Results 1-20 of 972 for in the 'Commons debates' OR in the 'Westminster Hall debates' OR in the 'Lords debates' OR in the 'Northern Ireland Assembly debates' speaker:Lord Darzi of Denham

Health and Social Care Bill: Committee (4th Day) (9 November 2011)

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...

Health and Social Care Bill: Committee (4th Day) (9 November 2011)

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,...

Health and Social Care Bill: Second Reading (11 October 2011)

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,...

NHS: Future Forum — Statement (14 June 2011)

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...

Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Special Exemption) Regulations 2009: Motion to Approve (7 July 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, yet again I am grateful for a very constructive debate on these regulations. I will attempt to address the large number of questions. If I do not complete in time, I will be more than happy to write to noble Lords with more detailed answers. I start with the exemption powers, which the noble Earl, Lord Howe, raised in relation to Regulation 2. The power under which these regulations...

Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Special Exemption) Regulations 2009: Motion to Approve (7 July 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I shall speak to the draft Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Appeals) Regulations, the draft Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Special Exemption) Regulations and the draft Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Consequential Amendments and Transitional and Saving Provisions) Order. I will describe briefly each set of statutory instruments, starting with the appeals regulations. The...

Working Time Directive — Question (29 June 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, the NHS has made excellent progress in implementing this important health and safety legislation, which ensures that patients receive safe, high-quality care from staff who have not worked excessive hours. Only doctors in training remain to become fully compliant by 1 August and two-thirds of them are already working a 48-hour week averaged over 26 weeks. Our overriding principles...

Working Time Directive — Question (29 June 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I am aware of these debates and refer to a publication from the Institute of Medicine in the US, which is the US academy. It stated that the surgery profession was concerned about the shift in work mentality, loss of professionalism and decreased access to quality surgical care; but that it was difficult to assess how much of the complaining represented rhetoric and resistance to...

Working Time Directive — Question (29 June 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, there have been 200 successful applications across 13 specialties, which represents about 3 per cent of all the rotas. I could write to the noble Baroness with details of which regions and what specialties. The 3 per cent is what we believe needs to be derogated by 1 August. However, if there are strains on services within a period of 26 weeks—we calculate the 48-hour week...

Working Time Directive — Question (29 June 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising the issue. She is correct that we have had 10 years to get these rotas compliant. There are 200 rotas and, to be fair to the service—I am sure that the noble Baroness will agree—there are some sub-specialties for which we find it extremely difficult to make these rotas compliant: for example, transplantation in children and...

Working Time Directive — Question (29 June 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I am told that the directive was introduced in Europe at a time when impact assessment was not a part of the introduction of European legislation. However, I share the noble Lord's concerns about its impact on the quality of training for the future generation of surgeons, which is an important issue. To address that, we need to start a dialogue not around the numbers of hours of...

Working Time Directive — Question (29 June 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, any doctor employed in the National Health Service who might provide services within an NHS provider or outside in social community services will be obliged to comply with the 48-hour working time directive.

Working Time Directive — Question (29 June 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord raising that important issue. Anaesthetists should get more rest than surgeons. Some of us may enjoy the odd nap here, but it is a dangerous thing to do in an operating theatre. The answer to the question is valid: a number of rotas have been requested for derogation in anaesthesia, but we hope that within two years we will be able to resolve some of...

Health: Information Prescription — Question (19 May 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, the National Cancer Action Team is working with cancer networks and cancer charities to develop an electronic delivery system that can be used by professionals to deliver information prescriptions to patients at any point during their cancer journey. Eleven tumour-specific information pathways have been developed and are being piloted across 71 sites in England. It is planned that...

Health: Information Prescription — Question (19 May 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, that is correct. The information prescription pilots are addressing, first, the concept of the dispensing of patient prescription information by a clinical nurse specialist who has all the competencies to explain the content of such prescription information. In addition, a written consultation discussion will be recorded and explained by the consultant; prescribing and dispensing...

Health: Information Prescription — Question (19 May 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, the reason these are called information prescriptions rather than notes is because they contain evidence-based information. As to what this process does to the relationship between the clinician and the patients, I personally think it is transforming it from an era of paternalism into an era of partnership between the patient and the clinician.

Health: Information Prescription — Question (19 May 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I commend Christie's and many specialist hospitals around the country. I work in one, the Royal Marsden, which provides services not dissimilar to the ones provided by Christie's. I have little expertise in the banking arrangements of specialist hospitals, but I shall be more than happy to write to my noble friend about the issue.

Health: Information Prescription — Question (19 May 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, we are working with a large number of charities. I acknowledge the championing and pioneering impact of the work of the late Lady Clement-Jones, who introduced this concept through Cancerbackup and, more recently, Macmillan Cancer Support. We are working with CRUK, the biggest cancer charity in this country, supporting research and the evidence base for these information...

Health: Information Prescription — Question (19 May 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, we give guidance to PCTs about the information prescription. As it stands, we are running the pilots to learn more from them but, while we are doing so, we also have 25,000 patient questionnaires seeking patients' views about the information. One thousand, two hundred and fifty patients will be part of the participating pilot while the other half will be the control group without...

Health: Information Prescription — Question (19 May 2009)

Lord Darzi of Denham: My Lords, I agree. I can say that patients' satisfaction and experience tremendously improved when I started to work for the specialist nurse in my colorectal team. I could not agree more; we need to develop specialist nurses and the roles that they will play, but that needs a significant mindset shift, certainly on the part of many of my nursing colleagues, as well as the development of...