English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th February 2026 Grand Committee

The Government are right to take inspiration from the GLA with the measures in the Bill, and Amendment 166 would ensure that other regions follow its example. Without the amendment, there is a real risk that the new health duty will remain well-intentioned but inconsistently applied across regions, and it will therefore fail to have any real impact on reducing health inequalities. This would be a significant opportunity missed to reverse worrying health trends.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 165A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and I thank him for tabling it. As a wheelchair user, I know from first-hand experience that if you cannot move around your own home or get out, to socialise with friends, go shopping or go to work, for example, that will inevitably have a negative impact on your health, both physical and mental.

Of course, each of these negative health impacts will also have an inevitable negative impact on the NHS, whether that is additional out-patient treatment or hospitalisation; on the retail sector, given that the purple pound—the spending power of households containing one or more disabled people—is estimated to be worth £274 billion; on the disability benefits bill, which, in October 2024, the OBR estimated to be £48 billion; and on the disability employment gap, which continues to hover at around 30%. Does the Minister therefore accept that access to wheelchair and community equipment services is, as his noble friend argued, a health inequality issue? Does he also accept that, while not purporting to be a panacea, the approach proposed by his noble friend’s amendment does at least seek to put this issue on the radar? I fear that it is not currently on the radar—if it is, it is only an obscure blip at the edge of a screen.

The neglect of wheelchair and community equipment services by successive Governments has consequences. I do not propose to repeat the important points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of King’s Heath, but I add that, if weak regulation and limited transparency are not a recipe for success anywhere else, why should NHS wheelchair and community equipment services be the exception? This fragmented system makes it hard to challenge poor performance. Without national direction, inequality has become normalised.

To finish, fragmentation may make for better ICB balance sheets in the short term, but history shows that, in the medium term, it is a very costly false economy. In short, we are cutting our nose to spite our face. This amendment invites us to look at the bigger picture. I hope very much that the Minister will agree, and I look forward to his response.