflect on the death of young Harry Richford at the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital maternity unit, and on what the coroner said last week. The coroner said that the death of young Harry—who died after a week, following a very difficult Caesarean—had been "wholly avoidable" and "contributed to by neglect", and that "Harry was failed" We cannot just keep saying that we will learn from these things. We need to embed improvements so that our healthcare system in this country is much the best on the planet, and I am sure that the Government will deliver that.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Andrew Iain Lewer (Conservative, Centre-right): This Government have now committed £33.9 billion, the largest cash increase in the history of the NHS, and I am hopeful that the funding will go where it is needed most and that, when combined with the NHS long-term plan, it will help to provide direction and certainty. During the last Parliament, I sat on a Joint Committee of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee, which commissioned a report on adult social care that recommended various ways in which the funding of adult social care could be reformed As a former county council leader and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, this matter has been of interest to me for a long time, and as an MP in Northamptonshire, that interest is even more acute. There is no point pretending that the weight of adult social care costs has not had a large part to play in the crises that that authority has experienced. In recent years, increases to adult social care funding have come, and they have been welcome, but they have been piecemeal, which can affect a local council’s ability to plan for anything beyond the short term. This is why I am encouraged by the confirmed funding and the long-term plan covered in this Bill. Social care and public health funding need the same long-term certainty as NHS funding A joined-up approach between local authorities and NHS staff where both are working in tandem with each other is vital to delivering adult social care, especially in constituencies such as mine. This is an approach that I will continue to push for across Northampton South and Northamptonshire, and I have had several meetings with colleagues, council leaders and healthcare professionals to discuss an integrated joined-up approach to adult social care across the county. This could be a radical and exciting pilot—a blueprint, if you prefer—if handled with ambition and vision I am fortunate in having been able to go on numerous visits to Northampton General Hospital in my constituency, both publicly and for private meetings with staff. I have a very good relationship with Doctor Sonia Swart, the chief executive of NGH, and I am immensely proud when I meet the dedicated and hard-working NHS staff on my visits there. There is one thing I would like to see a commitment to, or have further discussions with Ministers about, and that is the £6.5 million funding for a new children’s A&E facility in Northampton General Hospital. I have seen at first hand the brilliant work carried out by the staff there, but some of the facilities are in desperate need of updating, and this is something I am keen to help deliver. I believe that this Bill will help to deliver the funding and the commitments we made in our manifesto to transform patient care and to support those who use the NHS and those who provide first-rate care free at the point of delivery.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): As ever, this has been an excellent and wide-ranging debate, with constructive speeches from both sides of the House. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, the NHS is the people’s priority and it is our priority. Today, we take another important step towards delivering on our manifesto commitment: our pledge to the people to enshrine in law the record funding for our NHS The NHS has a long-term plan to build a sustainable health and social care system that can rise to the challenges of the future. The NHS has told us how much funding it needs to deliver that plan and the Government are providing it. By 2023-24, the NHS will have an additional £33.9 billion to spend each year. I welcome the Opposition’s willingness to support the Bill, as indeed they should; it provides an iron-clad guarantee to deliver the NHS funding. In doing so, we are giving the NHS the certainty it needs to invest now for the long term.
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Steven John Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): As the Opposition Front Benchers are engaged in a conversation and not listening to my hon. Friend, will he repeat the point he made about the Government giving NHS England the money that it has asked for?
NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-01-27
Topic: Health
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): I am afraid that, with one minute to go, I will not give way The nation’s health and social care is the people’s priority and it is also our priority. Key to delivering on our long-term plan, and the NHS’s long-term plan, is giving the NHS the investment that it needs. This Bill does exactly that. We are delivering on the people’s priorities and on our pledges to the NHS, and I commend the Bill to the House Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read a Second time.