Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, as we have heard, the ongoing blockade of the Lachin corridor is causing a humanitarian crisis which has been widely condemned but to no discernible effect. Food is being rationed in Nagorno-Karabakh, schools are closed because of shortages and families have been separated. Does the Minister agree that it is time for the international community and the Government to step up the...
Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for the passionate and determined way he has pursued this vital issue over many years. As the first Armenian in the British Parliament, and as a descendent of a genocide survivor, I owe him a particular debt. I was born in Iraq to Armenian parents made refugees by the 1915 genocide, in which more than 1 million ethnic Armenians were...
Lord Darzi of Denham: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reports of cases of detainment without charge by the government of Myanmar; and what representations they have made to the government of Myanmar to secure the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I have a few minutes to finish off. I thank everyone here for their amazing contributions on this very special day—the 70th anniversary of the NHS. The thoughts and ideas, although diverse, were all united in one thing: not just celebrating the past but designing the future. I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, my noble friend Lord Hunt and the Minister. The noble...
Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, in opening this debate, I declare my interest. I am a practising surgeon in the NHS at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, and the Royal Marsden and am the chair of surgery at Imperial College. I proudly sit as a non-executive director of NHS Improvement. Over the past 10 months, I have led an independent review of the health and care system with the Institute for Public Policy...
Lord Darzi of Denham: I suggest that the last person I will ask about their experience is the person who is conflicted.
Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, for calling this debate. I declare an interest: I am a surgeon working in the NHS, the chair of surgery at Imperial College London and a consultant surgeon at Imperial College and the Royal Marsden NHS trusts. I am also a non-executive director of NHS Improvement. I have always been a passionate champion of change in the NHS, so long as...
Lord Darzi of Denham: My apologies, my Lords. Just to finish, I strongly believe that this debate is based on complete fallacy in terms of the evidence supporting it and I urge the Government not to dismantle the most important hospital contributing to the treatment of congenital and non-congenital heart disease in this country.
Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I acknowledge the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, who is leading on the Bill. Before I begin, I declare an interest in that I sit on the advisory council of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. I also hold an academic appointment at Imperial College London. This country is a research superpower. We have world-leading research that contributes to the...
Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 42. I declare an obvious conflict: I am a recipient of funding from the National Institute of Health Research; I am also a senior fellow in the NIHR. We should all be very proud that huge investment has gone into research in the NHS. The reforms of the past decade have been significant. We have been used as the exemplar across the globe not just on...
Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I enter the debate speaking as a professional working in the health service, but also as someone who has had the opportunity and privilege of serving in government. I might know something, therefore, about the accountability of driving quality and improvements. I also had to learn fairly quickly about the accountability in this democracy and the accountability, as the noble Lord,...
Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, we live in a time of rising fear. We fear losing our jobs, we fear riots in the streets and we fear that our economic future and our country's place in the world are no longer secure. A little over 60 years ago, the National Health Service was founded to take away the fear that getting sick meant going broke, and growing old meant becoming poor, with rising healthcare bills. Today,...
Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I welcome the Statement from the noble Earl and also congratulate him on his leadership in getting us back on track. One of the commonest sayings about a good clinician, whether a doctor or nurse, is that they listen to a patient but also seek the opinion of others if dealing with a complicated case. In this instance, the noble Earl has done both. I am very reassured that the...
Lord Darzi of Denham: Copies of the posters from the Know Your Limits campaign have been placed in the Library. Campaign materials may be ordered, free of cost, from the Department of Health. The attached table shows levels of uptake of these materials by central and local government, the National Health Service and other public bodies. In 2008 posters, fact sheets and handouts were also made available free to all...
Lord Darzi of Denham: Since 20 May 2009, no debate has been held in the House of Lords on the Government's response to Lord Archer's independent inquiry into National Health Service (NHS) supplied contaminated blood and blood products. The reference to "further debate" in a previous reply (WA 14) was intended to relate to the most recent request for a debate on Lord Archer's report following the one secured on...
Lord Darzi of Denham: Since 20 May 2009, no debate has been held in the House of Lords on the Government's response to Lord Archer's independent inquiry into National Health Service (NHS) supplied contaminated blood and blood products. The reference to "further debate" in a previous reply (WA 14) was intended to relate to the most recent request for a debate on Lord Archer's report following the one secured on...
Lord Darzi of Denham: We have no plans to do so, but other reforms may help people, such as direct payments.
Lord Darzi of Denham: The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has advised that since the earlier Answer on 6 July (WA 100-1), it has been informed that St Mary's Hospital, Manchester was deriving stem cell lines from the embryonic masses that form when an embryo outgrows its structure at the time of the authority's inspection on 26 September 2007. The method the centre used for stem cell...
Lord Darzi of Denham: The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has advised that this is not considered to be an optimal method for derivation of stem cells.