Speeches by Dixon.

“The Public Accounts Committee recently had a hearing on environmental regulation with the Environment Agency and Natural England. Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that the transition to a new regulator is a huge undertaking and that there is a risk while it is being set up? We must not take our eyes off the enf…”

“Will the Minister assure the House that the regional planning for water catchments will have a strong citizen voice embedded in it, as well as drawing on evidence and expertise?”

“Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that under the previous Government, light-touch regulation left our infrastructure crumbling? It is right that there will be asset mapping under the new proposals, so that we can finally know the state of the infrastructure and whether these investments are actually fixing the le…”

“I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to Born in Bradford, an internationally recognised research cohort study. It has just launched the “In Real Life” trial with children in Bradford aged 12 to 15 to test whether reducing their social media use will reduce anxiety and improve their sleep and their relationship with their …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) on securing this important debate. My constituents in Shipley, with the lovely River Wharfe and River Aire flowing through, have been outraged at the levels of water pollution in them. They face h…”

“I am sure that the Minister is aware that it is the National Year of Reading. On the wider opportunities to get our kids off their screens, would she commend the work of the National Literacy Trust in trying to restore the joy of reading, and perhaps share her favourite childhood book with us? Mine was “The Very Hungry…”

“It underlines that the whole point of it was to target this population. Generally, obviously, that money has been diverted into providing core adult social care due to the financial straits that local authorities are in. Clearly, how that gets targeted better at this cohort will be very important.”

“We have been hearing about the reform of the Better Care Fund—you mentioned it again: a “refresh”, a reset. When can we expect to see the details of what you are proposing? Or have I missed it?”

“Thank you. Hopefully colleagues may pick up the point about care homes, which I did not get a chance to come back on.”

“That is the modern service framework.”

“And they have the tools, with the electronic frailty index. Declaration of conflict: some academics in Bradford were part of the team that developed the electronic frailty index, and they are always very keen for me to publicise that.”

“I can see Chris and Sir Jim indicating that they want to come in on this. If you are happy, Chair, I will let them do so.”

“I did not mean, by any means, to criticise GPs, including those in my area, who do a fantastic job. The point I was making is that they were doing a pretty good job of supporting the older, frailer patients, and sometimes, inadvertently, changes that are made can go in the wrong direction, and that this isn’t all for G…”

“Okay. Proactive care is three things: medication review, falls risk assessment and an enriched summary care record. The percentages are in the NAO Report: 16%, 18% and 29%. That seems pretty low, so there are pretty poor levels of performance. Clearly, these are not just tasks for GPs. Potentially, pharmacists can do m…”

“You may like to come back, but maybe this is one for Jim. I have a local GP who said that their practice was doing really well with same-day urgent appointments, with only one or two-week waits for routine appointments. Since digital access was given greater emphasis, the wait for routine appointments is now about thre…”

“Do you think that is a reason why GPs are not doing it, because they are not getting any payment relative to other prospects?”

“So is this no longer incentivised positively?”

“We might come back to care homes in a minute. Sticking with the core role of the GP in identification and proactive care—and the lack of that—it sounds like you put the responsibility with ICBs to do the contract management and oversight of GPs. Do they have the data to know who is doing it and who is not? What are the…”

“I want to focus on the role of the GP in supporting people with frailty. Since the contract in 2017-18, it has been a contractual requirement for GPs to identify registered patients over the age of 65 who are living with moderate to severe frailty, and then to put in place a more proactive care plan and make sure that …”

“The risk of that, surely, is that you end up with nurses sitting behind computer screens looking at patients. How do you maintain human contact? What might be more efficient may be detrimental to other outcomes.”