Summer Health and Resilience

Jen Craft Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I thank the shadow Secretary of State for his response. As I did not reply to him yesterday, I did not have the opportunity to welcome him to his post. He referred to my personal links to East Hampshire. I should say that I remember going to see the GP at the health centre on Anstey Road in Alton, because of an earache—not that I am associating the right hon. Gentleman with earache.

The shadow Secretary of State raised the issue of this summer. Despite the record demand on the health service in July, there were actually improvements in performance on waiting lists, waiting times and emergency care as a result of the huge amount of planning and work that had been done on performance, particularly for A&E, emergency care and electives. That is a tribute to the work across the national health service and all the planning work that had been done nationally, including to improve performance.

The right hon. Gentleman rightly raised the issue of preparedness for the coming winter. Health Ministers have meetings about the winter in the summer and we are now increasingly going to have to have meetings about summer in the winter as well, but that planning is already well under way right across the NHS and across NHS England. We will provide updates for the House in due course.

The right hon. Gentleman raised some particular issues to do with heat. The NHS approach should be about seasonal resilience to be ready for what might be extremes of flooding, extremes of hot weather and different kinds of conditions that will impact on the country, so that it is able to respond to changing patterns of health need. That is why things such as capital investment are so important in building that greater resilience, which we do not have at the moment because of what we inherited. It is also why we now have a specific heat taskforce to look through the journey on both prevention and how we modernise, and to ensure that the right response is in place right across the NHS.

I am happy to discuss those details further with the shadow Secretary of State as that work progresses. I hope that he will recognise the investment that has gone in over the last two years, in contrast to what we inherited, and the improvements and reforms that are taking place as a result of the changes we have made. I look forward to discussing those with him further.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I very much welcome this statement on our preparedness for future extreme heat events. As the Secretary of State mentioned, there were record A&E attendances this summer, and in my constituency, as in many others, this led to ambulances having to queue outside for upwards of eight hours. I have called on my local hospital’s trust—Mid and South Essex NHS foundation trust—to make a room available for paramedics and ambulance crews to rest and recuperate when this happens, because otherwise they have to sit in their ambulance, often with a very sick person, for upwards of eight hours, with nowhere to go for even a cup of tea and a sandwich. I have been unsuccessful thus far, so will she back my call for hospital trusts, and particularly Mid and South Essex, to make a space available so that ambulance crews can take a break when they have to sit outside A&E for prolonged periods of time?

[Yvette Cooper]

I thank my hon. Friend for recognising the crucial role that ambulance staff and paramedics play in our emergency care, and the importance of the NHS supporting its staff—our NHS is the staff; it is the people who make up the service. I do not know the details of the individual case she raises, but I will ensure that it is passed on to NHS England. I certainly agree that we need to ensure that staff have the support they need.

Health Bill

Jen Craft Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 7th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)]

We all often have a common memory that is so incredibly important and special: holding our child for the very first time. Sadly, so many people up and down this country cannot have that memory because of their difficulty in having children.

In 2004, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommended a way forward on IVF, which was to give all a minimum three cycles of IVF treatment. That was set out 22 years ago, so we would hope that over time all ICBs would have moved towards delivering that. Sadly, it is something that people have moved away from, and that is not because the issue has got easier or better or is impacting fewer people. The reality is that the issue has got more difficult and is impacting more people, meaning that more people will not have that amazing joy of holding their own child.

I ask the Minister to look at new clause 104, which has been tabled in my name, with the support of 16 other Members from all parts of the House. The issue of people not being able to have children is growing. Male fertility has been collapsing over the past few decades. As people are dealing with greater pressures to buy their own home, they are having children later in life, rather than earlier.

We have a postcode lottery. Only two ICBs across the country offer the NICE recommendation of three cycles. In fact, as we have already heard, the offer in Manchester has been decreased. That is also the case in Cheshire and Merseyside. In Staffordshire, which I represent, people are not even entitled to one full cycle of IVF, meaning that unless someone is incredibly rich, they are condemned to probably never being able to have children. That is just not right, and I urge the Minister to be proactive in looking at how it can be addressed.

We face a demographic issue in this country. We have a falling birth rate, with fewer than 600,000 babies born in this country last year. That will only get worse. It is sad that the NHS is not prioritising this issue. I understand the pressures that ICBs operate under, and it may always be seen as an easy, no-cost option to deprive people of the ability to have a child, but for those people who desperately spend their whole life doing everything they can—remortgaging their homes, begging for money from family and friends—to have a cycle of IVF, it is destroying them. There is no humanity in this system. I urge the Minister to look at new clause 104 and give families the opportunity—the greatest blessing that they can have—to hold their own child. I urge her to take action, as opposed to ignoring something that is so important to so many.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I strongly welcome this landmark Bill, which will protect and strengthen our health service for decades to come, but for children with special educational needs and disabilities who are disproportionately impacted by not getting the healthcare that they need, I believe that it should go further. That is why I tabled new clause 85, which seeks to address the fundamental imbalance in the provision of health services for disabled children and young people. Currently, the statutory duty to deliver education, health and care plans—the legal mechanism by which children with special educational needs and disabilities can receive support—sits entirely with local authorities.

[Jim Shannon]

I commend the hon. Lady for all her endeavours in this regard. Does she share my concern that when a child is diagnosed with cancer, the parents are instantly overwhelmed by medical jargon, by appointments and by sheer panic? Does she agree that the Minister, and the Government, should accept the common-sense duty to ensure that no family faces those critical first two weeks completely alone?

[Jen Craft]

I do agree. The hon. Gentleman has made a very good point about the impact of childhood illness, not only on the child but on the family. I also agree that support for families is crucial. They are part of the care team for children when they are unwell, and that acknowledgment needs to be strengthened and acted on.

As I was saying, the statutory duty to deliver EHCPs sits solely with local authorities. In practice, that means that councils are the only bodies that can be held legally responsible for providing the service that a disabled child needs to access education, including health services such as occupational or speech and language therapy. Health bodies are not subject to the same requirement, and I know from my work as a member of the Health and Social Care Committee and a constituency MP, and as a parent of a disabled child, that that too often means that they are not at the table when it comes to delivering services for children with special educational needs and disabilities. There is a fundamental lack of accountability in the system. That, in practice, can force local authorities or families to procure privately, which can drive shortages in the NHS workforce or can mean that provision is substandard or non-existent.

My constituent’s son Haider, for example, has an EHCP which outlines his need for speech and language therapy to gain full access to education. Despite his mother Qaila’s relentless efforts, that support was not delivered for months. Qaila tells me that she has been forced to watch while Haider has become withdrawn, anxious and isolated. My constituent Elizabeth has a similar story. She has been fighting to get occupational and physical therapy for her son William, but significant delays in securing assessments from healthcare professionals have resulted in inaccurate, unhelpful support arrangements.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn]

I thank my hon. Friend for making such a powerful speech, and for all the work that she does in this regard. These long waiting times are particularly difficult when children are involved, because a child's life is so attenuated. If a parent is waiting for 18 months, that amounts to one and a half or two school years. Does my hon. Friend agree that the key to prevention is to ensure that these matters are dealt with as quickly as possible?

[Jen Craft]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Owing to the lack of early intervention for my constituent Elizabeth and her son William, he has missed countless hours and days and weeks of schooling at a critical point in his development.

At a drop-in that I hosted last week, I met a woman called Annika. Her daughter Winnie has cerebral palsy, and her EHCP clearly states that she requires a physiotherapist, but the family have been forced to arrange that for themselves. Countless other families are in the same position. I think that every single Member in this House will have encountered similar constituency cases, and it is just not good enough.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady is making a most powerful speech. We will all have experienced the frustration of parents with a child whose EHCP lacks the health element. Does the hon. Lady share my concern that, furthermore, the abolition of Healthwatch might remove one of the few elements that externally and independently marks the homework of the NHS, and that we are moving to a situation in which the NHS itself, and Ministers, will collect the data and mark their own homework, and we will lose yet another of the few tools that a frustrated parent has to hold the system to account?

[Jen Craft]

I agree that there needs to be better accountability in the health service. It currently does not work, and the mechanisms by which we can hold healthcare bodies to account are few and far between. I believe that it is most acutely felt in paediatric care and in the special educational needs and disabilities system, where a mechanism for holding public bodies to account already exists: EHCPs. The idea that the responsibility should fall entirely on local authorities is misguided, because roughly 50% of what a child with an EHCP needs in order to access education is healthcare, which should be provided by a healthcare service. There must be better accountability and transparency for parents, and for their children, when that does not happen. I know that parents often have to go out of their way and spend, on average, £8,500 a year on their child’s healthcare so that they can access education.

[Ben Coleman]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jen Craft]

I will not, because I am going to run out of time.

Roughly 40% of people have paid privately for therapies, and many are forced to fundraise for the vital medical equipment to which their child is legally entitled. It is worth noting that beyond the direct costs, many parents are forced to miss work because the right support is not available for their child to attend school. Around 40% report cutting back their hours, and 35% have left the job market completely. Before I became a Member of Parliament, I stopped work to become a full-time carer for my daughter. I do not regret that choice for a second, but it was a difficult and sometimes lonely period. Like many parents, I had not anticipated just how hard it would be to secure basic support for my child. Even to this day, I struggle to secure the basic healthcare support that she needs to support her education and her place at school. I am wearing a dragon for her today, and she will know why that is. I will not share it with the House, but if she watches this debate, she will see the dragon and it will make her smile.

New clause 85 is intended to fix the inequality. It would place a statutory duty on ICBs to deliver the health part of EHCPs, matching the existing duty on local authorities. The fundamental concept that there must be a meaningful legal requirement on health services to deliver the support set out in EHCPs is critical. If we do not act and do not rightly demand that health services pull their weight, the status quo of young people missing out on education will continue, and I am afraid the planned SEND reforms will be doomed to failure. Disabled children are no less worthy of a decent education than their peers and are no less capable of thriving in school, but we are denying them access to the tools they need to succeed.

I am grateful to the Health and Social Care Committee and the Education Committee for their support for new clause 85, and to the nearly 100 Members from across the House who put their name to it. I want to express my thanks to the charities involved for their continued campaigning efforts, and to the many parents who have contacted me. I sincerely hope that the Government will give the new clause the attention it deserves. If they cannot accept it in whole, I hope that they will give a commitment to deliver proper accountability.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Vaccination Rates: England

Jen Craft Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered vaccination rates in England.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship today, Mrs Barker. I am pleased to co-sponsor this debate alongside colleagues from the Health and Social Care Committee who are also here today.

It is very easy, from the vantage point of the 21st century, to forget that about half of children used to die before the age of 15 from infection and disease. Thankfully, we now have vaccines and our routine vaccination schedule providing protection against 15 preventable infections across our lifetimes. For decades, our system was one of the best in the world. The childhood diseases that used to cause so much suffering—measles, polio and others—sound like things from history books. I am sure we all have memories of our early school-based vaccinations and flu jabs in the winter period, and the joy of the discovery of the covid-19 vaccine and the hope it brought of a return to normality. So why have this debate today? Because, despite a seemingly continued record of progress and innovation since 2012, our vaccination system has been sleepwalking into a crisis.

The percentage of eligible people getting the major vaccines has been falling year on year, dropping below the 95% coverage recommended by the World Health Organisation to prevent onward transmission. We have now undoubtedly hit a crisis point. Across England as a whole, the 95% target is not being met for any routine childhood vaccination programme and many adult programmes. For example, in 2024-25, only 83.7% of five-year-olds in England had both doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. In my own constituency, the figure is even lower, at 74%. We are now seeing measles outbreaks in our cities and, shockingly, we have lost our measles elimination status nationally. Tragically, three children died this year from measles—a totally preventable illness.

When questioned about these issues at the Health and Social Care Committee, officials assured us that actions were under way and the tide was turning, but the most recent vaccine stats, released at the end of August, unfortunately show a continued downward trend. The 6-in-1 vaccine dose three coverage is down, the meningitis B dose three coverage is down, and the rotavirus dose two coverage is also down.

This is also a serious equalities issue. Children who grow up unprotected are disproportionately those living in poverty and from ethnic minority communities, and the gap in vaccination status is growing across the country. How has that been allowed to happen in modern Britain? The 2023 vaccination strategy under the last Government was intended to halt the decline, but it is clearly failing, with vaccination rates continuing to fall in the three years since. The WHO target of 95% coverage for all routine vaccination programmes was removed from NHS planning guidance in 2025-26, with the Secretary of State at the time saying,

“If everything is a priority, then nothing is”,

but the choice not to explicitly prioritise vaccinations is incredibly short-sighted.

My colleagues and I on the Health and Social Care Committee held a short inquiry into vaccination rates earlier this year, and we were, to be frank, shocked by the apparent complacency of leading NHS officials. There was no understanding of when it is hoped rates will return to WHO levels, or of whether and when our elimination status will be reached again. There is no target. This debate must be a call to arms to prioritise rebuilding our vaccination system as a matter of utmost urgency and to restore vaccination rates to 95% as soon as possible. Developing an effective vaccination system is not rocket science. Much of the existing strategy is relevant and positive, but we must acknowledge that we are off track.

The debate about what is wrong tends to focus on two key issues: access versus hesitancy. The access argument focuses on systemic, practical barriers that make it harder for people to get vaccinated, such as poor appointment availability, ineffective call and recall systems, lack of data linkage and fragmented health systems. On that argument, recent coverage decline is the sign of a system under strain, rather than a loss of confidence. Most patients and parents do trust vaccines: 85% of people polled by Ipsos in 2025 said that vaccines were safe. But people are busy—moving home, switching GPs—and they do not have endless time to navigate a confusing and increasingly fragmented NHS system.

The gap between MMR 1 and MMR 2 uptake is stark evidence of this failure, with MMR 1 coverage at five years at 91% and MMR 2 coverage at only 83%. The loss of contact is a system failure. Missed appointments should be chased, and families should retain close contact with trusted health professionals to guide them through the childhood vaccination schedule.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Our mini-inquiry into vaccination rates found that when rates decline or stall, the problem is often lack of trust and inability to access either trusted health professionals or the appointments themselves. Does he agree that improving the availability of vaccinations and advice from trusted health professionals is key to reversing this worrying trend?

[Danny Beales]

I agree. Those issues are clearly intertwined and cannot be separated.

Every contact should count. Shared digital records should identify, at the next GP appointment, pharmacy check-in, health visit or hospital appointment, where vaccines are missing. The system should be enabled, encouraged and paid to act, but this is currently not the case.

The hesitancy argument focuses on the growing prevalence of misinformation around vaccines and falling trust in vaccines and health institutions more broadly. Polling shows that these are not the most important factors numerically, but for the 15% of parents who have concerns, they matter. Evidence from the University of Manchester shows that this is especially important for certain population groups.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) just said, the barriers are multifaceted: poor trust and poor access go hand in hand, because the best way to build trust is through regular contact with known, trusted professionals. To maximise vaccine coverage, we need a system that can reliably identify and locate every child or patient missing their vaccination, repeatedly invite them for appointments and make attending appointments as easy as possible, with clear lines of responsibility when targets are missed. To do that effectively, the vaccination system needs adequate resourcing, accurate data and explicit accountability for meeting targets. Currently, we have none of that.

The Government have been acting. We are piloting health visits and community pharmacy delivery, although roll-out has been slow and it is unclear when national roll-out will be possible. Parents are now given access to their child’s records through the NHS app, work is under way to improve the consent process for vaccinating children in school. More is being done, and all of that is positive, but the Select Committee is not convinced that that will be enough to restore our vaccination levels to WHO standards, and neither are officials, who are unable to say whether and when levels will be restored.

Moving forward, what do we need? We need resourcing. Data I have obtained through parliamentary questions shows that in 2023-24 NHS England spent 0.51% of its total budget, or £852 million, on vaccination, down from 0.65%, or £989 million, in 2022-23. The very year the strategy released, funding was cut. We also need to be honest about what improvement will cost. Vaccinating the last 10% or 15% of any population is not the same task as vaccinating the first 80%, because of deprivation, language barriers and housing instability. All families affected by those factors need more contact with clinicians, and GPs simply do not have the resources to do the necessary outreach.

We need to fund not just new medicines and drugs, but their roll-out. We should be using lifetime parental consent to increase uptake of school-age vaccinations, and developing efficient, convenient and ongoing catch-up opportunities in schools, shopping centres, nurseries and family hubs. The school-age immunisation service should be operating a check-and-offer approach at every contact.

For the last 15%, we should be willing to fund what actually works: explicit payments to GPs for outreach programmes for underserved communities, including funding for multiple contact attempts, data cleaning, and non-responder tracking, with incentives linked to real outcomes. We should be training healthcare professionals and community groups to have difficult conversations with confidence and making far better use of our community pharmacy network, which is rooted in local areas.

We also need clear accountability; the buck has to stop somewhere locally and nationally, with clear vaccination leads at both levels. Since the Lansley reforms in 2012 and the subsequent austerity cuts, lines of accountability have become blurred. From April 2027, integrated care boards will have greater responsibility for commissioning vaccination programmes locally, but who is overseeing the national strategy? That remains unclear. Who will require corrective action when that is deemed to be necessary? That is not clear.

The removal of national targets was clearly a step backward for the system. Health officials and clinicians tell us that it is not always clear who is responsible when vaccination rates fall at delivery level in a given neighbourhood. We need a new national action plan that sets out concrete steps that will be taken to return coverage to our WHO targets.

We do not have all the systems in place to tell us reliably who has and has not been vaccinated. Data challenges run right through the system. Vaccines given in maternity settings, community pharmacy settings or school often fail to make their way back to the child’s GP surgery because the systems do not talk to each other. How can we expect call-and-recall strategies to work if clinicians do not reliably know which children need to be called?

Lastly, on hesitancy, we need to tackle misinformation, regulate it online and hold the peddlers of harmful and potentially deadly misinformation to account. Social media companies must step up their game in bringing down anti-vax information and providing clear, evidence-based health information instead.

I know much of this is not easy, but that is why it requires genuine commitment and prioritisation. I thank the Minister for listening; will she outline whether the Government accept that the situation is unacceptable and that urgent action is needed, and whether a clear timeline for meeting the WHO targets can and should be agreed by the NHS? If we are to set a timeline, will a clear action plan be outlined to set us on the path back to 95% of all children being vaccinated, so that we can all see a welcome and vital return of our measles elimination status? We must ensure that every child is safe, that people of all ages get the vaccines they need, and that the UK is once again a global leader in vaccinations.

NHS Corridor Care

Jen Craft Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Beccy Cooper (Worthing West) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) for bringing this timely and important debate to the Chamber.

As we have heard, corridor care is one of the clearest signs of wider pressures across urgent and emergency care services, including rising demand, delayed discharge and constrained hospital capacity. As so much has already been said, I want to focus my remarks on a couple of areas. As an MP for a coastal community, I want to make it clear to the Minister that when we are looking at these pressures, we need to acknowledge the additional pressures facing specific communities. Coastal communities tend to have older populations and poorer health outcomes.

Worthing West sits within one of England’s coastal communities. Its population is older than average—even though I am not older than average—frailty is increasing, multiple long-term conditions are common, emergency admissions are correspondingly higher, recruitment is harder and deprivation exists alongside affluence. All these things contribute to the pressures that we have discussed during the debate.

University Hospitals Sussex NHS foundation trust is in my constituency. As we have discussed, NHS England’s data is not completely useful in many instances, but it is the best that we have. I have had a look and, on average, the four emergency departments in the trust are seeing 65 patients in their emergency department corridor care service each day. In their general and acute wards, they have corridor care for 39 patients each day. That is not insubstantial.

We have talked about the back door, but I really want to talk about the front door. Members will be unsurprised to hear that, as a public health doctor, I know that prevention is a corridor care policy. The Government need to ensure that investment in prevention and public health is recognised as part of the solution to reducing corridor care. We have to reduce the flow of avoidable illness into our hospitals in the first place, and that means tackling smoking, poor housing, air pollution, obesity, loneliness, poverty and delayed access to community care. Corridor care begins long before a patient reaches an accident and emergency department.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

My local hospital, Basildon university hospital, is in the 40th worst trust for delivering hospital care. Does my hon. Friend agree that not having the right community equipment, such as community disability aids and home adaptations, can quite often be a leading cause of delayed discharge? Will she urge the Minister to look at this issue when she commits to ending corridor care by the end of this Parliament?

[Dr Cooper]

I thank my hon. Friend for those excellent remarks, and I agree wholeheartedly.

As I have said, corridor care is a symptom, and our challenge is to identify the underlying causes, rather than simply measure the symptoms. It is what happens when demand, delayed discharge, workforce shortages, social care pressures and preventable ill health collide in one place. Stakeholders that I speak to—and, I am sure, stakeholders that colleagues across the House speak to—repeatedly call for public health investment, stronger community services, social care capacity and the prevention of avoidable admissions. Every prevented stroke, every smoking cessation intervention, every warm home, every child who grows up healthier and every patient supported earlier in the community means one less avoidable admission to an already overcrowded emergency department, such as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting.

National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation

Jen Craft Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I thank the hon. Lady for sharing her experience and raising the importance of this issue for the benefit of maternity services more widely. I am very happy for myself or one of the ministerial team to meet her to discuss this in detail, because it is very important that that is part of the national action plan and our wider response.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I very much welcome the report and Baroness Amos’s work to highlight the failings across our maternity system. It is pure and utter medical misogyny that has led us here. The value that we place on the lives and experiences of women has been brought to the fore, and it is very, very low. The throughline of this report and the ones before it is that women’s voices were not heard, their pain was not believed, and their experiences were completely and utterly disregarded. That must change.

I would like to add my voice to the calls for measures to address the disparity in treatment for black and ethnic minority women. There must be proper training and continuing professional development to ensure that black women do not have the experiences that we have seen to date. I also plead with the Secretary of State to ensure that any proposals contain real accountability measures. I have a maternity unit in my constituency that is inadequate and has always been rated inadequate or “requires improvement”, but I have never seen a senior member of staff ever hauled over the coals. That cannot be right and it has to change.

[James Murray]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to call this what it is in many cases, which is misogyny in maternity services, and to draw attention to the different impact on different mothers and the racial and ethnic inequality within the system. The anti-discrimination programme that I mentioned, which is being rolled out over the next year and a half, will be an important first step, but it cannot be the sum total of what we do to address discrimination and inequality. That will be a focus of the national taskforce, as will—to repeat a point many Members have rightly made—accountability, because it is only by embedding accountability throughout the system that we can be truly confident of change.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jen Craft Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that unpaid carers are the lifeblood of our care system, and we pay tribute to them for the compassion that they show. I was very pleased yesterday to accompany the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden), to the launch of the new paid carer’s leave consultation document. I am also pleased to chair the cross-ministerial group that will produce an action plan for unpaid carers, addressing exactly the issues that the hon. Lady mentioned about respite care.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

Last week the Supreme Court overturned the previous Cheshire West judgment on the Mental Capacity Act 2005, throwing the sector that cares for people with learning disabilities and/or autism into what it has called “chaos”. There is significant concern that, without further clarification as to whether someone who does not have mental capacity can consent to deprivation of liberty, vulnerable people will be put at significant risk. Will the Secretary of State listen to calls for—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I have to get through the questions from others, so Members have to help me by asking shorter questions.

Health Bill

Jen Craft Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

I gently remind the hon. Lady that it was the former Secretary of State who said that he did not want to go through another reorganisation, because it would be very costly. We still cannot get a clear answer from the Government about how much this is all going to cost the taxpayer, and there are estimates of £1 billion. There are still serious questions to be answered. The hon. Lady talks about democratic responsibility and accountability, and she is right to do that. She is fortunate—depending on one’s point of view—to have a mayor, but my constituency and county do not. Will my constituents get less of a voice in their NHS than her constituents in Shipley? That does not seem fair to me.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that transferring powers from an unelected quango to the Secretary of State, who is directly accountable to this very House, increases, not diminishes, accountability in the NHS?

[Stuart Andrew]

I am talking about trying to get accountability down to the local area. That is where it matters, and that is where my constituents want to see it. They know their local services and the hospitals in their areas, and they are the ones who should have their voices.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

The NHS is at a critical juncture in its existence. In order to survive, it needs radical change in how it is run. I welcome the measures in the Bill to keep the NHS around for generations to come, but there are opportunities for the Bill to go further.

I will briefly touch on the situation in my constituency, where an acute care trust has been under-delivering for decades. It constantly gets terrible CQC ratings, whether they relate to how it is run, specific departments or access to services such as A&E. During a recent inspection, two of the inspectors had to stop the work that they were carrying out to point out that there was a deterioration in a patient that had not been noticed by the medical staff on duty. The previous Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), placed the trust into an intervention programme, naming it as one of five trusts across the country that were “challenged”, which means it will be subject to significant NHS intervention.

I strongly welcome the measures in the Bill, particularly those that put a clear emphasis on accountability and preventing historic patterns of underperformance and that allow the Secretary of State to deauthorise failing foundation trusts, taking away some of their independence and bringing them under the control of the Secretary of State. Ongoing interventions have not delivered the healthcare that my constituents need, so this might be the final measure that ticks the trust into working, benefiting from the wealth of expertise and experience within the Department of Health and Social Care.

I believe that the Bill can go further in the area of special educational needs and disabilities, delivering for children with disabilities or extra educational needs. There is a systemic problem that is not related to individual instances in specific trusts or areas of the country. Far too often, health is not at the table when it comes to commissioning services for disabled children or meeting the needs of children with additional needs, so there is an onus on local authorities, who have a statutory duty to provide services that it is not in their gift to provide. We hear from local authorities, schools, academy trusts, parents and sometimes even children that the absence of health in these discussions is critical.

The crucial role that the Department of Health and Social Care can play in delivering the SEND White Paper relates to the “Experts at Hand” model. These experts provide an early intervention model, so that all children who exhibit an additional educational need can access expert advice from a panel of people who make up part of the allied health professions. We know that there is a huge shortage in this workforce and, again, it is in the gift of DHSC to remedy that. The Bill could go further to create a change in the commissioning and the development of a workforce strategy, moving the responsibility from NHS England to the Secretary of State. The Bill should mention allied health professionals and paediatric allied health professionals, which would put them on an equal footing with normal clinical staff.

Another way in which the Bill could go slightly further is by putting a duty of partnership and a duty of commissioning on ICBs around SEND services, particularly paediatric services. As I said, there is currently a statutory duty on LAs. We have heard time and again that a similar statutory duty on ICBs would help delivery.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making some powerful points. I hear again and again from parents that while different commissioning bodies argue about who is responsible, children fall through the cracks. Does she agree that we must urge the Secretary of State to go further and ensure that these children do not fall through the cracks?

[Jen Craft]

My hon. Friend is completely right.

One of the biggest issues with delivering care for children in the SEND system and for disabled children more widely is the lack of join-up between the various services that they should be able to access. The single point of access in this Bill is a great way to deliver on the health aspect of that. I hear from my constituents who parent children with chronic or complex medical needs, and they find it extremely frustrating that they are the one nexus holding all the information about their child’s healthcare and what they need. They are quite often battling a number of healthcare bureaucracies to get their child the healthcare and support that they need.

I believe that with a few tweaks, this Bill could be truly revolutionary in delivering the healthcare and support that disabled children and children with extra educational needs require and in taking the onus and the stress away from their parents.

Allied Health Professionals

Jen Craft Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2026 Commons Chamber

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

[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?

Women’s Health Strategy

Jen Craft Excerpts

Thursday 16th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

I thank the Liberal Democrat representative for his comments—frankly, that is the way it is done.

Let me turn to some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised. May I take the opportunity to mention endometriosis in particular? There have long been campaigns on that issue in this place from many women and men such as him talking not on behalf of their partners, but for them about the suffering. That is all very welcome.

I commend the work of Sir David Amess, a former Member of the House whose plaque is behind us, and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) in chairing the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis. When in opposition in 2017 or 2018, I had a member of staff—I hope she does not mind my saying so—who opened my eyes to this issue. Persistence works. We have got to where we are by supporting women’s voices across the country, and that is front and centre in this strategy.

On the hon. Gentleman’s wider point, I am sure that when he gets all the way through the strategy, he will see that there is a list of 102 actions—if I remember rightly—with dates aligned to them. I am sure that all hon. Members will look at that. I notice that my friend Baroness Merron is in the Gallery; she will be keeping everybody’s feet to the fire, including the Secretary of State’s, to deliver on this work. That list is in the strategy, and we wanted to set it out very clearly. We are waiting for the roll-out of NHS Online during the summer, and seeing how that works will be a litmus test for us, so I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s challenging us on that.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I strongly welcome the women’s health strategy, and I congratulate both Baroness Merron and my hon. Friend the Minister on their work on it. Since its publication yesterday, my inbox has received a number of emails from women in my constituency who suffer from endometriosis.

I wanted to highlight that, because it is very rare that constituents contact us on the publication of a Government report to comment on its contents so quickly. That shows what an absolute hotbed this issue is and how profoundly it affects people. They speak of sometimes having decades of debilitating pain, going into debt while looking for treatment, losing housing, and suffering from relationships being impacted, their jobs being undermined and experiencing a loss of income, but overall they talk about how the condition is just not recognised and how their pain goes unheard.

One of my constituents said that women need better understanding, better support and better options, and seeing that set out in black and white in a Government report has really meant so much to women. Will the Minister join me in thanking these women for their bravery in continuing to raise their voices despite their continued experience?

[Karin Smyth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is unusual to receive emails saying good things. There will be challenges in this work, but it speaks to a wider issue. Many of us as women experience much of this ourselves, and we have women in Parliament who are able to articulate that. There are some fantastic women clinicians whom we have been pleased to work with and who have really pushed forward those voices as they have become more senior in the medical and clinical professions to help us with those clinical pathways. We have been able to build on all that in bringing this strategy forward.

May I commend my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State? He was on various media yesterday and he has been working with people such as influencers to give voice to those women. I think that this is an important part of our democracy. It is worth emailing MPs—I am sorry if that elicits more emails to other Members and to my staff—because we listen and we are engaged. It matters when people raise these issues in our surgeries and come forward with them. Sometimes policy development and getting action is a struggle for all of us; it is tough and takes a long time. The process of politics sometimes takes too long, but those women have made this happen, and I thank them for it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jen Craft Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

1. What steps he is taking to improve underperforming hospital trusts.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)]

Under Labour, the NHS is on the road to recovery: with an extra £26 billion invested, 2,000 extra GPs and 100 community diagnostic centres now open weekdays and weekends, waiting lists are coming down and patient satisfaction is going up—lots done, but so much more to do to ensure that that improvement is felt everywhere. Where trusts underperform, we will send crack teams of top clinicians into those struggling trusts to cut waiting times faster. No more turning a blind eye to failure: this Government, unlike our predecessors, will do whatever it takes to improve the NHS in every part of the country—lots done; lots more to do.

[Jen Craft]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s work in improving the NHS and turning fortunes around, but as he has said, that is unfortunately not the case in every area of the country, including my own. Mid and South Essex NHS foundation trust, which looks after constituents in my area including at Basildon university hospital, has been named as one of the challenged trusts in the intensive recovery programme, which I strongly welcome. The issues with the trust are not just recent but historical—they sometimes go back decades—and quite frankly, my constituents are not getting the healthcare they deserve. Will the Secretary of State set out what the recovery programme looks like and how my constituents can be assured that they will get the level of healthcare they deserve?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question and for the work that she has been doing on behalf of the people of Thurrock to speak up consistently for improving services and to expose failures at her local trust. As I told listeners to BBC Essex this morning, I will always report back on the things that this Government are doing well but I will also acknowledge where we are not seeing improvement fast enough. I am sorry to say that Mid and South Essex is one such trust, despite the best efforts of frontline staff. That is why we announced that Mid and South Essex is one of the first providers to be put in the new intensive recovery programme. We are sending in teams of clinical experts to identify the root causes of failure and a new chief executive will take up post shortly and get a grip on the issues at the trust so that we deliver for patients.