argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Lords amendment 91 Lords amendment 85, and Government motion to disagree Lords amendment 86, and Government motion to disagree Lords amendment 87, and Government motion to disagree Lords amendment 88, and Government motion to disagree Lords amendment 92, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendment (a) in lieu Lords amendment 95, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendment (a) in lieu Lords amendments 52 to 54, 66 to 79, 82, 84, 93, 94, 96 to 101 and 109 to 122 Lords amendment 123, and amendment (a) thereto Lords amendment 124, and amendment (a) thereto Lords amendment 125, and amendment (a) thereto Lords amendment 126, and amendment (a) thereto Lords amendment 127, and amendment (a) thereto Lords amendments 128 and 129.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Civil Rights
Richard John Holden (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the Minister for his comments about virginity testing and hymenoplasty and the work done by other hon. Members on parts of the legislation that affect women and girls. One issue with virginity testing and hymenoplasty relates to the family procedure rules—I know that they fall outside his Department—which still permit spouses to apply for a so-called virginity test on the grounds that a marriage is not consummated. Will he speak to his colleagues and perhaps suggest a meeting with me and other campaigners in the area to see if we can remove from legislation some of those issues affecting women and girls?
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome very much what the Minister said on the previous Lords amendment concerning safety culture. Can he tell us a little more about what other actions will be taken in lieu of legislation, which is not always the best answer, to encourage the learning, safety and quality culture which is so vital to a great service?
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Mixed Topics
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Lady not only for her comments just now, but for her work on this agenda and on HSSIB over many years on various incarnations of this legislation. She has a right to gently tweak my tail that I could have listened to her in Committee and got here faster, but as she will know, occasionally it takes a little time in Government to be able to move to the compromise that often we all seek Turning back to the advertising restrictions, the overall policy direction has been set out effectively through last year’s Government consultation response, this proposed legislation and the debate that has taken place in both Houses.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Mixed Topics
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): If I may just finish this point. I suspect my right hon. Friend may speak later on the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) A consultation on secondary legislation will be launched shortly and consultations on the wider guidance to the restrictions, which will support industry and provide further clarity on what to expect, are anticipated later in the year. Therefore, we do not believe there is a need to incorporate a requirement in primary legislation to specify a gap between the date of publication of guidance and implementation of the restrictions, as proposed by my hon. Friend, but I look forward to hearing his speech later. I reassure him that the Government will of course continue to work closely with industry and with him to ensure that the transition is as smooth as possible.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Mixed Topics
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): If I can just finish this point, I will give way to my hon. Friend. Our preference is to continue with a proven and effective model of encouraging tobacco cessation. Ultimately, given the review that is under way and the forthcoming tobacco control plan, which will be published later this year, we do not believe that this Bill is the right place for the proposals I will give way to my hon. Friend, but then I wish to turn to the final, important set of Lords amendments on abortion.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Other
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): To a degree, that is why I mentioned the Javed Khan review. We are undertaking a lot of work and let us see what emerges from that, as well as from consultations and other pieces of work, and draw it all together. I can see where my hon. Friend is coming from, but I think that the Government have set out the right approach, so I encourage right hon. and hon. Members to reject their lordships’ amendments.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Other
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): My understanding—although my recollection may fail me, so I caveat my comment with that—is that this was initially looked at that stage, but was not proceeded with. I know that my hon. Friend will continue to press that point and I pay tribute to him for being the policy Minister at the time and for making huge progress on this agenda. I suspect that we will return to this matter subsequently, and I look forward to the comments of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Tooting, in due course.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Civil Rights
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not now, but I may during my wind-up speech, if I have time. I want to conclude my remarks so that colleagues can make their contributions on the matters that I have referred to, but if there is time, I commit to taking an intervention from the hon. Lady at the end of our consideration of this set of Lords amendments We come, finally, to Lords amendment 92 and the amendment offered in lieu relating to abortion. I am aware of strong and sincerely and genuinely held views from Members on all sides of this debate and this issue, and I respect the integrity of their views. Although I will set out why the Government took the action that they did and the procedure that is in place, I emphasise at the outset that, given that this matter is before the House because of an amendment by their lordships, it is right that this is properly considered and that this will be—in line with how we normally treat these matters—a free vote, in which how individual Members vote will be a matter of conscience In response to the covid pandemic, an approval was issued in accordance with the Abortion Act 1967 that allowed women to take both pills for early medical abortion at home. That temporary measure addressed a specific and acute medical need, reducing the risk of covid-19 transmission and ensuring continued access to abortion services. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced last month that the approval will end at midnight on 29 August 2022.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Civil Rights
Fiona Claire Bruce (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes; the organisation Right to Life, which is the secretariat to the all-party parliamentary pro-life group, has collated such data. Freedom of information data analysis also shows that one in 17 women taking abortion pills requires hospital treatment. That means that more than 14,000 women have been treated in hospital following the approval of pills-by-post abortion. A similar study of FOI data in February 2021 showed that every month, 495 women attended hospital with complications arising from abortion pills, and that 365 of them required hospital treatment. Thirty-six women every month are making 999 calls—that is more than one a day—seeking medical assistance because they are concerned about complications arising from taking abortion pills Women, especially vulnerable women, deserve the care and attention given in an in-person meeting with an experienced clinician before making such an important decision. Indeed, 74% of GPs have indicated concerns about women finding it distressing to terminate a pregnancy themselves at home. More than 600 medics signed an open letter to the Prime Minister in May 2021 calling for an end to pills-by-post abortion, and a clear majority—70%—of the respondents to the Government’s consultation on this subject said that the temporary measure of pills-by-post abortion should end However, whatever one’s views on abortion, the Government very recently made a decision to cease the authorisation of these pills from August this year, due to this being a temporary covid provision that was never intended to outlast the covid pandemic period. The Government—our Health Ministers—have made an informed, carefully considered, evidence-based decision. We should respect that, but once more, those pressing for an even more easily available abortion regime in this country are not willing to accept it. Instead, they are seeking to make a serious change to the law through an amendment, as is frequently their practice. That gives us far too little time to debate such fundamental issues. There is too little opportunity for us parliamentarians to scrutinise this serious issue, which is literally a matter of life and death. Whatever our views on abortion, that is simply wrong. I urge colleagues to vote against this proposal to make at-home abortion pills permanently available.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Other
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): A lot of people want to contribute to this debate, and this first group must come to an end at 10 minutes past 5. Those who make long contributions really are doing other people out of an opportunity to speak.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Civil Rights
Peter James Bottomley (Conservative, Centre-right): The evidence that has been given to me is that virtually every group concerned with violence against women and girls supports the use of telemedicine, as do Dame Clare Gerada and Dame Lesley Regan, who are leading doctors, gynaecologists and obstetricians. Lastly, with telemedicine consultations, the period of time before an abortion has been halved, not increased.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Other
Alec Shelbrooke (Conservative, Centre-right): First, may I offer my condolences for what must be a very difficult time for the hon. Lady and her family There has been a lot of conversation in which people have said, "You’ve got no way of knowing that it is going to be less than nine weeks and six days." Will the hon. Lady address that particular point, which is very important to how people have been trying to frame the debate?
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Civil Rights
Caroline Elizabeth Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): With respect, the right hon. Lady makes my point for me, because that is right: there is nothing to stop that happening, and it may be that the doctor would say that they wanted to see the patient, but they do not have to do so. We know that abortions are being prescribed by telemedicine to children under the age of 18. If this measure had been looked at properly by the House as a single issue, rather than as this amendment to something else, we would have stipulated that children under the age of 18 should not be receiving abortions over the telephone without proper appointments, as I think they should and as the right hon. Lady, if I understand her correctly, also seems to be saying that they should We know that sometimes women and girls can be coerced into having abortions that they do not want, perhaps because the baby is of a gender or sex that the father does not want, perhaps because they are being abused, or perhaps they are being trafficked or sexually assaulted. It is very difficult for a woman to tell someone about that over the telephone, whereas if a woman is seen in clinic, she has that one-to-one opportunity.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Civil Rights
Caroline Elizabeth Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): No, I am going to continue. The other problem with giving tablets—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady spoke for 16 minutes, which is considerably more than a fair share, given the number of Members who want to speak, so I will keep going The other problem is who will take the tablets. If someone is prescribed something of such severity over the telephone, the clinician does not know who will take the tablets. Will they be taken by the woman speaking to the clinician on the telephone? Will they be given to somebody else? Are they going to be sold to somebody else? Is somebody else going to be forced to take them? The reality is that we do not know and we cannot know, and that is another safety issue I will summarise my concern by saying, as a woman— I have not had an abortion, but I guess in the future I could become pregnant and not want to be—if I were having an abortion, I would rather have the inconvenience of having to go to a clinic than the worry of knowing that some women are having abortions without going to a clinic. Essentially, for me this is an issue of whether we want to make things more convenient for the majority of women, or we want to protect the women who are the most vulnerable, the most marginalised and the most at risk.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Civil Rights
Maria Frances Lewis Miller (Conservative, Centre-right): First, I apologise for being late to the debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. I appreciate your calling me to speak, and I will be brief. Amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 92 is all about increasing women’s choice, not about taking choice away from anyone. The basis on which the amendment can be judged is the evidence we have gathered, not in a short period of time, but during two years in which 150,000 women have used telemedical abortion care. Judge the amendment against that backdrop; it is done not on a whim or a fancy, but after two years of intensive analysis While I might want to agree with those of my right hon. and hon. Friends who are calling for a reasoned debate in the House of Commons on the broader issues of abortion, the truth is that we do not have those debates because the Government talk about changes to abortion provision coming from Back Benchers when that provision is now so out of date in our country that we need the Government to look at it more broadly. I will support the amendment because it is the right thing to do. The amendment is backed by a huge range of organisations and a significant body of evidence, and it requires the Government to look more broadly at abortion—to take this as a responsibility and to stop shoving it back on to the Back Benches Continuing telemedical abortions will be supported and regulated in exactly the same way as face-to-face abortion care, and to suggest otherwise is to be factually incorrect. Members really need to think about the evidence showing that online sales of abortion pills from unregulated providers have decreased since telemedical abortion was made legally available. Rather than push people back into an unregulated market, let us keep what we have, which has worked for 150,000 women over the past two years. But please, please, Minister, let us have a reasoned look at abortion more broadly. Stop saying that this is an issue for Back Benchers. It is not.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Civil Rights
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): Obviously, abortion is a deeply emotional issue and we probably all know where we stand, but this is not a debate about abortion. At-home abortions were brought in as a purely temporary measure to defend women’s health. It was always the understanding that the measure would continue just as long as the pandemic continued There are many different arguments about this issue. I could go through the statistics that have been given to me that some people might deny, but it is undoubtedly the case that more than 10,000 women who took at least one abortion pill at home provided by the NHS in 2020 needed hospital treatment. There is therefore an issue around safety and women’s health and we need a proper debate. This amendment was brought in in the House of Lords at night-time. Barely a seventh of the Members of the House of Lords actually took part in the Division. We need a proper, evidenced debate on this issue. There is nothing more important when a human life is at risk Of course, we all support telemedicine; I chaired a meeting yesterday on atopic eczema and we are making wonderful steps, but as important as curing atopic eczema is, it is nowhere near as important as a situation where a life is at stake. I know that there are different views about coercion, but surely the whole point of the Abortion Act, for those who supported it, was to get abortions into a safe medical location and to get them away from the backstreets. People surely did not want them to be done at home, where there is risk. The hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) spoke about the case of the 16-year-old girl who delivered a foetus who, apparently, was 20 weeks old. That is why, as my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) said, the National Network of Designated Healthcare Professionals for Children welcomes the Government’s stance, and why children and young people will be provided with protections I urge hon. Members, whatever their view, to think, to consider the evidence and not to rush in. The amendment goes completely against the whole spirit of the Abortion Act. Whatever we think of that Act, the amendment would be a huge new step that I believe would put more women’s health at risk and possibly lead to coercion—we need more evidence on that. I therefore support what the Government are doing today.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Civil Rights
Matthew Robert Warman (Conservative, Centre-right): I rather think that men should enter the debate on abortion with a degree of trepidation and humility. In that spirit, I will make three simple points. First, it strikes me as absolutely right that parliamentarians in this place and in the other place should seek to use every vehicle before them to enact the improvements in our constituents’ lives that we all want. It is right and fair to say that the measures were temporary and were brought in only for a certain purpose, but it cannot be right to say that now that we have done that extraordinary experiment, seen how many women have benefited from the change in telemedicine and got the data, we cannot let the vehicle of the Bill pass us by without trying to make this improvement Secondly, the reason that all the expert bodies—including the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Women’s Aid and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, where I have to declare that my wife works—support this approach is that they have seen the evidence. They look at that evidence as organisations that have the safeguarding of their patients absolutely at the heart of every single thing they do. They have looked at what we have done and the evidence we have gathered, and they say it is right to continue with the measures brought in for the pandemic. That is why Wales and Scotland have continued them We have to trust the evidence; we have to trust the science. We have to understand that we are in the position that we are in as a result of the covid vaccine programme because we trusted the science. Today, we have an opportunity to trust the science yet again. That seems to me an incredibly powerful argument We are not making telemedicine compulsory; we are making it a choice. Yes, we are putting a huge burden on doctors to say that the person on the other side of the screen is not someone who should have pills by post, so to speak. We are saying that they should make that calculated judgment. We ask the professionals, be they in charities or in hospitals, to make those judgments every day. We do so because they are the experts I say simply to hon. Members that there are issues on which we profoundly disagree—of course there are; these are fundamentally ethical issues—but if we are in favour of abortion, we should be in favour of the choice that is provided by the very safest options. We can see today from the evidence of the past couple of years that it is safer for women who are at their most vulnerable to have the option that we are talking about today. It is not compulsory; it is an option. For me, supporting that today is the definition of being pro-choice.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Lords amendment 30, and Government motion to disagree Lords amendment 48, Government motion to disagree, Government amendment (a) in lieu, and amendment (b) in lieu Lords amendment 57, and Government motion to disagree Lords amendment 89, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendment (a) in lieu Lords amendment 108, and Government motion to disagree Lords amendments 42 to 47, 55, 56 and 58 to 64.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Other
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me, because I will finish discussing the workforce amendments before I turn to the so-called genocide amendments and the organ sales amendments. I will come to her point, but I hope she will allow me to do it in that way; I have heard what she has said.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Mixed Topics
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and she and I have worked together on a number of issues in the past. We always engage—and the since the inception of the Bill and throughout its passage, we have engaged collaboratively—with a whole range of organisations, such as professional bodies and trade unions, including some of those she mentioned. We believe that the approach we have adopted in the commissions from the Secretary of State, coupled with the merger with Health Education England, will be a significant step forward, and we believe it is the right approach to take. I suspect that the hon. Lady may disagree, and I always respect her opinion, although I may not always agree with it.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Other
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): As ever, the hon. Lady makes her point courteously but clearly. As I said, depending on the time available at the end of the debate, I will endeavour to respond more fully to the points that she and my right hon. Friend make.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. It has only just become obvious to me that so many people wish to speak on this group of amendments. I will have to set an immediate time limit of four minutes, which might be reduced to three minutes. People who intervened on the Front Benchers will be considered to have already made their contribution.
Health and Care Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-30
Topic: Other
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): I think that was exactly five seconds, and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I suspect that colleagues across Government will have heard what he said and will pay very careful attention to it, as I know Ministers across Government do to all that my right hon. Friend says in this House With that in mind, I ask the House to accept the motions in my name on the amendment paper.