Wheelchair Provision: Independent Review Body

Zubir Ahmed Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Zubir Ahmed)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) on securing this important debate and also on challenging us, born of his lived experience, to make the lives of disabled people better and better lived across our country. We are grateful for his presence in this House and this place, every single day. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend for the work he has done to champion this interest more generally in his capacity as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for wheelchair users.

In recent months wheelchair services have received considerable attention, both within Parliament and more widely. As has been highlighted, last month I participated in a debate on the provision of disability equipment, brought forward by the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan). I have been struck by the compelling testimonies shared during those discussions and the ones today, highlighting the profound impact that timely access to appropriate disability equipment can have on people’s lives.

This is a matter clearly deserving of much more attention. Since the previous debate on this topic, I have written to the national quality board to request that disabled people and the equipment they use are considered as part of the board’s ongoing work to improve quality and reduce inequality across health and care services. I am pleased to update that the board has confirmed it will take this forward.

This Government remain steadfast in their commitment to ensuring that disabled people can access the services and support they need. Through our reforms to health and social care, we are dedicated to delivering meaningful change that will make that vision a reality. Integrated care boards, as has been highlighted, are responsible for commissioning local wheelchair services. Responsibility for providing disability equipment lies with local authorities or the NHS, depending on the person’s needs.

For adults and children with long-term complex needs, services are typically provided by NHS wheelchair services. There is a range of NHS wheelchair providers across England, as we have heard. I acknowledge the concerns that the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) raises about NRS. My hon. Friend the Minister for Care and I will be having discussions about that, and it would be appropriate to write the hon. Member an urgent letter to update him, as I know that he is genuinely concerned about the topic. ICBs are expected to monitor service provision and effectively manage contracts with their commissioned providers.

Although the latest data from NHS England shows a reduction in wheelchair waiting times for adults, I recognise that far too many people of all ages, as we have heard today, experience unacceptable delays for appropriate equipment. The covid pandemic had a significant impact on wheelchair services, from which we are still suffering in terms of supply chain disruption. That has meant that waiting times for both adults and children have fluctuated unnecessarily—well, unacceptably—as services have worked to recover. Those with more complex needs can also experience delays due to the lead-in time for supply of more bespoke equipment.

I understand that there have been complaints about the quality of services commissioned by some ICBs. Some of these are being dealt with on an individual basis by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, following escalation by individual patients. As part of its oversight of ICBs, NHS England is also gathering intelligence through regional teams to understand fully the issues being raised.

It is important that local commissioners have the discretion to decide how best to meet the needs of their local population, and we are giving systems control and flexibility over how that is done. None the less, the Government are taking action to support local systems in delivering effective wheelchair services. Although there are no plans at the moment to establish a national review body to oversee wheelchair provision, the medium-term planning framework, published in October, requires that from this year all ICBs and community health services should actively manage and reduce waits over 18 weeks and develop a plan to eliminate all 52-week waits. The framework also states that in 2026-27, ICBs are required to

“increase community health service capacity”—

including wheelchair services—

“to meet growth in demand, expected to be approximately 3% nationally per year”.

[Dr Evans]

Can the Minister just clarify who he sees as responsible for the framework?

[Dr Ahmed]

Ultimately, ICBs are responsible for delivering the framework. The Government are held accountable in the manner being seen today, and I have no doubt that in the new structures that we propose there will be further accountability, because in many ways the middleman will be removed and we will have more direct oversight as to what is going on with wheelchair services and other services up and down the country.

I take the hon. Member’s point on data as well. I am the Minister responsible for data, health innovation and innovation in general, and I think this moment of restructuring, whether in relation to wheelchair services or other parts of the system, is a moment for us to really get into the 21st century with our capabilities for monitoring data for operational and capacity planning. I am very happy to share with him some of my thoughts about that over a cup of tea later, if he is interested.

The community health services situation report will be used to monitor ICB performance against waiting time targets in 2026-27. Those targets will guide systems to reduce the longest waits. In addition, the 10-year plan makes a commitment to reviewing the complaints regulations, and NHSE and the Department of Health and Social Care are developing plans to achieve that.

NHS England has developed policy, guidance and legislation to support ICBs to reduce delays and unacceptable regional variation in the quality and provision of wheelchair services. In April 2025 NHS England published the wheelchair quality framework, in collaboration with the wheelchair advisory group, which I understand includes the Wheelchair Alliance and Whizz Kidz, both of which were recognised by hon. Members in the debate today.

That framework is designed to assist ICBs and NHS wheelchair service providers in delivering high-quality provision that offers improved access, outcomes and experiences. The framework sets out quality standards relevant to all suppliers and aligns with the Care Quality Commission assessment framework that applies to providers, local authorities and integrated care systems. Those quality standards should be used to develop local service specifications and to benchmark current commissioning and provision.

Other measures taken by NHS England include the establishment of a national dataset on wheelchair waiting times to increase transparency and to enable targeted action if improvement is required, and the introduction of the legal right to a personal wheelchair budget in 2019. Personal wheelchair budgets provide a clear framework for ICBs to commission personalised wheelchair services that are outcomes-focused and integrated with other aspects of care.

[Dr Gardner]

I acknowledge the personal wheelchair budget, but constituents have raised with me that it does not fit the cost of wheelchairs nowadays. It does not quite match, so they sometimes have to use their own funds to get the wheelchair they need, which is not good enough.

[Dr Ahmed]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. That is partly a reflection of the underfunding of aspects of the NHS over the past decade and a half. As she well knows, our party supports the NHS, and we have funded it with £26 billion of additional funding. That will clearly take time to filter through to the services that require the most.

The Government are also driving forward improvements for disabled people through our wider reforms to health and social care. The recently published neighbourhood health framework aims to improve health and care outcomes, and reduce inequalities through more convenient, personalised and joined-up care. It includes a focus on improving the diagnosis and treatment of people with long-term conditions, so that they feel more in control of their care.

In July 2025, the Government announced that we will develop a new plan for disability, setting out a clear vision to break down barriers to opportunity for disabled people. We are making more than £4.6 billion of additional funding available for adult social care in 2028-29 compared with 2025-26, to support the sector and make the improvements that we all crave. We have also established the better care fund, a framework for ICBs and local authorities to make joint plans and pool budgets to deliver better, joined-up holistic care.

This financial year, ICBs and local authorities plan to spend £440 million on assistive technology and equipment such as wheelchairs. We also continue to invest in support for home adaptations to enable independent living, with £723 million confirmed for the disabled facilities grant this year. The disabled facilities grant budget across 2025-26 and 2026-27 is £150 million more than the total budget across the previous two years, representing an 11% increase that exceeds inflation. The independent commission into adult social care, chaired by Baroness Louise Casey, is building consensus on the medium and long-term reforms required to create a social care system that is fit for the future, with the phase 1 report due this year.

I recognise the profound impact that delays in wheelchair provision are having on the quality of life of hon. Members’ constituents, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford for highlighting that today. He had a number of asks of me, to which I hope I have responded. I am cognisant of the work he has done and the personal attention he gives to these matters, and I offer him a meeting with Department officials in my office to go through them in greater detail. My officials will be in touch to arrange that.

I hope that the work, reforms and modernisation I have set out address the questions he has raised. I assure hon. Members that we take this issue extremely seriously, and remain committed to improving the lives of disabled people up and down our country.