𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

When someone you love breaks a bone, the physical pain is obvious but what cuts deeper is the quiet, agonising worry that follows. Osteoporosis fractures bones but it also fractures families, strips away independence and leaves loved ones living in constant fear of the next fall. Yet while millions of families face this agony every day, the system in Whitehall treats osteoporosis like an inevitable tax on getting old. I refuse to accept that.

Osteoporosis is a manageable condition. Bone-strengthening medicines cost the NHS as little as £1 a week. Yet, because of a scandalous postcode lottery, two-thirds of the 3.5 million people living with osteoporosis in Britain are left completely overlooked, untreated and defenceless.

Right now, my local NHS trust doesn’t even have a Fracture Liaison Service: the specialised care teams that identify early warning signs, prescribe that £1 medicine and stop repeat breaks before they happen. In a typical constituency, around 5,000 to 7,000 people are living with osteoporosis, many without access to the service that could identify them after a first fracture and help prevent the next. If a constituent falls and breaks a wrist in Redditch, the hospital fixes them up and sends them home, leaving them ticking like a timebomb for a catastrophic hip fracture.

Every year, up to 62,000 working-age Britons suffer fragility fractures. That translates into more than one million lost sick days annually, costing British businesses up to £142 million every single year. When hard-pressed employers and workers are already struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, forcing healthy, willing people onto long-term sick leave because Whitehall won’t fund a basic health check is economic self-sabotage of the highest order.

At any given moment, 7% of all hospital beds in England are occupied by people suffering from preventable fragility fractures. Hip fractures alone drain £2 billion a year from the health service. Worse still, a hip fracture is a heart-attack-level event: more than a quarter of patients die within twelve months. To make matters even more unjust, working-class people in deprived communities face a 25% higher risk of fractures and higher death rates.

This Labour Government committed at the election to deliver universal access to Fracture Liaison Services by 2030. Over two years on from the election, the pace of delivery has been frustratingly slow. Since July 2024, the number of FLS clinics across England has crawled from 80 to just 83. Around half of all NHS Trusts still offer nothing. The Society of Radiographers has warned that these services cannot be established overnight and that, unless rollout begins this summer, the 2030 deadline will become impossible to meet.

Services take time to train specialist staff, install diagnostic scanners and build referral pathways. The clock is ticking and every day that passes without action is another day where someone in Redditch or across the country suffers a preventable fracture.

There is also a wider opportunity as the Government considers the future of social care. Preventing avoidable fractures, particularly hip fractures among older people, is exactly the kind of intervention that can reduce pressure on the NHS while preventing people from losing their independence and requiring greater social care support.

When the Welsh Government demanded full FLS coverage, backed it with clear deadlines and pump-priming funding, every single health board delivered within a year. Fracture identification rocketed by 191%. If Wales can show that kind of backbone and speed, why on earth can’t Whitehall do the same? The treatment exists, the need is desperate, the economics make perfect sense. What’s missing is urgency.

That is why I have taken action. Alongside Dr Caroline Johnson MP and the Royal Osteoporosis Society, I tabled a cross-party amendment to the Health Bill. Following the Report Stage, this effort is being revived in in the Lords with cross-party support and I am writing to the Secretary of State to ask for a meeting to discuss how we can turn the Government’s existing commitment into a practical plan for delivery. Our demand is simple: Ministers must publish a clear, milestone-driven delivery plan with hard deadlines so Parliament, NHS staff and the public can hold them to account.

Delivering universal FLS pays for itself within 18 to 24 months and saves taxpayers money forever after. Most importantly, it will save 2,000 lives every single year. Two thousand people who will still be here next Christmas, next birthday, next anniversary.

It is time to get a grip, stop the waste and deliver the care our people deserve.