argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place) (England) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-09-18
Topic: Health
David John Maclean (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I support these regulations, but I urge my noble friend the Minister to go further and simplify the rules on wearing face masks. First, I agree 100% with my former Cumbrian sparring partner, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. Yes, I know that there is often a huge sigh when he makes the same point over and again, but I think that he is absolutely right: face masks should be worn by everyone, every time and in every place, except when in one’s own home or when eating or drinking in a properly socially distanced establishment The government line is that there is no conclusive evidence that face masks work. However, if that is the case, why have all medical staff for the last six months made such a terrible fuss when they have not had enough of them? Every doctor and nurse wears a face mask, and, if they work for the medical profession, they can work for everyone else. There is good evidence that, even if they do not stop the inhalation of every droplet, nevertheless they reduce the overall load of infection inhaled. There is now cast-iron evidence that the initial intake of the virus is the crucial thing between a mild infection and a life-threatening one Just as I approve of simplifying all those bubble rules that we had into a rule of six, so I approve of simplifying all our face-mask-wearing rules. I ask my noble friend to tell the media to stop whingeing about not meeting granny at Christmas. Christmas is three months away and anything can happen in the meantime On a train, passengers and crew wear masks most of the time, but shop assistants are exempt, it seems. I was in a shop last week and every shopper was wearing a mask, but a guy filling the shelves had no mask and was coughing and wheezing like an old sheep with lungworm. How does that encourage others to obey the law? I am a libertarian and—the Lord Chairman would strongly disapprove of this—if someone kills themselves with 60 cigarettes a day, I do not mind so long as it does not affect others and I do not have to pay for it. That is why I deeply resent those who are guzzling themselves obese and expect NHS taxpayers to pay the bill for their diabetes treatment. So I do not care if people cram themselves into a ghastly Ryanair flight or pack a pub and get Covid-19—it serves them right—but I care very deeply indeed that they are infecting other innocent people, such as their more elderly relatives, their friends and their workmates For many years, we have seen oriental tourists in London warning masks. It is nothing to do with Covid-19, but out of courtesy because they have a cold and do not want to infect others. I commend that oriental courtesy and culture. It is high time everyone in this country did the same every time they are outdoors or in public places with no exemptions, except for a few medical exemptions, and no excuses. Report them instantly and hit them hard with penalties when they do not comply.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place) (England) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-09-18
Topic: Health
Rachel Trixie Anne Gardner (Conservative, Centre-right): [Inaudible] the regulations and amendments that the Minister has moved, together with the clarity they bring. However, in future we should seek to ensure that regulations swiftly follow any announcement. My family tell me that too often they see young people, particularly young men, not wearing masks when required. This selfish behaviour puts others at risk. With the rise in the number of cases of coronavirus infection, compliance with the regulations is essential. I ask the Minister what more can be done to educate people and encourage them to wear face masks.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place) (England) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-09-18
Topic: Health
Elizabeth Sanderson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, as previously acknowledged by my noble friend Lady Noakes, there is not yet definitive evidence of the efficacy of face masks. But if wearing them potentially helps protect others from the virus, that is something we should all want to do. However, we should not ignore the fact that mandating their use is a controversial policy, which at worst compromises individual liberty and at best is a considerable inconvenience which could discourage some people from going about their normal business, be that travelling on public transport, attending church or simply getting back to the shops. On that basis, will the Minister say whether any consideration has been given to when the Government might lift the mandatory wearing of face coverings in certain circumstances? For instance, will it be based on the Covid alert level reducing? If so, will they announce any change so that the wearing of face masks does not end up becoming a social norm by default?
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-10-20
Topic: Health
Rosalind Altmann (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have sympathy with my noble friend on the Front Bench and I have great admiration for the work that he is doing in this area. But I also have sympathy with the statements which have already been made by other noble Lords. I have continually asked for a broad impact assessment of the damage being caused by these measures. How does the 10 pm curfew work? Why can cinemas stay open after 10 pm but not other hospitality venues We seem to have a hokey-cokey policy here. One minute, Durham is in while Gateshead is out, and Newcastle is in and Northumberland is out. On 22 September, Merseyside and the majority of Lancashire were in, and then on 26 September Blackpool went in as well. How are ordinary people who are living in these areas meant to keep up with all of this The ONS estimates that 85,400 people have died at home in England and Wales this year, some 25,000 more than the five-year average. That represents around 500 people a day. We seem to be trading off cancer deaths against Covid deaths, with bowel cancer endoscopies running at only 12% of their usual levels. Other checks, such as people not seeing their dentist, mean that head and neck cancers, breast and oesophageal cancers are not being spotted. This will lead to thousands of deaths I understand that the Government are facing difficulties in the current situation and that the desire to lock down is great, but just hiding people away is not necessarily the answer to solving the problems we are facing as a country not just from one illness but from all the other dangers that are around us.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-10-20
Topic: Health
David John Maclean (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I support these regulations, and I apologise to the Minister, because that is probably the most helpful thing I will say in the next two minutes. I am heartily sick of the media producing so-called experts who contradict everything Whitty and Vallance say within seconds of their briefings concluding. There is a never-ending stream of attention-seeking professors who are undermining public confidence in everything the Government do The others undermining government efforts are the police service of this country. I was a Police Minister and I defended the police every day of my life, but no more. They are a national disgrace, because they are deliberately refusing to enforce the laws passed by this Parliament. The Times revealed yesterday that, despite tens of thousands of breaches of the face-mask-wearing rules in shops, in the last three months, three-quarters of the police force have not given a single fine for breaking the law, and only 28 fines have been handed out by the rest of the police. They have just handed out 18 fines for mass lawbreaking. No wonder Covid is on the rampage in some of our major cities, when people see the police turning a blind eye to blatant law-breaking Can we also stop these idiotic euphemisms of circuit breakers and fire breaks, which are just code for total shutdown again? Shutdowns do not cure Covid; they just suppress it for a few weeks, then it takes off again. We have to learn to live and die with it, and survive by using social distancing, face mask wearing and handwashing We are told by the Government that we have to save the NHS, but why? I thought the NHS was supposed to save us, not the other way around. We are told the NHS must not get overwhelmed, but it already is. In its fetish to empty hospitals in case Covid kicks off, it has dumped tens of thousands of cancer patients and people with heart attacks, strokes and other serious illnesses. Some 90% of operations and treatments have been cancelled. These people will die prematurely and that is a disgrace. We can all clap the NHS medical staff, but the incompetent NHS bureaucracy is still stuck in Soviet-style government.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-10-20
Topic: Health
Daniel Moylan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it is a great privilege to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, who brings to the House her experience of the European Parliament, where she represented the north-west of England. Like many of her constituents there, she is and has been a doughty defender of Brexit and taking back control of our laws. She also has the unique distinction of being the longest-serving panellist on the BBC’s programme "Moral Maze", dispensing ethical guidance to the nation. I am sure that if noble Lords felt they would like some ethical guidance, she would be willing to offer an open ear. She is a defender of free speech, as we have heard—a cause that must commend itself to your Lordships’ House, which manages to combine freedom from legal limitation on what it says with courteous and quintessentially rational debate On the subject of the Motion, the acid test is not infections but deaths. While these have been rising, they have been rising much more slowly than infections. For example, in the Evening Standard yesterday we learned that deaths in London over the past seven days have been running at a rate 1/50th of the height of the pandemic. This is good news, and we owe a great deal of that to the skill, experience and intuition of medical professionals, who have learned as time has gone on how better to treat and to care for those suffering from this dreadful disease. We owe them a great debt, as so often in this pandemic Mortality rates in ICU have come down from 40% to 15%. This points the way to the future, because while we would all like a silver bullet that will put an end to this pandemic, in practice we are much more likely to have to live with it for many years and rely on advances in care and treatment to make it ever less fatal. My question to the Minister is simply: can he assure the House that the Government’s attention is on improving treatment and care as much as on apps and vaccines?
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-10-20
Topic: Health
Colin Moynihan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, there is much in both these SIs and replacement local level regulations about permitted indoor sports gatherings. There has been significant publicity about differences between regions in the north when it comes to keeping gyms open. I would like to take this opportunity to emphasise how important it is to recognise that grass-roots sports and the safe use of gyms to sustain an active lifestyle are critical, not only for the financial security of these businesses but for the physical and mental well-being of everyone. The fitter we are, the stronger our resistance to Covid, the less exposed we become to the worst consequences of the disease, and the greater our chance of avoiding long Covid The positive influence of exercise is recognised alongside evidence that it is the fittest in society who are best placed to fight the disease. A recent publication in the Lancet concluded that the practice of any type of regular, moderate to vigorous physical activity appears to be associated with enhanced immunosurveillance and mucosal immune responses. This is likely to explain the significant risk reduction of community-acquired infectious diseases and infectious disease mortality, as well as an increase in the potency of vaccination I urge my noble friend the Minister and his colleagues across government in health, education and the DCMS to work closely together and back campaigns to reclassify gyms, pools and leisure centres as essential services. Some 400,000 signatories have been added to a petition today to stop the mandated closure of gyms in Merseyside, Wales and areas with tier 3 Covid-19 restrictions. I fully support the petition, for we must promote safe, healthy lifestyles among all sections of the population, and particularly the young, who have borne the brunt of the epidemic while, ironically, being the least exposed to its harmful effects.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-10-20
Topic: Health
Richard Balfe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I would like to add a bit of nonsense for the noble Lord, Lord Mann. My noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Moylan, if I understood them correctly, said that we would have to learn to live with the virus. That is now the bottom line. The increase in infections is quite different from the increase in deaths and serious infections. The fact that the average age of death is 82.4 and that people have underlying conditions has not been lost on the young, who widely regard themselves as being pretty well exempt—and, if they do get it, it is a bit like a cold; they will sniff it off. I am sorry to say that this may not be lost on the young, but it is also not lost on the old that the health service is in a state of virtual collapse when it comes to treatments for cancer, heart problems, colonoscopies and many other things. We cannot carry on, and I would like the Minister to go back to his department and say, "Look, we really have to rethink this." The press and the public, and in particular what I think of as the "thinking classes", are turning against the Government. You have only to read today’s Times— and I am told that there are similar things in the Daily Mail—to work out that the Government are gradually losing the confidence of the commentariat, because these measures are seen as not working. I would ask for a coherent strategy, because local authorities are not enforcing; I do not think that the police in Cambridge have issued a single penalty notice, and they do not show any sign of wishing to do so. So it is time to reconsider, and maybe Professor Heneghan should be brought in to lead the Government’s analysis of the science.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-10-20
Topic: Health
Lucy Neville-Rolfe (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, on her maiden speech and her trenchant defence of free speech. In that spirit, I shall explain my increasing unhappiness. First, we are regulating punitively but often without evidence. I note the Minister’s helpful summary of experience here and overseas, but we still lack firm scientific evidence to show that the measures adopted here—for example, requiring seated consumption of food and drink, or further limiting the number at weddings or funerals—will reduce the risk of transmission to any significant extent. We are sure, however, that such measures will make those affected unhappy Secondly, it is now clear that restrictions and lockdowns do not solve the problem posed by the virus. They delay things, but only at enormous cost, running into tens of billions of pounds, and in terms of unhappiness brought on by loneliness and lives lost due to the consequent neglect of other medical conditions. Since my noble friend represents the whole of health and social care, I cannot understand why so little attention is paid to this aspect. Those in need of urgent treatment avoid seeking help, many GPs still only see people online, those who want a dental procedure or an operation often have to self-isolate, doctors have asked relatives to verify deaths via video calls, cancer patients and heart patients are dying for lack of early treatment, and partners are prevented from attending maternity scans or being with the mother of the baby throughout labour. When I raised this point with the Minister some weeks ago, he gave me a really promising answer, but bad stories abound, and I would like a progress report Thirdly, the rule of six is very inconvenient. Yet again, there is no evidence that it will work. Nevertheless, I am with the Government in believing that we need to avoid another national lockdown at all costs: all that will do is delay the virus wave in the slim hope that a vaccine will arrive in time. We need to learn to live with the virus and to continue to deal with it locally.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-10-20
Topic: Health
Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. I welcome her to the House and wish her a very happy and successful time in this place. I also add my congratulations to my noble friend the Minister for his stamina and patience in once again coming to present these regulations to the House It is not that I do not support regulations—I do—but I make a plea to my noble friend that the guidance could be much clearer. In particular, for example, when reference is made to "linked households" and "bubbles", my noble friend referred me to the app, so I took his advice and went on the app, but it is not immediately clear where to find this guidance. When you look up "linked households", it comes up with general advice about coronavirus, about household antibacterial chemicals linked to weakened bones and something about house dust linked to obesity, which I do not think is what my noble friend intended to direct me to I make a plea that there should be a one-stop shop, where those who are the target and recipient of the restrictions in these regulations can go for very clear, specific guidance. A specific example that received great notoriety was when Dominic Cummings visited the north-east, a place in County Durham, right at the outset of the original lockdown. Giving him the benefit of the doubt—perhaps he did not understand the rules—where would he look to find these rules in a very simple way, so that he could understand, as we could all understand as the recipients of these regulations, what, for example, constitutes a bubble and what constitutes a linked household?
Agriculture Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-20
Topic: Health
Malcolm Sinclair (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I served on the House of Lords Select Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs—the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Committee. Many things struck me when we received evidence. Perhaps I may mention just two of them The first was how reluctant were some in the food and drinks industry to give us any evidence, which makes one entirely suspicious of their motives. They were reluctant to come to the table to discuss the problems and found every excuse not to co-operate. That came out pretty clearly in the evidence we received. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has just said, it is only where the Government have taken firm action that the industry has made significant changes. I say to my noble friend the Minister, who I know has advocated, supported and encouraged this industry, as I do, that a very black cloud hangs over it with regard to this issue. He will have to kick it hard to get it to co-operate in the way that it should The second point that struck me was the need for a cross-departmental response. We took evidence from the Minister for Health and Social Care. She—or rather the department—has been sitting on reports and consultations for some considerable months, and blamed their lack of implementation on Covid. I therefore asked the Minister what would have happened if there had been no Covid. We received the reply, "I shall have further consultations". Let us have some action. The noble Lord and his department may well be taking an active role, but I am not at all convinced that the Department of Health and Social Care is doing so. That is why I support what the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said about the need for the cross-departmental analysis to be done at ministerial level. It is all very well doing it at official level but if it can be kicked into the long grass, I am afraid that it will be. This has to be driven politically by Ministers at the highest level, and probably chaired by someone such as Michael Gove as head of the Cabinet Office. That sort of impetus is needed I should say to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that 18 months is too long—I agree with my noble friend Lady McIntosh on that. We need a speedy reply. My noble friend the Minister has reassured me to some extent, but he has a much more difficult job than he anticipates, given the need to take the other government departments such as health, education and the Home Office with him on this matter.
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-10-20
Topic: Health
Andrew Lansley (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the figures today for the number of cases and deaths are deeply worrying. It is a 20% increase in the week in the number of cases and, of course, the number of cases that we have seen in recent weeks is now tragically leading to a much-increased number of deaths, so there are no grounds for complacency. However, as I think we all understand, this is a marathon, not a sprint, and there is an inevitable tension in the question of how far businesses can be shut down on a permanent basis—and we want to avoid that I put it to the Minister that to support businesses that are Covid-secure and keeping open, we need compensating measures to try to limit the transmission in social circumstances. Would the Government consider extending the advice across England that, when indoors, people should mix only in their own household and social bubble, and that the rule of six, while continuing to apply, is not sufficient indoors? We need to limit the mixing of households indoors.