Baroness Quin (Lab)

My Lords, I join in the congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, on initiating this debate. I know, as another long-standing member of the all-party group, how active he has been in promoting the goal of a proper system of fracture liaison services. I remember initiating a similar debate on NHS provision for tackling osteoporosis not long after I joined your Lordships’ House, way back in October 2007. At that time, I was focusing on the patchy provision and availability of DEXA scans across the country, and highlighting the postcode lottery whereby, while you might be identified as needing access to services aimed at preventing osteoporosis, whether those services were available depended very much on where you happened to live. It is therefore very frustrating that, even now, so many years later, we are still complaining about postcode lotteries and that, in England, we still do not have the nationwide system of fracture liaison services which everyone who has spoken in this debate has favoured. As a long-standing supporter of devolution, I also find it frustrating that England, the most populous country, has once again been lagging behind the rest of the UK. I firmly believe that if devolution is to count as a UK success, it should be a process that fosters high standards of service to all our citizens in whatever part of the UK they live. I also hope that, perhaps with the emergence of regional mayors in England, there will be a renewed effort, supported by the Government, to tackle inequalities in healthcare provisions in different regions of our country. I accept of course that my noble friend the Minister who will reply to the debate and the Government of which she is part have been in office for only a very short period of time. I am very pleased that the current Secretary of State for Health, in already committing himself to rolling out a system of fracture liaison services across the country, fully recognises not only the benefits this will bring to NHS patients but the financial savings to the NHS in the long term through the establishment of these much-needed preventive services. I pay warm tribute to the Royal Osteoporosis Society for the work it has done over the years in raising awareness of osteoporosis and the various ways it can be prevented and tackled. It has been particularly successful in promoting national media coverage of the issue, which in turn has increased public awareness and public consciousness of its importance. In correspondence with me, the Royal Osteoporosis Society has made the point that fracture liaison services fit very well into the recent update on the National Health Service from the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, particularly in the three key shifts that he highlighted and deemed necessary: a move from sickness to prevention, from analogue to digital, and from emergency-based care to community-focused models. Surely it is the case that fracture liaison services offer a practical example of how we can deliver on all three of these worthwhile aims, and do so in the short term as well as the long term. Many speeches this evening have made very telling points, and I am sure the Minister will have listened carefully to them. Like others, I look forward very much to her reply to this debate.