Musculoskeletal Conditions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Andrew Gwynne)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) for securing this really important debate, and for bringing her professional expertise to the House. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge), who showed that she can think on the spot and turn an intervention into a short speech.

It is important that we acknowledge just how significant the impact of musculoskeletal conditions can be on both individuals and their loved ones. Poor MSK health can severely impact every aspect of a person’s life. It also has a significant impact on the NHS and the wider economy. Pain, stiffness and limited movement all affect quality of life and independence, including the ability to work. MSK conditions are the leading cause of years lived with disability in England. They are responsible for up to 30% of GP consultations, and MSK community services have the longest waiting lists of all community services in England, as of September this year. MSK conditions are also one of the leading causes of sickness absence, with approximately 23.4 million working days lost due to MSK conditions in 2022 in the UK.

That is why the Government are committed to improving care for the 17 million people living with MSK conditions in England, and ensuring that they receive support and access to the latest treatments. Improving health and work outcomes for people living with MSK conditions also forms a key part of the Government’s missions to build an NHS fit for the future, and to kickstart economic growth.

Turning first to the health mission, my Department recently announced plans to develop a 10-year NHS plan. It will consider what actions are needed to improve patient access and reduce waiting times. It will set out a bold agenda to deliver the three big shifts needed. Those are moving healthcare from the hospital to the community, from analogue to digital, and from treatment to prevention. We recognise that there is much more we can do to support earlier diagnosis and management for people with MSK conditions, and the need for timely and comprehensive care that starts at home. We know that many people with MSK conditions can be diagnosed and well managed in the community, which is why we are making a start by exploring how best to support MSK primary and community service improvement, helping to give MSK conditions greater parity with other conditions.

I will certainly take away the suggestions made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley on physiotherapists, AHPs more generally, and other issues. They could play a vital and important role in getting the better outcomes we want to see. She spoke rightly about how we deal with children. The Government want to create the healthiest generation of children ever. We must ensure that we have the services to diagnose bone conditions at an earlier stage and get children the appropriate treatment.

My hon. Friend also talked about communities that are difficult to reach. I have a row with my officials because I do not accept that any community is difficult to reach—we have just not tried hard enough. It is precisely the kind of suggestions that she set out that will ensure, on a whole range of health conditions including MSK, that we do better at identifying where those people and health inequalities are, and get access to services into the places where those people are so we can get them on to the treatment pathways.

With NHS England, we are considering a range of options to identify the most effective ways of improving the quality of and access to the fracture liaison service model, and the interventions that that model provides. For MSK conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, early diagnosis is the key to preventing joint damage and improving quality of life. The Government are investing £1.5 billion in capital funding in 2025-26 for new surgical hubs and diagnostic scanners, to build capacity for over 30,000 additional procedures and over 1.25 million diagnostic tests as they come online.

I turn now to the growth mission. The “Get Britain Working” White Paper highlighted the issue of spiralling economic inactivity, with 2.8 million people, which is equivalent to the population of Greater Manchester, being locked out of work because of long-term sickness. Tackling economic inactivity caused by ill health will play an important part in realising our ambition of having an 80% employment rate.

To support that ambition, the Further Faster 20 scheme will be delivered by NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time programme. Further Faster 20 will operate in 20 areas of the country that have high levels of economic inactivity, with the aim of reducing waiting times and enabling people to return to work. Actions will include improving secondary care interfaces with primary and community services.

We will also launch a set of place-based trailblazers in eight areas in England and Wales to run during 2025-26. These trailblazers will be at the forefront of developing joined-up approaches to support people with work, health and skills. Three trailblazer areas will be funded to become health and growth accelerator sites, in order to build evidence of the impact of targeted action on the main health conditions driving economic inactivity, and I assure the House that those conditions include MSK conditions.

I also say to my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley that I am more than happy to meet her to discuss these issues further. If we can squeeze it in somewhere in my diary, I am also more than happy to visit the fracture liaison services in her area.

I want to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale that we take very seriously the impact of MSK conditions on the NHS workforce itself. As part of our workforce planning, we need to get better at identifying NHS employees who have MSK conditions and ensure that we provide them with the appropriate support, so that they can carry on working in our health and care systems.

To conclude, once again I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley for securing this important debate. I hope that she is reassured by some of the measures I have outlined today. In addition, I will take on board the very important points she made about how we can do better on those issues and ensure that they are fed back through my team to those working up our policies on fracture liaison and MSK more generally.

I hope that my hon. Friend recognises that MSK is a priority for this Government. I absolutely recognise that we must go further, but today I will close by reaffirming this Government’s commitment to supporting the millions of people in the UK living with an MSK condition, to ensure that they receive the support they need, including improved diagnosis and management, and to ensure that we drive down waiting times and waiting lists, identify conditions earlier, get people into treatment as quickly as possible, and have the happier, healthier and more prosperous country that we have all been elected to this place to help deliver, which would be the consequence of having a healthier, happier workforce and a healthier and happier population.

Question put and agreed to.