argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings on Public Transport) (England) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-07-08
Topic: Health
John Hendy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I support the regulations, which make it mandatory to make a wear a form of personal protective equipment. As the Department for Transport’s Explanatory Memorandum says: "Mandating the use of face coverings, when used alongside other measures, therefore offers a reasonable protective measure to reduce the risk of infection on contamination by a virus that presents a significant harm to public health." Like public transport, many workplaces have a similar risk of infection because they contain a number of people in a confined space for significant periods of time, with limited changes of air. Yet, notwithstanding the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992, instead of making mandatory the provision of face coverings at work, the Government have published eight sets of guidance advising that workplaces should not encourage the precautionary use of PPE. In light of the regulations under debate, how can the Government justify advising employers not to adopt at work what the Department for Transport describes as a "reasonable protective measure" on public transport?
Coronavirus — House of Lords, 2020-03-12
Topic: Health
Jonathan Toby Harris (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am slightly surprised by that answer. I was not going to ask about this but, none the less, I will. Surely, what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is asking is: if an employer wants to go above and beyond the current minimum level of requirement, where can they get guidance? That seems quite important. The question I would like to ask the Minister is this: obviously, we wish Nadine Dorries all the best for her recovery, but is the line by which she acquired the virus yet clear? If it is not possible to answer that, of those people who have been confirmed to have the virus, in how many cases is the route by which they acquired it known? If that route is not known, clearly this is much more endemic than has previously been said.
Coronavirus — House of Lords, 2020-03-12
Topic: Health
Peter Richard Grenville Layard (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, if we look abroad, especially to Japan and China, it is clearly not as inevitable as the Government assume that this disease will become widely spread through the population. Extraordinarily, in Hubei province, the epicentre of the disease, the proportion of the population who caught it was 0.1%. So how can we be hearing our experts talking about up to 80% of our population being affected? This cannot be right; it is based entirely on the assumption that our approach will be very passive. Can the Minister assure me that we will move to a really stringent regime next week?
Covid-19: Business — House of Lords, 2020-05-13
Topic: Health
John Hendy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, each of the eight guidance notes published on Monday advises: "Workplaces should not encourage the precautionary use of … PPE to protect against COVID-19 outside clinical settings" That advice is surely contrary to the clear statutory duty set out in the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992 to provide PPE to any employee in respect of whom risk has not been eliminated by other measures. The importance of this duty is magnified in the light of the Office for National Statistics report to which my noble friend Lord Stevenson referred, which identifies various occupations at an increased risk of death from Covid-19. Will the Minister indicate whether the guidance might be reconsidered in each of these eight notes?
Covid-19: Care Home Deaths — House of Lords, 2020-04-22
Topic: Health
Questions: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the analysis by Care England which suggests that there have been significantly more deaths caused by Covid-19 in care homes than have been reported.
Margaret Eileen Joyce Wheeler (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for his response. Both Care England and the National Care Forum report an alarming increase in the number of care home deaths, with estimates of more than 6,000 deaths above this week’s official ONS figure of 1,043; we already know that these figures are 12 days out of date when they are published. The National Care Forum has called for the Government to build a ring of steel around care homes to safeguard the most vulnerable among us, with providers suggesting that doctors and nurses should be urgently deployed to fight Covid-19 in homes for older people. They rightly stress that an unprecedented situation calls for an unprecedented plan, as we have had in hospitals. What is the Minister’s response?
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-15
Topic: Health
Elizabeth Barker (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the Minister for that. This is a very important part of our discussion. I have two questions which I am absolutely certain he will not be in a position to answer, but I hope that he will write to me. First, how many cases of a failure to follow the code of practice rather than a failure to follow the law have gone to the Court of Protection? Secondly, can the Minister confirm that the original Mental Capacity Act code of practice was never reviewed and that it is not possible to make individual amendments to a code of practice: it has to be changed in its entirety? I shall not put the Minister on the spot now but we need to return to those matters in a further discussion because they are really important.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-15
Topic: Health
Elizabeth Barker (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, Amendments 60 and 62, to which I shall speak briefly. To reiterate, the responsibility for this law lies and remains with the responsible bodies, and not with the care providers. If things go wrong, it is they who will end up in court. Consequently, and rather like the bodies under the Mental Health Act, they retain responsibility for ensuring enough sufficiently trained people are available to ensure that the law is applied properly Part of the reason for all noble Lords having such an interest in this issue is that we know from the review of the Mental Capacity Act that availability of trained staff is one of the biggest reasons why the Act failed to be properly implemented. Furthermore, we have statistics on the patchy nature of implementation by local authorities and some in the health service. Some authorities absolutely get this and implement it properly, but a lot just do not. It is an almost random distribution, which has a knock-on effect The other reason for noble Lords wanting to talk about these issues is the impact assessment. We have not really talked about the impact assessment for this Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, used some particularly strong words, but she let them off very lightly, because I do not see how that impact assessment stacks up. Perhaps I may ask the Minister about one of the many assumptions made in the impact assessment. My understanding is that it assumes that training under this Bill will be needed for 10% of doctors and 10% of social workers. Can the Minister explain—if not now, then perhaps at a different juncture—that assumption and how it has come to be? I would be really surprised if the figure for social workers was 10%. Ten per cent for doctors is possible, but a figure of 10% for social workers needing to be trained under this Bill seems very low. My amendments were designed to enable us to have this sort of probing debate.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) — House of Lords, 2020-03-03
Topic: Health
Dale Norman Campbell-Savours (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I listened very carefully to the Minister’s comments on behavioural change and discouragement, but there is nothing of any substance in this Statement on the provision of early information that could affect personal conduct—which is very important on this—particularly for the elderly, apart from hand-washing and tissue cover when coughing. The public want detailed information now on transmission points—where they are and what they are—and on the life of the virus under various conditions. Detailed, authoritative information will influence personal conduct. In my view, personal conduct may well be more important than what the Government do. At the moment, all we have is an internet riddled with rumour, speculation and unattributable advice. The Government have missed a real opportunity. Can we have far more detailed information at this stage I am also concerned about the conflation of statistics on the risk of mortality. The 1% to 2% figure is misleading. Among the over-70s, the figure is 8%; among the over-80s, it is 14.8%. If you have underlying health conditions, it is even higher. Why can Ministers not be more up front on the elderly? I understand that the stats I have just given are now being repeated by the Government, but not openly.
Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-10-15
Topic: Health
Elizabeth Barker (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, can I take this opportunity to ask the noble Baroness some questions? Can she confirm my understanding that this duty to consult does not come under Article 4 of the Mental Capacity Act? As I read the Bill, the responsible body or the care home manager is under a duty to consult only in so far as they deem it to be practicable or appropriate to do so. They make that decision. Is that correct? Under DoLS, if somebody was "unbefriended" and if there was nobody to consult, that automatically triggered the right to an advocate. I do not believe that is the case under the Bill. Finally, this duty to consult is a stand-alone one. What happens as a result of that consultation? For example, it does not make it clear that if a family—like Mark Neary—objects to a placement, it does not trigger the need for an AMCP or another assessment. Yes, there is a long list of people but, as I understand it, there is no nearest-relative rule as there is under mental health legislation. There is no sequential order. My basic question is: what happens as a result of this duty to consult? It is not clear to me that anything necessarily happens.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2020-03-13
Topic: Health
David Blunkett (Labour, Centre-left): Will my noble friend produce a pamphlet highlighting some of the contributions made today? They seemed to suggest that genetics and the virility of our grandparents are reasons for being in this place that are not only equivalent to the reasons why others are here, but are actually superior, in essence, to the reasons why Members are elected to the other place.
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
Roger John Liddle (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for his frankness on this occasion. On European co-operation, how have we got ourselves into a situation where for PPE we are so dependent on supplies from China, Turkey and other faraway countries, and allowed ourselves to get into a position where we do not have much domestic manufacture? Similarly, on vaccines, I read a report in the Financial Times that we have no vaccination manufacturing capacity at scale in Britain. If that is the case, should we not look at whether European co-operation can help us there I welcome what the Minister said about testing. I had a report locally of care workers in Silloth, in the west of Cumbria on the coast of the Irish Sea, being told that if they wanted to be tested, they had to go to Gateshead, some 80 miles away, with no means of transport to do so. Will there be no repetition of that problem?
Covid-19 — House of Lords, 2020-04-23
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister; he has had a lot of work to do in the Lords today. He commented on ONS figures and the analysis it has done on the number of people who have so sadly died. The figure he gave in the Statement was, I think, around 18,000. I assume that these are deaths from the virus of people in hospital. I suspect he will have seen a piece in the Financial Times earlier this week which did some analysis of the ONS figures. It suggested that the figure of deaths caused by the pandemic was as much as 41,000. Have his officials looked into this and can he comment on its veracity?
Modernising Defence Programme — House of Lords, 2018-12-18
Topic: Defense
Julie Smith (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, as the noble Earl has just said, the present document is very detailed, yet in many ways it appears to be a glossy brochure with a lot of aspirations. These remind me rather of the vagueness that we get on what Brexit might look like. There do not appear to be clear strategies for where the Government want to go. Can the noble Earl explain what £160 million might actually be able to deliver? I think it is about the equivalent of two F35s, and I am not quite sure how will keep this one step ahead of our adversaries. I also come back to the question raised by my noble friend Lord Campbell about the exchange rate because hedging is one thing, but we are moving towards a one-for-one rate in the pound to the dollar. Is it really credible to say that the Government have hedged all of our defence budget in that way?
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill — House of Lords, 2018-12-17
Topic: Health
Robert Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the Minister and other noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. I am glad that neither she nor I believe that Prevent is beyond improvement after the magic year of 2015, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, imputed to me. I am very grateful for her words of encouragement. The key issue here is the perception referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and the widespread misapprehension, as the Government see it, by the minority community of what Prevent is and does. The best way to overcome that is to have more transparency and information. I welcome what the Minister has said today and therefore beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review — House of Lords, 2020-07-15
Topic: Health
Jonathan Toby Harris (Labour, Centre-left): We have heard some of this before. Thirty-four years ago, I submitted to the then Secretary of State—now our Lord Speaker—a patients’ charter prepared by the association of CHCs, which talked about listening to patients, putting them at the centre of every decision, and having a proper system of redress. Since then, every White Paper published by every successive Secretary of State has paid lip service to those principles, as the Minister has today. But the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, has shown how shallow the commitment has been. The Minister talked about a patchwork quilt of safety mechanisms; can he convince us that this time it will be different? When will the Government say not only that they accept her recommendations in full, but what robust arrangements there will be to make sure that action and culture change actually follow?
Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Health
Peter Hain (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Bridges said, and say what a pleasure it is to welcome my noble friend Baroness Clark of Kilwinning, with whom I worked in the Commons, especially on trade union issues, supporting postal workers. I also welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, who has been a beacon of sanity for his pro-Europeanism, and with whom I once raced wheel-to-wheel in an MPs v Lords motor race in the early 1990s at Brands Hatch I thank the Minister for his invariable courtesy and hard work, but I ask him these questions. Why does he think my niece living in Dorset, a young working mother of three whose husband is a firefighter, speaks for so many citizens throughout the country in expressing her outrage in these terms at last week’s shambolic announcement by the Prime Minister: "It’s a mess, he didn’t discuss the fact that no one can actually get tests, which is causing people to be off work for ages. We’ve just had an email from the kids’ school, saying it may have to close, as the tests for staff are taking too long" Why did the Government not accept the offer from Swiftair, an airbase company, to test everybody landing at Britain’s airports from other countries for £115 and give them the results quickly? Surely that is common sense, and it would take the enormous load off airlines facing bankruptcy and the travel industry as well Instead of imposing an expensive, incompetent system of testing and tracing through privatised agencies and outsourced corporates with no experience of this sort of thing, why did Ministers not rely on our excellent system of local care and primary healthcare, using GPs, for example, who often have the friends and the sort of people we would all have made contact with on their books as well as us? Why do they not use care workers and primary healthcare workers and resource them properly, instead of cutting local budgets so remorselessly? Why was the money not spent on them? Why were local councils not properly consulted? The leader of the Leeds City Council was on the radio only a few days ago, asking—pleading—to be properly consulted and properly resourced. There is a real danger that without a proper test, trace and isolation system, like Germany’s, for example—a much more efficient and cheaper one than ours—we could lurch from lockdown to lockdown at terrible cost to our economy and social fabric. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, said in this respect Finally, if I am permitted a rant, I am astonished that anybody agreed to a different regime for bars in the House of Commons from the 10 pm closure for everybody else. Surely this is a Dominic Cummings case of "Do as I say not as I do". I am thankful that that did not apply in the Lords, as our digital Lord Speaker has just confirmed in his announcement on Twitter.
Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Health
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): I would like some clarification. The green sheets very clearly say that the House "regrets Her Majesty’s Government’s use of the temporary provisions of the Coronavirus Act" and goes on to call for those things. So there are two points in it, and I am seeking clarification that that is the case.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister and refer him to the report of Sir David King and colleagues in Independent SAGE, who concluded that: "The situation in Leicester was both predictable and avoidable." This derived from the premature lifting of lockdown restrictions when the virus was still circulating widely in some areas, when there was no functional system of find, test, trace, isolate and support, and when the Prime Minister then sent an implied message that things were getting back to normal. Independent SAGE further stated: "The current situation arose out of a failure to respond to the increase of infections in Leicester … at an early stage and before they reached crisis levels. This was a result of several factors", including "excessive centralisation and unavailability of data" The Minister said just now that megabytes of data were given to local directors of public health, but why did it take so long for all the data to be given to Leicester’s director of public health On Monday in his Covid-19 Statement, and he repeated it today, the Minister was very clear that the Government were in constructive dialogue with dozens of directors of public health. If that is the case, can he explain why, on the test and trace system, directors of public health have expressed frustration that local expertise has been sidelined? Of course, he is right in saying that data alone will not deal with the virus and that what counts is local action. However, does he not agree that for local action to be effective, you have to trust people locally and give them the full facts?
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) Regulations 2020 — House of Lords, 2020-07-29
Topic: Health
Barbara Young (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, in reality, it is only within the last seven days that local directors of public health, after many times of asking, were finally given access to address-level data, which is so needed for local contact tracing. This is very important to stem household transmission within vulnerable communities, particularly among those living in overcrowded housing. As yet, local public health officials and local authorities still do not routinely, in real time, get other data on those who have had negative tests; nor do they have workplace data to spot workplace clusters early and take effective action based on local knowledge. They do not have data by ethnicity, which is provided only sporadically at the time of testing and not regularly on death certificates Some local authorities are doing crazy things, such as scanning test results to spot likely ethnic names to help them understand the characteristics of a community spread. Information from the call centre process is not available to local authorities on who has been contact traced, where they live or whether they have undertaken to self-isolate. As well as inadequate real-time data, local authorities lack resources. The additional £300 million for Covid-19 action plans will not go far. Some local authorities have no paid or trained local contact tracers. Can the Minister clarify whether he sees local authorities, rather than the national process, as the leads in managing outbreaks; what he is doing to assure them of real-time comprehensive data of the kind that I have outlined; and how he plans to create a step change in local authority capacity? Yesterday, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, said that local outbreaks are being managed by local authorities extremely well. This is not how local authorities feel.