argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-12
Topic: Health
Colleen Margaret Fletcher (Labour, Centre-left): The announcement in the Budget of additional funds for the NHS is to be welcomed and will provide a much needed boost to the delivery of healthcare services across the country. However, I am concerned that the Government have not got to grips with the reality of what is happening to healthcare services and health outcomes on the ground The record of the Government on healthcare is not a good one. Last week, we heard how improvements to life expectancy have stalled for the first time in 100 years and that health inequalities have grown. This added to a long list of indicators that suggest that all is not well with our NHS and, perhaps more importantly, the health of the nation. It is a sad fact that investment seems to be made available only when the Government are reacting to a crisis—often of their own making, I have to add. If the Government are serious about improving the health of the nation, they need not only to deal with the day-to-day challenges that the NHS is facing and will face in the short to medium terms: they need a whole-of-Government approach that includes taking into account the role of the welfare system, local government and education. Indeed, it is worth reminding ourselves that, when local government was made responsible for public health, it was to recognise the role of different Government bodies in delivering health outcomes To continue on the Government’s current trajectory is to continue to lurch from one healthcare crisis to another. This is simply not sustainable, and a whole-of-Government approach must be adopted if we are truly to reverse the declines that we have seen over the past few years, particularly among poorer households.
Young-onset Parkinson’s Disease — House of Commons, 2017-03-06
Topic: Health
Andrew Edmund Armstrong Selous (Conservative, Centre-right): I am a huge admirer of the hon. Gentleman’s speech and I commend him on bringing this matter before the House. Does he agree that cases such as those that he has outlined can often be helped if there is a local support group? Such groups provide a lot of information and can effectively lobby local health services on matters such as Parkinson’s nurses? Would he recommend the setting up of such groups around the country?
Health and Social Care Workers: Recognition and Reward — House of Commons, 2020-06-25
Topic: Health
Rushanara Ali (Labour, Centre-left): It has been said many times, but we should never tire of saying that our NHS and care workers are true heroes and that we are incredibly grateful for their skill, dedication, selflessness and sacrifice. We came out on Thursday evenings to applaud them; now it is time to build a system that rewards them with more than applause. That is why it is important that the Government put their money where their mouth is and start to recognise them, as hundreds of thousands of people in each of these petitions have called for. After a decade of austerity, the NHS and social care system is on its knees. The Government were already missing A&E targets as far back as 2015. We know that the NHS has vacancies of 100,000 and that NHS trusts are £1.23 billion in deficit, which needs to be addressed quickly so that they can get on with the job of protecting us. Then there is the mental health crisis Across the NHS and care system, there is the scourge of low pay. Unison predicts that we will need another 1 million extra careworkers by 2025. It is vital that we learn the lessons now and ensure that we have a resilient, well-resourced, effective NHS, where people are properly rewarded and have their skills and expertise recognised, rather than being treated shoddily, which is what we have seen We also need the Government to ensure that junior doctors are properly rewarded. The Government’s behaviour in recent years has been appalling, yet the doctors, nurses and carers have been the people on the frontline, saving people’s lives and protecting us. We also know that black, Asian and minority ethnic NHS and care workers have had the highest death rate, yet the Government have been inadequate in protecting them. To be frank, the Government have treated them like cannon fodder and the fact that they do not have proper recommendations for those workers is scandalous. They need to get a grip before more lives are lost. If the Minister for Care thinks that health and care workers should be protected, she should act instead of saying appalling things about them. I hope she will apologise for the remarks she made recently about care staff. The point is that we need to ensure that, when the crisis eases, this Government do not forget the sacrifice and commitments that people in the NHS and care system have made, and that they act to ensure those people are properly rewarded, properly recognised and protected.
Young-onset Parkinson’s Disease — House of Commons, 2017-03-06
Topic: Health
David Mowat (Conservative, Centre-right): Well, as I was saying a few moments ago, there is no cure for this disease but it is possible to manage the symptoms and alleviate them. However, to do that we have to have a diagnosis, and that is the issue we are talking about today, particularly in the case of early-onset Parkinson’s disease On the prevalence of the disease, something like 130,000 people suffer from it—that is likely to be 160,000 by 2020—and 95% of them are over 60 years old. Because of that fact, there is a tendency in the medical profession and, indeed, in society at large, to think that it is a disease of older people. To an extent that is true according to the statistics, but we also know that something like 5,000 or 6,000 people under 50 have the disease. I will talk about the statistics a little more later, because the hon. Member for Torfaen did challenge them, and it is true that the numbers are all estimates. Nevertheless, the number I have is that something like 400 people under 40 have the disease. Incredibly, it is thought that a few dozen people get the disease under the age of 20, which is a terrible thing as it means that it is with them for their entire working lives Parkinson’s is a progressive disease caused by the death of cells containing dopamine. As we have heard, it causes tremors, slowness, speech impediment and gait disorder. Its severity varies, as recognised in some of the points made about the Department for Work and Pensions. There is no cure; the best we can do is to manage the symptoms by trying to address the lack of dopamine through techniques such as brain stimulation, and apomorphine is the most commonly used drug. The hon. Member for Torfaen mentioned the recent debate on Duodopa; I do not intend to go over that in detail, other than to say that it is very much a minority treatment, with something like 75 people receiving the medication. It is typically used when other treatments are not successful We all—the Government and the country more generally—need to build awareness of the prevalence of early-onset disease. The NHS Choices website has information on the local and national support groups we heard about a few moments ago. Parkinson’s UK does a huge amount of work in this area, and I would of course be happy to meet it and the hon. Member for Torfaen.
Health and Social Care Workers: Recognition and Reward — House of Commons, 2020-06-25
Topic: Health
Zarah Sultana (Labour, Centre-left): I begin by thanking every single health and care worker in my constituency of Coventry South. They have gone over and beyond to keep us safe and healthy. I know that I speak on behalf of all of Coventry when I say thank you. They have faced this crisis with incredible strength, selflessness and determination. At its height, millions of people across the country went out every Thursday to clap for health and care workers. Now it is our responsibility to match that appreciation with meaningful action— with NHS staff and carers getting the real pay rise and recognition that they so richly deserve The simple truth is that NHS staff and carers have been failed for far too long. Since 2010, newly qualified nurses have faced an 8% pay cut. Half of frontline carers are paid less than the minimum wage and years of devastating cuts to the NHS and neglect of care work have left us all more vulnerable to a pandemic. We saw that with the PPE shortages in hospitals when the crisis hit. We saw that when doctors and nurses repeatedly —desperately—asked for testing, only to be told that there was not capacity. We saw it again with black and ethnic minority NHS workers killed by coronavirus at a disproportionately higher rate, exposing the inequalities that lie at the heart of our society Let me go through some of the experiences that my constituents who work in our health and care system have told me of. There are migrants who work on the frontline, but have been hit by the hostile environment and burdened with visa fees and health surcharges. There are NHS staff who, until recently, were forced to pay obscene parking charges at University Hospital Coventry—in some cases, almost £500 a year. These charges are exploitatively set by private companies that are making profits on the back of our workers There are nurses robbed of NHS bursaries, leading to a 32% decrease in nursing applicants nationwide. Now we have an overstretched and overworked workforce, with more than 7,500 nursing vacancies in the midlands alone, which has been called a "full-blown crisis" by the Royal College of Nursing. Then there are the A&E workers, who face a mental health crisis, with one of my constituents describing their work as heart-breaking and soul-destroying, and their work environment as a war zone Those are just some of the wrongs done to the NHS and care workers in my constituency. I urge the Government, who clapped for them through this crisis, to match that with action: give our carers, nurses, porters and cleaners a real pay rise; end poverty wages in the NHS and care work; ensure that they are all on good contracts with no more precarious work; give indefinite leave to remain to all migrant workers; and restore the NHS to a truly public service, free from privatisation and run for the public good, not private profit.
Health and Social Care Workers: Recognition and Reward — House of Commons, 2020-06-25
Topic: Health
Abena Oppong-Asare (Labour, Centre-left): I speak today in favour of a pay increase for NHS healthcare workers. More than 500 constituents have signed the petition calling on the Government to recognise the hard work and sacrifice of healthcare workers with a pay increase. I completely agree that those working in the health and social care sector deserve a pay increase, not only as a recognition of their hard work during the crisis, but as a necessary step towards ensuring their future wellbeing For years, this Government have stood by as our NHS and care staff have given their all to provide a great healthcare service while their families fall further into poverty. In 2018, we saw a rise in the number of nurses using food banks, with one study finding that 38% of nurses struggle to buy food and that 50.5% had considered quitting their profession because of financial difficulties. More than half of all care workers are paid less than the real living wage and these workers are four times more likely to be on a zero-hours contract than the average worker This pay rise is not just about rewarding people for their hard work; it is about recognising the real and negative impact that low pay has had on our health and social care workers. Some 15% of workers in low-quality, low-paid jobs say that they have poor-quality health, which compares with a figure of 7% for those in good working environments. Covid-19 has thrived on inequality, with people in the poorest parts of England twice as likely to die from covid-19. Perhaps there is some correlation between that fact and the fact that our poorly paid social care workers are almost twice as likely to die from covid-19. Ensuring that health and social care staff work in a high-quality and well-paid environment benefits us all Covid-19 has highlighted how much the UK needs a well-functioning NHS and social care system, and how lucky we are to have access to healthcare. However, organisations are already warning of mass vacancies in the future. How are the Government planning to fulfil their promise, as well as to recruit more than 100,000 employees to the care sector, given that what they are offering is low-paid, high-stress, insecure work? I have been contacted throughout this crisis by many constituents urging me to support a pay rise for workers in the healthcare sector. Today, I am asking the Government to show all the hard-working NHS and social care staff in Erith and Thamesmead, and across the UK, the support they deserve and to give them this much-needed pay rise.
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): As the House knows, on 24 March 2016 I was informed of a serious incident involving a large backlog of unprocessed NHS patient correspondence by the company contracted to deliver it to GP surgeries—NHS Shared Business Services. The backlog arose from the primary care services’ GP mail redirection service that SBS was contracted to run. No documents were lost, and all were kept in secure storage, but my immediate concern was that patient safety had been compromised by the delay in forwarding correspondence. A rapid process was started to identify whether anyone had been put at risk The Department of Health and NHS England immediately established an incident team. All the documentation has now been sent on to the relevant GP surgery where it was possible to do so, following an initial clinical assessment of where any patient risk may lie. Some 200,000 pieces were temporary residence forms and a further 535,000 pieces were assessed as low risk. A first triage identified 2,508 items with a higher risk of harm, of which the vast majority have now been assessed by a GP. Of those 84% were confirmed to be of no harm to patients and 9% as needing a further clinical review. To date, no harm has been confirmed to any patients as a result of this incident Today’s National Audit Office report confirms that patient safety was the Department and NHS England’s primary concern, but as well as patient safety, transparency with both the public and the House has been my priority. I was advised by my officials not to make the issue public last March until an assessment of the risks to patient safety had been completed and all relevant GP surgeries informed. I accepted that advice for the very simple reason that publicising the issue would have meant GP surgeries being inundated with inquiries from worried patients, which would have prevented them from doing the most important work, namely investigating the named patients who were potentially at risk A proactive statement about what had happened was again not recommended by my Department in July for the same reasons and because the process was not complete. However, as I explained to the House in February, on balance I decided that it was important for the House to know what had happened before we broke for recess, so I overruled that advice and placed a written statement on 21 July. Since then, the Public Accounts Committee has been kept regularly informed, most recently being updated by my permanent secretary in February. The Information Commissioner was updated in August In July 2016, I committed to keeping the House updated once the investigations were complete and more was known, and I will continue to do so.
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me respond to those points. First, what happened at SBS was totally unacceptable. It was incompetent and it should never have allowed that backlog to develop, but before the hon. Gentleman gets on his high horse, may I remind him that SBS and the governance arrangements surrounding it were set up in 2008, at a time when a Labour Government were rather keen on contracting with the private sector? I know that things have changed, but the fact of the matter is that throughout this process our priority has been to keep patients safe. Transparency is nearly always the right thing; I am the Secretary of State who introduced transparency over standards of care in hospitals—[Laughter.] It is interesting that Opposition Members are laughing, as Labour was the party responsible for sitting on what happened at Mid Staffs for more than four years, when nothing was done Transparency is incredibly important but it is not an absolute virtue, and in this case there was a specific reason for that. If we had informed the public and the House immediately, GP surgeries would have been overwhelmed—we are talking about 709,000 pieces of patient data—and they would not have been able to get on as quickly as we needed them to with identifying risk. That was the priority and that is what today’s report confirms: patient safety was the priority of the Department and NHS England. I put it to the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) that if he were in my shoes, and faced with advice that said that it was wrong to go public straight away as that would compromise the very important work GPs had to do to keep patients safe, he would have followed exactly the same advice. That is why, while I completely recognise that there is a potential conflict of interest with the Government arrangements, I do not accept that there was an actual conflict of interest, because patient safety concerns always overrode any interests we had as a shareholder in SBS The NHS is a large organisation. It has a huge number of contracts with both the public and private sectors, and no Government of any party can ever guarantee that there will be absolutely no breach of contract. However, what we can do is ensure that we react quickly when there is such a breach, which happened on this occasion, and that we have better assurance than we had on this occasion. I assure the House that the appropriate lessons will be learned.
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Sarah James (Wollaston) (Conservative, Centre-right): While Members from across the House will be relieved that so far no patients are identified as having been harmed by this appalling incident, will the Secretary of State set out what steps he is taking to ensure that this can never happen again?
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that it is totally inappropriate to try to make political capital from this incident. The facts of the case are that the NAO today published a report saying that patient safety was the primary concern of both the Department of Health and NHS England throughout. There were some problems with the assurance of that contract, but the contract and the relationship with SBS in particular dates back to 2008. Both sides of the House need to learn the lessons of properly assuring NHS contracts, and I dare say the same is true in Scotland.
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I did not come to that conclusion. The hon. Lady is right, as a doctor, to say that patients’ trust in the way we hold their records is very important. In this case, the correspondence concerning patients was not forwarded, but it was not lost either. It was held securely, so no patient data were put at risk, but it should have been forwarded to another part of the NHS, and it was not; it was effectively stockpiled. That is what caused the concerns. We have been going through the high-priority cases. So far, the vast majority of cases have had two clinical reviews, and the ones we are still concerned about are having a third clinical review. We are taking this extremely seriously.
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Jeremy John Elton Lefroy (Conservative, Centre-right): The Secretary of State mentioned Mid Staffordshire and patient safety, which is absolutely critical, but may I point out that the County hospital in Stafford now has an excellent record? It is currently seeing 27 patients in A&E with a waiting time of not much more than one hour, according to the app that I have on my phone. Will he confirm that the situation has been transformed because of the fantastic work of the staff in that hospital?
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I am happy to confirm that. I am also happy to say that the problems in the old Mid Staffs, which I am afraid we had in many parts of the NHS, are being addressed much more quickly because of an independent oversight regime—the new Care Quality Commission inspection regime—and the appointment of a chief inspector of hospitals, who is independent in law and gives his judgment independently in law. That is something the Labour party regrettably tried to vote down.
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): The costs are in excess of £6 million, and we are seeking to recover as much of that as we can from the company involved. I know that the regime in the Labour party has changed, but to try to turn this into an issue of privatisation when under the right hon. Gentleman’s own party’s Government—and indeed, during his own time as Health Secretary—we had problems at Mid Staffs that were squarely in the public sector is wholly inappropriate. This is about proper assurance of what is going on in the NHS, and both sides of the House need to learn the lessons.
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Victoria Atkins (Conservative, Centre-right): In order to reassure my constituents, will my right hon. Friend confirm that NHS SBS no longer provides this mail redirection service, that all backlogged correspondence has now been delivered to the relevant GP surgeries for filing and that no patient harm has been found in this case?
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is exactly right. Of course we welcome the fact that no patient harm has been identified to date. We have to wait until the process of the third clinical review is completed on at-risk patients’ records, which will happen by the end of December. She is absolutely right to say that SBS is no longer performing this contract; it has been taken in-house. Other parts of the SBS contract not related to what we are discussing today were given to another supplier.
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I acknowledged in my statement that there is, or was, a potential conflict of interest when the contract with SBS was in operation, and the National Audit Office talks about that today. In reality, as the National Audit Office confirms, patient safety was always our overriding priority in all the decisions we took. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman, as I do to the shadow Health Secretary, that he would have taken exactly the same decisions had he been in my shoes.
NHS Shared Business Services — House of Commons, 2017-06-27
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): There has been a huge operation to deal with this. As the hon. Gentleman will know, there were 709,000 pieces of correspondence. We did an initial clinical triage to identify which ones were low risk, such as notifications of change of address, and which ones were higher risk, such as test results. We identified 2,500 that had a high priority, and 84% of those have so far been identified as being of no clinical risk, but we are continuing to do more thorough clinical risk assessment.