Asked by: Lord Rooker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether and how Osteoporosis is considered within wider preventative health policies.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Our 10-Year Health Plan is clear that the future National Health Service must be more preventative, more integrated, and deliver more care closer to home, including for people with osteoporosis.
The Plan committed to rolling out Fracture Liaison Services across every part of the country by 2030, and we are clear that everyone at risk of fragility fractures should be able to benefit from high-quality, timely care that supports prevention, early intervention, and effective management. We are pursuing those goals across the whole pathway of fracture prevention, including improving access to diagnosis, supporting the adoption of effective treatments, and encouraging local systems to develop services that identify people at the highest risk of future fractures and intervene early.
Earlier this year, the Government announced £2.6 million of funding for 20 new DEXA bone density scanners across England. Tens of thousands of patients will benefit from faster access to bone scans as a result, helping to ensure that people with bone conditions, such as osteoporosis, get diagnosed earlier. This builds on the first wave of 13 DEXA scanners announced last year. In 2025, over 21,000 extra DEXA scans were delivered in England compared with 2024.
We continue to work closely with NHS England to improve access to fracture prevention services and to explore the best ways of supporting local systems to deliver high-quality care which meets the needs of their populations. The Government has been clear that integrated care boards are best placed to shape services for their localities and we have set expectations, through the Renewed Women’s Health Strategy, that they should prioritise community-based models when commissioning new services.
Progress in this area can be monitored through activity and outcomes reported through the Fracture Liaison Service Database.
Asked by: Lord Rooker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government on how many occasions since July 2024 ministers have met representatives of the Royal Osteoporosis Society.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Details of ministerial meetings with external organisations and individuals are published on a quarterly basis on GOV.UK. These publications show that, on 16 December 2025, the former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health and Prevention, Ashley Dalton MP, met the Royal Osteoporosis Society to discuss work and insights on Osteoporosis, bone health, and interventions such as Fracture Liaison Services. There have been several similar meetings at official level.
Asked by: Lord Rooker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what are the financial or legislative barriers to making the display of food hygiene ratings mandatory in England.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is currently exploring a wide set of reforms to the existing food system, and this will include consideration of a statutory Food Hygiene Rating Scheme in England. As part of this work, the FSA will review the available legislative options and update its assessment of the associated costs and benefits of a statutory scheme. Ministers will consider proposals in due course.
Asked by: Lord Rooker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Baroness Merron on 6 July (HL Deb col 2), how many Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) do not have a fracture liaison service in each of the NHS hospitals within the ICB.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Analysis of 2025 Fracture Liaison Services (FLS) data shows that the number of FLS’ in England has increased since 2024, from 80 to 83. These 83 services are based in 23 out of the 25 integrated care board (ICB) clusters.
Analysis of the 2025 data suggests that no ICB clusters had an FLS in each of the NHS hospitals within the ICB clusters. The number of FLS’ per ICB cluster ranged from one to eight.
Asked by: Lord Rooker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they plan to take to ensure standards of treatment for osteoporosis are consistent across England.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We would expect healthcare professionals to follow the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence clinical knowledge summary on osteoporosis and the prevention of fragility fractures.
The Royal College of General Practitioners also has an e-learning module for general practitioners on the diagnosis and management of osteoporosis, developed in collaboration with the Royal Osteoporosis Society, which helps to ensure there is consistency across general practitioners in the management and treatment of osteoporosis.
We are supporting better care for patients with musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions, including osteoporosis, through the Getting It Right First Time Programme (GIRFT) for Rheumatology. The GIRFT rheumatology programme is supporting the National Health Service to deliver care more equitably across the country and improve services nationally.
Additionally, the GIRFT community MSK workstream is working to better enable integrated care systems to commission the delivery of high-quality MSK services in the community, including for patients with osteoporosis.
Asked by: Lord Rooker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken since July 2024 to establish early diagnosis clinics for osteoporosis in England; and how many such clinics have been established.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
There are no ‘early diagnosis centres’ for osteoporosis as such. Many patients with osteoporosis will be diagnosed in primary care. Additionally, osteoporosis assessment services can be run from a number of different specialities, for example rheumatology, endocrinology, or older people’s medicine.
Asked by: Lord Rooker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of deaths each year following fractures.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Not all deaths are directly attributable to the fracture, and complications following a fracture are often related to pre-existing ill health and frailty.
For hip fractures, data is available through the National Hip Fracture Database, which is part of the Falls and Fragility Fracture Audit Programme, a clinical audit of fracture prevention care delivered by the Royal College of Physicians.
The National Hip Fracture Database collects data on the care and outcomes for the over 70,000 people who have a hip fracture each year in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Data from the National Hip Fracture Database for 2024 shows that the percentage of patients who die in the month after a hip fracture in England is 6%.
We do not have data on the number of deaths after other types of fractures.
Asked by: Lord Rooker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many fracture liaison services have been established since July 2024.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Our 10-Year Health Plan committed to rolling out Fracture Liaison Services (FLSs) across every part of the country by 2030.
The Department does not routinely collect data on the number of FLSs. The Falls and Fragility Fracture Audit Programme, which includes a dedicated FLS database, is a clinical audit of fracture prevention care, delivered by the Royal College of Physicians. The FLS database collects, measures, and reports on the care provided by FLSs in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It does not include opening and closing dates of FLSs but provides an annual snapshot of the number of FLSs that have submitted data. The database is available at the Fracture Liaison Service Database’s website.
Asked by: Lord Rooker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they take when funding medical research to ensure that diseases common to males and females are studied on a separate gender basis rather than a male-only basis.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Through our National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), we are actively committed to ensuring there is more research into women’s health, and that women’s voices and priorities are placed at the heart of this research.
We know that women have been under-represented in some research areas, particularly women in ethnic minority groups, older women, women of reproductive age, disabled women and LGBT+ women. This has implications for the health and care they receive, their options and awareness of treatments, the support they can access afterwards, and their health outcomes. To address this gap, applicants are now required to build inclusion into their research design as a condition of NIHR funding.
As highlighted in the newly published Renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England, the Department has strengthened NIHR conditions of funding by making it mandatory for researchers to account for sex and gender in their research applications. This move aims to tackle significant and persistent gaps in health and care research.
Alongside this, the NIHR’s Research Inclusion Strategy 2022-2027 sets out how NIHR will become a more inclusive funder of research and widen access to participation in clinical trials. The strategy has been designed to address inequalities associated with the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010.
Through the ongoing systematic collection of data on sex, ethnicity and age of participants taking part in NIHR research, we can monitor progress and continue to champion the inclusion of under-represented groups.
Asked by: Lord Rooker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether a health gap for females is caused by bias in medical research.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Through our National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), we are actively committed to ensuring there is more research into women’s health, and that women’s voices and priorities are placed at the heart of this research.
We know that women have been under-represented in some research areas, particularly women in ethnic minority groups, older women, women of reproductive age, disabled women and LGBT+ women. This has implications for the health and care they receive, their options and awareness of treatments, the support they can access afterwards, and their health outcomes. To address this gap, applicants are now required to build inclusion into their research design as a condition of NIHR funding.
As highlighted in the newly published Renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England, the Department has strengthened NIHR conditions of funding by making it mandatory for researchers to account for sex and gender in their research applications. This move aims to tackle significant and persistent gaps in health and care research.
Alongside this, the NIHR’s Research Inclusion Strategy 2022-2027 sets out how NIHR will become a more inclusive funder of research and widen access to participation in clinical trials. The strategy has been designed to address inequalities associated with the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010.
Through the ongoing systematic collection of data on sex, ethnicity and age of participants taking part in NIHR research, we can monitor progress and continue to champion the inclusion of under-represented groups.