Speeches by Dixon.

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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.”

“I am hoping that whoever succeeded me as the chief analyst will be doing their job to ensure that all the modelling is properly quality assured. It would be useful to have a note to understand exactly what the QA is for that demand and capacity modelling, given how critical it is. We know that sometimes those assumptio…”

“We hear a lot about optimism bias. How can you be sure that you are stress-testing the assumptions in your capacity model and not being overly optimistic? We have seen before that we do not get the shift left into the community. What stress-testing are you doing to make sure you do not have an optimism bias within your…”

“Paul, do you want to add anything about how you are handling the programme dependencies between your programme and the neighbourhood programme?”

“Will capital funding be prioritised for community capacity where it has to be brought onstream in order for the new hospitals to operate?”

“I want to pick up on another aspect of the future demand projections: the assumptions about bed capacity and the shift to the community. The number of overnight beds is assumed to be an average of 6% for hospitals built under 2.0. There are questions locally about investment, for example in a Keighley health and wellbe…”

“Thank you, Chair.”

“I very much look forward to seeing the new Airedale hospital. I hope to be a patient there one day.”

“On futureproofing, we are not necessarily very good—or we have not been—in the NHS at looking into the crystal ball. Some of the hospitals will not come on stream until 2036 and beyond. From locking down a design in 2026 to the thing opening in 2036 and hopefully still being operational in 2056 and beyond, are you buil…”

“The Report mentions a “fully assured design in April 2026 following market testing”. Is that market testing with patients and professionals—the people who will have to work in it and be treated in it—or market testing with the builders?”

“That is encouraging. My colleague asked about the impact of the delays in getting Hospital 2.0. I want to probe a bit further about the Hospital 2.0 design. There were a number of elements to it—100% single-room occupancy and so on. To what extent was the 2.0 design really going to deliver for the patient of the future…”

“By capacity, you are talking about the companies and the procurement framework; I am talking about the skilled labour force. How are you ensuring social value, if you are using overseas suppliers, and that these are good jobs for local people like Leighton, who can get training and get on a career path in construction?”

“Charlotte and Paul, on the market, do you have confidence that you will be able to deliver the RAAC hospitals, given the constraints in terms of construction skills and construction companies that have the capabilities to deliver these large and complex new hospitals?”

“Good afternoon. My constituents in Shipley are served by Airedale hospital, which is one of the RAAC hospitals. I was fortunate enough to visit it on Friday. I met Leighton, a construction T-level student, and looked at the refurbishment that is happening to deal with the RAAC, ward by ward, on that site. This is perha…”

“That is fine. We sometimes like short answers, don’t we, Chair?”

“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?”