My Lords, would the Government consider requiring the HFEA to share data on these inappropriate and harmful add-ons with the General Medical Council so that fitness to practise concerns can be acted on?
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, for securing this debate and to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for saying many of the things around primary care and general practice that I want to say. I always feel that I am here defending my own profession.
The NHS was founded on a…
Can the Minister comment on whether the mental health investment standard introduced in the Health and Care Act 2022, which requires the Secretary of State to report annually to Parliament on the share of NHS funding for mental health, will be replicated for primary care?
My Lords, this is a Private Member’s Bill, finally passed in the Commons with a shrinking majority of 26. I have spoken to a number of Labour MPs since, and what is possibly not known is that there was considerable pressure from No. 10 to pass the Bill. It was known that the Prime Minister, Sir Keir…
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Patel on securing this important debate, which places emphasis on diagnostic care, research and the necessary delivery mechanisms to implement the National Cancer Plan.
I am a breast cancer sur…
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his “any old” comment; I am “any old” general practitioner. I will pick up a few issues. One is around the register being made publicly available. I absolutely would not want my name on a publicly available register as somebody providing the services of assisted …
I have talked before about using the term “assisted suicide”. If this becomes available, it will be an unusual event: we are not talking about hundreds of patients wanting an assisted death. I suspect that, within each local area, a list will be available, held at the local health authority or where…
Is the right reverend Prelate aware that coercion can also occur in the consultation room, as I have seen many times? It may actually be safer for the girl—or the child, as he is calling her—to be able to choose the place and the time where she has that consultation.
My Lords, the new GP contract appears to be baking in access over continuity: my GP, when I want to see him. How will the Government protect continuity of care, which is after all what keeps the NHS safe and provides value for money, and which patients welcome?
My Lords, I start by thanking Adam in the Lib Dem office for his help and support, and my good and noble friend Lord Clement-Jones for his support in guiding and helping me navigate around this Bill. As we have heard, this is emergency legislation and there are question marks on whether it should ha…
My Lords, I am also against these amendments. I will disclose a conflict of interest: I started smoking when I was 16—and 33 years later, like many of us who start to smoke at that age, because it is a childhood disease, I gave up.
We know and have heard about all the health effects of smoking, but…
My Lords, as probably the only person in this Chamber who has headed up a royal college not once but twice—the Royal College of General Practitioners—I feel the urge just to defend them and correct what is been said three times in this Chamber. The royal colleges set the standards and the curriculum…
I thank the noble Lord very much. I have to also tell your Lordships that for the last 20 years I have led what is called the practitioner health programme, which has looked after the mental health of the medical workforce—I no longer lead it. To date, about 40,000, mainly doctors, have passed throu…
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 15, 16 and 19. I want to disclose an interest that I did not have at Second Reading: I am now co-chair of the Malta APPG—and I remain of Maltese heritage.
Amendment 19, in my name and that of the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Mendelsohn, seeks to add…
I am grateful to the Minister for the care with which she has addressed my amendments. I will be very brief. I must say I am disappointed, and I have a few points.
I will address Malta first. These are not international medical graduates; these are UK-trained doctors training in a UK university, al…
My Lords, I am completely in favour of Amendment 87. I have permission to use the name of my patient, Melanie Spooner, who died from anorexia nervosa—she died from taking her own life. The end point of anorexia nervosa is often that the patient wants to die. As such, it is a terrible mental illness,…
I was not aware of that research. The evidence shows, and we heard it from the Australian group, that where voluntary assisted death is in place, the provision of palliative care is improved. In Australia, a great deal more resource was put in to providing palliative care. My point, however, is: ple…
My Lords, I thank noble Lords across the Chamber for their contributions, and in particular the noble Lords, Lord Roe and Lord Duvall, for their fantastic maiden speeches. I look forward to working alongside both noble Lords in taking forward this and other Bills. I was particularly interested to he…
We very much appreciate the role that GPs play. Corridor care is related to a whole range of factors, not only the position of GPs. I have heard what the noble Baroness has said and will gladly relate it to my ministerial colleague.
My Lords, until recently I was head of the Royal College of GPs. Our college is fully in favour of decriminalisation of abortion. As Professor Hawthorne said:
“No woman should face prosecution under antiquated laws that were created before women were even allowed to vote. This change in the law is …
My Lords, I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, that this issue will never be a routine tick-box exercise. Being in Tenerife rather than Torbay is the choice of the patient. If they want to spend that time there before they return to the UK and die, it is not our choice. Videos allow patients an…
My Lords, under this amendment as it stands, we would have patients who could not have computerised records, because we have AI sitting behind every computer. The AI starts at the beginning. It starts with our telephone system, so, in fact, the patient would not even be able to use the telephone to …
I have not referred to them as gambling lite. The law is clear that loot boxes are not currently legally considered gambling, for the reasons that the noble Baroness outlined. The grey market is not a legal market, and the Gambling Commission and the Advertising Standards Authority, where appropriat…
As a GP, I understand the sentiment behind this amendment and the power of continuity; in fact, it was what my maiden speech was about yesterday. But modern general practice works in multidisciplinary teams. We have nurse prescribers, pharmacists and physician associates. We also work with other tea…
My Lords, if a patient is at the end of their life in any practice in the NHS, that patient will be discussed at a multidisciplinary team meeting. The patient will be put on an end-of-life pathway and will have a named clinician within the practice to do their care. This would include assisted dying…
My Lords, it is great honour to listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, and to have enjoyed a small sample of the immense knowledge that she will bring to this House. It is, however, somewhat ironic that I am asked to talk about her in a time-limited debate when it is clear it is possible to fill…