Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:14 pm on 10 October 2017.
Thank you. I think there were a couple of comments and a couple of questions and I’ll try and answer promptly, Deputy Presiding Officer. On common ailments, I think you’re right—it’s a fair point to make—we want people to go and see the appropriate person in our system, or that they self-medicate and care for themselves. It’s why the roll-out of our community pharmacy programme—the Choose Pharmacy programme for common ailments—is really important. And we’re making very good progress—we’re making more and more pharmacies available for that first point of contact without needing to take up GP time.
On the point about PB Opticians in Pentwyn, I’m genuinely excited about the pilot that they’re taking part in with another larger multiple optician, Specsavers, in the middle of the city and also in your constituency. I’m interested in having a follow-up visit with them, as the model of their piloting is then used throughout a greater period of time. So, I hope to go back over the new year and to look again at, with months of practice, whether that is delivering the gain that we think it could do, both for the clinicians in either setting, but also, importantly, for the citizen as well. Assuming that works, I am then keen to see that rolled out across the rest of the country as well. So, it’s a really exciting pilot to be taking forward.
On the point about obesity, you’ll know that Rebecca Evans is leading our national strategy, to draw together, because we recognise that our challenges about diet and exercise are real and significant challenges in almost every area of activity, and actually, encouraging people to maintain a healthy weight and more activity is a really important part of driving demand out of our system. If we can’t do that, we have very real challenges about having a more sustainable service, so I do look forward to us being able to take advantage of the ability to do that, and I’m optimistic about where we will be as a Government. The challenge is: can we persuade the public to do more things for themselves, because it’s in their interests to do so, and not simply about making life easier for the Government?