argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Covid-19 Vaccines: Distribution — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Johanna Peta Churchill (Conservative, Centre-right): On top of the positive news this week of two vaccines, a covid vaccine will be deployed only once it has met robust standards on safety, effectiveness and quality through clinical trials and been approved for use by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency or an appropriate regulatory body. The Government have asked the NHS to be ready to deploy any safe, effective vaccine as soon as it is available. Distribution arrangements must be flexible and include the make-up of the workforce needed to rapidly deliver a vaccination programme, training requirements, consumables and any supporting infrastructure. The key point, though, is that the Government have been clear they will do everything they need to do to roll out a successful vaccine.
Covid-19 Vaccines: Distribution — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Johanna Peta Churchill (Conservative, Centre-right): First, I would like to place on record my enormous thanks to Liverpool and its local leadership for how it has helped us with repatriating from Wuhan and with the mass testing. I am sure that Liverpool will once again step to the fore with any help we might need with deploying the vaccine. We will deploy it as fast as possible, but there is a process. We have to know that it is safe, through the regulatory framework. We then have to know that as it arrives from the manufacturers, we can distribute it at pace. We are aiming to do that, and every sinew is being strained to ensure that we can deliver as swiftly as possible. The entire population wants to get on with living a normal, or more normal, life.
Covid-19: Care Home Residents — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Helen Olivia Bicknell Whately (Conservative, Centre-right): Sadly, covid is cruel to care home residents, and outbreaks are hard to prevent and control, especially when covid rates are high in the surrounding community. As we set out in our winter plan for adult social care, we have a regime of regular testing for staff and residents, we are supplying personal protective equipment to care homes, we have been offering training in infection prevention and control, backed up by Care Quality Commission inspections, and we are providing £1.1 billion to social care specifically to go towards the cost of infection prevention and control.
Covid-19: Care Home Residents — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
David Anthony Andrew Amess (Conservative, Centre-right): I know that my hon. Friend has already touched on this subject, but she will be aware that since April, many people have not been able to visit relatives and loved ones in care homes, so will she please tell the House again what is being done to improve testing and to roll out the flu vaccine to ensure that these visits can resume safely after the latest lockdown?
Covid-19: Care Home Residents — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Helen Olivia Bicknell Whately (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is a great advocate for the care sector—for those who receive care and for the workforce—in Southend West. Yesterday we launched a trial of visitor testing, and we plan to offer this to care homes across the country during December. On his question about flu vaccinations, this year we are carrying out the biggest ever flu vaccination programme. So far, the majority of care home residents have been vaccinated, but there is further to go for care staff, and I urge any careworker who has yet to have their flu jab to ensure that they get it over the next few weeks.
Covid-19: Adult Social Care — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Helen Olivia Bicknell Whately (Conservative, Centre-right): Our winter plan sets out what we are doing to support adult social care during the second wave of the pandemic, including supplying free PPE to meet social care’s covid needs across domiciliary care, day care services and personal assistance as well as in care homes, and includes a further £546 million of funding for the infection control fund, bringing the total we have provided to social care for infection control to £1.1 billion.
Covid-19: Adult Social Care — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Suzanne Webb (Conservative, Centre-right): The new megalabs will open in 2021, one of which will be just down the road in Leamington Spa. This is very welcome news for the care sector in Stourbridge, which needs fast access to testing to carry out its amazing work, and let us not forget that these megalabs will bring thousands of jobs to the midlands. The UK is already No. 1 in Europe for testing capacity. With these new labs on stream, that capacity will double. Will my hon. Friend commit to prioritising the social care sector in this new capacity?
Covid-19: Adult Social Care — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Helen Olivia Bicknell Whately (Conservative, Centre-right): The answer to my hon. Friend’s question is yes. Adult social care has already been at the front of the queue for testing. Care homes in Stourbridge and across the country have had whole care home testing since May. We have now sent out more than 13 million test kits to care homes. Every week we are testing more than half a million staff and residents, with nearly 90% of results back within 72 hours. I will continue to make sure that social care is a priority, going beyond care homes to include domiciliary care and supported living as we increase testing capacity.
Covid-19 Autumn 2020 Lockdown: Newborn Babies — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Nadine Vanessa Dorries (Conservative, Centre-right): The indirect impact of covid-19 has been significant for pregnant women and their young families. Support for families is a priority, and it means short-term and long-term harms can be prevented. Health visiting teams have continued to support and prioritise high-need families. We have also gone to great lengths to ensure that informal support networks that have been there in the past to support mothers and younger babies can remain and provide the support they were unable to give during the first wave.
Covid-19 Autumn 2020 Lockdown: Newborn Babies — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Nadine Vanessa Dorries (Conservative, Centre-right): I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend on that. First, may I pay tribute to her for the work she has undertaken throughout her career with families, parents and young babies, and on early years, particularly the first years of a child’s life? I am sure Members on both sides of the House are hugely anticipating and excited about receiving her review on early years and young families. She is right to say that using digital technologies has enhanced so many areas during the first lockdown and throughout our time with covid, not only in mental health, but with young families and children. In a way, it has been a catalyst whereby we have embraced technology in all areas across health service delivery. We are making sure that we continue to do that and we do not lose the moment.
Non-covid-19 Healthcare Treatment — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): The Government are supporting the NHS’s ambition to continue to restore elective services for non-covid patients, while of course recognising the pressure on services from covid-19 infection control, with September statistics showing services already restored to about 80% of last year’s levels. Some £2.9 billion of additional funding has been made available from 1 October to manage ongoing covid-19 pressures, alongside recovering non-covid activity levels.
Non-covid-19 Healthcare Treatment — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Gareth Andrew Bacon (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for his response. Given the difficulties faced by the NHS because of covid-19, what considerations are being given to additional initiatives or the management of existing resources to address patient demand and break the backlog of non-covid-related treatments, such as diagnostic interventions for cancer?
Non-covid-19 Healthcare Treatment — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): The NHS is working hard to maintain elective activity as far as possible during the second wave with extra funding, as has been set out. As shown in published September data, hospitals are carrying out more than 1 million routine appointments and operations per week, with around three times the levels of elective patients admitted to hospitals than in April, with many hospitals innovating to get through their lists. For example, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and West Berkshire sustainability and transformation partnership has set up additional bespoke cataract units to deliver services. In addition, we have been making use of independent sector sites to assist the NHS with almost 1 million NHS patient appointments taking place within those facilities.
Non-covid-19 Healthcare Treatment — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Jerome Patrick Burke Mayhew (Conservative, Centre-right): One adverse consequence of the first lockdown was that many people failed to seek treatment because they were afraid of the virus, but due to good planning and hard work, the staff of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital are able to treat covid patients while still undertaking the normal work of the hospital. Does my hon. Friend agree that the people of Broadland should continue to seek medical assistance when they need it, confident in the knowledge that it will be provided in a covid-safe and effective manner?
Non-covid-19 Healthcare Treatment — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): I share my hon. Friend’s fulsome praise of the staff at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and the work that they are doing. They have a strong champion in him. Indeed, I pay tribute to all the health and social care staff who have worked so magnificently throughout the pandemic. I can wholeheartedly agree with everything he says. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been clear throughout this pandemic that anyone who needs medical help should continue to seek it in the knowledge that they will be treated in a safe and effective manner appropriate to their needs. To put it bluntly, it is a case of help us to help you.
Non-covid-19 Healthcare Treatment — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Edward John Comport Argar (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the shadow Minister, who always asks measured and sensible questions. He is right to ask that particular question, but I am very happy for him to raise with me any specific incidents of where urgent cancer care is being cancelled in the current situation. We have worked extremely hard, as has the NHS, to ensure that treatments such as that and emergency and urgent treatment can continue. He asked what we are doing differently. We have learned a huge amount, as has the whole country, over the past six to nine months. We have increased capacity in our hospitals, which is why, with the measures that we have taken, we can continue far more surgery and far more treatments, particularly cancer treatments, than we could in the first wave.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): We are seeing major scientific advances that will help to get things back to normal. We are expanding mass testing with the two mega labs that will add another 600,000 to our daily testing capacity and, on vaccines, we have secured an initial agreement for 5 million doses of the very promising Moderna vaccine and begun clinical trials of the Janssen vaccine.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): The provision of fertility services is happening in the normal way in as many places as possible across England, but it is not happening everywhere because of the huge pressures on the NHS from the second wave of covid. As my hon. Friend the Minister of State was saying a moment ago, there are pressures on the NHS. There are now 15,000 people in hospital with covid across the UK, but the NHS is doing far more normal services that it was not able to do in the first wave.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): This morning, the Select Committee has been hearing about workforce burnout. Witness after witness said that the one thing that would make a big difference to NHS staff is knowing that we are training enough doctors and nurses for the future even if we do not have enough now. Nearly two years on from the NHS 10-year plan, we still do not have the workforce projections published—I know that the Secretary of State is keen to get them published. Can he assure the House that, when they are published, they will be the independent projections and not what the Treasury has negotiated with his Department as part of the spending review?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that question. I can give him a couple of projections and a couple of facts. Over the past year, we have 13,500 more nurses in the NHS than we did a year ago, and thousands more doctors. Let me give him this projection, which I am sure that he and everybody on the Government Benches will buy into: we are going to have 50,000 more nurses in the NHS by the end of this Parliament.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes; the lateral flow tests that are being used in Liverpool are accurate. They measure whether somebody is infectious and have a very high specificity. We publish all these statistics, having had them assessed at Porton Down in one of the best medical science units across the whole world, so I assure the hon. Gentleman—and, through him, his constituents —that the lateral flow tests have a quick turnaround and a high degree of accuracy regarding whether someone is infectious. I have not seen the reports to which he refers, but I assure him that the best thing that people can do if they are offered a test is to get one.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Christopher Lionel John Loder (Conservative, Centre-right): I was delighted when the Secretary of State came to visit the Yeatman Hospital in Sherborne at the end of last year, but my constituents in West Dorset are becoming increasingly concerned that the Yeatman Hospital’s minor injuries unit has been closed for too long. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the MIU will not be permanently closed, and that it will reopen at the first possible opportunity?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Holly Mumby-Croft (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my right hon. Friend for his incredible hard work over recent months. I am delighted that Scunthorpe General Hospital has received significant funding, which will help with the short to medium-term pressures, but he knows that it is in need of a much more significant upgrade. When he is able to, will he meet me to discuss a way forward?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes; my hon. Friend has been a champion for Scunthorpe and for supporting Scunthorpe General Hospital. I am glad that we have been able to make an investment in that hospital, and I am happy to meet her to talk about what more we can do.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman and I share a passion for ensuring that organ donation is possible and is supported wherever it is needed. That is very close to my heart through personal experience—not mine, but that of a friend. The hon. Gentleman has raised this issue and driven a change in the law, and I am glad that the change in the law to an opt-out system has happened. However, during the first lockdown there was clearly a slowdown in the number of donations, and we do not want to see that. There are more services available in the second peak of this coronavirus crisis. I look forward to working with him and others to make sure that organ donation is as high as it possibly can be.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Joanna Mary Gideon (Conservative, Centre-right): Royal Stoke University Hospital in my constituency has warned that the rising level of obesity is becoming an increasingly serious problem. With nearly one in seven adults considered obese in Stoke-on-Trent Central, does my right hon. Friend agree that tackling rising levels of obesity has never been more important for our public health and should remain a priority for our Government?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, I do, and so does the Prime Minister. We feel very strongly about this. It is so important that we have the work across the country to tackle obesity; this has only been made more urgent because we know of the link between obesity and the risk of dying from covid. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend and others to make this happen.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Jonathan Edward Gullis (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend will be aware that nosocomial spread is high in the NHS and that transmission is sometimes via staff. In order to help the amazing teams at Royal Stoke University Hospital and the Hayward walk-in centre, will he give guidance that stops substantive staff working bank, agency and locum shifts in other hospitals, to help reduce transmissions?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, I would be happy to do that. We are proposing roving teams who can get out into rural communities across England. I know that there are ongoing discussions between those in the NHS in England and in Scotland who are responsible for the deployment of the vaccine. However, it is a critical principle that it should be deployed according to clinical need, not according to where people live across the United Kingdom.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Gary William Sambrook (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the news that the Secretary of State has secured 5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, totalling 355 million dosages for the UK. Does he agree that it is key to putting this virus back in its box, and that it is down to the willingness of the great British public to step forward and to voluntarily have this vaccine so that we can all move on?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, that is right. A vaccine will be approved only if it is both effective and safe, so when your ticket comes up, if you are asked to take the vaccine, then I and the whole serious clinical establishment—all of those who understand the vaccines and the value of them —will be urging people right across the country to get it, because it is good for you, it protects your loved ones and it protects your community. It is the primary route, alongside other things like testing, by which we will get out of this and get life back more closely to normal.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Christopher Stephen Grayling (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the Government’s substantial investment in hospital services in my area. The Secretary of State knows that I remain disappointed that Epsom, was not the NHS’s choice of location— rather than Sutton—but will he assure me that as the NHS reviews the impact of the pandemic and looks at future capacity needs, he will keep an open mind if that decision needs to be changed, because in the end Epsom represents better value for the health service?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s tenacity and doggedness in making the case for Epsom. I am a big supporter of the decision that has been made, and I am afraid, from his point of view, that the final decision on the location of the new hospital—in Sutton—has now been made. However, I am always open-minded to what further health services can be deployed in Epsom itself, and I suggest that my right hon. Friend and I work together on that.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Michael Jon Wood (Conservative, Centre-right): Rising infection rates in Dudley are extremely worrying. The launch of the third covid vaccine trial in the UK this week is excellent news and I pay tribute to the volunteers and researchers involved in the trials, but does my right hon. Friend agree that it is still early days, so it is vital that all of us continue to play our part in doing everything possible to bring down that infection rate, particularly in areas, like Dudley, where it continues to rise?
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes. Vaccines could not be approved if there were not volunteers who were willing to take them and play their part. I want to end this session, if I may, with a tribute to my PPS, my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), who, along with some other Members of the House, is taking part in a vaccine trial, and therefore doing his bit to make vaccines available to help everybody across this country.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Health
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Following on from your reference to named day questions, may I ask what can be done to ensure that we get timely responses to those questions? I have 12 outstanding named day questions to the Department of Health and Social Care, one of which is over six months late. Others are over a month late, including questions the answers to which I think might be of interest to the Prime Minister—for example, about policy relating to those who are immune through antibodies. I have also raised one matter not just as a named day question, but twice during debates on the Floor of the House, when I have asked the Department, and the Secretary of State in particular, for the evidence in support of the assertion made to the House on 1 October that "hundreds of thousands of deaths…would follow" if the Government "just let the virus rip".—[Official Report, 1 October 2020; Vol. 681, c. 503.] Where is the answer to the very reasonable question that I submitted?
National Security and Investment Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Defense
Nusrat Munir Ul-Ghani (Conservative, Centre-right): From the moment that this Bill was started to now, we have learnt a lot more about security and infrastructure. Does my right hon. Friend share my concerns that the Chinese national intelligence law requires Chinese firms to assist with state intelligence work? This was brought to light for me when TikTok gave evidence to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. I am incredibly anxious about the data that it could potentially be harvesting and sharing back with its parent company, ByteDance.
National Security and Investment Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-17
Topic: Defense
Robert William Henry Seely (Conservative, Centre-right): Unless I missed it, there is no definition of national security in the Bill. Will the Secretary of State provide a definition or will he commit to putting one in the Bill to give us something to work with?