argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-20
Topic: Health
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support Amendments 7 and 9, and I compliment the Government on Amendment 6. I remind the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, that scientific research, in this area or anywhere else, is now overwhelmingly collaborative. If you do not get in the game collaboratively, you find that some of your best researchers and ideas are rapidly transferred abroad to someone else who is much more interested in collaborative research. We have moved on from being a Great Britain that does all this stuff ourselves to being a collaborative, global, international participant in research, including in this area. That is one of the reasons why I support Amendment 7; I think it takes us in the right direction. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Broers, whose amendment last night I sadly missed, will want to say a bit about that I am really pleased that we have come back to talking about medical isotopes and having a report that keeps Parliament up to date in that area. There is huge concern outside this House about whether the supply chains around medical isotopes will be sufficient to cope with the needs and demands of NHS research and NHS patients On Amendment 9, after the last debate that we had before the vote, you would have to be one of life’s perennial optimists—I am not a Liberal Democrat so I do not join that particular club—to believe that everything is going to be okay by March 2019. I suggest to the Minister that he might find it useful to have an independent reviewer who can make independent reports to Parliament to convince sceptical parliamentarians such as me and, I suspect, a few others in this House that good progress is being made on some of the critical issues. That is why I support Amendments 7 and 9.
Medical Devices (Coronavirus Test Device Approvals) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 — House of Lords, 2021-07-20
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am very glad to support my noble friend in her Motion. I want to put two points to the Minister. The context of this SI is the poor quality of many tests. Paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum makes the point that, during public procurement of lateral flow tests for the NHS, "only 25% passed through all stages of validation including assessments of performance and quality standards." That is a pretty shocking statistic. Can I take it that most of these tests came from China? We had an Oral Question on this from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, only a few minutes ago. That being so, can the Minister assure me that Uighur slave labour in Xinjiang was not used in the manufacture of those tests?
Manchester Arena Attack Review — House of Lords, 2018-03-28
Topic: Health
Robert Kerslake (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response to the Urgent Question. I add my praise to the emergency services and indeed, to the people of Manchester, who responded magnificently to this terrible event. As we say in the report, there is a lot for Manchester to be proud of, but clearly there are some important lessons to learn. They are lessons for Greater Manchester, but they go well beyond that to the country as a whole, and we would all hope that a similar attack does not happen At what point will the Minister come back on the eight recommendations we made to the Government? It would be extremely helpful if a letter went directly to the Mayor of Greater Manchester. In particular, will she give her thoughts to the question of mental health service support for those who are injured as a consequence or indeed, for bereaved families? The people who were injured and the families who were bereaved came from across the north of England, not just from Greater Manchester. Does she agree that it is unacceptable that they had a different level of service according to where they lived and that we must have a co-ordinated response?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-12
Topic: Health
Narendra Babubhai Patel (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, it was not my intention to intervene. I am sorry to do so but it has been forced upon me. I think there is a fundamental failure of understanding here. Clinical trials are planned over a long time: it takes at least six to eight months to plan a clinical trial; it takes a lot of collaboration to find out whether we will be able to recruit the same category of patients; and we are required to understand whether the people who volunteer to join the trial have the necessary patience to do so. Because of this time lag, my amendment seeks to raise a very simple question. We had agreed to a regulation—the new clinical trials regulation—and we believed that it would come into force this year and therefore would be incorporated into the current European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. By a quirk of fate, that will not happen. But we have already agreed to have it in the Bill, so, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, what is the problem with incorporating it in the Bill?
Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-03-23
Topic: Health
Nuala O'Loan (Crossbench, Unknown): I may have misunderstood the noble Lord, but I think that he said that the Bill would enable a doctor who will not engage with a particular process to prevent somebody else from engaging in that process. Is that what the noble Lord said? Could he explain to me why he said it, if so, so that I can understand better?
Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-03-23
Topic: Health
Molly Christine Meacher (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I was not planning to intervene in this group, but the entire debate has focused on abortion. Amendment 1 also applies to the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment at the end of life. That is a totally different situation from abortion. These people are finding life unbearable, they are finding their treatment intolerable, they are facing the fact that they are dying, and they want something to happen. They want to be able to have their life-sustaining treatment withdrawn. Of course under current law someone with a conscientious objection who might be expected to help with that process has an absolute right not to do so. The great concern of those of us concerned about the end of life rather than the very beginning of it is that a lot of people towards the end of life find themselves in hospices, and we hope more of them will do so over time If you extend conscientious objection to supervisors, managers and so on, hospices do not have armies of staff. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, made the point that there are 1 million-plus people in the NHS, so surely there are people who can undertake abortions. Yes, but if you are an elderly, very sick person in a hospice and the manager of that hospice, the supervisor or someone else has a conscientious objection, you are likely to find yourself unable to exercise your absolute right to have your life-sustaining treatment withdrawn. That right cannot be fulfilled. The GMC makes very clear in its guidance that no one should be able to exercise a conscientious objection unless they ensure that someone else will take over that role, but that is likely to be impossible.
Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-03-23
Topic: Health
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): Does my noble friend Lady Meacher recognise that hospices do not provide life-sustaining treatment? It is the very ability of patients not to continue with whatever their life-sustaining treatment was—whether chemotherapy, artificial nutrition and hydration or ventilation—that is in question. In those units, symptom control is managed when patients refuse consent to continue. To treat a patient who has had life-sustaining treatment and says, "I do not want any more", would be assault in law. That refusal of consent must be respected and, in the process, you have a duty of care. That duty of care is to provide all other care and comfort measures during the process as they die of their disease. That is a natural process, and hospices are about accepting death. You will not find people in hospices being ventilated against their wishes. There may be some people on non-invasive ventilation because they want to continue with it while having other care. We must be clear that the Bill will not jeopardise hospices. I will speak on the Bill in a moment, but would like to put that on record.
Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-03-23
Topic: Health
Molly Christine Meacher (Crossbench, Unknown): I understand that in many hospices the emphasis is, as my noble friend said, on symptom control—in other words perpetuating, keeping things going—rather than enabling, encouraging and helping somebody to take their life in a dignified way.
Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-03-23
Topic: Health
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): I am sorry, but I have to intervene again. I should have declared my interest as palliative care lead for Wales, as vice-president of Hospice UK and of Marie Curie, and as having set up a lot of hospices. Symptom control is not life-prolonging treatment; it is about keeping people comfortable during the time they are dying of their disease. It may run in parallel with other treatments and it may be provided when other treatments are withdrawn, but it certainly does not prolong life per se. There is evidence that if you leave people in pain, it is a powerful drive to respiration. When you make people comfortable and relieve their pain, they can let go of life and die, but it is not the morphine that has killed them, it is the disease. Symptom control does not force people to stay alive.
Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-03-23
Topic: Health
Shreela Flather (Crossbench, Unknown): This is a very interesting point. Should they leave the service or not? I had a very recent experience when my husband was taken ill; he was dying and was taken to hospital. We had to make a decision about whether to keep his breathing going. My sons and I were there discussing this matter and it was a very difficult time for us. The doctor in charge came and spoke to us and told us what the situation was. We decided it was not the right time to prolong his life. If the doctor had then said, "I’m sorry, I have to get someone else to do this necessary job. I can’t do it because I object to it", that would have been terrible. You can say that he should have prepared for that in advance, but how can he prepare for everything in advance? You do not know when a dying person will come into hospital.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-21
Topic: Health
Alexander Carlile (Crossbench, Unknown): I am grateful to the Minister for the explanation that he has given on the issue of medical isotopes. Can he give us one further piece of information? How many meetings have actually taken place so far in an attempt to negotiate with the EU the continuity of the system of importing and exporting medical isotopes from the UK and from the EU?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-19
Topic: Health
David Hugh Alexander Hannay (Crossbench, Unknown): The noble Lord has misunderstood what I said, which was that the provision in the treaty that provides for qualified majority voting for health and safety was introduced with the agreement of the Government of the day, whose Prime Minister was Margaret Thatcher.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-19
Topic: Health
Norman Warner (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support this amendment and echo very much the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I say that as a former Minister who was responsible for regulating pharmaceuticals and medical devices. In those days, we were a rule-maker; now, we become a rule-taker—and in an area where we have already lost the European Medicines Agency, which is disappearing out of the country. So our position on the regulation of medicines has been worsened, as has the investment in this country as a result We are now going down the same path with medical devices, which are one of the unglamorous bits of our healthcare system but they are very important. We are rather good at inventing medical devices in this country. We produce quite a lot of inventions and have been the rule-maker through the BSI. Most of Europe has been happy to take that rule-making from the BSI, which has moved abroad, because it has a reputation as an effective regulator in this area. We are ending up with medicines and medical devices coming ever closer together but we have lost the regulatory system for them both. That is no mean achievement for the Government If we do not secure some kind of reciprocal agreement, as this amendment suggests, we will be in an even worse state than the noble Lord, Lord Deben, thinks we might. I am with him all the way. This is another industry which we are neglecting. In many cases, the companies making these devices are quite small and we are putting them into a very difficult position. They cannot hang around when they make their business decisions in the hope that David Davis will come up with a deal that resolves some of the uncertainties in their business. They will have to take decisions quite quickly if they want to survive The Government’s approach to negotiation is to be untransparent and incoherent, while trying to reassure everybody that it will all be all right on the night. But that is not a position that businessmen and businesswomen can accept in running their businesses and keeping them solvent. This is another example of a sector where we are going to diminish our capacity to innovate and to open up new markets within Europe for our inventions. Much more to the point, we will lose the kind of control over regulation that we had in the past.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-19
Topic: Health
Julia Neuberger (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support this amendment, which is in the name of my noble friend Lord Warner and others. It has been nicknamed, as everybody knows, the "do no harm" amendment although perhaps, more accurately, it should be the "do not roll back" amendment. I declare interests as an honorary fellow of the Faculty of Public Health—I too wish to thank the faculty and staff for its briefing—and as a former chief executive of the King’s Fund Much has already been argued, and I will not repeat any of that; it is late, and there are more amendments to come. However, I lay on the line that, as was asserted by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, in the debate on the amendment on medical devices, this is a moral issue. "First, do no harm" is a moral imperative taught to all medical and healthcare students, and this amendment makes it clear that those hard-won advances in public health as a result of EU legislation and regulation must not be rolled back, for whatever reason, be they air quality, tobacco packaging, alcohol pricing or whatever else that has been raised from around the House. The Government have given assurances that all will be well. However, as my noble friend Lord Warner has already said, we need more. We need this in the Bill. I cannot remember the public health community coming so strongly together on anything since tobacco packaging. This matters hugely to those who work in the area of public health, and it should matter to all of us. There is concern out there, and a moral imperative in the amendment. I support it strongly.
Mental Health — House of Lords, 2018-02-27
Topic: Health
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of the National Mental Capacity Forum. One difficulty for the police is that they are often called when someone is acutely disturbed, and they have to deal with the situation as it arises. In some police forces in Wales, particularly in Gwent, there has been an active programme to educate the police. Are there plans to involve the police at a national level in the review of the Mental Health Act? If not, they will end up being the front-line person who is called on to cope with an acutely distressing situation.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-25
Topic: Health
Shami Chakrabarti (Labour, Centre-left): Forgive me, but before the Minister sits down, can I ask her to reflect and, if she wants to come back, to address the issue of who decides? I am very grateful for her assurance about intention and that there is no attempt to go further than classical practice has gone, which is a public interest exception to general patient confidentiality. But if, for example, under the new provisions, there were to be a dispute between, say, the police and the relevant health authority and/or the relevant health authority and the individual practitioner, who would decide? That is of course crucial in relation to patient-doctor trust.
National Security Situation — House of Lords, 2018-04-19
Topic: Defense
Peter Ricketts (Crossbench, Unknown): I had the privilege of being the National Security Adviser at the time of what the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, referred to as the worst security and defence review of all time, in 2010. It ran alongside a comprehensive spending review. It is an inevitable law of government that strategic decisions have to be taken in light of the resources available, otherwise you make a strategy and totally fail to fund it, which does not help you either. I would defend that 2010 review. As noble Lords will remember, it inherited a large gap in the programme for the Ministry of Defence, and tried to bring the programme and the defence budget back together. One of the legacies of that most awful defence review ever will be our two aircraft carriers and the F35s on them, which will restore a degree of clout to British defence policy.
Afghanistan — House of Lords, 2021-08-18
Topic: Defense
George Robertson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, over two decades, NATO and those who served with ISAF did much to reduce the terrorist threat to the people of this country. Those who served can be justifiably proud. We were always going to eventually leave Afghanistan to the Afghan people, but, instead of a conditions-based, gradual withdrawal, this shambolic, reckless and disorganised retreat will weaken NATO and the West, strengthen our adversaries and betray those Afghans who trusted us, especially girls and women But hand wringing in debates such as this is not going to help the future. First, we need to prepare for an increased terrorist threat here, as the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, has just warned. Secondly, we need to rebuild the regional coalition to hold the Taliban to account for what it is saying today. Thirdly, we need to learn the lessons of this mission, especially about conducting a distant military operation with an inadequate, half-hearted determination to win it When I was NATO Secretary-General, I repeatedly warned the NATO countries and the wider world that we have to go to Afghanistan or Afghanistan will come to us. I greatly fear that that is just what is going to happen.
Learning Disabilities Mortality Review — House of Lords, 2018-05-09
Topic: Health
Sheila Clare Hollins (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I declare my interest as the chair of a social enterprise that creates communication resources for people with learning disabilities. My own research more than 25 years ago uncovered very similar shocking inequalities. The noble Lord has responded to a question about education but is it not now time for there to be mandatory education for all healthcare professionals? This is not a specialist matter. Does he agree that such training should be co-delivered by people with learning disabilities in order to reduce the fear and lack of understanding among health professionals when it comes to making reasonable adjustments? What action will be taken now?
Learning Disabilities Mortality Review — House of Lords, 2018-05-09
Topic: Health
Ilora Gillian Finlay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, given that the report recommends that there should be a named healthcare co-ordinator, yet there is a serious shortage of experienced learning disability medical and nursing staff and it will take some time for trainees to feed through the system, have the Government considered discussing with the GMC and the Nursing and Midwifery Council ways of attracting back into the service older, currently retired professionals who might have a great deal of wisdom and might be motivated to work in a specific area, act as a person’s advocate and provide on-site teaching in conjunction with the person? They could take on the role of communicator and navigator to develop a strategic pathway for the person with learning difficulties or disabilities, and they could also have a role in teaching people about the signs of sepsis, pneumonia and so on, so that there are early alerts.
Civil Liability Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-05-15
Topic: Health
Igor Judge (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I apologise to the Committee that I was not here for the first 90 seconds of what the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, had to say, but I came puffing in as quickly as I could In our discussions so far, which I entirely understand and support, one feature has not yet been mentioned: the advantage of the PPO in the process from the point of view of the unfortunate man or woman who has suffered serious or catastrophic injuries. Both at the Bar and as a judge, one thing that you have to look at is how long the unfortunate individual concerned will actually live. I am sorry to say so, but when you talk to your client and say, "We have to discuss how long you will live", or to the parents of a child who has suffered catastrophic injuries, "We are discussing how long your little boy or your little girl will live", you are treading on what is obviously deeply sensitive ground. The answer is that it has to be discussed if you are proceeding by way of lump sum, because the calculation of damages depends significantly on whatever the medical experts say the life expectation of the man, the woman, the little boy or the little girl is likely to be The medical experts I dealt with were men and women of the utmost integrity. They would do their best. They would say, "Well, the best I can do is X", or Y or Z. What you discovered after a little while doing these sorts of cases was that, actually, what they were doing—and who can blame them?—was taking an average: "We have had so many patients aged between 21 and 25 who have suffered these sorts of injuries, and they have lived for so long and then they have died". So in addition to the sensitivities that go into a discussion of how long will the victim—the plaintiff, as they used to be in those days—suffer, be alive, and how long will the damages have to cater for his or her interests, there is also the uncertainty of the medical evidence, because no doctor can tell you I still remember a very distinguished surgeon from Stoke Mandeville, when I asked him this question in a conference just before I became a judge, said, "Well, we are asked the most ridiculous questions. We do our best. We offer you the best. The truth is that we do not know when this man or this woman’s will to live will go. When the will to live goes, that is when they will die. Some will wish to live and will have the will to live for longer than others, so what we are offering you is the best we can do". He did not say, and it would not be fair to say, that it is speculative: it is the best they can do but, inevitably, it is almost certainly not going to be right. The end result is that the damages will be too much or too little. The great advantage of the PPO system is that it caters for however long this unfortunate injured person actually lives. I support the idea behind this amendment.