argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
David William Donald Cameron (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman asks an important question. The report states that huge improvements have since been undertaken to improve family support and liaison, but I suspect that we need to do even more in the area of mental health. That is one of the reasons why the Government have given that area such a boost.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Defense
David William Donald Cameron (Conservative, Centre-right): We are going to study the report very carefully to see what other lessons can be learned, but some of the early lessons are about processes, procedures, legal advice, national security councils and the use of intelligence information. A lot of those have been learned, but as I have said there are still more things to be discovered, and I commit to making sure that we learn those lessons.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Defense
David William Donald Cameron (Conservative, Centre-right): First, I thank those families for the service and the sacrifice of their children. We should genuinely praise the work that everyone in our armed forces did. We have to separate some of the decision making, the lessons learned and the problems from the military action. These people were serving their country in a cause that had been sanctioned by this House of Commons, so we should not in any way denigrate their memory, because they were doing what they believed in, which was serving their country. The most important thing we can do for all their memories is to digest the report, learn the lessons and put in place better decision-making procedures for the future.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Defense
David William Donald Cameron (Conservative, Centre-right): First, through the hon. Gentleman, may I thank Ben for his service to our country and for everything that he did? We must continue to help him throughout his life. Ministry of Defence Ministers have offered meetings with veterans, and they are going ahead. The assurance I can give is that I think we have already learned a lot of very important lessons. Whitehall is a very different place and the way in which decisions are taken is different, as is the use of legal advice. Do not underestimate the extent to which Whitehall has already taken on board so many of the lessons and changed its practices and culture. Clearly, there will be more to do, and that is why we should study the report and have a two-day debate.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Defense
David William Donald Cameron (Conservative, Centre-right): What the hon. Lady is asking for is quite difficult. The process should be that Ministers take action on the advice of officials and on the advice of intelligence that is carefully corralled by the Joint Intelligence Committee. Then we have to account to Parliament for the decisions that we take. On occasion, it would be right for the Joint Intelligence Committee or the Government to put some of that intelligence in front of Parliament, as I think we did in the cases of Libya and Syria. By its very nature, the idea of sharing secret intelligence on a much wider basis will be very difficult, and I do not want to promise to do that. The ISC is there to scrutinise decisions that have been taken, rather than pre-emptively to review a decision that is about to be taken, so we do need to get our ducks in a row. If we try to muddle that, we will get ourselves into a muddle.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Defense
David William Donald Cameron (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that providing the correct military equipment is an absolute obligation on Government, and huge steps have been taken in the past few years to make that happen. On the responsibility for apologies and all the rest of it, the people who were in Government who took these decisions are still alive and able to answer the criticisms in the report. This is slightly different from the situation over, for instance, Bloody Sunday or Hillsborough. This report is about a set of Government decisions that were taken, and the people responsible are still around. It is very easy for a Prime Minister to stand up and make an apology and all the rest of it, but it is not appropriate for me to do so today, because the people who made these decisions are still around. That is why I have chosen to speak in the way that I have.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Sarah James (Wollaston) (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome today’s statement and thank the Secretary of State for dealing with many of the extra-contractual issues that have blighted the lives of junior doctors. I join him in regretting the outcome of the ballot. Like my right hon. Friend, I welcome Doctor Ellen McCourt to her post. I know that my right hon. Friend will work constructively with the junior doctors committee to try to resolve the outstanding issues. In proceeding in a careful, measured way with the imposition of the contract, will he work to reassure the public that if patient safety issues arise during that process, he will deal with them?
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for her measured tone and for being an independent voice throughout the dispute. I spoke to Dr Ellen McCourt earlier this afternoon. I appreciate that she is in a very difficult situation, but I wanted to stress to her that, as I told the House this afternoon, my door remains open for talks about absolutely anything and that I am keen to find a way forward through dialogue. I had lots of discussions with Dr McCourt when we were negotiating the agreement in May, and I know that she approached those negotiations in a positive spirit We have set in place processes, and that is one of the reasons why Professor Bailey recommended phased implementation—so that if there are any safety concerns, we can address them as we go along. The Minister with responsibility for care quality, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich, is leading a process that will keep looking at the issues to do with the quality of life of junior doctors. NHS Employers is leading a process that will look in detail at how the contract is implemented. Absolutely, the point of the changes is to make care safer for patients; we will continue to keep an eye on this to make sure that it does so.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for her constructive comments, which are born of her NHS experience. She is right: we are phasing in the contract carefully to make sure that we learn lessons. She is absolutely right to talk about rota gaps. Unfortunately, the problem of rota gaps cannot be solved at a stroke on signing a contract; it has to do with making sure that we have a big enough supply of doctors in the NHS to fill those rota gaps. We now have much greater transparency about the safety levels that are appropriate in different hospitals; that is one of the lessons that we learned post Mid Staffs. We are investing more in the NHS in this Parliament. We recruited an extra 9,300 doctors in the last Parliament and we are increasing our investment in the NHS in this Parliament, so that we can continue to boost the doctor workforce in the NHS. In the long run, that is how we will deal with the rota gap issue; but unfortunately, that cannot be done overnight.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the Secretary of State on taking the only responsible decision that he could take, in the interests of the service and patients, to bring this sad, extraordinarily long episode to an end. I also congratulate him on being conciliatory, because he made concessions in May to produce the final contract, and now he is phasing it in, in its negotiated form. I hope that we get back to a peaceful settlement. Does he agree that the surprising fact that so many dedicated junior doctors were prepared to take industrial action over rather ill-defined problems with the contract shows that there is a problem with morale in the service? Will he give an undertaking that the very welcome steps that he has announced today to try to address the wider issues will last not just a few months, until the dust settles on this dispute, but will be part of a continuous process to make sure that we restore to the service the morale and dedication on which we all know the NHS relies?
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): As ever, my right hon. and learned Friend speaks with great wisdom and experience. He is absolutely right to say that tackling the morale deficit in the NHS has to be a key priority. That is why we have to recognise that for doctors—particularly junior doctors starting out on their medical careers—the most depressing and dispiriting thing of all is when they cannot give the patients in front of them the care that they want to. That is why we are looking at a number of things to make it easier for doctors to improve the quality of care. One of the things that is particularly challenging and that we in this House have to think about and discuss a lot more is how difficult doctors and nurses find it to speak out if they see poor care, or if they or a colleague make a mistake, because they are frightened of litigation, a General Medical Council referral, or disciplinary action by their trust. The problem is that people then do not go through the learning processes necessary to prevent those mistakes from happening again. The key is creating a supportive environment, in which learning can really happen, in hospitals.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): Health Education England is absolutely clear that it has to run national training programmes, and that is why it has to have standard contracts across the country. As the hon. Lady knows well from her previous role on the Front Bench, in reality foundation trusts have the legal right to set their own terms and conditions, but they currently follow a national contract; that is their choice, but because they do that, I used the phrase "introduction of a new contract" this afternoon. I expect, on the basis of current practice, that the contract will be adopted throughout the NHS I enjoyed working with the hon. Lady when she was shadow Health Secretary, but on this issue, she was quite wrong, because she saw the WhatsApp leaks, which revealed that the British Medical Association had no willingness or desire for a negotiated settlement in February, precisely when she was saying at the Dispatch Box that I was the one being intransigent. She gave a running commentary on the dispute at every stage, but when those leaks happened, she said absolutely nothing. She should set the record straight and apologise to the House for getting the issue totally wrong.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Andrew William Murrison (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the patience that he has shown on this matter, and on the deal that was agreed back in May—it is a good deal. Apropos of the remarks of the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who speaks for the Opposition, does the Secretary of State agree that it is indeed important to maintain morale in the health service? We need to be very careful about striking special deals for one particular part of the workforce, and the perception that that might be unfair. Would he further agree that we need to avoid the temptation of addressing every single grievance of a particular workforce? That is more properly within the bailiwick of managers locally than national contracts.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend obviously speaks from experience and very sensibly on this issue. In this House, of course, we think about the actions of politicians, Ministers and so on, but for doctors in a hospital, the most important component of their morale is the way that they are treated by their direct line manager. One of the things that worries me most in the NHS, looking at the staff survey, is that 19% of NHS staff talk about being bullied in the last year. That is ridiculously high. We need to think about why that is. The reality is that it is very tough on the frontline at the moment. There are a lot of people walking through the front doors of our NHS organisations, and we need to do everything that we can to try to support doctors and nurses, who are doing a very challenging job.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): Actually, in my statement I took the trouble to praise BMA leaders. Admittedly, at the outset I did not agree with their tactics at all, but they did then have the courage to negotiate a deal and try really hard to get their members to accept it. I respect them for doing that. Part of the problem was that in the early stages of the dispute, there was a lot of misinformation going around. There were a lot of doctors who thought, for example, that their salary was going to be cut by about a third. That was never on the table and never the Government’s intention. A lot of doctors thought that they were going to be asked to work longer hours. That, too, was the opposite of what we wanted to do. I am afraid that that created a very bitter atmosphere. I simply say that, in the end, the best way to restore morale is to support doctors in giving better care to their patients, and that is what the NHS transformation plan is all about and what we are working on.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Peter James Bottomley (Conservative, Centre-right): Around 10 years ago the mishandled introduction of MMC—modernising medical careers—and the medical training application service started some of the problems for junior doctors. I pay tribute to the BMA who, in the discussions up to May, helped to agree with NHS England employers changes to the proposed contract, which were to the benefit of doctors in training? I say to the Secretary of State and, through him, to the employers that I hope they will pay attention to the extra-contractual issues which are of concern to doctors, and that the BMA will catch up with the rest of us in saying that we rely on them and others in hospitals to give a good, safe service to patients. They need to work together with everybody else and we will support them in doing that.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I am absolutely prepared to give that assurance and I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He is right. We can look at MTAS and such changes. We can go even further back and look at the introduction of the European working time directive—strange to bring that up in the current context—and the shift system, which sensibly reduced some of the crazy hours that junior doctors were being asked to work, but unfortunately at the same time got rid of the "old firm" system which gave junior doctors a sense of collegiality, meant that there was a consultant whom they knew and related to, and made their training a lot more rewarding and satisfying. That was disrupted when we introduced the shift system and the maximum hours limits. We need to think about—and we are doing some very important work on this—how we could recreate some of that sense of collegiality, which is particularly missing for junior doctors in the first two years of their training, before they have joined a specialty.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): There is one very good doctor in the Hull A&E department, and that is Dr Ellen McCourt, who has taken over as leader of the junior doctors committee—at least, I imagine she is very good; I have been very impressed every time I have met her. There are particular pressures at Hull, and as the hon. Lady knows we have had management changes. So far we have not seen the improvement in performance that we would like. I am aware that there are big issues with the infrastructure— the physical buildings. We will continue to work with the NHS locally and with the trust to try to improve the situation. She is right to bring it to my attention.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Oliver Heald (Conservative, Centre-right): I join my right hon. Friend in expressing sadness at the decision of the vote. He will remember that on previous occasions I have raised with him some family-friendly aspects of the lives of junior doctors. Does he agree that it is important to look at the training situation, where a couple can be sent to different towns many miles apart; the rostering, which can make family life difficult; and some of the problems of returners to work, whose training perhaps needs to be properly considered? Will he confirm that he will continue to look at these issues and that, as the monitoring and phasing goes ahead, he will try to address them?
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. and learned Friend is correct to have raised that before and I can reassure him that we have subsequently started a very big piece of work to look at those exact issues. The difficulty is that throughout their training junior doctors are rotated every six months. That is particularly disruptive to family life or, for example, if they have a partner and one is sent to Sheffield and the other to Bristol. We are seeing what we can do to deal with that. The other issue that we are looking at is that of people who for family reasons discover that they have a caring responsibility, maybe for children or for a parent with dementia, and want to switch to a specialty that may not have quite so many unsocial hours, and whether it is possible to novate their training across from one specialty to another, which does not happen at present.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me tell the hon. Lady the words that Dr Malawana actually said: "I will happily state that I think this is a good deal." He talked about junior doctors benefiting from "massively strengthened areas of safety precautions…equalities improvements, improvements to whistleblowing protection and appropriate pay for unsocial hours." He thought this deal was a big step forward. As I said, if I thought that there was any prospect of further negotiations leading to a consensus that could get the support of the BMA membership, that is what I would be doing, but my honest assessment of the situation—given that the people who most strongly opposed the Government recommended accepting this deal and still they were not listened to—is that there is no such prospect, and I therefore need to take the difficult decision that I have taken this afternoon.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Helen Olivia Bicknell Whately (Conservative, Centre-right): There has been a negotiation, the Secretary of State has listened to the concerns of junior doctors, we now have a better contract, and we heard today that there will a phased introduction of it. Does my right hon. Friend agree that junior doctors now need to move forward and that they should take up the offer to be involved in work to improve the experience of junior doctors in training? We know that junior doctors do not feel valued. They should feel valued. They need to play their part in making sure that they are valued.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right to say that. One of the things that is clear to me is that the reason that the May deal is better than the deal that we were going to introduce in February is because of the involvement of the BMA and the BMA leaders in telling us the concerns of junior doctors at the coalface, and the specific niggles and annoyances, many of which we were able to sort out very straightforwardly. I strongly hope that junior doctors will remain in all the discussions that we have, so that we try to get even better solutions.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman has misinterpreted what I said. I am clear on this. I said in my statement that 58% voted against the contract, and I accept that that was a majority of BMA members. I stated the fact that on a 68% turnout, around a third of serving junior doctors actively voted against the contract. That is factually correct.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Margaret Ann Throup (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my right hon. Friend for all his efforts in agreeing a deal that was acceptable to the junior doctors’ leaders. In effect, the junior doctors have now voted against their own trade union. I welcome the way forward that the Secretary of State has outlined, but will he reassure the House that patients and their safety will always be his No. 1 priority?
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I am happy to give that assurance. One of the most exciting things in the NHS, despite a lot of the doom and gloom in the headlines, is that we are seeing a transformation in safety culture. Even though we are now doing about 4,500 more operations every day, the proportion of patients being harmed is down by about a third in just three years. I think there is a transformation, but of course there is a lot more to do, as I am no doubt going to hear.
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Andrea Marie Jenkyns (Conservative, Centre-right): I am shocked that we are here yet again. If we look at the history, 90% of the contract has been renegotiated. There have been years of negotiations. This contract is far safer for patients. Regardless of what the Opposition say, it cannot be laid at the Secretary of State’s door if the junior doctors decide to take strike action. We should stop using patients as pawns and put patients first. I would like to thank the Secretary of State for his perseverance. Does he agree that, through its relentless pursuit of partisan politics, the BMA has backed itself into a corner and put patients at risk?
Junior Doctors Contract — House of Commons, 2016-07-06
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): The way patients have suffered—there have been over 20,000 cancelled operations during this process—has been very disappointing. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to campaign on issues of hygiene and cleanliness, which lead to so many tragedies when they are not properly attended to. I hope we can move on now. I do believe that, despite the disappointing rejection of this deal in the ballot, some trust has been established between the leaders of the BMA and the Government, and we have had a productive dialogue. We have made a number of changes to the May contract since announcing it—things that they suggested and that we agreed to. I would like to continue that process and build that trust.