argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Batten Disease — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Health
Caroline Elizabeth Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): I have looked after a number of children with Batten disease in my career, and no one should underestimate the horrific nature of this condition with which a child develops apparently normally and then gets the horrific diagnosis that they will suffer neurodegeneration. I completely respect the importance of NICE being independent, and in general I do not get involved in these debates, but I believe I should do so in this one, because I actually think that NICE has this wrong. This drug does not make a little bit of difference—it does not have the effect of making someone die a couple of weeks later; it makes a phenomenal difference to the quality of life for these children. Yes, the trials have been short so far, but over a reasonable period it makes a massive difference, and I think we should do everything we can. I have heard the Minister say that she will ask the chief executive of NHS England to get BioMarin back round the table. How long will she give him to achieve that, and if he does not succeed, what will she herself do to ensure that these children get these drugs as soon as possible?
Batten Disease — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Health
Seema Louise Ghiassi Kennedy (Conservative, Centre-right): I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for all the work she has done as a clinician. I can only say again—I know this is very disappointing for the House—that we have to rely on the NICE process to be independent. I hear what the House is saying with how some people having doubts about the process, but, again, it is under review. NICE is internationally respected, and it has been going for 20 years. Yes, these are exceptionally difficult cases, but this is why, as custodians of NHS funds, we have to be very careful, because every pound we spend on one drug is a pound we cannot spend on another. I hear what my hon. Friend says about this being a life-changing drug, and I hope that BioMarin, NHSE and NICE will, and we would urge them to, carry on with their negotiations.
Batten Disease — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Health
Seema Louise Ghiassi Kennedy (Conservative, Centre-right): We are determined to improve treatments for people living with rare diseases. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, they have to be treated differently because fewer people are affected by them. We have the rare diseases strategy, and we are trying to use genomics to better diagnose and treat diseases. We are trying to be the first health service to put genomics into day-to-day health delivery, which will enable us to diagnose and treat diseases such as Batten more quickly. We have care co-ordinators for patients with rare diseases and we are trying to ensure that those who live to adulthood are cared for better, but what the hon. Gentleman said about having an international approach is valid.
Batten Disease — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Health
Michael Jon Wood (Conservative, Centre-right): The Minister rightly speaks about NICE’s important role in eliminating postcode lotteries. Does she agree that NICE’s independence is vital to ensuring availability to patients once an agreement is reached with BioMarin, wherever those patients are from, whether Penwortham in her constituency or Pensnett in mine?
Batten Disease — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Health
Seema Louise Ghiassi Kennedy (Conservative, Centre-right): There will be co-operation with other medicines agencies, and I have no doubt that future co-operation will also come under any agreement that we reach with our European partners following our withdrawal from the European Union.
Batten Disease — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Health
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): Sadly, this is not the first time that we have been here discussing how to make a highly specialised drug available for people generally and the discussions with companies. May I add my request to my hon. Friend to act urgently to ensure that the review of NICE is undertaken with speed and that the full range of appropriate stakeholders is included in the discussions to take NICE forward?
Batten Disease — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Health
Seema Louise Ghiassi Kennedy (Conservative, Centre-right): I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I have answered debates here and in Westminster Hall about the medical treatments for rare diseases. To reassure both patients and their families and Members of this place, we need to ensure that the review of NICE processes is robust and transparent.
Batten Disease — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Health
Seema Louise Ghiassi Kennedy (Conservative, Centre-right): We are putting record amounts of funding into the NHS, but I would rest again on the independence of the NICE process and the fact that it is experts and clinicians who are making these decisions. I agree that these are dreadful decisions and it is very hard for us to make them, which is why we rely on that expert advice. I would say to the hon. Gentleman that other jurisdictions are not always a good comparison.
Batten Disease — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Health
Seema Louise Ghiassi Kennedy (Conservative, Centre-right): I pay tribute to Kaycee and Liam. The hon. Lady makes a very important point. We want pharmaceutical companies to develop their medicines here, so that they are brought to the market here first and our constituents have access to them. However, we also have an obligation to spend taxpayers’ money in a very fair way, so that every penny we spend is done so correctly and appropriately. When it comes to PKU, Orkambi or Brineura, what we are all—NHS England and all of us here—saying to the drug companies is that we will pay a price, but we want it to be a fair price.
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I always listen to my right hon. Friend very carefully on all defence matters, and I reassure him that throughout this period we have had close behind-the-scenes discussions with the United States on how we can improve maritime security. HMS Montrose’s 17 transit missions would not have been possible without US logistical support. Indeed, the United States has made a proposal on how we could enhance maritime security more generally. The US asked us to contribute to a maritime force on 24 June, which became a formal request on 30 June, and it formally briefed NATO allies and the Washington diplomatic corps on the proposal last Thursday and last Friday. We will be talking to the US about it later this week We think what the United States is saying is helpful and important, and we will seek to co-ordinate any European efforts on freedom of navigation with anything the US does, but we want the UK’s contribution to be to make that coalition as broad as possible.
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend speaks with enormous experience on these matters because of his own background as Defence Secretary. I can assure him that we would not exclude, or seek to exclude, the American navy because it has a vital role in, for example, the refuelling of our own ships, the communication system, the command and control system and, indeed, the intelligence support. We would always operate in partnership with our American allies in these situations whatever difference of opinion we might have on the Iran nuclear deal.
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I can give the right hon. Gentleman a little bit of the answer to that, which is that it will not be a sudden switching on and off. There will be a gradual build-up of presence, because it takes time for ships to get to the region from all over the world. HMS Duncan will arrive on 29 July, or possibly even before that, as the first step in this process, but we are having substantive discussions later this week with allies from across the world in which things such as the timescales will become a lot clearer. I would be happy to write to him after that.
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): Commendably brief—and the answer to that question is no, because I do not think that Iran can possibly want an increased western naval presence in the strait of Hormuz, which is right in its backyard. That is the consequence of what it has decided to do with the Stena Impero.
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): What my hon. Friend says is close to my heart, as the son of a naval officer, a phrase I have been known to use in the last few weeks one or two times—[Interruption]—and as an entrepreneur, but that is not perhaps relevant to this afternoon’s statement. My hon. Friend makes a very important point. The Defence Secretary has been talking to the Defence Ministers of France, the Netherlands, Norway and others about more burden sharing within the EU. The reason why we have constructed the proposal that we have in the way that we have today is precisely because we are trying to encourage more European involvement in maritime security, because it is in the European interest.
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
John Charles Baron (Conservative, Centre-right): Given that the risk of seizure was foreseen and that 95% of goods entering the UK do so by sea, does the Foreign Secretary agree that a Royal Navy of fewer than 20 ships is not up to the task and that we need to spend more on our defence, because no matter how capable a ship, it cannot be in more than one place at a time?
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I might be straying slightly from my brief as Foreign Secretary, but it will not surprise my hon. Friend to know that I am support increased spending on our armed forces. We have to recognise that we had in many ways a golden period after the fall of the Berlin wall, when there was a peace dividend and we were able to reduce defence spending, but now we have to recognise that there are increased dangers in the world, both in the middle east and because Russia has become much more aggressive than it was previously. I think that the Navy in particular has become too small, so I hope that whoever the next Prime Minister is will reflect carefully on what we can do to bolster our great Royal Navy.
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Sarah Louise Newton (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome my right hon. Friend’s prescient remarks in recent weeks about the need to expand our naval presence. To help with that, will he ask the Defence Secretary to change the classification of our much-valued Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships to warships, as our allies classify them, so that we can bring forward the building of planned new ships in the UK?
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Oliver Heald (Conservative, Centre-right): The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Foreign Secretary, who I thank, are well known for their effective use of soft power—of course, we head the index of soft power—but does he agree that that does not mean that we do not need increased defence spending? As a major maritime nation, we have duties in the world that require a larger Navy.
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend and thank him for his question. Just to add to my earlier comments, at the point of Brexit, that will be a moment when a lot of people around the world will be looking to us to see what type of country we want to be in the world. We are one of the very few countries that has always championed democratic values and the security needed to underpin them, and the Royal Navy has an absolutely critical role in doing that.
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
James Stephen Heappey (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the Foreign Secretary for his earlier answers to my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), with which I completely agree. I know that he is nervous of straying out of lane, but does he agree that the Royal Navy is not just about power projection but has an important diplomatic role as well? Therefore, it is not just our defence policy but our foreign policy that is greatly enhanced by a larger surface fleet.
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, and I wish I had made more of my strong agreement with what my hon. Friend has just said in the last few months. As we have been talking a lot about the Gulf and he has mentioned the Navy, let me talk about a couple of other areas where I think we could do with a stronger Royal Navy presence. One of them is the Arctic and the other is the Indo-Pacific region. I think in both regions it would send a very strong signal about British national self-confidence if we had the naval capacity that we would all want.
Situation in the Gulf — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his eagle eye in spotting that detail, but I want to reassure him that when HMS Duncan arrives HMS Montrose will not be going out of service immediately. There will be a period, particularly the extremely dangerous period in the next few weeks, when they will be operating together. Secondly, we will get HMS Montrose back into service as quickly as we can. Thirdly, HMS Montrose is based in Bahrain, so it will stay in the region for its refitting and refuelling. It will not be far away.
Telecoms Supply Chain Review — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the Secretary of State accept that the phrase "manageable risk" is almost a contradiction in terms, because if it were fully manageable, it would not be a risk? Is he not absolutely right not to be taking a decision with such profound security implications for our future in the dying few hours of an outgoing prime ministerial administration? Finally, does he accept that unlike other suppliers, which, it is true, may have contaminated supply chains themselves, Huawei is unique in being subject to article 14 of China’s national intelligence law, passed in June 2017, which empowers the intelligence agencies of the Chinese state to "request the relevant organs, organisations and civilians to provide necessary support, assistance and cooperation" to those intelligence services? We would be mad to enter into a direct security relationship with the agencies of a totalitarian communist state.
Telecoms Supply Chain Review — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Jeremy Paul Wright (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman is right, but they are not mutually exclusive. We can and should do both. Diversification will not happen overnight, which is one reason why I want to proceed as swiftly as possible with that track. It will take time for us to develop diversification in the market, but none the less we should seek to do so in the longer term. In the shorter term, he is also right—he knows this from his ISC work—that part of the reason why we want a larger number of suppliers in the system is not simply that it is commercially and economically beneficial, but that there is a security benefit too. Having several different suppliers’ equipment in the system helps to prevent overdependence on any one supplier’s equipment. That is an obvious security imperative. We should do that. It is part of the calculation we make about the security imperative in this decision.
Telecoms Supply Chain Review — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Defense
Nicholas Soames (Conservative, Centre-right): Given the fundamental issue of security, which for many of us here must override all the other interests, I congratulate my right hon. Friend on this statement on a new security framework, particularly since it will be a much stronger security-based regime than that which exists at present.
Universal Credit: Managed Migration — House of Commons, 2019-07-22
Topic: Health
Amber Rudd (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his comments and for his time in discussing with me a constituency issue that contributed to my responding in an accelerated way to the plans I was already formulating for looking again at how we support people with terminal illness diagnosis. Yes, I will continue to proceed with that at pace, because I am very conscious that the people who have that sort of diagnosis need as much support as possible, as soon as possible.
Topical Questions — House of Commons, 2019-10-17
Topic: Health
Questions: Bullying and harassment that particularly affect women have no place in any workplace anywhere in the world. When will the Government ratify the new International Labour Organisation global convention that outlaws such offences? This Government led the way on that convention when it was established earlier this year.; May I remind the Minister that next year marks 50 years since the Equal Pay Act 1970, and much of the progress has been made because of our membership of the European Union? I took the first petition on equal pay and sex discrimination to the EU in 1977. Much of the progress has been made because the EU has pushed us and many Labour Members campaigned for many years. How much longer are we going to have to wait? Is it going to be another 50 years?; I am sure the Minister will agree that all women deserve equal protection under the law, no matter where they come from. Indeed, I have had positive conversations with Ministers about including migrant women in the Domestic Abuse Bill, but can she tell us when she will be able to commit to including them specifically in that Bill?; Audio-visual announcements on buses are vital to enable people with sight loss or hearing loss to travel with confidence. The UK Government’s consultation ended more than a year ago, in September 2018, with no further progress, so what discussions has the Minister had with her counterparts in the Department for Transport to bring forward this important measure?; Endometriosis UK found that 476,000 British women had to visit their GP more than 11 times for a positive diagnosis, and that their pain was often dismissed as being psychological. What steps is the Minister taking to eliminate gender bias in the diagnosis of health conditions?
Nadine Vanessa Dorries (Conservative, Centre-right): On the particular issue of endometriosis, I will have to write back to the hon. Lady, but being wrongly diagnosed as having a mental health condition is incredibly serious, and we are looking into rolling out training to GPs to help them better to diagnose mental health conditions. I will use this opportunity to say again that we are investing £2.3 billion a year in mental health services in the community, and hopefully that will go into GP practices and GPs will know not to make those kinds of diagnoses in future. I will get back to the hon. Lady on that particular condition.
Online Pornography: Age Verification — House of Commons, 2019-10-17
Topic: Health
Desmond Angus Swayne (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the Minister recall the nerve required to reach for Health and Efficiency and the looks at the counter as it was put in a paper bag? What is out there now makes H&E look like a nursery rhyme. His approach really is going to be comprehensive, is it not?
Compliance with the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019 — House of Commons, 2019-09-26
Topic: Defense
James Philip Duddridge (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for the work she does on defence and for giving me the opportunity to confirm this Government’s belief in the international rule of law, specifically and incredibly importantly in relation to NATO. Although exiting the European Union is rightly taking up an awful lot of time in this House, the relationship across the eastern border and with NATO is potentially more important than it has been for a long time. Our NATO allies, whether in meetings in Addis or in normal NATO meetings, should know that they can rely on the United Kingdom as they have done in the past.
Leaving the EU: Diplomacy — House of Commons, 2019-09-03
Topic: Health
Dominic Rennie Raab (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the shadow Foreign Secretary for her generous welcome to the Dispatch Box. On no deal and medicines, the UK has a long-standing relationship with pharmaceutical companies, through the NHS, involving hundreds of vaccines and medicines, whereby we do stockpile, without any context of Brexit, but in the ordinary course of events. Both the Health Secretary and the head of the NHS have made it clear that the plans and arrangements are in place to make sure that people can receive their medication supplies in all circumstances. I am sure she will not want to engage in irresponsible scaremongering. It is very important that this be a fact-driven risk analysis.
Leaving the EU: Diplomacy — House of Commons, 2019-09-03
Topic: Health
Dominic Rennie Raab (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me gently say to the shadow Foreign Secretary that what is shameful is to take a potentially vulnerable group in our society and scaremonger in such an appalling way. I think that she should listen to what the Health Secretary and Sir Simon Stevens have said, and take into account the reassurances that medical supplies will be protected in any scenario.
G7 Summit — House of Commons, 2019-09-03
Topic: Health
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): I am glad that the hon. Lady has given me occasion to remind the House that there are now in fact 700 more doctors in the NHS since the vote to leave the EU. Just in the last six weeks, we have been able to announce another £1.8 billion going to 20 new hospital upgrades around the country, in addition to the £34 billion extra that the Conservative Government are putting into the NHS. I am grateful to her for allowing me to point that out.
Leaving the EU: Preparations — House of Commons, 2019-09-03
Topic: Health
Luke Patrick Graham (Conservative, Centre-right): Earlier today, the chairman of the British Medical Association in Scotland went on record to say that there are shortages of medical supplies in Scotland due to Brexit. Can my right hon. Friend give assurances that that is not the case, and that the Cabinet Office is engaging directly with the devolved Administration, local government and all Government bodies to ensure that no shortages are caused by Brexit?
Leaving the EU: Preparations — House of Commons, 2019-09-03
Topic: Health
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a very important point. To the anguish of many, but to the joy of some, we have not actually left the European Union yet, so it is hard to see how any shortages could be caused by Brexit. The Department of Health and Social Care and others have worked to ensure that in the event of a no-deal Brexit we can continue to have all the medicines and medical supplies that people need. I will look closely at what the Scottish BMA has said and investigate it, but sometimes—I am sure this is not the case with the Scottish BMA—one or two figures attribute to Brexit responsibility for matters that are absolutely nothing to do with our departure from the European Union.