Physiotherapy: Rehabilitation Services

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for bringing this to our attention; again, I believe that the advantage of these Questions is that they shine the spotlight on particular areas. As the survey pointed out, there are a lot of places which, for very understandable reasons, were swapped over to Covid uses during the pandemic and which now need to be brought back into physio use. That was one of the main recommendations from the society, and we will now write to all the NHS chief executives on the back of that. As the House will be aware, I am doing some work anyway to make more space available as part of the capital programme, so this is very much on my list to make sure that we expand that space and provision.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that physiotherapists do very little of their work in the actual appointment, and that it is the supervised exercise patterns they give patients afterwards that are probably the most important for all forms of rehabilitative structure? Bearing that in mind, what is the Department of Health doing to make sure that local government has facilities such as swimming pools and gyms that remain open under the financial squeeze?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord’s point; our estimate is that over half of all physiotherapy takes place outside the hospital environment. Clearly, all sorts of settings, including swimming pools and gyms, are vital for that. The work we have done with the Energy Bill and the caps has been a vital help to those leisure centres, and, thankfully, we are now starting to see bills come done and so these places are on a better financial footing.