argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Health
Alastair Bruce (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I too am pleased to speak in support of the amendment addressing pancreatic cancer tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, to which I have added my name. I am grateful to the noble Lord for sharing a draft of his speech with me so that I have no need to test your Lordships’ patience by repeating facts and arguments that he and, indeed, the noble Baronesses, Lady Morgan and Lady Finlay, have already stated so tellingly I shall just emphasise a couple of points. I imagine that most, if not all, of your Lordships either know or know of someone who has died of this horrific cancer. Few survive more than a few months, unless they are lucky enough to be among the small number—I think it is about two in five people—whose cancer is diagnosed early enough to be operable. I find it quite shocking that the UK still lags so far behind other countries; as we heard, it is 29th out of 33 countries for its five-year pancreatic cancer survival rates. Research spending on pancreatic cancer is scarcely a quarter of that on leukaemia, for example, and supports correspondingly few researchers and projects. Hopefully, the noble Baroness’s friend may get some more of that There is a sort of vicious circle: because pancreatic cancer is so deadly, few patients are fit enough for long enough to take part in clinical trials, and few researchers are attracted to specialise in a condition that is widely regarded as a death sentence. The noble Lord’s amendment would build on the welcome audit of pancreatic cancer that he mentioned, seeking to ensure that its findings are regularly published, that they contribute to better information about pancreatic cancer and lead to specific action to address the issues identified—hopefully, the action may happen first and the audit later—while at the same time seeking to increase provision of PERT through national guidance and regular reporting Like the noble Lord, I wanted to mention that there are similar issues with other rare and aggressive cancers in this part of the body, such as bile duct cancer, and these too are often diagnosed too late for successful treatment. Even when surgery is available, the prognosis may be poor. Ideally, there should surely be an integrated approach to expedite diagnosis and treatment for all these cancers, and better information to help GPs and other healthcare workers to recognise their symptoms I very much hope that the Minister can give some reassurance on how the system being created by this Bill, including the revised NHS mandate on cancer outcome targets, will help to address the challenges of pancreatic and related cancers with some urgency, so that we can at last start to narrow the gap with other countries in treating them. I also very much support the government amendments that broaden the range of factors covered by cancer outcome objectives.
Medical Cannabis (Access) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-12-10
Topic: Health
Richard James Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party, Right): The hon. Lady refers to evidence. Sophia Gibson, the daughter of my constituents, has had the use of medicinal cannabis for three and a half years. It has greatly improved her quality of life, reduced her epileptic fits and given her the opportunity to transcend from primary school to secondary school this year. Her parents have a very strong evidential base that it works.
A&E Services — House of Commons, 2015-06-24
Topic: Health
Jamieson Ronald Reed (Labour, Centre-left): I beg to move, That this House notes that hospital A&E departments have now missed the four-hour A&E target for 100 weeks in a row; further notes that trusts are predicting record deficits this year; believes the pressures on hospitals are a consequence of declining access to out-of-hospital services under this Government, including fewer older people receiving social care and more people waiting a week or more for a GP appointment; further believes the increasing bill for agency staff is also adding to the pressure on hospitals; notes that the Government plans to stop the weekly reporting of A&E data; believes this decision will make the NHS less transparent and make it harder for patients to judge the performance of their local hospital; and calls on the Government to reinstate the publication of weekly A&E data and to set out how it will tackle hospital deficits in 2015 in order to protect services I want hon. Members from all parts of the House to cast their minds back to the week commencing 14 July 2013: the country was still basking in Andy Murray’s historic win at Wimbledon; England had just embarked on a successful Ashes series against Australia; and hospital A&E departments achieved their target to see 95% of patients within four hours. Since then a number of unlikely things have happened: the then reigning world champions, Spain, have crashed out of the World cup in the first round; a group of scientists remotely have landed a probe on a comet hundreds of millions of kilometres from earth; and Cuba and the United States have begun to repair diplomatic relations. But in the same period some sadly predictable things have occurred: England have crashed out of the World cup in Brazil; they have been whitewashed by Australia in the cricket; and under a Conservative Government hospitals in England have now missed their A&E target for 100 weeks in a row I start this debate by paying tribute to the hard-working staff at every level of our national health service. They work tirelessly in trying circumstances, and without them there would be no NHS. Ministers have in this place adopted the practice of attempting to pretend that any criticism of Government policy is a criticism of the health service or its staff, so let us make clear one thing right at the start of this debate: NHS staff are remarkable and we are all in their debt. The achievements of NHS staff are despite Government policy, not because of it.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-31
Topic: Health
Mary Watkins (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, delayed transfers in care is an ongoing challenge for health and social care services, made worse with the pandemic. We need to remember that hospitals are for assessment and treatment. As other noble Lords have already said, extensive stay in hospital is not good for your health In February 2020, there were over 155,000 delay days in hospital, costing a significant amount of money. A majority of the delays—21%—were caused by delays in packages of care in patients’ own homes, while 18% were due to delays in receiving further non-acute NHS care. With over half a million emergency admissions in the same month, intervention is urgently needed to reduce systematic pressures and maintain safe and timely discharge I therefore particularly support Amendment 289 to optimise existing space and develop new accommodation for hospital patients who no longer require acute treatment. There are a range of options, including community hospitals, NHS nursing homes, contracts with not-for-profit social enterprises and, as my noble friend Lady Greengross has said, independent sector companies. However, these issues are not new. I have in my hands a paper by Sir Cyril Chantler for the King’s Fund, The Potential of Community Hospitals to Change the Delivery of Health Care. The salutary point about this excellent paper is that it was written in 2001.
Elective Care Recovery — House of Lords, 2022-02-07
Topic: Health
Narendra Babubhai Patel (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, there are 20,000 more cases of cancer in the deprived population compared to other populations. Deprived people not only get cancers at a higher incidence but have late diagnoses, find it difficult to access the services and die earlier. What plans do the Government have to address this inequality in cancer outcomes?
A&E Services — House of Commons, 2015-06-24
Topic: Health
Jamieson Ronald Reed (Labour, Centre-left): I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his knighthood—it is remiss of me not to have done that. He will know that real-terms increases and cash increases are not the same. He will also know, because he voted for it, that the budget in Wales has been cut by this Government by more than £2 billion. Let us compare like with like The Royal College of Nursing has calculated that almost £1 billion—£980 million—was spent on agency staff in the last year alone. Those and other choices made by this Government have meant that, collectively, trusts in England reported a total deficit of £822 million in 2014-15. That is simply unsustainable. A recent survey by the King’s Fund found that 90% of trust financial directors and 85% of commissioners are concerned about the financial state of their local health economies, and that view will be shared by many Members on both sides of the House. An investigation by Pulse revealed that clinical commissioning groups were being forced to use their 2015-16 winter pressures allocations just to maintain regular services Questions must also be asked about this week’s revelations that thousands of foreign nurses working in our NHS could be forced to leave the country as a result of the Government’s immigration rules. The RCN points out that this would cause chaos for the NHS and waste tens of millions of pounds—the Secretary of State laughs as I mention that. It would make matters much worse for patients and for front-line clinicians. Will the Minister tell us how many nurses will be lost from A&E and how many will be lost in total as a result of this move? Where in the country will they be lost? How will the vacancies be filled? What will this cost? Has he or any Minister in his Department made representations to the Prime Minister about the effects of this policy? If so, will he share those with the House? When did Health Ministers know that this policy might cause so much damage?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2022-03-28
Topic: Defense
Questions: The Secretary of State’s decision to send lethal defensive military aid to Ukraine before Russia’s invasion was inspired, and it is probably one of the best decisions he has ever taken. What is the initial assessment of the Minister for the Armed Forces of the operational effectiveness in theatre of the next generation light anti-tank weapons we have sent to Ukraine?; It is 40 years this coming week since the invasion of the Falkland Islands and the violation of British sovereignty by Argentina. It is five weeks since the violation of Ukrainian sovereignty by Russia. As China eyes up Taiwan, does the Minister agree that it is time that the Government started to plan for an increase in defence spending, maybe to 3% of GDP?; As a member of the Scottish Affairs Committee, I had the pleasure of visiting Lossiemouth earlier this year. Leuchars airfield in my constituency is still maintained as a back-up site for operations. Given the current situation, can the Minister advise on sonar and radar upgrades? It is important that back-up facilities are also fit for purpose.; Fleeing for their lives when Kabul fell, some Afghans with UK connections entered Pakistan without documentation. Will Ministers urgently devise a practical plan safely to bring to the UK those Afghans who have entry visas to come to this country, but who are still being hunted by the Pakistani police, whose Government apparently want to hand them back to the Taliban?; It is vital that we protect our veterans from vexatious legal claims, something that we have already put in place for those who have served overseas. Will the Minister agree to work with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Government to ensure that legislation is also urgently brought forward to help to protect our Northern Ireland veterans?
Jamie Hume Stone (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): The most effective deployment of our submarine forces in response to Russian deployment is surely intelligence-dependent. Membership of the joint expeditionary force is not synonymous with that of NATO. I press the Minister: are we making every effort to glean intelligence on Russian naval deployment from those other countries?
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-26
Topic: Health
Sally Greengross (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 133, 139 and 161 in my name, and to Amendments 143 and 144 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, to which I have added my name Amendments 133, 139 and 161 are intended to clarify the role that continuing healthcare—CHC—will play, along with other commissioned services. The Continuing Healthcare Alliance has raised concerns about the provision of NHS continuing healthcare. The package of care is there to support people with ongoing and substantial needs in England. Examples of conditions for which someone may qualify for CHC include Parkinson’s, motor neurone disease and dementia, but there are many others as well Amendments 143 and 144 would strengthen the power of NHS England to give directions to integrated care boards. They would help to ensure national consistency of CHC services, which, sadly, is not always the case at present. When the Bill was debated in the other place, the Minister, Edward Argar, responded to a similar amendment as follows: "It is right that clinical commissioning groups, as they are currently called, are held accountable for NHS continuing healthcare within their local health and social care economy. That will also be the case with the national move to integrated care boards, where the board will discharge those duties and be accountable for NHS continuing healthcare as part of its NHS commissioning responsibilities."—[Official Report, Commons, Health and Care Bill Committee, 28/10/21; col. 825.] Given this earlier response, I believe that it is the intention of the Government to improve the national delivery of continuing healthcare and to ensure more consistent delivery throughout England. The intention of this group of amendments is to clarify that in the Bill, so I commend Amendments 133, 139 and 161.
Access to Palliative Care Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-10-23
Topic: Health
John Davies (Labour, Centre-left): On the matter of transparency, does the Minister agree with my point that it is important that the commission should be transparent vis-à-vis the patient and that there should be a policy of full disclosure to the patient of the diagnosis, prognosis and any implications involved or deriving from changes in treatment or changes of venue from, for example, hospital to hospice or otherwise?
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-26
Topic: Health
Narendra Babubhai Patel (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support all the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. She introduced them very comprehensively and I agree with what she said. My noble friend Lord Stevens of Birmingham added to it, so much has already been said and I need to be extremely brief I concur with my noble friend Lord Stevens of Birmingham that outside bodies, including professional organisations in medicine, oppose these powers and that they will lead to more chaos rather than solving problems. As a clinician, I find the unchecked powers for Secretaries of State over local service reconfigurations that the Bill proposes astounding. Local service reconfigurations should be driven by clinical advice and expert assessment of what services are needed to meet the health needs of a local community with patient safety at the heart, as well as considerations about what resources are available in terms of workforce, infrastructure and the proximity of alternative services The powers in the Bill would allow the Secretary of State to initiate service changes without any consultation. How can any Secretary of State feel sufficiently qualified to be making unilateral judgments about what constitutes "safe"? The existing, largely successful, processes, which have already been mentioned, take account of clinical advice and the views of local communities in the final decision have been effective. The noble Baroness gave the example of Kent and Medway stroke services, which were held up by the Secretary of State, not by the consultation. I strongly support these amendments and I hope that the Minister will think about removing the provisions from the Bill.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-26
Topic: Health
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I want to briefly make clear my support for this group of amendments and try to be consistent with what I said on the previous group. The only amendment which causes me to have pause for thought is Amendment 183. The NHS, perfect in every form of course, has been known to have its arteries fur up occasionally. Sometimes there is a need for scale in some services. I want to mention three or four services where scale, after clinical consideration, is important. Pathology is a good example, where we need to have more scale than many of the local pathology departments. Another one, which the Royal College of Surgeons has advocated, is elective surgery hubs, which may mean taking stuff away from a particular local hospital. Another good example is the issue of stroke specialisation, which is beneficial for patients. I have given you three examples where we do not want to totally neutralise the Secretary of State. Sometimes Ministers have a use; it may be few and far between, but occasionally they have some use. We do not want to say that you cannot ever be a catalyst for change. That seems a bit drastic in Amendment 183, and I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, to think about that, because sometimes scale is important, with clinical advice for the benefit of patients.
Stepping Hill Hospital — House of Commons, 2020-01-21
Topic: Health
Richard James Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party, Right): First, may I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on what he is doing? I have read some of the background, as I have already told him, and I commend him for his energetic efforts on behalf of his constituents and the hospital. My hospital, like his, has a specialist stroke unit and we want to keep it open, too. Time is of the essence. Does he agree that the retainment and enhancement of specialist services must be a priority in the NHS, no matter what direction it takes?
Wuhan Coronavirus — House of Commons, 2020-01-23
Topic: Health
Richard James Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party, Right): First, may I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and his clear commitment? Throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, people like you and me, Mr Speaker—you are a type 1 diabetic and I am a type 2 diabetic—have a chronic disease. Those who are diabetic and many others across the United Kingdom worry about the killer impact of this virus I note that the United States of America has diverted flights to specific screening areas. I am sure that the Minister and many others in the House saw the news this morning, as I did. On the flight that arrived this morning, there were three different opinions among those coming off the plane: one said that they had had no advice or discussion whatsoever; the second one got a leaflet; and the third one said that they had some tests done before they left China. So it seems that mixed messages are coming out. It is important that we have a clear policy and that everyone flying here and every person here feels assured.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-20
Topic: Health
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): The noble Lord asked me a question to which I feel obliged to try to respond, but I really want to answer the question with a question: does the CQC have enough powers to benchmark as it would want to do, and to publish those benchmarks? I hear the concerns of my noble friend Lord Stevens in relation to fear of litigation and how that is an objection to the amendments, but I am also quite worried that that is potentially a way of avoiding adopting the guidelines themselves, thereby inhibiting a change in practice and a move to best practice. While there are sources of information that those who are very health-literate, IT-literate, and so on, can access to establish their own benchmarks about what is happening, many people, particularly those in the most deprived areas of the UK, do not have any knowledge of even where to begin looking for these things. That was the motivation behind the amendment: to try to make sure that in the poorest and most deprived areas, people would still be able to access this. That would drive up standards gently but would not create a mandated requirement that a NICE guideline is adopted, for the reasons I outlined previously.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-20
Topic: Health
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): When the Minister is looking into that, will he also look at the issue of the usual suspects? The problem that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, probably encountered—I certainly encountered it—was that many of these areas that are slow to implement NICE recommendations are the same areas where overall performance is pretty poor. There is an issue here about whether we can clearly identify the laggards and take action with them, rather than have a generalised look at the performance of particular areas.
Health and Care Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-20
Topic: Health
Edmund Crisp (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on introducing this very important group of amendments and other noble Lords who have made some very interesting points, such that made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley: this is becoming received wisdom, whereas it might have been regarded as eccentric even five or 10 years ago I have three points to make. First, this is a Bill about integration and partnership. It would be good to have a clear message that non-clinical groups such as the ones we are talking about are part of that, in whatever is the appropriate way—a duty or obligation or something of that sort on in the Bill—without being too specific about the detail Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, made the point that this is the rediscovery of ancient wisdom, not least, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, pointed out, through Covid. I am talking about human flourishing going back to Aristotle and many others in the past: the merging of that ancient wisdom with very modern evidence—more evidence all the time about things such as relationships, as well as the arts and everything else that has an impact on our health My third point is about impact. I co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence. Last year, 17% of the adult population were prescribed antidepressants. That is a huge amount: when I see such a figure, I always have to remind myself that that means that 83% of us were not. However, 17% is a huge number, and the sort of things that we are talking about can reduce that number to the benefit of the people who would otherwise be prescribed antidepressants, making enormous economic savings, time savings and so on.