Fracture Liaison Services

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, my thanks also go to the noble Lord, Lord Black, for this important debate, but most importantly for his persistence, which I believe has been instrumental in securing the Government’s commitment to deliver universal fracture liaison services by 2030—and I love his insistence on delivery.

It is essential that the FLS plan is delivered this year. I gently suggest to my noble friend the Minister that the forthcoming update to the women’s health strategy might offer the ideal opportunity to make progress. I understand, of course, that osteoporosis affects men as well, but it is one of the most common long-term conditions affecting women. Half of women aged over 50 will experience a fracture caused by osteoporosis. I, like many others, speak from a personal perspective. My mother had chronic osteoporosis, so I joined the Royal Osteoporosis Society, which has helped me enormously. I too pay tribute to it for its campaigning, for the information and support it provides for sufferers and for the support it provides for researchers. I am glad that the Government wish to work with it.

As we know, more than 2.5 million women in England are living with the condition, and most do not know until they break a bone. The last women’s health strategy focused on reproductive and gynaecological health, but the update offers an opportunity to address conditions that threaten women’s independence in later life. Including a rollout plan for fracture liaison services within that update would show that the Government mean what they say about taking action over words. I hope the Minister will relay that message to her department as it prepares the updated women’s health strategy.

We know these services work, yet the postcode lottery remains stark. A part of the country I know well, Gloucestershire, still has no fracture liaison service at all. A woman who slips and breaks her wrist in my area, the Forest of Dean, or in Cheltenham will be patched up in A&E and sent home, her osteoporosis undiagnosed and untreated. Yet just 40 miles away in Oxfordshire, where the noble Earl lives, the local FLS identified and treated more than 2,500 people last year. The contrast between these neighbouring areas shows why a national rollout plan cannot wait. Commissioning takes time. From approval to maturity, an FLS can take five years to establish, so the decisions made this year will determine whether the 2030 target can be met.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Black, I welcome the Government’s commitment in their plan on reforming elective care for patients to boosting the number of bone density—DEXA—scanners by investing in up to 13 DEXA scanners, six of which will replace existing machines. This would be brilliant as it would enable an extra 29,000 bone scans a year. However, it also requires radiographers to enable the scans to take place, so I ask my noble friend the Minister for her assurance that there will be an adequate number of them.

I would be grateful if the Minister could also tell me what consideration, if any, her department is giving to treating osteoporosis with MBST. This uses magnetic resonance therapy to stimulate bone regeneration and increase bone density. I understand that a neighbourhood health hub at the University of East London is providing MBST therapy—that experience could provide invaluable information.

Recognising osteoporosis as central to women’s health would fire the starting gun on delivery and give millions of women confidence that progress is finally being made.