(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call Jen Craft, who will speak for up to 15 minutes.
Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That his House has considered the contribution of allied health professionals.
I am very grateful to be able to introduce this debate today, and I would like to begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) on her hard work in securing it.
Allied health professionals, such as occupational therapists, physiotherapists, dieticians, music therapists and so many more, are a vital part of our NHS. They will be crucial to delivering the three shifts in healthcare—in particular, treatment to prevention and hospital to community—that the Secretary of State set out as key to delivering the 10-year health plan and securing the future of the NHS for generations to come. They help people to recover from illness or injury, prevent the onset and development of conditions such as frailty, help people to adjust to new or existing realities of disability, and are vital in enabling and empowering people to take control of their health.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley brings considerable professional experience to this place as a trained physiotherapist. I believe she plans to speak to the importance of those professionals to adult healthcare—indeed, she is best placed to do so—so I will focus primarily on the vital role of allied health professionals in paediatric care.
As a parent with experience of paediatric allied health professionals, I can speak to their completely invaluable contribution to a child’s wellbeing. They not only support the child who is the patient in their care, but the entire family. It can be a real lifeline to have a trusted professional helping you to come to terms with your child’s diagnosis, or perhaps with a shift in reality. I also know, from friends and constituents who have children living with life-limiting conditions, that allied health professionals such as music therapists and drama therapists can be the lifeline that provides moments of joy, as well as extending the lifespan and the time that people get to spend with their children who have very severe and limiting conditions.
I want to put on record that paediatric allied health professionals in particular are not just a “nice to have” or an add-on to the health profession. It is quite easy to overlook the contribution and impact that people such as music therapists—I will give an excellent example—can have on a child’s life. If Members can imagine a child who is non-verbal and potentially has behavioural and communication difficulties and no real form of self-expression, an art therapist, a music therapist or a drama therapist can help to unlock something that traditional healthcare workers perhaps cannot. They can make a real difference to how that child’s care progresses and how their life chances pan out.
Paediatric allied health professionals are also able to reduce the pressure and the intensity on the acute system. Excellent work has been done with music therapists, art therapists and play therapists, who do not currently come under the auspices of allied health professionals but perhaps one day may do, to reduce sometimes even the need for general anaesthetic, MRI scans or CT scans for particular children with complex needs, as they help them to navigate their pathway through the system.
They are also crucial in helping children who perhaps have had a traumatic early start to life to engage with the healthcare system and the wider healthcare system at large. Children who are recovering from, or going through treatment for, cancer or other severe diseases and illnesses, are supported by these professionals to come to terms and to grips with what they are going through and to express themselves. Professions such as occupational therapists, physiotherapists, and speech and language therapists play a vital role in childhood, enabling children who have an additional need in those areas to be able to perform at the same level as their peers and to be the best version of themselves.
The Health and Social Care Committee, of which I am a member, has taken considerable evidence on the crisis in the allied healthcare professions, in particular in paediatrics and early years. We have discussed at length with various organisations such as the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, Speech and Language UK, the Disabled Children’s Partnership and Contact the impact this is having on children, on families and on the professionals themselves.
There are currently 77,500 children who have been on community waiting lists—quite often the way that people access allied health professional care—for over a year.
Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making some fantastic points, especially those highlighting the findings of the Health and Social Care Committee. Allied health professionals are absolutely vital to what we do in the health service. As with health visitors, their numbers seem to be going down at the moment, and nothing is really being done to build them back up. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to build the numbers of allied health professionals back up?
Jen Craft
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She brings a breadth of experience to this place on these issues, both as a member of the Health and Social Care Committee and as a registered nurse. I agree that we do need to take urgent action to rebuild the numbers of allied health professionals and health visitors. The Committee has heard that there has been a halving of the number of health visitors in the past 10 years, which has had an almost catastrophic impact on their ability to deliver the vital role that they play in identifying early need in childhood, particularly in the early years, supporting families where there is an additional need for support and signposting people to other mechanisms, such as Best Start family hubs, to ensure there is that proportionate universalism that is so key to ensuring that those who need help get it in a timely way. I very much agree with my hon. Friend that urgent action needs to be taken to address this, which we will hopefully see in the upcoming NHS workforce plan.
That ties into my earlier point. There are 77,500 children and young people who have been on a community care waiting list for more than a year in England, which is a sixfold rise since the start of 2023. For comparison, only around 1% of adults wait for more than a year for community care, compared with around 25% of children. Thinking about equity in healthcare, a year for a child could be an entire lifetime, which is not the case for an adult.
We also know that there is a really rapid development window in the early years, particularly in the first 1,001 days, where we have the ability to make an impact on the life chances of a child, when all that quick-fire development is happening mentally, physically, socially and emotionally. It is absolutely crucial to get in at the onset and arrest conditions before they become more serious and make a real impact on the life chances of a child through to schooling, employment and beyond.
However, there is a crisis across the allied health professions, particularly in early years. I want to highlight a few areas where this is really bearing fruit. According to the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, four fifths of occupational therapists are unable to meet local demand. The workforce remains focused on secondary care, which limits capacity for prevention and early intervention in communities. Workforce pressure does translate into rising waiting lists; in February 2026, nearly 18,000 children and young people were waiting to see an occupational therapist. This has a huge impact on the life of a young person. Quite often occupational therapist interventions are not costly, but the inference and reference of an expert or specialist is needed to be able to direct people in how best to carry them out. The fact that 18,000 children are waiting to see an OT is really shocking. These delays will have a real impact on professionals being able to act at the very earliest opportunity to turn children’s life chances around.
Speech and language therapy is another area that is experiencing a crisis in both recruitment and retention. According to Speech and Language UK, more than 2 million children in the UK have struggled to speak or understand words and an estimated 1.3 million have a developmental language disorder. The Government must train and recruit enough speech and language therapists to ensure that the trend of a reduction in the profession is arrested. Currently, 16% of NHS speech and language therapy posts in England are vacant, and the vacancy rate for NHS speech and language therapy posts supporting people with a learning disability is even more stark, at 25%. The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists reports that 96% of children’s speech and language therapy services say that recruitment is more or much more challenging than at any time in the past three years.
What that translates to is those in these crucial professions spending the vast majority of their time carrying out assessment work when things have reached a point of crisis or acute care need. They are not getting to see people and intervene at the earliest opportunity, and they are not getting to help families. That is driving the retention crisis, as professionals find themselves unable to perform the role for which they trained and about which they are, by and large, incredibly passionate. Instead, they are spending their time carrying out assessments and recommending therapeutic care that they know is very unlikely to materialise.
The real crisis in the paediatric allied healthcare professions could have a huge knock-on effect on a major part of Government policy found in the education White Paper. I know that the Minister is here to speak for the Department of Health and Social Care, but the Health and Social Care Committee has continually found that there is a real gap in the role of healthcare when it comes to education, health and care plans, and in the special educational needs and disabilities system as a whole.
The White Paper places huge demand on having “experts at hand”—a locally trained workforce who are able to provide specialist support. It names professions such as occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech and language therapy, which fall entirely within the allied health professional workforce, which it is in the gift of the Department of Health and Social Care to provide. However, we know that these occupations are at crisis point; time and again, when we talk to our local integrated care boards, they say that they do not have the people available to fulfil that “expert at hand” role. It is such an important part of the education White Paper that if it fails, I am afraid the entire White Paper is at risk of failure. The crux of it is early and timely intervention, and support for families, school staff and children, in order to make an impact at the earliest possible opportunity. Without this workforce, it cannot and will not succeed.
I ask the Minister: what plans will there be in the upcoming workforce strategy to address the decline in paediatric allied healthcare professionals? What plans are there for training, recruitment and retention, not just to support this important part of the education White Paper, but to address the real health inequality in paediatrics? It is fair to say that the impact on children is so much worse than that on adults receiving healthcare, because they can spend such a significant chunk of their life on a waiting list.
Most importantly, what action is being taken to ensure that these professionals, particularly those in the paediatric workforce, feel valued and know that their contribution really counts towards the delivery of both the current healthcare system and the Government’s wider reform agenda? How can we ensure that the life chances of children are best improved and encouraged through the recruitment, retention and valuing of allied healthcare professionals?
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
I start by paying tribute to the allied health professionals in my constituency and across the country, who work so hard to help people to regain and maintain their health. Indeed, I count many among my friends. From paramedics to physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and so many others, I am always amazed at the skill and dedication of these professionals, who often work under intense pressure.
My constituent Jackie Lees-Howes is one of 174 registered physiotherapists living in my constituency. She highlighted several statistics that should give us pause for thought. Two thirds of the population will likely be living with a long-term health condition by 2035. Community waiting times continue to grow and, to make matters worse, the UK has far fewer physiotherapists per head than comparable countries. However, we know that physiotherapy is highly cost-effective, generating an overall return of around £4 for every £1 invested. It can prevent illness and help people recover more quickly, which reduces the strain on health services. Crucially, physios enable people to stay in and return to work. They help people to reduce pain, obesity and inactivity, contributing to a healthier and more productive population. Expanding the physiotherapy workforce alone could save the NHS hundreds of millions of pounds over the next five years.
However, as we have heard, many physios are struggling even to find a job due to recruitment freezes and a lack of entry-level positions, as well as problems with job security. Worryingly, the Government confirmed last year that they had made no estimate of the impact of recruitment freezes on physiotherapists and physiotherapist support workers.
Twenty-three per cent of my South West Devon constituents have at least one long-term condition. Over 18,000 are classed as disabled, slightly higher than the average across England. Relatively speaking, it is an ageing constituency, with 45% of constituents over the age of 50. That makes the role of physios and other allied health professionals in enabling people to prepare for and rehabilitate from things like cancer treatment and surgery even more vital.
I commend the Rehab Legends campaign led by Kate Tantam, an inspirational constituent of mine who works as an intensive care sister at Derriford hospital. Kate has spent years campaigning to ensure that every patient in the UK can access rehabilitation services towards the end of their stay in intensive care, which would end the current patchy provision. People might ask what Rehab Legends is. It is effectively a multidisciplinary team that helps rehabilitate men and women who have been on life support, because they often see deconditioning in the rest of their body. With rehabilitation, they stand a much better chance of moving on from intensive care.
Why is this important? At the moment, the step down from ICU to a normal ward is huge, and if people do not have the physical ability to take that step, their ultimate rehabilitation and ability to get back out into life will be significantly affected. That point has been raised time and again—it came up during the last Parliament in the work done by the all-party parliamentary group on intensive care, which my predecessor, Sir Gary Streeter, chaired—and it needs to be addressed. While that is not entirely about allied health professionals, I am sure the Minister will be aware of it, and it would be interesting to hear what might be done. Ultimately, the role of rehabilitation is good for patients and for society, because we want to enable everyone who has survived intensive care to leave intensive care and leave hospital.
We have heard plenty about occupational therapists and speech and language therapists. The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists and others have highlighted that the NHS long-term workforce plan is likely to cover only speech and language therapists in the NHS workforce, which overlooks shortages in education and criminal justice settings. As we have heard, there is a real need for a holistic approach to developing the workforce, in recognition of the vital role played by speech and language therapists and others in supporting, in particular, children with special educational needs. Without capacity in the NHS for speech and language therapists, we will not be able to deliver on improving outcomes for some of the most vulnerable in our community, which I am sure we would all want to see.
Finally, I want to mention the work of allied health professionals who assess people for health-related benefits. We know from Department for Work and Pensions data published in January—rather late—that over half of assessors leave in their first year. Assessors describe stressful time constraints and impossible workloads as some of their reasons for leaving.
Under the current Government, one in 10 people in England and Wales is now claiming disability benefits, and the number is only set to increase. I urge the Minister to ensure that all allied health professionals are empowered to assess their patients without undue haste. I worry that otherwise this overstretched system may be incentivising assessors to recommend that a person receives disability benefits without having the appropriate time to thoroughly investigate their needs. Of course, that is in no way a reflection of these professionals themselves, as they are simply doing the job they are there to do with limited time and resources.
Let me finish with three brief requests. First, I urge the Minister to capitalise on the record number of newly qualified physiotherapists. Will she confirm what steps the Department is taking to ensure that newly qualified physiotherapists can be guaranteed an NHS job? Secondly, I urge her to commit to retaining the chief allied health professions officer role to ensure that their clinical expertise is recognised in the Department. Thirdly, a plug for rehabilitation: I would love the Minister to ensure that the role of intensive care rehabilitation is reflected in the NHS workforce plan, and a holistic approach is central to that.
I echo the concerns raised by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, which has criticised the Government’s requirement for integrated care boards to reduce their budgets by 50% and the impact that will have on allied health professional leadership roles. Under the previous Conservative Government, NHS England set out to increase our much-needed AHP workforce, as outlined in the 2023 NHS long-term workforce plan. This included an ambition to increase training places by 25% by 2031-32.
We know how critical allied health professions are to prevention and recovery. The Government must ensure that they prioritise them in the revised NHS workforce plan, which is due to be published this spring. The allied health professions are ideally placed to help people help themselves. If we want a healthier country and a more productive society, we must back them all the way.
Sonia Kumar (Dudley) (Lab)
Happy St George’s day to everyone in the Chamber. As a physiotherapist, I am immensely grateful to have the opportunity to co-lead this debate on the contribution of allied health professionals. This is an historic moment, as it is the first ever debate in this House on AHPs.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, and I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for her leadership and partnership. She set out powerfully why AHPs must be central to SEND and paediatric reform, and I want to broaden that by arguing that AHPs are the NHS’s best-kept secret. They are the most powerful levers we have to keep our health and social care systems sustainable, patient-centred and effective. If we are serious about delivering the Government’s ambition in the 10-year health plan and the 10-year workforce plan—the shifts from hospital to community, from sickness to prevention and from analogue to digital—then allied health professionals must be put at the heart of policy, planning and delivery.
I want to do three things today. First, I want to set out who AHPs are and the scale of their contribution across our lives; secondly, I want to demonstrate with evidence the impact they have on outcomes and on public finances, and why they are worth investing in; and thirdly, I want to set out five concrete demands, recommendations or wishes to the Government, rooted in evidence from AHP bodies and aligned with the three major shifts in the Government’s agenda.
Who are allied health professionals? There are 14 allied health professions covering 15 roles, and together, AHPs form the third largest clinical workforce in the NHS, with over 300,000 on the Health and Care Professions Council register today. They include art therapists, drama therapists, music therapists, dietitians, occupational therapists, operating department practitioners, orthoptists, osteopaths, paramedics, physiotherapists, podiatrists, prosthetists and orthotists, radiographers and, finally, speech and language therapists—which I may need after this speech!
AHPs are present from the start of our lives. Neonatal therapists, including physiotherapists, OTs and speech and language therapists, support premature and sick babies to feed, move and develop, with long-term gains for their health, learning and independence. In adulthood, AHPs are central to keeping us in work and out of hospital. The Government rightly want to get more people back into work, which is exactly what OTs do. OTs run vocational rehab services that enabled 94% of people on long-term sick in one primary care network in Wakefield to return to work, leading to a 40% reduction in fit notes and preventing over 1,700 people from leaving the workforce.
If we want a healthier workforce, dietitians help diabetics to reduce the risk of complications by up to 50%, and people who see a dietitian are two and a half times more likely to achieve their blood sugar targets, which means fewer long-term complications, fewer heart attacks and fewer strokes.
For older people, physiotherapists and OTs lead fall-prevention services and frailty programmes that reduce falls at home by around a third, preventing injuries and avoidable hospital admissions, reducing fractures and maintaining patients’ dignity. I have treated patients who have fallen in their home, who have lain on the floor for hours waiting for an ambulance to arrive. One patient said she lost her dignity and her self-worth as she sat in her own urine, dehydrated, hungry and helpless on the floor, waiting for help. We can reduce such cases. Nobody wants their grandmother, relative or friend to be left on the floor, helpless, for hours.
Earlier access to community podiatry, meanwhile, could reduce amputations by 80%. My podiatry friends prevent the need for life-changing surgery every single day. I have worked on surgical wards where patients said time and time again that they wished they had had intervention earlier. Prosthetists and orthotists ensure that people who have survived major trauma can regain their independence. A seven-day prosthetic service in south-east London reduced the time for lower-limb amputees to become independent with a prosthesis from three months to just seven weeks—so they gained their independence more quickly. Radiographers underpin around 80% of hospital pathways through imaging, and community diagnostic centres staffed by radiographers reduce pressure on urgent and emergency care; I may say that I recently gained one such centre, through this Labour Government, at the Guest hospital.
We have a mental health crisis, and both children and adults are not getting care quickly enough. Art therapists and music and drama therapists provide early intervention in schools and communities, reducing referrals into overwhelmed child and adolescent mental health services and supporting the wellbeing and resilience of NHS staff themselves.
My argument is not just about the care case, however; the economic case is just as compelling. We have clear return on investment data across multiple professions. Self-referral to AHP services has shown a return of around £98 for every £1 invested, by reducing unnecessary GP appointments and enabling early management. Exercise-based self-management programmes, often led by physiotherapists, have demonstrated returns of around £8.80 per £1 invested.
Nutritional interventions led by dietitians to prevent and treat malnutrition deliver returns of about £10 for every £1 invested. Osteopathic care can generate a return of up to £2 per £1 invested in primary care. Physiotherapists across a range of conditions deliver an overall economic return on investment of £4 for every £1 invested, which, modelling suggests, potentially saves the NHS a staggering £700 million over five years and an additional £639 million overall of economic benefit to the UK.
The Government have set out three core shifts, and AHPs are already delivering on all three. First, on digital and data, paramedics are leading “hear and treat” models, using teleconsultations and shared electronic records to assess, advise and refer 999 and 111 callers without always needing to dispatch an ambulance. In London, that approach is saving around 9,200 double-crewed ambulance hours each week, allowing crews to reach the sickest patients faster.
Secondly, on the shift from hospital to neighbourhood care, advanced paramedics working in primary care and urgent community response teams carry out same-day home visits, treat people where they are and prevent unnecessary trips to A&E. A Welsh model reduced avoidable hospital visits by up to 70%. Operating department practitioners are the only profession trained at graduation to work across anaesthetics, surgery and recovery. They can tackle the elective backlog and maintain safety, especially as robotic-assisted surgery and smart operating theatres expand.
Thirdly, on the shift to prevention over sickness, orthoptists are essential to diagnosing early eye conditions and they should be rolled out to screen our children in every school so they can get the best start to life. If we do not fully integrate AHPs into those three shifts, we will simply not achieve the ambitions of the 10-year health plan or the 10-year workforce plan.
Let me turn to my five recommendations, drawing on the evidence from the HCPC, from the expert AHP professional bodies, from patients and from the APPG on AHPs, which I chair. First, we must have AHP leadership at the table at every level. That means retaining and strengthening the chief allied health professions officer role and the director of rehabilitation role in the Department of Health and Social Care. If they are not at the heart of Government, they will simply be forgotten. At system level, every integrated care board and major provider should have a senior AHP director who has parity with medical and nursing directors and is responsible for prevention, rehabilitation and neighbourhood care. That should be mirrored in primary care and neighbourhood boards, where clinical leadership roles should be defined by function and capability, not by base profession.
Secondly, we should expand and evaluate advanced and extended-scope AHP roles in the areas where there is most need and they have most value, such as first-contact physiotherapists in primary care, who reduce secondary care referrals, speed up diagnosis and recovery, and reduce opioid prescribing compared with GP-led care.
Thirdly, we must invest in AHP careers from start to retirement. That means increasing training places in line with population need for each of the 14 professions, while also protecting small and vulnerable professions such as prosthetics and orthotics with minimum training place guarantees. We should fully fund AHP apprenticeships, including for operating department practitioners and dietitians, with backfill. We should guarantee high-quality placements and structured preceptorships—something often forgotten by departments.
We should also embed continuing professional development funding that is embedded into workforce planning, recognising that CPD is a regulatory requirement and a patient safety issue, not a luxury. That includes bringing forward independent prescribing rights across AHP professions, where appropriate, to reduce delays and free up medical time, building on recent legislation for paramedics.
Fourthly, we must fix the digital plumbing to enable multidisciplinary care. AHPs need full, appropriate access to shared care records, ordering and results systems, and remote care tools. Where they have prescribing responsibilities, their digital profiles must reflect that in order for prescribing to be safe, visible and integrated with the whole system. Data must also capture what AHPs do and the outcomes they achieve in function, independence, return to work, quality of life and participation; it is not just contacts and processes.
Fifthly, we should make AHP outcomes visible and use them to drive improvements across the system. At national level, the NHS and DHSC should publish regular data on AHP workforce numbers, vacancies and outcomes across each of the 14 professions, using HCPC and other data to inform the workforce plan and the neighbourhood health framework. At local level, integrated care systems should be required to report on access to AHP services and on key indicators such as falls, amputations, delayed discharge, return to work rates and SEND outcomes, linking those to AHP provision. Where investment in, for example, community podiatry or OT rehabilitation leads to reductions in admissions or benefits, those should be visible and reinvested.
Five demands—five things that would show real progress, backed by experts, backed by patients. I hope the Minister will meet me to discuss them further. If we give AHPs the leadership roles, tools and recognition they deserve, if we embed them in the 10-year workforce plan, in neighbourhood health plans, in SEND reforms and in the women’s health strategy, they will repay us over and over again in reduced hospital admissions, shorter stays, fewer amputations, more people in work, and children and adults able to communicate, learn and live independently. Allied health professionals are ready to deliver, if we choose to let them.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) on securing this important debate and the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for introducing it.
During the Easter recess, I was invited to meet the Dorset Younger Onset Parkinson’s group in Wimborne. Two of the people I met, Simon and Julia, had been diagnosed with the condition in their 30s. The impact on their decisions about family life, their ability to work and save for the future and the effect on their families, who have had to take on caring responsibilities much earlier than most, was clear to see. They told me about the success of their open water swimming group and, in particular, about the impact of the recently introduced walking football team. The Dorset Parky Striders were named team of the year in the impairment section by the Walking Football Association in its grassroots awards last year, and achieved fantastic results at the Sport Parkinson’s walking football tournament earlier this month. Both programmes boost physical health and mental wellbeing and provide peer support.
Simon and Julia shared their concerns about the complete loss of Parkinson’s nurses in the county of Dorset. I have since engaged with University Hospitals Dorset NHS foundation trust to call for the service to be restored without delay, and we have discussed the severe shortage of neurologists across the country, made more acute by our ageing population.
Yet it is not just doctors and nurses who can make a positive difference for people living with Parkinson’s. Neuro physiotherapy focuses not on muscles or joints, but on improving movement, balance, co-ordination and overall quality of life for people living with neurological conditions. At its core, it aims to restore as much independence as possible, using targeted techniques to help people regain their function, relearn movement and adapt to physical challenges. It can be life-changing for individuals recovering from trauma or surgery, as well as for those living with long-term neurological conditions. If people with Parkinson’s can improve their balance and gait, they reduce their risk of falls—incidents that can have a profound impact on their independence, confidence and long-term health. This branch of physiotherapy also benefits people who have experienced strokes, live with multiple sclerosis or have acquired brain injuries. The mental health and wellbeing benefits are significant, as is the reduction in pain that can be achieved through that approach.
I highlight the crucial role of occupational therapy, particularly in educational settings. Around one third of children starting school are not considered to be school-ready, often lacking the communication or functional skills needed to mix confidently with other children. Schools already under pressure are then required to provide significant extra support. Many children who spend more time using tablets than colouring books lack the fine motor skills needed to write, while others struggle with everyday activities such as eating a school meal with a knife and fork. Paediatric occupational therapy offers practical, play-based support and can prevent children from losing confidence or developing a fear or aversion of school by addressing those needs early. Children with special educational needs and disabilities can also be overwhelmed in traditional classroom environments. With growing evidence about the impact of excessive screen time on attention and regulation, small changes to the physical environment can help not only those children but all pupils to improve their focus and learning.
My constituent Anna, who is an occupational therapist, shared the importance of using the profession’s principles in classrooms. On a visit to Colehill first school last year, I was impressed by how the school had removed bright colours from classrooms, replacing them with muted shades and consistent layouts as the children move through the school to create calmer learning spaces. At my son’s specialist setting—Summerwood in Bournemouth—ceilings include sound-absorbing panels and walls are gently curved to support children with neurodiversity to regulate and to reduce distraction. Those adjustments help everyone, not just those with additional needs.
If such approaches work in classrooms, it is likely that they can be effective in workplaces and public spaces too. Reducing harsh fluorescent lighting, lowering background noise and creating opportunities for movement throughout the day are techniques that can be applied widely and successfully. However, inclusion of occupational therapy in programmes such as Experts at Hand is essential to make that happen. The Royal College of Occupational Therapists has welcomed the ambition set out in the SEND White Paper, but has raised serious concerns about whether the sector is sufficiently resourced to develop them. Its most recent workforce survey found that two thirds of respondents did not believe that the profession could currently provide the level of support that children and young people need, highlighting the need to fund more frontline teams.
Taken together, the examples make one thing clear: allied health professionals, as already referenced by the hon. Member for Thurrock, are not a nice-to-have; they are essential in helping people to live independently and participate fully in education and work, in avoiding crisis later on and in ensuring that everyone fulfils their potential. I therefore urge the Government to match their recognition of the importance of allied health professionals with meaningful action in workforce planning and resourcing. If we are serious about prevention, inclusion and long-term value for money across health and education, investing in that workforce and ensuring that funding reaches the frontline must be part of that commitment.
Cat Eccles (Stourbridge) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for her opening speech and my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) for securing this long-overdue debate.
As we have heard, allied health professionals make up the third largest clinical workforce in the NHS, yet sadly, time and again, we only hear about the health service in terms of doctors and nurses. Just last week, the Government announced a welcome package of measures to widen access to healthcare careers for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. It promised 2,000 new nursing apprenticeships and support for 2,000 young people from deprived communities to apply to medical school.
Those commitments really matter, but for AHPs, there was nothing—not a single initiative, not a single pathway, not even a mention. That omission is not an oversight; it is a pattern. For decades, successive Governments have failed to recognise the value of and to invest in this vital part of the NHS workforce. That is especially relevant given the increase in workforce required to deliver on the Department for Education’s SEND reforms. We need more speech and language therapists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists, so why do we not make it easier for more people to access those careers?
Before entering Parliament at the last election, I spent more than 20 years in the NHS as an operating department practitioner, and I am proud to be the first ODP here in Parliament. In fact, my time working in the NHS is in large part what politicised me and drove me to want to make the changes that are desperately needed to highlight and improve the profession. ODPs are unique within the healthcare workforce. At the point of graduation, they are the only professionals fully qualified to work across every area of perioperative practice: anaesthetics, surgery and post-anaesthetic care. My speech will focus on that profession.
As of March 2026, there were 17,906 ODPs registered with the HCPC. They are highly skilled and highly committed, with strong retention rates across the NHS. Many go on to hold senior clinical leadership roles, not just in the operating department, and they play a crucial role in patient safety, service efficiency and the successful running of our theatres. My profession plays a critical role in keeping the NHS functioning and in safeguarding patient safety every single day.
Given the recent reviews into maternity care, I want to highlight the importance of ODPs for maternal and neonatal safety. Nearly half of births are now done by caesarean section and ODPs are involved in every single one, playing a key role in the perinatal period. I therefore commend the College of Operating Department Practitioners for its recent contribution to NHS Resolution’s maternity (perinatal) incentive scheme safety actions. Given the importance of operating department practitioners to the NHS, they should be properly recognised, valued and supported; instead, too often they are forgotten, and that neglect has real consequences.
An area of serious concern is the eligibility of operating department practitioners to supply and administer medicines within their scope of practice using patient group directions, known as PGDs. That is holding the profession back and creates a perverse situation in clinical settings, where an ODP must seek the supervision of a nurse or doctor to administer certain medications. For example, post surgery, it is common for patients to experience post-operative nausea and vomiting. There is a suite of antiemetics that can be given without a prescription under a PGD, but an ODP caring for the nauseous patient cannot give relief without input from a nurse or doctor, thus delaying treatment and putting unnecessary pressure on colleagues. Another example is ODPs working in endoscopy units, where sedatives are routinely administered under a PGD. The ability to administer vaccines is also impacted: during the pandemic, ODPs were unable to support the vaccination effort due to the use of PGDs, yet bizarrely, a healthcare assistant could carry out that role. ODPs are being prevented from making a valuable contribution to public health and system resilience.
The Department recently carried out a consultation on expanding the supply and administration of medicines to ODPs, as well as to physiotherapists, paramedics and diagnostic radiographers, and we must move at pace to level the playing field to benefit both healthcare professionals and their patients. I ask the Minister to commit to adding ODPs to schedule 16 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 and to outline when that change is likely to be implemented.
Another example is the introduction of the graduate guarantee scheme for newly qualified nurses. While well-intentioned, its narrow focus has had the unintended consequence of some newly qualified ODPs finding themselves displaced and unable to secure posts with NHS operating departments. That is not just unfair to those professionals; it is short-sighted and risks wasting vital skills at a time when our health service can least afford it.
A review of band 5 nursing roles is under way, yet no equivalent review is taking place for operating department practitioners or other AHPs. This selective approach risks unpicking the harmonised pay structures established under “Agenda for Change” in 2004. The Royal College of Nursing has long pushed for a separate pay spine for nursing, but that would be absolutely the wrong move, breaking the concept of “one NHS team” and creating two-tier employment, particularly in operating departments.
We must uphold the fundamental principle of equal pay for equal work. Anything less would be a serious step backwards for fairness, morale and workforce cohesion in the NHS. Will the Minister therefore commit to ensuring that any review of band 5 roles includes AHPs so that parity and equity are properly protected?
I know that in a recent letter to the College of Operating Department Practitioners, the Minister stated that
“any review of the national profiles for ODPs would need to be supported by the NHS Staff Council, with the Job Evaluation Group—an established group of the Council—responsible for undertaking that review.”
That absolutely explains the process, but it cannot excuse the delay. It is vital that this work is taken forward promptly and with a clear timetable.
At the same time, ODPs and AHPs more broadly are still waiting for the publication of the NHS workforce plan. That plan, unlike those that came before it, must finally include meaningful, measurable commitments to the third-largest clinical workforce in the NHS, rather than relegating it to the margins once again. ODPs and AHPs more widely are not asking for special treatment; they are asking for recognition, fairness and a clear strategy that reflects the reality of how the NHS actually operates. As the third-largest clinical workforce, they are central to patient safety, service delivery and the long-term sustainability of the health service.
I would like to put on the record my concerns about abolishing the role of the chief AHP in NHS England. While the current chief nursing officer is a strong and passionate advocate of AHPs, I believe that we need the representation and oversight that a chief AHP can provide.
Finally, I would like to highlight the removal of NHS bursaries for allied health professionals. I was lucky enough to train with a bursary, receiving around £500 a month during my two years of training. While the recent introduction of apprenticeships has negated some of the costs of going to university, these places are limited and dependent on NHS trust training budgets. Getting into an excess of £30,000 of debt for a starting salary barely above the minimum wage does not incentivise prospective students to get into these professions.
After decades of being overlooked, warm words are no longer enough. What we need now is action: fair pay structures that are protected, sensible regulation that makes full use of professional skills, clear career pathways and a workforce plan that treats AHPs as integral to the future of the NHS. The message from ODPs and AHPs is clear: they want to contribute, lead and be part of the solution to the pressures facing our health service. It is time for the Government to act and give this vital workforce the recognition and support they have long deserved.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
I thank the hon. Members for Thurrock (Jen Craft) and for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) for bringing this important debate to the House. I echo the sentiments of other Members who have underlined the important work that allied health professionals undertake and recognised the role that these clinicians play in saving lives, providing care and keeping our NHS running. At a time when some patients experience corridor care, the service of allied health professionals is even more pivotal as their work helps to keep people out of A&E. These clinicians lend their expertise to help treat and care for people or to diagnose illnesses before they require urgent attention.
These practitioners have also volunteered to take even more strain off of emergency services, writing to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care last month to request additional responsibilities. In the letter, the allied health professionals asked for the Department of Health and Social Care to consider extending additional independent prescribing powers to their sectors. Currently, they are provided with negligible independent prescribing responsibilities despite many of these clinicians having undertaken the exact same training as other medical professionals. For example, podiatrists can prescribe medicine for their patients, but dietitians have only supplementary prescribing rights and have to be overseen by a doctor.
This issue was raised with me by one of my constituents who is a dietitian and who supported the allied health professionals’ request for additional prescribing responsibilities. She states that this change would not only reduce GP waiting list times, but recognise the studies that allied health professionals have undertaken and the expertise they possess. My constituent highlights the bureaucracy and farce of an allied health professional who runs their own clinic having to go and find a consultant to sign off their prescribing, even though they will have had all their prescribing permissions checked and signed off by the chief pharmacist in the hospital. That creates duplication of work at a time when we desperately need to make the NHS more efficient.
The Government’s Pharmacy First initiative has had success in encouraging patients away from GPs and towards pharmacists, who can prescribe medicine for common ailments. My constituent merely asks that the Government build on their own good work in this area and extend prescription powers to all allied health professionals equally. I would be grateful if the Minister considered my constituent’s request and responded to the letter sent to the Department for Health and Social Care last month.
Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)
I declare an interest as a member of the all-party parliamentary group on allied health professionals. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) on initially securing this important debate before her well-deserved promotion to Parliamentary Private Secretary, and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for leading it.
It is right that we talk about doctors and nurses when we talk about the NHS and the difference that it makes to people’s lives and the lives it saves, but we often overlook the incredible contribution that is made by the group of 14 professions known as allied health professionals. Today I want to share my personal experience of the importance of these key workers. Without them, I would literally not be stood here today in this Chamber, speaking and serving as the Member of Parliament for North Durham.
Allied health professionals worked alongside doctors and nurses, as well as a host of other clinicians and non-clinicians, to save my life when I had a life-threatening illness in 2009 and then, to my mind, gave me my life back as they worked across disciplines to rehabilitate me following severe illness and disability. In 2009, I was hit by a sudden onset neurological illness called POEMS syndrome. It is a rare type of neurological disorder caused by a tumour that can affect multiple systems in the body. I spent five months in hospital being treated for and recovering from this illness, followed by an extensive process of recovery and rehabilitation in the months and years following it.
The symptoms of my condition were similar to multiple sclerosis, meaning that they affected my nervous system, which impaired my mobility, causing me to spend a year using a wheelchair and now to use a walking stick and orthotics, which Members cannot see but—[Interruption] —can just about hear.
Looking through the list of the 14 allied health professions, I was staggered by just how many of them I had been helped by. I will confine myself today to talking about the six or seven professions in this group from which I have personally experienced help and care.
At the beginning of my illness, when I was diagnosed, it was radiographers who contributed to diagnosing the tumour causing my condition, using a range of techniques from skeletal surveys to MRI scans to, eventually, a PET-CT scan. Once the tumour and its role were identified, they mapped its location to prepare me for radiotherapy and administered 30 days of 30 Grays of radiotherapy in the basement of University College London hospital. As I recovered, they measured the shrinkage and eventual elimination of my tumour using further PET-CT scans.
More recently, I have been back to see radiographers. I can actually remember the day of my last MRI scan, because when I went in, Liz Truss was Prime Minister, but when I came back out, the people looking after me said that the Prime Minister had resigned—she was not there for that long, but it felt like a long time inside the MRI machine. The radiographers were using the MRI not because they think there is a risk of recurrence of my illness, but to measure the long-term regrowth of my nervous system.
Following on from that, physiotherapists taught me to walk again. In fact, before that, they got me standing using a standing frame, because I could not stand independently. I had an intensive two-month period of in-patient physiotherapy on the rehabilitation ward of the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square. That was followed by almost a year of out-patient physiotherapy at home and in Saint Leonard’s hospital in Hackney. Support from my physiotherapist took me from being unable even to stand to taking the first faltering steps using a back slab, foot-ups and a walking frame, and then to using two crutches, one crutch and now a walking stick and ankle orthotics. As part of our recovery, the physiotherapists ask every neurological patient on the ward to set themselves a higher-level balance task to walk towards. They told me that I was the first patient they had met who set a higher-level balance goal of leading a canvassing team while carrying a clipboard and pen.
The dietitians in hospital were tasked with helping me rebuild my wasted muscles. They rather kindly asked me what food I like. Fortunately, when I answered “red meat and cheese”, they agreed that, at that stage, those were the ideal sources of protein to rebuild the muscles that had wasted away over five months spent predominantly in a hospital bed. My dietitians also ensured that friends or family occasionally took me from the hospital, in my wheelchair, to Carluccio’s restaurant in the nearby Brunswick centre, because the Italian-style liver and bacon served there very usefully contained the vitamins necessary for nerve regrowth.
As I prepared for, and then adjusted to, life outside a hospital ward, there came the support of occupational therapists, who taught me how to use a kitchen from a wheelchair—and later a perching stool. They taught me how to safely pour boiling water from a kettle when my arms were weakened. They taught me how to write again using a biro, when my ability to grip a pen had gone. Unfortunately, they did not get very far in teaching me how to cook again, as I had never got to grips with cooking even before my illness and disability. They taught me how to transfer safely from a wheelchair to a piece of furniture, and then back to the wheelchair again. They asked me what I needed to do in my life, and then worked as hard as they could to get me back to doing it.
One of the most fundamental tasks that the occupational therapists succeeded in—[Interruption.] Sorry, this is a little emotional. They succeeded in enabling me to get down on to the floor so that I could play with my three-year-old son, and then to get back up again, when my legs were too weak to lift me up and down. When I left hospital, they equipped my wheelchair-accessible flat—which my amazing wife had organised at five days’ notice, after moving from a non-wheelchair-accessible home—with the equipment that I needed to use it safely, such as a seat across the bathtub to shower myself safely.
My occupational therapists oversaw my return to work, explaining to my then employers what adaptations were needed to make to my workplace. They advocated on my behalf for a graded return to work because of the severe fatigue that my illness and disability had caused. They signposted me to the support available to my employers for transport to, from and within work, and for physical adaptations from the Access to Work scheme. They also assessed my workplace to ensure that I could physically get around it from a wheelchair.
Alongside that work, podiatrists helped me with a horrible side effect of having impaired sensory nerves in my feet: I was very susceptible to ingrown toenails. At first, I could not feel them because of nerve damage, but when they cut through, the pain was excruciating. I thank the podiatrists for dealing with that, and alleviating those nasty side effects, in the first few months after I left hospital.
I still receive ongoing support from the orthotists, who, once I was able to walk, fitted me with the ankle/foot orthoses—often known as splints—that I wear on each foot. They stop me from tripping over my feet—even now my weak ankle nerves cause foot drop. I continue to rely on the orthotists’ services when having my orthoses repaired, refurbished or replaced as necessary. That reminds me: I have an outstanding appointment to schedule with University Hospital of North Durham to have my orthoses refurbished in the coming months.
I am fairly sure that operating department practitioners were involved in my treatment, when I had an operation to enable analysis of the tumour once it had been located, but as I was under general anaesthetic and completely unconscious at the time, I cannot speak for who was in the room with the surgeon.
By now, it will be clear to Members across the House that I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to a wide array of people across the allied health professional workforce. It is that gratitude that drove me to speak in this debate in order to call for greater prioritisation of AHPs in NHS workforce planning and for parity of esteem with medics and nurses. I join colleagues in asking the Minister to recognise the critical contribution that allied health professionals make to allow people like me to live happy and healthy lives.
To back that recognition, the Government could retain in the Department for Health and Social Care the roles of chief allied health professions officer and director of rehabilitation, confirm which Minister holds responsibility for AHPs—although, given the very welcome presence of my hon. Friend the Minister for Secondary Care on the Front Bench, I think I might be able to guess—and restore quarterly ministerial meetings with the Allied Health Professions Federation.
Some of the specific professions involved in my treatment face their own unique challenges, which I want to ask the Government to address. The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, with which I have worked closely in recent months, is campaigning to embed physiotherapy leadership in neighbourhoods. I back its calls for the upcoming NHS 10-year workforce plan to expand the capacity of core community rehabilitation services. Given the record number of physiotherapy graduates, and the high level of public trust in physiotherapists, who empower people to manage symptoms and improve general health, now is the time to take advantage of the healthy supply of physiotherapists to ensure that people can live as well as possible for as long as possible.
It is clear to me that physiotherapists can play a role in the Government’s ambitious healthcare shift away from hospitals and closer communities. However, in recent years recruitment freezes in physiotherapy have risked wasting the potential of newly qualified physios, so will the Minister meet me and representatives from the CSP to discuss widening access to physio careers through apprenticeship programmes, guaranteed NHS jobs for all newly qualified physio graduates—as has been rolled out for nurses—and other challenges facing this vital workforce? [Interruption.] I will come to a conclusion as quickly as I can, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The British Association of Prosthetics and Orthotics is asking for the creation of a formal “small and vulnerable profession” designation within NHS workforce and education policy in order to trigger proportionate safeguards and guarantees for those workers. The Royal College of Occupational Therapists is calling on the Government to establish national commissioning guidance to make occupational therapy a central component of the neighbourhood health systems that the Government are delivering. Will the Minister address those particular industry concerns and outline the Government’s broader support for the whole family of AHPs?
Without those professionals, I would not have got my life back. I want to use this platform to thank them, and to say that their fantastic professions need the pay, incentives and career structure to encourage the next generation of allied health professionals to support future generations in the way that so many of them have supported me.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
I do not think that anyone could have better described the importance of AHPs than my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst). I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) for securing the debate and for her tireless work as a physiotherapist; to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for leading the debate; and to my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) for all her work as an operating department practitioner—a profession that is often overlooked.
Allied health professionals are such an important part of our healthcare workforce, yet they are undervalued and poorly represented in NHS hierarchies. I am incredibly proud of the Government’s achievements within the NHS, including the £29 billion of additional funding—the largest injection of cash into our health service since Labour was last in government—a 320,000 fall in waiting list numbers, 5 million more NHS appointments, and the recruitment of 2,500 new GPs.
In my constituency, we have started to see the benefits of that investment for local people. George Eliot hospital has eliminated corridor care despite a difficult winter. It has also seen a 5% improvement in waiting lists. GP surgeries in Polesworth, Bedworth, Coleshill and Keresley are all getting upgrades, so that more patients can see physiotherapists, occupational therapists and other professionals much closer to home. There is much more to do, of course, but we should be proud of the progress we have made in less than two years.
These improvements would not have happened without the support of allied health professionals. Their workforce represents over 276,000 practitioners, aided by skilled support workers. The Government are right to be ambitious in their target to deliver more care in the community and invest in neighbourhood health centres across the country. To do that, we will rely on allied health professionals to support patients. We must embed dietitians, occupational therapists, osteopaths and physiotherapists into neighbourhood health if we are to succeed in treating more people closer to home.
I commend the work done on frailty by the Hazelwood group practice in Coleshill as part of the Apollo primary care network. I also pay tribute to the work of paramedics, radiographers and physios. My constituency is semi-rural and without a hospital, so the quick work of paramedics is crucial in providing urgent initial care and supporting my constituents on their journey to hospital.
Radiographers are vital in supporting patients through early diagnosis, as I found out myself a couple of weeks ago. Some 80% of hospital pathways require their skills for imaging to support a diagnosis. As part of this Government’s plans to bring care into the community, we must ensure that more radiographers are in community diagnostic centres like the one recently opened at the George Eliot hospital in Nuneaton or available through mobile services, to reduce pressure on hospitals. That way, patients can be treated faster and closer to home. On their behalf, I would like to ask the Minister to keep the chief allied health professions officer post in the Department of Health and Social Care and work with local ICBs to establish AHP director roles that have parity with medical directors and directors of nursing.
In 2018 my father had a stroke. The staff at George Eliot hospital were wonderful and took really good care of him. I cannot thank them enough for the support they gave him, but there reached a point when I was wondering, why is my elderly father still stuck in hospital? Why can he not leave, so that we can help him get better from the comfort of his own home and my elderly mum does not have to travel 10 miles each day to see him? What is the plan for him and other stroke patients after they leave hospital?
My dad, like many people recovering from a stroke, could not get the same support from speech and language therapy services at home or in his neighbourhood. Those are vital services that help patients learn to swallow and slowly regain their ability to speak and be understood. So my dad had to stay in hospital. He is definitely a fighter, and he regained his speech and his ability to sing in a choir. Patients like him deserve to be able to see speech and language therapists in their local neighbourhood, so that they can recover at home once they are medically fit to leave hospital.
This is not about freeing up spaces in hospital; it is about giving patients choice and the best care we can, so that they can recover comfortably at home, surrounded by friends and family. I will continue to work with all allied health professionals and their representative bodies to ensure that they are a core part of this Government’s 10-year health plan.
Finally, as a tennis player, I would like to thank the thousands of independent physiotherapists, support workers and students working in local gyms, on the high street, in professional sports facilities and at matches at weekends. Their support is vital to ensure that people can continue to play sport as they get older and that an injury does not stop them getting back on the court. We promised to deliver healthcare in the community, and with the support of allied health professionals, I am confident we will be able to do so successfully.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for leading the debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar), who has done so much incredible work as a physiotherapist previously and a staunch advocate of allied health professionals since her first day in this House. I pay tribute to the AHP community across my constituency.
In my past life, I had the pleasure of working at the Coventry and Warwickshire partnership NHS trust, and that experience shapes how I have approached this debate. Many Members have rightly recognised the roles of physiotherapists, paramedics, occupational therapists, and speech and language therapists, which are well recognised and rightly valued. But under the AHP umbrella are an incredible group of people I would like to pay tribute to: music, art and drama therapists. Those roles are not “nice to haves”; they are a vital part of our mental health workforce.
I saw during my time at CWPT how powerful the benefits of creative therapy are. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock described so eloquently in her excellent speech focused on paediatrics, for lots of people who have experienced trauma, who live with conditions that can make verbal communication difficult or who do not yet speak fluent English, such as refugees, common forms of talking therapy that work for so many people do not necessarily work for them. For those experiencing mutism, for example, creative therapies can be the only way they can access treatment. Through art, music and drama, lots of patients are able to process their experiences, communicate their emotions and rebuild a sense of self in ways that traditional models do not always reach.
At CWPT, there was a real investment in these services. Importantly, many therapists were directly employed, rather than brought in on short-term contracts. That not only offers stability to the workforce, but for patients it allows services to embed, relationships to develop and outcomes undoubtedly to improve. I had the privilege of seeing and hearing those patients’ stories for myself, and in so many cases the work of those therapists was quite literally life-changing.
Despite that, these professionals are often in short supply. Part of that issue, in my view, is visibility. These roles often are not spoken about in schools, careers advice and even, at times, in our broader conversations about the NHS workforce. There are now established degree and training pathways for these roles. They are skilled professions that require significant training and expertise and are recognised through professional bodies regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council, yet many young people with a creative inclination and flare are all too often unaware of them as a possible career path. That is a missed opportunity, both for those individuals, who often have a passion for caring and for sharing their creativity, and for our NHS and social care.
The Government are rightly focused on getting more people into work—in particular young people, who are facing a tough job market—and we should be thinking expansively about the routes that are available to them, including in creative and arts-based professions. For those who are drawn to the arts, music and drama, these roles can be a way to build a deeply rewarding, stable career in the NHS—a career that combines creativity with care and contributes directly to patient wellbeing. Importantly, for those who might have spent years navigating the uncertainty of freelance creative industries, these professions can provide a real sense of stability, progression and purpose, without them having to leave any of their skills behind. That is particularly true at times of life when stability is so valuable, such as when starting a family.
The Government have been clear that the workforce plan that will stem from the very welcome 10-year plan will focus on how we can make good on its priorities, including shifting care closer to patients, bringing fragmented services together and a greater focus on mental health. Sitting at the centre of the Venn diagram of all those things is creative therapies. Let us start with the therapists of tomorrow by improving awareness of those roles through schools, colleges and careers services. Let us look at widening training pathways, to ensure that these careers are open to a wide range of people, including career switchers.
Currently, there is a level 7—master’s level—degree apprenticeship for the three main forms of creative therapy, but as of this year, funding for level 7 apprenticeships has been largely restricted to under-21s, so the number of people accessing those higher-level courses will now be very small. Given that in mental health, many staff move up into roles from within the workforce, it would be fantastic if an apprenticeship pathway through to creative therapist roles could be developed, similar to what we see in nursing.
Above all, we should recognise that the impact of those already in these roles is not peripheral; it is central to so many patients’ care and recovery. Investing in this area would not only support individual recovery, which would ease pressure elsewhere in the system and enable the earlier intervention that so many Members have referred to, but lead to improved engagement and, ultimately, better outcomes. Art therapists, music therapists and drama therapists might not be the first roles we think of in mental health, but they can often be the ones that help our most vulnerable and isolated constituents to start to open up and communicate their experiences—often for the first time—and guide the way to wellbeing.
We talk a lot in this place about workforce shortages, and rightly so. There are thousands of young people out there, including in Cannock Chase, who love music, art and drama but perhaps worry about whether there is a career for them in creative industries. They might have absolutely no idea about the enormous contribution they would make in our healthcare workforce. This is partly about recognition, but it is also about being more imaginative in how we think about both healthcare and careers advice. It is a chance to give more people a way to use their creative passion to transform lives.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for opening the debate, and to the hon. Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) for her work on the APPG and as a physiotherapist.
Medical staff in my constituency and across the country are the backbone of our national health service. While doctors and nurses are often front of mind when the public think about the NHS workforce, as we have heard this afternoon an army of highly skilled professionals keep our health services running every single day. They save lives, provide comfort in moments of fear and, as set out so brilliantly by the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), aid rehabilitation, enabling people to get back to their normal lives.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I am conscious that this debate is on a devolved matter, but I thought it worth mentioning that the Allied Health Professions Federation held a hustings for the Scottish Parliament elections earlier today. Topics included having input from health professionals during primary care and the crisis in vacancies. On rehab, does my hon. Friend agree that we need to ensure that allied health professionals get the access they need to, for example, care home patients, so that we can get those people out of hospital and into the right setting to receive the care that they need?
Alison Bennett
My hon. Friend is right. We know that with the right support, often from allied health professionals, people do not need to present at A&E and they can get out of hospital and into suitable accommodation with the right level of support much more quickly, which is better for them as individuals and also supports the NHS in carrying out its functions more efficiently.
Many of our allied health professionals—the third largest professional group in the NHS—do amazing work, as we have heard. They are central to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and public health. As pressures on our health and care services have grown, their role has become indispensable. From the paramedic first on the scene in an emergency, to the radiographer enabling rapid diagnosis and the physiotherapist helping someone regain their independence, those professionals are there at every stage of the patient journey. They are often the difference between life and death, between recovery and long-term disability, between dependence and independence, yet their contribution is overlooked.
After years of mismanagement, our NHS has been left on its knees. Nowhere is that more visible than in our emergency departments. We have seen avoidable deaths in A&E waiting rooms, we have seen patients waiting hours for ambulances, and we have seen the shocking normalisation of corridor care—patients left on trolleys without privacy, dignity or proper attention. There are now even reports of people receiving end-of-life care in hospital corridors. This is a health system under intolerable strain. Public confidence is being shaken. It is no surprise that two thirds of people are worried about long A&E waits.
The data is stark. Last year saw the worst level of 12-hour trolley waits ever recorded. On average, hospital trusts are now seeing thousands of patients waiting more than 24 hours in A&E every year. That is unacceptable. The Liberal Democrats have been leading the call to end corridor care within a year. We believe the crisis can be tackled, but only with serious, practical action. That includes creating a bank of safety net social care places and expanding step-down care for patients who are medically fit to leave hospital but still need support.
At the heart of the solution are allied health professionals. By delivering rehabilitation packages through physio- therapists, occupational therapists and others, we can help people leave hospital sooner, recover more quickly, and regain their independence at home. That is better for patients and it is essential for freeing up hospital capacity and ending the gridlock in A&E.
Will the Government commit to ending corridor care and 12-hour waits this year, and will they back that commitment with real investment in community care, social care and the allied health workforce? If we are to rely on those professionals—as we must, and as we already do—we need to support them properly. Right now, working conditions across the NHS are driving morale into the ground. Staff face inflexible rotas, burnout and, shockingly, workplace violence. That is not sustainable for them or for the patients they serve.
The Liberal Democrats have a number of proposals that we would be grateful if the Minister considered. We would establish a truly independent pay review body. We would expand access to affordable childcare so NHS staff can balance their family with their careers. We are also calling for action on everyday costs such as reducing car parking charges at hospitals. Those are practical steps that would make a real difference.
There are also growing staffing pressures among the allied health professionals. The Library reports that there has been a 57% increase in allied health professional full-time equivalents over the last decade, with the number of employees rising from 75,000 to 118,000. However, in conversations with the Royal College of Podiatry, it described high vacancy levels for NHS podiatry positions, a declining pipeline of applications to study podiatry programmes in England and rising demand for podiatrists’ services, all the while with the draw of working in the private sector. In physiotherapy, eight in 10 physiotherapists report that they do not have enough staff to meet demand, yet many services are facing recruitment freezes. Those contradictions speak volumes.
The long-delayed national workforce plan must finally deliver for allied health professionals. It must address regional shortages and embed these roles fully into workforce planning from the outset, not as an afterthought. If the Government are serious about shifting care into the community and focusing on prevention, investment in AHPs is essential. Too often, we see a gap between rhetoric and reality. While Ministers talk about prevention, funding decisions continue to prioritise short-term fixes elsewhere.
Our NHS is one of this country’s greatest achievements, but it cannot function without the people who sustain it. Allied health professionals are highly trained, autonomous practitioners. There are nearly 118,000 of them working across the NHS in England. They are central to modern, multidisciplinary care and to the future of a sustainable NHS. If we want a health service that prevents illness, reduces inequalities, and supports people to live healthier, longer lives, we must recognise and invest in their contribution. We must continue to fight for an NHS that works for patients, and we will continue to stand up for the staff, especially those too often overlooked, who are doing everything they can to get our NHS back on its feet, because they deserve nothing less.
Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)
May I wish you a very happy St George’s day, Madam Deputy Speaker?
It is a privilege to respond to this debate on behalf of His Majesty’s most loyal Opposition and to recognise the invaluable contribution of allied health professionals, especially those living and working in my Farnham and Bordon constituency. Having spent much of my career in the healthcare sector, including time working for the College of Occupational Therapists—before it was granted its royal title, which shows how old I am—I have seen at first hand the critical role those professionals play across health and social care, often without the recognition they deserve.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) on leading today’s debate, and the hon. Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) , a physiotherapist herself, for her work in securing it. The House is right to give time to those who do so much, often without fanfare. I want also to mention the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), whose experience of care by allied health professionals was both extraordinarily moving and amusing. I have taken to heart his recommendation of a diet of red meat and cheese.
If this debate is to mean anything, we must address the central issue, which is workforce. Without a clear and credible workforce plan, warm words about allied health professionals will not translate into better care for patients. The Government’s still-awaited NHS workforce plan, due this spring, will be crucial. It is meant to set out how the ambitions of the 10-year health plan will be delivered. Without it, there remains real uncertainty about how workforce shortages and rising demands will be addressed, as the hon. Member for Thurrock highlighted so powerfully when she summed up the situation as “a crisis”. That matters, because allied health professionals are already helping to unlock capacity across the system. We see that clearly in the expansion of independent prescribing, which we as Conservatives support. By enabling allied health professionals to take on those responsibilities, pressure is reduced on GPs and specialists, and patients receive faster, more efficient care. It is a practical reform that improves outcomes, but one that depends on proper planning and support in order to scale it.
The challenge does not stop in the NHS; it extends directly into education and special educational needs and disabilities provision. As the vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for SEND, I see the growing reliance on an expanded workforce of therapists and specialists to support children with additional needs. From experience of working alongside occupational therapists early in my career, I know just how critical that support can be in helping children to access education and achieve their potential.
However, the pipeline simply does not match the ambition. Training an educational psychologist can take up to eight years and other key roles, such as speech and language therapists or occupational therapists, take many years to develop. Without a clear and actionable workforce plan, local authorities are left trying to bridge that gap themselves, often without the certainty or the funding required to do so effectively. I saw that at first hand in Hampshire, as I am sure you have, Madam Deputy Speaker. Proposed changes to therapy provision raised real concerns among professionals in my constituency, but through consultation, the council listened, protected staff and expanded the specialist roles. That is the difference that practical, locally informed decision making can make, protecting services while improving provision.
Unfortunately, by contrast, there is a growing concern that the Government’s approach risks creating uncertainty, rather than clarity. That is particularly striking when we consider the progress that had begun under the previous Conservative Government, rightly outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) in her superb speech. Through the AHP strategy and the long-term workforce plan, clear steps were set out to expand the workforce, increase training places and grow apprenticeship routes into these vital professions. It was not perfect, but it was a plan.
What we see now, however, are drifts: no published workforce plan, no clear assessment of the impact of recruitment challenges, and decisions that risk weakening the very structures needed to support AHPs. The requirement for integrated care boards to reduce their budgets has already raised serious concerns. The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy has warned about the impact on leadership roles, and we are already seeing a reduction in senior AHP positions across the system. That is not strengthening the workforce but undermining it.
Jen Craft
I welcome the hon. Member’s comments on supporting the SEND White Paper through an allied health professional workforce plan. However, there is something of an amnesiac recollection from Conservative Members when it comes to looking at a decline in numbers of healthcare professionals, and allied health professionals are not unique in that. Would he like to say what happened to the figures for allied health professionals over the 14 years when the Conservative Government were in office?
Gregory Stafford
The hon. Lady, with whom I serve on the Health and Social Care Committee, always raises important points. What the last Government were trying to do—certainly by the end—with their workforce plan, which was the first of its kind, was to ensure that the workforce began to expand again. That is what all of us across the House are hoping that this Government will build on.
The Government have confirmed that they have no plans to extend the job guarantee to allied health professionals, and have made no assessments of the impact of recruitment delays on patient care. For a Government who often speak about the importance of the NHS, it is difficult to understand why the very professionals who play such a central role in recovery, rehabilitation and patient flow are being overlooked, as the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) passionately highlighted. If we are serious about reducing waiting lists, improving outcomes and supporting patients across both health and education, allied health professionals are not optional but essential—and essential services require serious planning.
In conclusion, I will ask the Minister three simple questions. First, when will the NHS workforce plan be published and how will it specifically address the shortages in allied health professionals? Secondly, will the Government reconsider their decision not to include AHPs in the job guarantee, given the clear need to support and retain this workforce? Thirdly, what steps will be taken to ensure that NHS organisations and local services can recruit and retain the AHPs they need, particularly in under-resourced areas?
Without clear answers to those questions the risk is clear: we will continue to ask more of allied health professionals while giving them less support to deliver. From what I have seen throughout my career, including in my work with occupational therapists, that is not a position that any of us should accept for the workforce or the patients who depend on them
The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)
I add my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for introducing the debate and to my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) for bringing it forward and setting out her role as a physiotherapist.
I am grateful for the opportunity to set out the practical contribution of AHPs to delivering this Government’s priorities for health and care. I agree with many hon. Members who have spoken that the 10-year health plan, “Fit for the Future”, and the forthcoming 10-year workforce plan, due in the spring—we are now in the spring, so hopefully very soon—provide a real opportunity to optimise the AHP contribution for the years ahead, including by supporting AHPs to work at the top of their skills. As a Department, we are clear that the three shifts that patients and the public need—more care in the community, a stronger focus on prevention and better use of digital and data—must be delivered in day-to-day services. AHPs will be central to making that happen.
As we have heard, AHPs make up the third largest workforce in the NHS. They include physiotherapists, occupational therapists, radiographers, speech and language therapists, paramedics, dietitians, podiatrists, and arts therapists, among others. They work across hospital, community, primary care, mental health and education settings, bringing regulated, evidence-based practice that supports faster access, better outcomes and better value for the taxpayer.
The contribution of AHPs is not confined to any single service line. AHPs assess, diagnose, treat and rehabilitate. They support self-management and they work in multidisciplinary teams spanning health, social care and education. That combination—clinical autonomy alongside team-based working—is exactly what we need to redesign services around neighbourhoods and around people’s day-to-day lives.
First, on the shift to community, AHPs work across neighbourhoods, primary care and community services, including in people’s homes. They prevent avoidable admissions and they help people leave hospital sooner and recover well. Physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists support rehabilitation and independent living. Paramedics are increasingly part of urgent community response and neighbourhood teams, helping people get the right care, first time, closer to home.
Secondly, on the shift to prevention, prevention is fundamental to AHP practice, as we have heard. AHPs support earlier intervention for long-term conditions. They play a key role in falls prevention, respiratory disease and musculoskeletal health, and in improving population wellbeing. That work helps people stay well and independent, and it reduces pressure on urgent and emergency care and on hospital waiting lists. That contribution aligns directly with the Government’s work and health agenda.
By providing early intervention and rehabilitation, AHPs help people with long-term conditions, disability or injury to remain in, return to and thrive in work. We heard no better example of the role that they play than in the very moving speech by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst). I thank him for sharing his experience and I hope he is still enjoying playing with his son. It is good to have him in the Chamber being able to articulate that experience, which is not easy to do. Whether supporting recovery after illness, managing pain and fatigue, or enabling reasonable adjustments and independence, AHPs reduce avoidable time away from employment and help more people to remain economically active, benefiting individuals, employers and the wider economy.
Thirdly, on the shift to digital, AHPs are helping to lead the adoption of digital tools to improve access and continuity. That ranges from imaging and diagnostic technologies led by radiographers, to virtual rehabilitation, remote monitoring and data-enabled triage. Alongside shared care records, these approaches can support safer, more efficient and more personalised care. Remote consultations should be used where appropriate.
Across each of those shifts, AHPs also make an important contribution to mental health and wider wellbeing. Occupational therapists support recovery and independence, speech and language therapists help to address communication needs that can affect engagement, and arts therapies, which we heard about, including art, music and drama therapy, offer clinically led support. As was well articulated by many, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), those skills in neighbourhood teams can help to provide earlier, more joined-up care, including for children and young people.
I place particular emphasis on children and young people, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock did so ably, including those with special educational needs and disabilities. AHPs play a vital role in early identification, assessment and intervention, supporting communication, mobility, sensory needs, mental wellbeing and participation in education and community life. Speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, physios and others work alongside families and schools so that children can develop, learn and thrive, meeting their needs before they escalate.
For children with SEND, timely access to AHP support is fundamental. Delays affect speech and language development, social interaction and educational attainment, and they can place additional pressure on families and carers. That is why work is already in train with the Department for Education, NHS England, integrated care boards and partners in local government to strengthen community speech and language therapy and other AHP provision. Our aim is earlier support closer to home and better, joined-up services.
I recognise that many hon. Members will understandably focus on the current access and waiting times, particularly for speech and language therapy. We as constituency MPs all recognise that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock said, that is critical to achieving the Government’s ambition.
More broadly, in neighbourhoods, AHPs support people of all ages to avoid deterioration and to recover well through rapid assessment, rehabilitation and support management. That point was well made by the hon. Members for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) and for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade). Working alongside GPs, community nursing, social care, mental health services and the voluntary sector, they help prevent complications, reduce frailty and improve long-term condition management, easing pressure on acute services, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor) rightly said. I thank her for her support for George Eliot hospital as it improves its services for her constituents.
Delivering those shifts depends on having the right AHP workforce in the right place. That includes those smaller AHP professions such as podiatry, orthoptics, and prosthetics and orthotics whose specialist skills are essential to prevention, independence and quality of life. Through our work with system leaders and professional bodies, we will continue to support education and training routes to improve retention and enable new ways of working across systems so that people can access specialist expertise when they need it.
As part of enabling AHPs to work at the top of their skills—that is what we want—we are also taking forward work to increase their ability to prescribe medicines where it is safe and appropriate to do so. That point was well made by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney); others noted that duplication issue. I confirm to my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles)—I thank her for her expertise in operating department practitioners—that that does include ODPs.
We must also address variation in access, including in rural and underserved areas. Neighbourhood delivery models, stronger integration with local authorities and the voluntary sector, and sensible use of digital services can all help broaden reach while maintaining safe, personalised care for those who need face-to-face support.
AHPs bring the clinical skills and professional leadership to redesign pathways, strengthen neighbourhood teams and intervene earlier so that people receive effective care in the right place at the right time. My focus as the lead Minister for the workforce plan in the Department of Health and Social Care is to support systems to deliver those priorities. As part of that, I work closely with the chief allied health professions officer—it was news both to her and to me that there is concern about her ongoing role—and will continue to do so. I thank her for her help so far—indeed, including in preparing for this debate.
The 10-year plan set the direction to rebuild the NHS, but it absolutely depends on all our staff to deliver it. The long-term workforce plan produced by the previous Government essentially looked at supply, but it did not look at future service models, it did not look at the role of technology, it did not ensure sustainability for the future and it did not base itself on future workforce models. That is some of the reason why we have problems with, for example, bottlenecks and frustration—particularly for young people coming out of their training—in not being able to get into the right roles in the right places. That is part of the problem that we need to address with the workforce plan, which we will bringing forward in the spring, so that we ensure patients and the public have the services they deserve, and particularly so that young people and children get the best start in life. I look forward to bringing forward those plans.
I have been asked again for several meetings—it is always nice to be popular for meetings—and I look forward to working with people as we bring forward that plan. We are working closely with all representatives of the sector—I know that there is a lot of interest in this work—and I very much look forward to working with hon. Members in the House as we go forward with delivering the plan.
Jen Craft
I really appreciate the Minister giving way—I know that she was concluding her speech. She obviously cannot reveal the contents of the workforce plan before it is published, but particularly on paediatric care, can I ask specifically for reassurance that there is something in mind for the plan when it comes to servicing the SEND Experts at Hand provision? That will be key to delivering the White Paper aims and key to young people’s life chances. We hope to be able to see that soon.
Karin Smyth
I was literally on my last words, so let me go back. My hon. Friend tempts me to reveal more about the workforce plan. As I said, we are not waiting for the plan to work with our colleagues across the Department for Education, NHS England, locally in ICBs and so on to ensure that we deliver on that ambition. We will of course set out the overarching plan and where we want to have people in the future. I look forward to working with her and others on how that will work. We certainly want to engage with colleagues across the piece.
As my hon. Friend knows, the SEND White Paper—we all know this through our constituency work—is central to that and to the Government’s wider ambitions. We are due to publish the plan in the spring; I look forward to doing so very soon. I look forward to working with hon. Members on that, and I thank them for the debate and their contributions this afternoon.
Jen Craft
I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) said, this is the first time a debate about the contribution of allied health professionals has happened in this place. It is really important to acknowledge the contribution they make to our health services and to healthcare in general. Particular thanks go to my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) for sharing his personal story about the contribution of so many different allied health professionals in bringing him back to health—basically bringing him back to life—which summed up perfectly the crucial role these many different professions play and the impact they can have.
I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) both for her contribution and for her work as an allied health professional. As someone who has had two C-sections, I know that the entire operating theatre staff were crucial to making that a much better experience than anyone could have anticipated.
I thank the Minister very much for her comments, and particularly for being gracious in accepting my intervention at the last minute. I make a final plea for her to ensure that this vital part of our NHS, which is crucial to delivering those two strands—from sickness to prevention and from hospital to community—is not overlooked in the forthcoming workforce plan, and that its contribution is both valued and given due prominence.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That his House has considered the contribution of allied health professionals.
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Government placed a written ministerial statement on today’s Order Paper to update the House on the much-troubled Ajax armoured fighting vehicle programme. However, the media have reported within the last two hours that, according to urgent briefing from the Ministry of Defence, the statement will now be delayed until later next week due to the need to seek further interdepartmental approval across Whitehall. Given that the strategic defence review was published months late, the defence investment plan, including vital new equipment programmes, is still unpublished nine months on, and now the MOD is putting out WMSs on the Order Paper and then refusing to publish them, the Department is clearly in a state of chaos. Can you advise me on how we can force the MOD to clarify this utterly confusing situation later today, or on Monday at the very latest?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I thank the hon. Member for giving notice of her point of order. This House is entitled to expect that when a written statement is to be delivered to the House, it will be done promptly on the day the Government have given notice that it will be made. Those on the Government Front Bench will have heard her point of order, and may wish to verify what is happening about the written statement. The hon. Member may wish to take advice from the Table Office on the steps that she can take to obtain clarity on the substance of the matter.