Dr Zubir Ahmed

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. He always channels personal experience in such a productive way and he is a credit to this House in the way he conducts himself. I remember his maiden speech with great fondness in that regard. I do agree, and I will come later in my speech to how we can maintain quality more persistently across the whole system. Access to temporary wheelchair provision to support hospital discharge is also determined locally by ICBs. We recognise that elements of the NHS—despite it being on the road to recovery—are functioning below par and that many people are waiting too long to access equipment such as wheelchairs. During the pandemic, some wheelchair services experienced lower referral rates, which led to a surge in referrals post pandemic. Because of that, providers not only reduced their services but now, of course, face a backlog of referrals. That has meant unacceptable waiting times for both adults and—sadly—children, and those have fluctuated as services work to recover. However, action is being taken to address waiting times in England. In October 2025, we published the NHS medium-term planning framework, requiring all ICBs and community health services to actively manage and reduce waits above 18 weeks and to develop a plan to eliminate all 52-week waits. The community health services situation report will be used to monitor ICB performance against waiting-time targets in 2026-27, and it currently monitors waiting times for children, young people and adults under “Wheelchair, orthotics, prosthetics and equipment”. These targets will guide the system to reduce the longest waits first.