argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Medical Cannabis under Prescription — House of Commons, 2019-05-20
Topic: Health
Antonia Louise Antoniazzi (Labour, Centre-left): I entirely agree, and I am very concerned about it. We have heard in the House this evening that people are growing their own cannabis, and there is a growing trade. There is an online family of people who are helping each other to obtain the most THC possible from different combinations of different plants. It is a complete industry. Why are the Government not getting a grip, and providing a proper, GMP-standard, pharmaceutical product for people I also want to talk about the cost, which is extraordinary. Has the Minister or anybody in her office done a cost-analysis? Alfie Dingley’s case provides a classic example: how much has he saved the NHS by not having emergency medication and not using the ambulance service to go into hospital? It seems nonsensical that we are not going down this road I want to talk about a couple of my constituents. Only a few weeks ago I had a visit from the parents of a 14-year-old son. My son is 14 too, so their situation struck a chord with me. Their son has intractable epilepsy. Mum has given up her job to look after him—he has a very efficient system around him. He benefits from a ketogenic diet and the next available medicine is Epidiolex. Epidiolex does not contain THC but she wants her child to be on a trial, and the trial is limited. A mum should not come to me begging for her son to be on a trial, but when I spoke to her about medical cannabis with THC she was reluctant to engage because of a fear of breaking the law and of not following the system properly. All our families are following a system. They are at the end of the road in terms of what medicine they can be given, so I want them to be given medical cannabis with THC as soon as we can NHS England is drafting terms of reference, and as co-chair of the APPG I appreciate its efforts. These children must have access, however; they must not be waiting three or four years. I urge NHS England to work collaboratively with the devolved nations because we need our children in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to have the same benefits.
Medical Cannabis under Prescription — House of Commons, 2019-05-20
Topic: Health
Charalambos Charalambous (Labour, Centre-left): I congratulate my hon. Friend on her excellent speech and the excellent work she has been doing with the APPG. I also congratulate the End Our Pain campaign, which has done so much to raise this issue. Does my hon. Friend agree that NHS England needs to improve its guidance on intractable epilepsy and fast-track it so that children can get the THC they need?
Medical Cannabis under Prescription — House of Commons, 2019-05-20
Topic: Health
Antonia Louise Antoniazzi (Labour, Centre-left): I totally agree that a completely different approach is needed if we are to get the medicine to our families now It is very upsetting that families are risking getting criminal records by bringing in medical cannabis and are having to fundraise for prescriptions. I pay tribute to families that are fundraising in the public domain—to the parents and the friends, such as Craig who has cycled many, many miles up Pen y Fan recently to raise money for Bailey. I say to all those families that are raising money, "Don’t give up; there is hope, and hopefully we will be able to get you the medicine you need on prescription from the NHS." It would be very remiss of me to stand here and not pay tribute to the late Paul Flynn, former Member for Newport West. Paul was an absolute inspiration. I was a patron of an organisation with him and he was inspirational when I went to Birmingham to speak with him. His knowledge of and passion for medical cannabis was second to none, and I know that, as Madam Deputy Speaker mentioned, he is watching over us now and hoping we will get the breakthrough he was working so hard towards My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) spoke of a bespoke medical response and creative thinking, and I ask the Minister to work with us: pull groups of families out of local trusts and set up an immediate observational trial with the 18 families that we have at End Our Pain; get the NHS to pay for the costs of the medicine when a private prescription has been issued until NHS prescribing is more routinely accepted; and allow the guidance from medical cannabis experts to be used. Some excellent UK experts have come together to form the UK Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society, and they have issued prescribing guidance, too. I say, "Please, work with the NHS to give clear central guidance that medical cannabis is legal and that there is an expectation that it will be prescribed as a normal unlicensed medicine when appropriate."
Medical Cannabis under Prescription — House of Commons, 2019-05-20
Topic: Health
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is making an important and powerful speech. Is he not as frustrated as all of us here and, particularly, the families are at just how long it is taking for all this to go through and for medical cannabis to be legalised so that GPs will be allowed to prescribe it? Products such as oxycodone—OxyContin—and other opioids are totally addictive, yet they are available, at great cost. Surely the time has come for medical cannabis to be made legitimate.
Medical Cannabis under Prescription — House of Commons, 2019-05-20
Topic: Health
Stephen Twigg (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), who made a powerful and reflective speech. I particularly endorse what he says about the importance of having such evidence, a lot of which comes from the families themselves I join in congratulating the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), the co-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on medical cannabis under prescription, both on securing this important debate and on the leadership role they have played on a cross-party basis in putting this important question on the House’s agenda As many Members have said, hopes were raised last year when the Home Office did what it did, and I strongly support what my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) said about the importance of achieving a bespoke solution for our country. In particular, I support what he said about learning from international evidence. That combination of listening to the families and the campaigners and learning from the evidence of other countries could assist us in achieving the urgency that we all want to see.
Medical Cannabis under Prescription — House of Commons, 2019-05-20
Topic: Health
Mohammad Yasin (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald). I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) for bringing this hugely important debate to Parliament. The families of severely ill children and patients who had lived for years with conditions such as MS that meant a life of extreme pain believed that they had been offered a lifeline when the Home Secretary rescheduled medical cannabis so that it could be prescribed to patients who needed it. Six months on, hope has turned to despair as we are now in the unconscionable position whereby medicinal cannabis has been legalised but is almost impossible to access. It turns out that the policy change last year has so many ifs and buts and is steeped in so much bureaucracy that it is not yet worth the paper it was written on. The public are understandably bewildered and confused We have all heard the stories of parents who want only to protect their children from severe pain being denied life-saving drugs or having them confiscated by immigration officials. While the NHS and the medical professions are having arguments over what constitutes evidence on who is eligible for the drug, children and patients are suffering needlessly every day. It is a shameful situation and, as is so often the case, the Government’s defence is to say, "It’s nothing to do with us." They have distanced themselves from the implementation of their own policy and outsourced the tricky bits to those on the frontline who have been given little support or guidance. In doing so, the Government have let so many people down. They have left seriously ill patients to fend for themselves—to be pushed from pillar to post, unable to find an NHS clinician willing to prescribe the only meds that control their seizures The campaign group End Our Pain, which is supporting more than 20 desperate families of children with intractable epilepsy, are having to help to fundraise around £2,000 a month to finance trips abroad to get access to the medical cannabis that the children need. This issue has nothing to do with illegal drugs and neither is it a Home Office issue; it is a public health issue. More than that, it is a humanitarian issue. The evidence is clear—certainly to the parents whose children are alive because of CBD—that the benefits outweigh any negative effects, so why are patients still cruelly suffering? Parents and patients are being criminalised, forced to go abroad or to order off the dark web to get hold of the life-saving medicines they were promised they would be able to access legally. I realise the importance of a proper regulatory development process to coincide with the new policy, but why is it taking so long?
Medical Cannabis under Prescription — House of Commons, 2019-05-20
Topic: Health
Mohammad Yasin (Labour, Centre-left): I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, who makes a powerful point. That is why we are debating this issue today and urging the Government to take urgent steps and make these drugs available for children who are suffering. We can save lives by legalising them The evidence base and research surrounding the new policy must be called in and disseminated as soon as possible, and the barriers to clinically sound prescribing, including any training and support for prescribing doctors, must be addressed urgently. Yes, we have to get the policy implementation right and safe, but it is cruel and unjust to keep patients suffering while the Government hide behind a wall of red tape.
Medical Cannabis under Prescription — House of Commons, 2019-05-20
Topic: Health
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): We have heard some really rather touching and heartfelt speeches, and I suspect that I cannot justice to some of what we have heard. Although of course I condemn the current policy of criminalisation, I am incredibly sceptical about the use of cannabis in a recreational sense, but I am very much in favour of us moving towards a proper, normalised relationship with cannabis and cannabinoids in our health system The cruelty of what happened last year was that we dangled hope in front of lots of people’s faces—not only the children and their families who led the campaign, but many adults who suffer with long-term pain conditions and other conditions that would be helped by medical cannabis—and said that medical cannabis would be available for them. Through administrative burden—deliberately or because of a cock-up, I cannot quite tell—we have created a system in which the barriers are so high that the drugs are not being prescribed. Part of the problem is to do with the rescheduling, which has not been sufficient. The rescheduling has not normalised cannabis and cannabinoids even to the level of opiates. Extra conditions have been laid down through which clinicians have to jump; they have to know that no other drug could work.
Medical Cannabis under Prescription — House of Commons, 2019-05-20
Topic: Health
Julie Elizabeth Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): This has been a very powerful and emotional debate that has moved Members on both sides of the House. It has also been characterised by anger and exasperation on both sides. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting this subject for debate I pay tribute to my former, much-respected colleague, Paul Flynn, for his excellent campaigns on this subject. Somewhere, he will be cheering us on and I hope that he will have more to cheer about by the end of this debate, when we hear the Minister’s comments. I pay particular tribute to the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi); their unflinching commitment to this cause does them credit. Thanks is also due in no small part to the all-party parliamentary group, whose dedicated purpose is to "help secure…access to natural cannabis for medical purposes in the UK under prescription from a medical professional." The group has worked tirelessly to that end, highlighting the barriers that exist and posing constructive suggestions to remove them As the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) rightly said, we are not concerned today with criminals and illegal drug supplies. We are not concerned with the use of recreational drugs. We are considering a most important health issue. I welcome the fact that at long last the Government accept that the therapeutic use of cannabis is a public health issue and not the business of the Home Office. I trust, therefore, that we will never again see parents in possession of medicinal cannabis products accosted and treated like criminals. I refer of course to the disgraceful treatment meted out to Teagan Appleby’s family Cannabis has long been known to contain active ingredients that could have therapeutic use in the treatment of many conditions, including muscular dystrophy, Parkinson’s disease, Crohn’s disease, cancer, AIDS, sickle cell disease and many more. International research and real-life experience in the UK have shown that the active ingredients CBD and THC, in combination, can provide relief for these conditions. There are also strong indications that these medicinal cannabis products can have a transformational effect in paediatric epilepsy cases. In the UK, though, we have been very slow to accept this and even slower to act to help those who could be helped Other powerful drugs with significant street values, such as heroin and diazepam, have long been available on the NHS under the supervision and control of qualified clinicians. Such drugs are extremely harmful in the wrong hands, but, subject to the existing controlled drugs regulations, these products can be used beneficially. In recent years, we have made some progress and have begun to accept that cannabis could and should be available in the same way. This changing attitude has most definitely been driven by increased public awareness of the suffering of individuals, many of them children.
Medical Cannabis under Prescription — House of Commons, 2019-05-20
Topic: Health
Julie Elizabeth Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): Does the Minister accept that these are not normal circumstances? These families and parents are absolutely desperate to access the medication that they have seen work for themselves. Can she find some way to circumvent the usual processes?
Medical Cannabis under Prescription — House of Commons, 2019-05-20
Topic: Health
Antonia Louise Antoniazzi (Labour, Centre-left): I have one question for the Minister: has the cost analysis been done on a particular case? When I spoke earlier, I spoke about Alfie Dingley. It would be very interesting to see the impact of his case financially–the benefit that has been gained to the NHS and the money that it has saved the NHS since he has been taking the drug.
UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union — House of Commons, 2019-03-13
Topic: Health
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful for that opportunity to speak about Northern Ireland, but I must now press on and talk about the impact on health matters A no-deal would have a huge impact on our health service. It would put real strain on an already underfunded NHS, by disrupting medical supplies, access to medicines and the ability of hospitals to hire staff. Niall Dixon, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, has said: "A ‘no-deal’ without alternative arrangements to protect patients is simply not acceptable and could put lives at risk."
War Pensions: Appeals Process — House of Commons, 2019-03-13
Topic: Defense
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In these times of uncertainty, we can rely on the certainty that he will intervene in the Adjournment debate. The point that he made is absolutely pertinent to my constituent’s experiences. As the debate develops, I will show that he has experienced a convoluted appeals process, which only exacerbated his general condition As Members will know, the war pension scheme is run by Veterans UK to provide benefits for people with disablement caused or made worse by service in the armed forces. There is no list of prescribed diseases; claims can be made for any medical condition that is suffered provided that there is a causal link between the condition and military service. Rates for a war disablement pension depend on the degree of disability suffered, which is assessed on a percentage basis akin to the industrial injuries scheme A range of allowances and supplements may be granted depending on an individual’s circumstances, including for employability, mobility, constant attendance or severe disablement. As of 31 March 2018, there were 101,630 disablement pensioners and 15,854 war widows in receipt of a war pension, and in the year 2017-18, £517 million was paid out. With that amount of money at stake, it goes without saying that the process for assessment must be robust War pension claims are made to Veterans UK. If individuals are unhappy with the outcome they can request a review of their war pension decision, and they can also make an appeal to an independent tribunal.
War Pensions: Appeals Process — House of Commons, 2019-03-13
Topic: Defense
David Drew (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend may be aware of the ongoing issue affecting those who allege that because of taking Lariam when they were in the forces, they have been completely disabled in later life. The way in which that has been dealt with is Kafkaesque. That affects many veterans, so does he agree that that needs to be sorted out as a matter of urgency?
Overseas Electors Bill — House of Commons, 2019-03-22
Topic: Defense
David George Hanson (Labour, Centre-left): The point that the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) made is surely erroneous, in the sense that members of the armed forces will not be overseas for 15-plus years. They will be serving overseas for short periods. The people overseas for 15-plus years are those who have divorced themselves from the United Kingdom for a long period.
Gaza Border Deaths: UNHRC Inquiry — House of Commons, 2019-03-22
Topic: Health
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to make a statement on the vote at the United Nations Human Rights Council this morning.
Catherine Jane Smith (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister will be aware that, as of December last year, there was less than a month’s supply left of 42% of the essential medicines in Gaza. Indeed, in the 11 years since the illegal blockade, the Gazan medical system has reached the verge of collapse. If the Government will not vote for the recommendations in the report, to what concrete actions will they commit themselves?
Emergency Summit on Knife Crime — House of Commons, 2019-03-22
Topic: Health
Ruth Smeeth (Labour, Centre-left): We are on the verge of a national epidemic, including in places such as Stoke-on-Trent, which have never been touched at this level before. Will the Minister advise us on how people such as the wonderful Claire Gaygen at Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College, who is co-ordinating our activity, can be assisted to get best practice from other parts of the country?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-07-02
Topic: Health
Mary Theresa Glindon (Labour, Centre-left): Since 2013 this Government have given tax handouts worth £4.1 billion to the big alcohol corporations at a time when the NHS is short of 40,000 nurses. Would it not be a sensible choice to invest in the nurses, doctors and police officers who have to deal with the problems caused by cheap alcohol?
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — House of Commons, 2019-07-02
Topic: Health
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): I take a different point of view. When public health was the responsibility of the NHS, the money was kept within the NHS budget, and increased each year in line with NHS funding. Since the transfer to local government, the funds have been cut substantially in real terms. Let us return public health funding to a level at which local government will really deliver.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-06-06
Topic: Health
Questions: What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to showcase the exports of the Greater Manchester area—and may I take this opportunity to invite him and the Department to host an exporting showcase or roadshow in my constituency?
Stephen Hepburn (Labour, Centre-left): T3 The Minister will be aware of the potential threat to the NHS from any transatlantic trade deal done by the EU. Will he give a cast-iron guarantee that any post-Brexit deal done with the US will maintain the principles of the NHS, free at the point of use?
Global Fund: AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — House of Commons, 2019-06-06
Topic: Health
Questions: What assessment he has made of the extent to which the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is improving access to healthcare for the most vulnerable and marginalised communities.
Charalambos Charalambous (Labour, Centre-left): Will the Minister tell me what assessment he has made of the work of the Global Fund in co-ordination with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and how his Department is working to foster this collaboration so that the most vulnerable communities receive all the healthcare that they need?
Grenfell Tower Fire — House of Commons, 2019-06-06
Topic: Health
Rushanara Ali (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that it is completely insane for the Government not to introduce a complete ban? If they are not going to do so, Ministers should guarantee today that there will be no further fatalities. Otherwise they should call for a complete ban, through legislation if necessary.
Private Tower Blocks: Removal of Cladding — House of Commons, 2019-04-29
Topic: Health
Rushanara Ali (Labour, Centre-left): Can I ask the Minister once again about the timeframe he has in mind to get a grip on the outstanding issues, particularly with those companies that are not co-operating? Would he consider legislative action—or whatever action the Government can apply—to make them comply? Without the forcefulness of his Department and the entire Government, we are at risk of creating further danger to people’s lives.
Patient Registration: GP Surgeries — House of Commons, 2019-05-07
Topic: Health
Questions: What steps his Department is taking to ensure that patients with no (a) fixed address and (b) proof of identity can register at GP surgeries.
Katherine Anne Green (Labour, Centre-left): Has the Minister seen the report by a mystery shopper from Friends, Families and Travellers who attempted to register with 50 GP practices without ID or proof of address? Twenty-four refused to register her or would not register her; all but two of those were rated outstanding by the Care Quality Commission. The Minister says GPs must properly follow the guidance, but does she agree that the CQC needs to ensure that it uses the inspection regime to enforce that guidance?
Radiotherapy Services — House of Commons, 2019-05-07
Topic: Health
Grahame Mark Morris (Labour, Centre-left): One in four people currently receive radiotherapy—a number that will increase if the Government achieve their early diagnosis targets. Ministers dispute that 20,000 people in England annually miss out on appropriate access to life-saving radiotherapy. What is the Secretary of State’s estimate? Will he commit to meeting representatives of the Radiotherapy4Life campaign to discuss how we can improve radiotherapy provision in England?