Allied Health Professionals

Sonia Kumar Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2026 Commons Chamber

[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.