argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
NHS Funding — House of Commons, 2016-10-31
Topic: Health
Tom Blenkinsop (Labour, Centre-left): The Health Committee has been quite clear that of the actual £4.5 billion being spent by the Government on increased funds—not the £8 billion or the £10 billion mentioned by the Secretary of State— £3.5 billion comes from cuts to public health and to education and training. The Secretary of State can come to the Dispatch Box and twist it all he likes, but he has been found out. Every health sector worker in this country has his number and knows him to a tee—we know exactly what he is doing.
NHS Funding — House of Commons, 2016-10-31
Topic: Health
Tristram Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): I wrote to the Secretary of State over the summer because trollies were bumper to bumper in the corridors of Royal Stoke University hospital. This was not mid-winter but high summer. Since then, there have been more hospital bed closures in cottage hospitals, so I repeat my invitation and ask the Secretary of State to come to Stoke-on-Trent and see for himself the crisis in the funding settlement, which is hitting some of those with the most chronic health conditions.
NHS Funding — House of Commons, 2016-10-31
Topic: Health
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): If things are as rosy as the Secretary of State is making out, why is the London Borough of Redbridge, where I am an elected Member, suffering from public health cuts and, even while charging the social care precept, is still barely able to cover the costs of wage increases, let alone improve the service? He should have been lobbying the Chief Secretary this afternoon, not painting this ridiculously unjustifiable rosy picture.
NHS Funding — House of Commons, 2016-10-31
Topic: Health
Andrew Francis Slaughter (Labour, Centre-left): According to Sir Richard Sykes, the chair of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, "the problem is funding", we are "killing" NHS staff by making them work 18 hours a day, and it is not in a position to close any more accident and emergency facilities in north-west London because there is not the capacity to do so. How is the NHS in north-west London supposed to save £1.3 billion over the next four years, as its sustainability and transformation plan proposes?
NHS Funding — House of Commons, 2016-10-31
Topic: Health
Margaret Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): I am particularly concerned that the Government are cutting supply in public health to create demand for a private healthcare market, which means that, like the United States, we will have a two-tier system. I was very concerned by the vague response that the Secretary of State gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle). Will he guarantee this afternoon that there will be no closures of Arrowe Park hospital, Clatterbridge hospital or the Countess of Chester?
Improving Lives: Work, Health and Disability Green Paper — House of Commons, 2016-10-31
Topic: Health
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): Could the Secretary of State consider more carefully the role of GPs? With the work capability assessment, untrained people are sometimes overriding the advice of GPs. We do not want to see that with ESA regarding fit notes.
Improving Lives: Work, Health and Disability Green Paper — House of Commons, 2016-10-31
Topic: Health
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I broadly welcome the thrust of the Green Paper, but I suggest that there are two things the Secretary of State could do for people with mental health conditions now. One is to ensure that assessors undertaking work capability tests are properly qualified. Secondly, can we stop the small number of people with long-term, enduring mental health conditions, who are never going to work, going round this merry-go-round, which is not good for them or for the taxpayer?
European Council — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Stephen James McCabe (Labour, Centre-left): I am sure the Prime Minister understands the concerns of the British medical research sector about its continued access to vital European medical research networks post-Brexit. Without revealing her hand, can she give an assurance that she has a plan to protect access for this vital research?
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Stephen James McCabe (Labour, Centre-left): Further to that question, I can see how the Bill will deal with the issue of debranding, and that is very welcome, but I understand there are three other areas of concern. There is the question of price delay, which the Competition and Markets Authority has been looking at, and there are the problems of tying and bundling and so-called loyalty schemes, all of which act to inflate the cost of medicines to the NHS artificially. Will the Bill also deal with those areas?
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Secretary of State for outlining the overarching principles of this Bill, which, as we have heard, seek to allow the NHS to better control the cost of medicines and to close some of the loopholes, which have been the subject of blatant abuses in recent years I also thank the Minister of State for taking the time to meet me and other hon. Members last week to set out what the Government were seeking to achieve with this Bill. I only hope that this increased appetite for state intervention in the market that we have on display will spread more widely across Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) said, this kind of approach used to be called Marxist, anti-business interventionism. I never thought that I would say this, but, having heard what the Secretary of State said today, I believe that he is now a fully fledged Corbynista In all seriousness, it is clear that the market is not serving the patient or the taxpayer as well as it could. As we have heard, expenditure on medicines is a significant and growing proportion of the NHS budget, standing at £15.2 billion in England in 2015-16, an increase of more than 20% since 2010-11. One can only imagine where we would be now if the whole of the NHS had seen such an increase during the same period The incredible advances in science that we have seen in recent decades, often led by companies here in Britain, mean that people in this country are living longer, healthier lives than ever before. Although we celebrate that, it is also right that we work hard to secure value for money for the NHS to ensure that as many patients as possible can benefit from medical advances.
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Keith Anthony Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): May I declare an interest as a type 2 diabetic and chair of the all-party diabetes group? Ten per cent. of the expenditure of the NHS budget is on dealing with diabetes and complications related to it. Does my hon. Friend agree that there may well be a desire to prescribe more medicines, which will cost more, rather than providing diabetics with a structured education which, if appropriately used, can bring down the cost of diabetes to the health service? It is not just about pills.
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention and pay tribute to him for his great work on diabetes. It is a matter that he consistently raises in the House, and he is right to do so. Of course he is right that there are many ways in which the diabetes bill can be tackled, and some of the shocking statistics that I have seen on the level of take-up of education courses is something on which we can do much better We support the broad aims of the Bill and of what the Government are trying to achieve, but we have a number of concerns, which I hope the Minister will address when this debate is drawn to a close, both about what is in the Bill and about the Government’s policies more widely on access to treatments Historically, the technical mechanisms used by the NHS to control expenditure on medicine have not set the public’s imagination alight, but in June we were all appalled to read reports that a small number of companies were exploiting loopholes to hike up the cost of medicines. In the past few years, we have also seen headline after headline about one effective treatment or another being denied to patients in desperate need on the basis of cost. I will address each of those issues after briefly touching on the Government’s proposal to harmonise the statutory and voluntary schemes for price control and on the new reporting requirements As we have heard, there are currently two schemes for controlling pricing: the voluntary scheme, the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme, which applies to the vast majority of suppliers; and the statutory scheme, which, in 2014 covered around 6% of branded medicine sales in the UK The voluntary PPRS scheme is based on companies making payments back to the Department of Health based on their sales of branded medicines to the NHS. By contrast, the statutory scheme operates on the basis of a cut to the published prices of branded medicines. These different approaches appear to have produced different results. Since 2014, the statutory scheme has delivered significantly lower savings than those of the PPRS, partly as a result of companies either switching individual products or switching wholesale into the statutory scheme, which is one reason why we have seen a significant reduction in the level of the rebate. Therefore, we support the rationale behind aligning the two schemes, which will create a more level playing field between companies and also give us a better chance of delivering greater savings to the taxpayer However, as we have heard, this Bill extends beyond closely aligning the two schemes and adds a new provision, giving the Secretary of State the power to require all medicines manufacturers and suppliers to provide information relating to prices.
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Mark Richard Tami (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend will know—I am sure that we all know this—that there is a difference between the list price that is advertised and the price that the NHS actually pays. That is a very important point, and we have to be very careful that, in gaining all this information, we do actually bring down the cost for the NHS. Those companies may well charge other people higher amounts, and we need to put that in context.
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is one reason why we must tread carefully, and hear what regulations the Government produce for consultation. Some of the measures did not form part of the initial consultation, and there is a feeling that they have been added to the Bill at the last minute. Given the damaging cuts to the community pharmacy sector that were announced only last week, there is an anxiety about what costs could be created by any additional administrative burden.
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Sue Hayman (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that pharmacists often know their patients much better than over-stretched GPs do? They can also advise on the prescription of appropriate cheaper drugs. Does he also agree that, instead of putting further pressure on the pharmacy sector, the Minister should be supporting it to reduce the burden on GPs and to help the NHS save money?
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There was real concern about the announcement last week. From the surveys that have been taken, we know that approximately one in four people who currently use the pharmacist would go to their GP if they were unable to seek advice from the pharmacy. We know the pressure that GP surgeries, and indeed the NHS, are under. We will have to watch carefully the impact of these proposals, which I hope will not be as serious as a number of Members fear The impact assessment does not offer many clues. It states that the additional costs that could be incurred "have not been quantified, as their magnitude will not be known until after consultation on subsequent regulations." We need to tread carefully. The Secretary of State is asking us to give him new powers before setting out exactly how he will use them. That is a far from perfect state of affairs. I hope that we will get some further clarity when the Bill reaches Committee.
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend tempts me a little way outside my brief. I note, though, that our health service is entering into partnerships with Google, so I hope that questions are being asked by Ministers about the taxation arrangements We know that the vast majority of the generics sector is well controlled by competition and delivers value for money to the taxpayer, and we welcome the extension of pricing controls where competition has failed. Is the Minister confident, however, that the steps taken in the Bill are adequate? We have seen, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West mentioned, how adept international companies can be at moving figures around to avoid taxation, and we clearly want to ensure that the system that we develop is not vulnerable to the gaming that we have seen elsewhere. I do not think for a minute that given the vast sums of money at stake, the companies will just shrug their shoulders and take the hit if they can avoid it I was more than a little concerned when I read a section about this Bill in a Concordia investor presentation, which said that in the past the Department of Health "would seek informal negotiations with manufacturers where it believed there were pricing issues. We believe this step will remain." The notion of informal talks with officials brings up uncomfortable memories of the sweetheart deals between multinationals and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Although I am happy for chains of communication to be open with such companies, can the Minister reassure us that in all cases prices will be regulated through a transparent, formal process and not through behind-the-scenes talks?
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Stephen James McCabe (Labour, Centre-left): Where the advertising budgets of pharmaceutical companies dwarf their R&D budgets, is there not an argument for the Government to look again at the tax position of those companies, as well as at the price of their products?
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): We will not get very far with this Government on corporation tax. They have been going in a direction that we would not have chosen. They have decided on the measures in the Bill as the best way to control prices and we will see how they get on. Will the Minister confirm that if it becomes clear in a few years that we have opened up another set of loopholes, we can expect the Department to take the lead and to be proactive in its investigations, rather than relying on a team of journalists to expose the problem We know that in Scotland the rebate that has been generated has been used to create a dedicated fund to give patients access to new medicines. Will the Minister consider investigating similar models and ensuring that the benefits of the scheme are used for the purpose of improving our frankly poor record in allowing patients to benefit from new medicines? We accept that there will always be challenges in matching funding to new drugs, but there is at least a degree of logic in allowing savings made in the drugs bill to be reinvested to enable new products to reach patients more quickly. We welcome today’s report by the Accelerated Access Review, which sets out an ambitious plan that could see patients accessing new lifesaving treatments up to four years sooner. We hope the Minister will take this opportunity to give financial backing to the aims of the review by committing to using future rebates from the pharmaceutical sector to improve access to treatments. I ask the Government to seriously consider this, as there are growing concerns about access to new drugs and treatments in this country, and particularly about the widening gulf between the UK’s record on developing new drugs and the ability of the NHS to ensure that all patients benefit sufficiently The "International Comparisons of Health Technology Assessment" report published in August by Breast Cancer Now and Prostate Cancer UK shows that NHS cancer patients in the UK are missing out on innovative treatments that are being made available in some comparable countries of similar wealth. This is at the same time as a number of medicines have been delisted by the Cancer Drugs Fund after it overspent its budget, and the failure to extend this scheme to innovative treatments as well as medication. There was a report in The BMJ in July entitled "A pill too hard to swallow: how the NHS is limiting access to high priced drugs". It came to similar conclusions when looking at new antiviral drugs that held out a real prospect of eliminating hepatitis C but which were very expensive.
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Robert Howard Marris (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech, as ever. May I pick her medical brains, as it were, on the question of medical supplies? They are defined by the National Health Service Act 2006 as "surgical, dental and optical materials and equipment" Would she, as a clinician and a surgeon, include a CAT or an MRI scanner, as a piece of surgical equipment? It is certainly not dental or optical. It seems to me, as a layperson, albeit a lawyer, that it is not surgical equipment, but investigative equipment, and MRI scanners, as she and many other Members will know, start at about 2 million quid.
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Robert Howard Marris (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is extolling the work that The Times did in a series of articles this June. May I remind him and the House that in discussing the earlier adoption of drugs, we should bear in mind the work that The Times did in the 1960s to uncover thalidomide as a terrible drug? It was never licensed in the USA because of concerns that testing was not adequate. Yes, we want things to go to market earlier when that is possible, but we have to be extremely careful.
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Robert Howard Marris (Labour, Centre-left): I would like to cite for my hon. Friend and the House the Library briefing, which shows that it is not exactly as cut and dried as the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) seemed to think. It tells us that the Competition and Markets Authority took action against pharmaceutical companies with regards to generic pricing, and that GlaxoSmithKline and a number of other companies were fined £45 million when it was found that payments had been made in order to prevent the antidepressant medication Paroxetine being offered on the generics market. GSK is a great pharma company for coming up with new drugs, but it crossed the line in this case, according to the Library briefing, so it is not always either/or when it comes to these pharma companies.
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): No, but I think the hon. Member for Torbay was talking about companies that are not doing any research, but just buying up generic products and profiteering from them. There has been general condemnation of those sort of companies on all sides.
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): Perhaps I was not clear enough, but I was not making that point. I was making the point that the cuts imposed by the Government will mean that some community pharmacies—the smaller ones; the independent ones—will not have the necessary staff. If the Government are imposing a new information-gathering requirement, who will carry out that task? As I said, there may be staff cuts amounting to between £60,000 and £80,000, and people will simply not be able to absorb a new requirement.
Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Robert Howard Marris (Labour, Centre-left): First, may I say in passing that it does not sound very draconian if the powers have never been enforced? Section 260 of the 2006 Act refers to medical supplies and defines them, as I said earlier, as "surgical, dental and optical materials and equipment" Will the Minister look at that definition, because it seems to me that it is not as wide as many people think, and therefore there is a way to get around it if certain technological companies wish to do so, such as the manufacturers of MRI scanners, which I do not think is the intention of the House. Will he look at that definition?
NHS Provision (Brighton and Hove) — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Peter John Kyle (Labour, Centre-left): My neighbour mentions that we are constructing a new wing to the hospital and a bunch of other services locally. Does she agree that the fact that this is going to create an additional administrative burden and challenges for staff, including clinical staff, means we have to get this situation in Brighton and Hove right now, otherwise the additional burden could just be too much for the system locally?
NHS Provision (Brighton and Hove) — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Peter John Kyle (Labour, Centre-left): Is it not extraordinary that the contract was awarded in the first place? Coperforma and the whole underlying supply chain have underperformed and failed patients from the very first day that they took over the contract, and they continue to do so today. The service cannot be returned to where it was before, because the ambulance trust that it was taken from is also in special measures and now no longer has the capacity to take it over. Is not the lesson from this experience that if such a contract is outsourced, the Government must make sure that due diligence is done correctly so that patients do not suffer in this way?
NHS Provision (Brighton and Hove) — House of Commons, 2016-10-24
Topic: Health
Peter John Kyle (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister for giving way so early in his speech. He mentions that there has been an unusual confluence of reports. I would suggest that the unusual thing is that each of the reports indicates extreme failure in many different parts of our health system in Brighton and Hove, from the ambulance trust and six GP surgeries, as was brilliantly outlined by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), right through to the hospital trust—all in special measures, and the hospital in financial special measures. That is the unusual thing. I suggest that the health economy in Brighton and Hove is now bankrupt I suggest to the Minister that he does not do his thinking on his feet now, but would he consider arranging for his Department to appoint someone to our city who can take an overview of what is right and what is wrong in our city, of the funding and of the relationship between the different health bodies and the local authority? Let us bring together all the health systems, figure out what is wrong and how we can bring them together to solve all the problems. The fractures have got too much.