argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Ukraine — House of Lords, 2022-06-16
Topic: Defense
Stephen Benn (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. Many people in the House and the country will welcome the provision of additional multiple rocket launchers. I have two brief questions. First, are the Government confident that the military aid is actually reaching the people in Ukraine who need to use it? Secondly, in relation to that part of the Statement that says "We cannot allow Ukraine to be pressured into giving up territory in a way that we would never accept ourselves", is it the Government’s unshakeable and unwavering policy that Ukraine should remain in the borders that existed on 23 February? In the light of some of the other questions that have been asked, is there any concern in the Government that varying points of view may emerge that make it difficult to have a common front on that question?
Approved Premises (Substance Testing) Bill — House of Lords, 2022-04-26
Topic: Health
Frederick Ponsonby (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I too would like to welcome this Bill imminently passing. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, for the work she has done on this Bill and I also thank her honourable friend Rob Butler. It may be of interest to noble Lords that both the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, and Rob Butler were youth magistrates with me in London, so I know them both well This is an important Bill. Approved premises should be drug free. Drug types are changing all the time, and the Government and the approved premises themselves need the flexibility to make sure that the premises are as drug free as possible. I congratulate the noble Baroness.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2015-11-17
Topic: Health
Catherine Malloy Hollern (Labour, Centre-left): Just after the election, the Health Secretary called childhood obesity a national scandal and made tackling health inequalities one of his key priorities. How will a flat-rate cut in the public health grant across all authorities, regardless of specific health challenges, as well as a further projected cut, under the reformulation, of £3 million in my constituency, help him to achieve his mission?
G20 and Paris Attacks — House of Commons, 2015-11-17
Topic: Defense
Chuka Harrison Umunna (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with all the comments about the Government’s No. 1 priority being to safeguard the national security of those we represent, but that actually extends to every Member of the House. With regard to the use of lethal force by intelligence and police forces abroad and at home, it is of course important that they have the powers necessary to act, but it is also important that they act within a clear legal framework. I welcome the Prime Minister’s agreement to publish the advice on which he intends to act in Syria. Will he also ensure that the basis on which the police act on our streets is published and made known to those we represent?
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2015-11-17
Topic: Health
Deborah Angela Elspeth Marie Abrahams (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance. This morning eminent academics published research in a peer-reviewed journal that estimated the mental health effects of the Government’s new work capability assessment process between 2010 and 2013. The research is the first population-level study that looked at more than 1 million work capability reassessments in 149 local authorities in England, and at trends in suicide, self-reported mental health problems, and rates of antidepressant prescription. The report found that there is independent association of an additional 590 suicides, 280,000 cases of self-reported mental health conditions, and 725,000 antidepressant prescriptions. Concerns about the work capability assessment process and other aspects of the Government’s welfare policy have repeatedly been made in this House. In view of the gravity, and the scale and range of impacts of Government policy on the health of its citizens, I seek your advice, Mr Speaker, on how best to get the Secretary of State to make an early statement on how he intends to address those appalling effects.
Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust — House of Commons, 2015-12-10
Topic: Health
Heidi Alexander (Labour, Centre-left): These are truly shocking revelations that, if proven, reveal deep failures at Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust. The BBC has reported that the investigation found that more than 10,000 people died between April 2011 and March 2015. Of those 10,000 deaths, 1,454 were not expected. Only 195 of those unexpected deaths—just 13%—were treated by the trust as a serious incident requiring investigation. Perhaps most worryingly, it appears that the likelihood of an unexpected death being investigated depended hugely on the patient: for those with a learning disability, just 1% of unexpected deaths were investigated, and for older people with a mental health problem, just 0.3% We obviously await a full response from the Government when the report of the investigation is published, but a number of immediate questions need answers today. First, does the Health Secretary judge services at the trust to be safe? A recent Care Quality Commission report found that "inadequate staffing levels in community health services was impacting on the delivery of safe care." What advice can he give patients, and the families of patients, currently in the care of Southern Health Secondly, the Health Secretary confirmed in his reply that NHS England received the report in September, but can he explain why it still has not been published, and can he provide a specific date on which the final report will be made publicly available Thirdly, when was the Health Secretary first made aware of concerns about Southern Health, and what action did he take at that time? What does he have to say to the relatives and friends of people who have unexpectedly died in the care of the trust and who, today, will be reliving their grief with a new anxiety The issue raises broader questions about the care of people with learning disabilities or mental health problems. Just because some individuals have less ability to communicate concerns about their care, that must never mean that any less attention is paid to their treatment or their death. That would be the ultimate abrogation of responsibility, and one which should shame us all. The priority now must be to understand how this was allowed to happen, and to ensure this is put right so it can never happen again.
Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust — House of Commons, 2015-12-10
Topic: Health
Benjamin Peter James Bradshaw (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and congratulate NHS England on what sounds like a very thorough report. I remind him that challenging the methodology was exactly the same first line of defence used by the now disgraced management at Mid Staffs hospital. Will he answer the specific question my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) asked as to when Ministers first knew about problems in the trust, which we hear go back to 2011, and what action they took as a result?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2016-02-09
Topic: Health
Questions: I am sure Ministers will join me in congratulating Number 18 surgery in Bath on being ranked in the top 10 GP practices in the country. Do they agree that patients having a choice of where they are treated will increase patient satisfaction in the NHS?; The Secretary of State will be aware that Maximus is recruiting junior doctors to perform work capability assessments in the Department for Work and Pensions. The company is offering £72,000 a year, which is up to twice the salary that junior doctors would get in the health service. Is he concerned that that will result in inexperienced medical staff making judgments that relate to people’s livelihoods? Is he not also concerned that it will result in a drain of staff resources out of the NHS and out of providing general healthcare for the public?; Comparative research has shown that proton therapy is as effective as radiotherapy for certain cancers, but has fewer side effects. Do Her Majesty’s Government accept the use of comparative evidence in deciding the availability on the NHS of emerging treatments such as proton therapy?; Will the Secretary of State provide an update on efforts and contingencies to combat the Zika virus, and on how that is being co-ordinated with the devolved Administrations, including Scotland?; Has the Secretary of State seen the comments of Professor Angus Dalgleish, who is widely reported in the papers today as suggesting that EU rules are forcing us to spend billions of pounds treating health tourists and preventing us from undertaking important clinical trials? Has the Secretary of State made any assessment of Professor Dalgleish’s comments?; Despite the prevalence of pancakes in Parliament today, I am pleased to be asking a food-related question. A recent opinion poll performed by Diabetes UK showed that three quarters of British adults think food and drink manufacturers should reduce the amount of saturated fat, salt and sugar in their products. Does the Minister support introducing mandatory targets for industry to reformulate food and drink products to help people to eat more healthily, and will that form part of the Government’s childhood obesity strategy?; Ministers will be aware of The Lancet series on breastfeeding and the open letter signed today by a range of organisations in the field calling for concerted action to promote, protect and support breastfeeding. Will the Minister meet me and these organisations to discuss the proposals further?
Gregory Thomas Mulholland (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Leeds has a shortage of integrated care beds and pressure on acute services. Will the Secretary of State—[Interruption.] That was a comma, Mr Speaker. Will the Secretary of State please intervene, so that Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust can open wards at Wharfedale hospital, which it wants to do, while the clinical commissioning group provides the money?
NATO Accession: Sweden and Finland — House of Commons, 2022-07-06
Topic: Defense
Alyn Edward Smith (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I too thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. It is a pleasure to see her in her place, although I should point out there are still nine and a half resigning hours until "Newsnight". More seriously, it is important to stress where we agree, and the SNP agrees with the UK Government’s position in welcoming the applications, from a position of self-determination and democratic sovereignty, of Finland and Sweden to join NATO. I also welcome our Finnish colleague to the Gallery and pledge the SNP’s support for a speedy accession process into NATO. Finland and Sweden will be very welcome; they will augment the alliance, and we support that We also support the expedited approval process within this House that the Minister proposes under section 22 of the 2010 Act. I stress that that is not a precedent or a blank cheque, but, as the Minister says, the circumstances match that case and very much merit the suspension of normal procedures. We also support NATO’s strategic concept from an SNP perspective and believe NATO is the cornerstone of European defence. We look forward, under our worldview, to seeing an independent Scotland joining the 29 out of 32 non-nuclear NATO member states—that is, of course, a different discussion We on the SNP Benches are NATO supporters. While we support the strategic concept, since the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee made wider points it is also worth mentioning the EU’s strategic compass, which is moving at light speed. The EU is developing a much stronger unified defence capability. The UK risks missing out on those negotiations and the UK defence industry and defence operations risk missing those co-ordinations. I reiterate our call for a deep and comprehensive UK-EU strategic defence treaty, as well as augmenting the NATO alliance. We support what the Minister presents today, and I thank her for the statement.
Junior Doctors: Industrial Action — House of Commons, 2016-03-24
Topic: Health
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): A junior doctor at St Helier hospital states that "this contract is unfair, unsafe, uncosted, unevidenced, ineffective, unassessed for impact and risk, and unnecessary." With doctors depressed and demoralised, and with the revelation in David Laws’s book that the NHS required £15 billion to £16 billion, does the Minister agree that the failure to resolve this dispute is putting a huge amount of unnecessary pressure on the NHS, and that the Government and the BMA must settle?
Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust — House of Commons, 2015-12-10
Topic: Health
Peter John Kyle (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State rightly mentions the fact that the culture needs to change so that people can be more uninhibited about talking about the problems they face within trusts and hospitals. May I remind him that the culture is set from the top? I therefore invite him to come to the Dispatch Box again and inform the families and the House when Ministers first knew that there were problems in this trust.
Northern Ireland — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Defense
David Julian Winnick (Labour, Centre-left): Despite the present crisis, is it not a fact that the Belfast agreement has saved the lives of so many people, certainly compared with what happened previously? May I tell the Secretary of State, since she was not here at the time, that when atrocities and crimes were being committed by the IRA, the overwhelming majority of Labour Members of Parliament denounced such actions, as we did, of course, the murderous crimes of the loyalist gunmen? To describe the actions of the IRA in any way as an armed struggle is absolutely wrong and farcical.
NHS Long Term Plan — House of Lords, 2019-01-31
Topic: Health
John Bird (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for this opportunity to talk about health If you really want to cheese off anybody from the health industry, when they start talking about not having enough doctors, nurses and assistants, you might choose to say, "Well, maybe the problem is that you’ve got too many patients". I have tried that out in many places and have cheesed people off. However, when I tried it out on my GP, he said, "That’s very interesting. If I had 25% fewer people to handle, I could do a much better job than I am doing now". The question of whether there might be too many patients rather than not enough doctors was raised by Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, the other day when he said that we spend £97 billion on curing disease and £8 billion on prevention I first went to school as a child after the Second World War in 1951. Back then there was social medicine, with an enormous amount of National Health Service involvement in the lives of young working-class boys—even boys from the slums—in an attempt to prevent illness. We were given so much help that I think many of us have remained healthy. That is borne out by my reaching my 73rd birthday yesterday, which is an enormous surprise if you consider all the things that I have done to myself. It has not been the National Health Service that has helped me but I am still here, and I put it down to some of that early stuff back in the slums, when they got us running around, drinking milk and water, looking at our memberships, inspecting our hair and all sorts of wonderful things like that. However, I will not go into too much detail I am also interested in whether it is possible to look at the National Health Service as the very epicentre of our society, reinventing the concept of health over the next 20 years. I do not think that we should leave health to doctors or nurses; you should go to them only when something goes wrong. A very nice report by the Big Issue and CILIP on libraries and the reasons for supporting them proves that £27 million was saved for the National Health Service by running libraries and attacking the problems of loneliness I was on the train today and met a woman who was going to Addenbrooke’s Hospital for the last session of chemotherapy on her breasts. She went with a fierceness, and I thought to myself, "God bless her". It will increase her chance of surviving if her mental well-being is improved by a sense of happiness, hope and optimism, and that is what is created by areas outside the National Health Service. We have to reinvent the NHS so that it is the very epicentre of everything, with libraries, schools, universities and prisons all linked together.
Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-10-11
Topic: Defense
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, Amendment 9 is similar to the amendment to which I spoke in Grand Committee—I think it was Amendment 13 on that occasion—which sought to amend the Bill to ensure that personnel who successfully apply to work part-time will still be entitled to service family accommodation and resettlement support The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, will recall that during discussions in Grand Committee I provided assurances that regular service personnel undertaking part-time working would retain the entitlements currently available to full-time regulars. I was able to give those assurances because providing our people with service accommodation is pivotal to the work we are doing to enable personnel and their families with mobility in support of defence capability To support my earlier reassurances, I stress again that regular service personnel who successfully apply to work part-time following the introduction of these new measures will be entitled to service accommodation commensurate with their personal status category and other qualifying criteria in the same way as their full-time colleagues. There is no reason to alter the entitlement to accommodation for those who undertake part-time working in the future since these individuals will retain an enduring liability for mobility and will still be subject to the same moves associated with new assignments as others in the regular Armed Forces.
Adult Stem Cells and Life Sciences — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Health
Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds (Labour, Centre-left): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the collecting of data at transplantation centres is very important and so is the sharing of it if we are to make progress? There should be greater emphasis on that, and it should be properly resourced.
Paris Terrorist Attacks — House of Commons, 2015-11-16
Topic: Defense
Stephen John Doughty (Labour, Centre-left): I listened carefully to the Defence Secretary’s justification for the drone strike against Reyaad Khan, from Cardiff, and his description of the nature of the threat he posed to the UK. Will the Home Secretary say a little bit about the nature and origins of the threats we face and the extent to which they are supported directly from Daesh-controlled territory in Syria?
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
John Warren Shipley (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the Government seem very dependent on people using NHS 111 telephone lines, NHS 24 in Scotland, or NHS Direct Wales. I seek the Minister’s confirmation that the resourcing of NHS 111 and the other similar lines will be sufficient to meet the demand the Government are anticipating with trained staff who can give good-quality advice.
Medicines and Medical Devices Bill — House of Lords, 2021-01-14
Topic: Health
Margaret Eileen Joyce Wheeler (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for her response. I shall not go into details now, but we know that there will be significant issues of regulatory divergence, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, my noble friend Lord Hunt and the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, have stressed. We know that it is an issue about which we will have to be very watchful. In the circumstances we currently face, an annual report would have aided the process of working through the issues and encouraged understanding of the plans to address them and the progress being made. On Amendment 78, the Minister is obviously not going to oblige me with a tidying-up amendment at Third Reading to underline the importance of the patient voice. I think that is a mistake; it would have been helpful. However, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 69.
Social Care Costs — House of Commons, 2016-06-06
Topic: Health
Questions: I am grateful for the Secretary of State’s visit to Shrewsbury the other week. He will have heard from the council of the big pressures it is under as a result of increasing costs in adult social care services. We have more senior citizens in Shropshire than the national average and the number is growing at a faster rate than the national average. What lessons has he learned from his visit to Shrewsbury, and what further assistance will he give my council to deal with that very important issue?
Norman Peter Lamb (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Clinical commissioning groups in my county of Norfolk have told the county council that they are withdrawing the money from the better care fund that was available for the protection of social care last year, leaving at least a £7.5 million gap. What is the Secretary of State doing in his discussions with the Secretary of State for Health to ensure that social care is protected? The risk of elderly, frail people and disabled people losing out more is very real.
Yemen — House of Commons, 2016-12-12
Topic: Defense
Thomas Anthony Brake (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Thank you, Mr Speaker. You will have heard, just a couple of minutes ago, the Minister say that the Government are against cluster munitions, but I have before me a letter from the Minister dated 3 November 2016, in which he states: "The UK maintains the view that cluster munitions are not prima facie illegal, and can be used in compliance with international law by States that are not party to the Convention…provided that they are used in a manner that is compatible with international humanitarian law, including distinction, proportionality and the obligation to take all feasible precautions." I am confused, because the Minister says that the Government are completely opposed to cluster munitions and yet in this letter he sets out a view that in some circumstances they are perfectly legitimate and acceptable to use.
Covid-19: Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment — House of Commons, 2021-01-12
Topic: Health
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): As the Secretary of State highlighted earlier, primary care networks will play a major role in rolling out the vaccine in England, but we have heard previously from MPs that not all areas are covered by such networks. How does he plan to avoid a postcode lottery and ensure equitable access, with outreach into vulnerable ethnic or deprived communities?
Covid-19: Innova Lateral Flow Tests — House of Commons, 2021-01-12
Topic: Health
James Neale Hanvey (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I would like to thank the Secretary of State for that answer, and I thank him also for his helpful response to my questions in the Select Committee last week. In that spirit, he will know that I have been pursuing the use of lateral flow tests since early November, when concerns were first raised. Unfortunately, some of those concerns continue to persist—not least when they were underscored by a communication from his Department as recently as 11 December, which stated: "We are not currently planning mass asymptomatic testing; swab testing people with no symptoms is not an accurate way of screening the general population, as there is a…risk of giving false reassurance. Widespread asymptomatic testing could undermine the value of testing, as there is a risk of giving misleading results." Given those ongoing concerns, I would be most grateful if the Secretary of State committed to a meeting to consider those concerns in a bit more detail—