Acquired Brain Injury Action Plan

Alison Bennett Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this afternoon, Dame Siobhain. I sincerely thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) for securing this debate, for his thoughtful remarks and for his advocacy on this subject over many years.

As we have heard, an acquired brain injury is an injury to the brain occurring after birth, often caused by a car accident, a fall or, as hon. Members have said, a sports incident. The consequences can be profound. Acquired brain injuries can alter movement, senses, memory, reasoning, personality and emotions. In other words, they can change the entire direction of a person’s life and the lives of their families and carers.

Although the injury itself may often be sudden, the struggle that follows is not. For better or worse, it is shaped by the systems meant to support recovery. At present, those systems are failing far too many people. For years we have seen the same problems persisting: too little access to specialist rehabilitation, chronic workforce shortages, incomplete data, fragmented commissioning and Departments that do not work together. Those failings translate directly into poorer recoveries, greater long-term disability and immense emotional and financial strain on families and the economy.

The NHS 10-year health plan committed to delivering effective rehabilitation in the community—a promise that was warmly welcomed, but it is frustratingly vague. We know that access to rehabilitation is central to enabling people with an ABI to live fulfilling, independent lives, and that rehabilitation works best when delivered by a skilled multidisciplinary team. Despite that, rehabilitation remains underfunded, understaffed and inconsistent across the country. Earlier this year, the UK Acquired Brain Injury Forum published a report that laid bare the scale of the challenge and the opportunities to tackle it. It is estimated that acquired brain injuries directly cost the UK economy £43 billion every year, while ABI-related wellbeing costs amount to £91.5 billion. Crucially, as the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) said, neuro-rehabilitation yields a remarkable 16:1 return on investment.

The message is clear: investing in rehabilitation is not only the right thing to do morally, but one of the smartest decisions economically. Yet local capacity is shrinking when it should be expanding. Headway UK recently revealed that delays in receiving payments from local authorities and ICBs have had severe impacts on local brain injury services. My constituents in Mid Sussex are lucky enough to have Headway Sussex, which partners with brilliant local organisations such as Carers Support West Sussex. However, in the past two years alone, almost 10% of local Headway groups have been forced to close their doors. Each closure represents a community losing vital expertise and support.

There has been some progress. In October 2025, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published new guidance on rehabilitation for chronic neurological disorders, including ABI. The evidence underpinning that guidance showed what people with ABI have known for a long time: that many do not feel empowered to share feedback, that often rehabilitation is considered only once symptoms already affect daily life, and that people with acquired brain injuries typically need cycles of intensive treatment followed by lighter ongoing support. The new NICE standards set out clear minimum expectations across all health, mental health and social care settings, but they are just that—expectations.

In July, in response to a written question from my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour), the Government confirmed their intention to publish an acquired brain injury action plan in autumn 2025. As the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings noted in his opening remarks, we are yet to see that plan. This follows years of long overdue commitments from the previous Conservative Government, who, having consulted in 2022, promised an ABI strategy back in 2024. People with an acquired brain injury should not have to wait any longer. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I believe the Government must publish that action plan without delay, and it must include a commitment that every person with an acquired brain injury has access to a named GP.

Continuity of care is essential and at the heart of Liberal Democrat policy, but our vision goes further. We are fighting for better social care for disabled people, including free personal care, more support for family carers, more respite breaks and paid carer’s leave. That would offer desperately needed stability to families who have been carrying the burden alone for too long. We would extend the right to flexible working to everyone and give every disabled person the right to work from home, unless there are compelling business reasons not to.

We want people with an acquired brain injury to live not only independently, but with dignity and opportunity. To make that a reality, we would adopt new accessibility standards for public spaces, modernise the blue badge system and incorporate the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities into UK law. We would also introduce adjustment passports, ensuring that support and equipment stay with the person, not the employer, when someone changes jobs. Those are practical reforms, grounded in common sense.

However, we simply cannot talk about acquired brain injuries without talking about the crisis in social care. People with long-term conditions such as an acquired brain injury often have the most complex needs, yet they are among those suffering the most from the failings of the system. Hundreds of thousands of people are waiting for care, and many are stranded in hospital beds because the support they need simply does not exist in the community. In my time since being elected, I have heard that from constituents in Mid Sussex. The situation is bad not only for those individuals, but for the NHS, and it is disastrous for the taxpayer.

The Liberal Democrats would fix the back door of the NHS by introducing free personal care based on the successful Scottish model, creating a social care workforce plan, establishing a college of care workers, raising the carers’ minimum wage and ensuring that unpaid carers get the respite breaks and financial support they deserve and need. The Liberal Democrats would reverse the increase in national insurance contributions and invest directly in community nursing. We would create an independent pay review body, implement a 10-year retention plan and expand access to flexible working and childcare. We would reduce reliance on expensive agency staffing by rebuilding a flexible and sustainable NHS workforce.

People with acquired brain injuries and their families and carers deserve better. Our country, which bears the enormous economic and social cost of inaction, deserves better too. It is time for the Government to act, so I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say today.