Wes Streeting has launched an extraordinary attack on one of the Queen’s charities in comments leaked to the Mail on Sunday.
The Health Secretary has been accused of ‘arrogance’ after criticising health campaigners last week and describing the Royal Osteoporosis Society as the ‘worst offender’ when it came to lobbying government.
Queen Camilla, whose mother died in agony of osteoporosis, is the president of the charity, having supported it since 1994.
It works closely with the Mail on Sunday on its War on Osteoporosis campaign, which aims to end the postcode lottery of vital bone scans.
The Health Secretary told this newspaper that one of his first acts in government would be to start work on making vital bone scans universally available by 2030. He repeated the pledge after Labour took power.
But in a bitter blow to patients, NHS planning guidance issued on Thursday setting out the priorities for 2025-26 contained no instructions to health bosses to start work on rolling out fracture liaison services (FLS).
Mr Streeting made his comments in a meeting with officials on the same day, when he also said he wants to ‘break the culture of the voluntary sector and the way that it lobbies government’.
In a leaked video of the meeting, Mr Streeting mocked the campaigners and said: ‘If it was up to the Royal Osteoporosis Society, the planning guidance would be called the ‘Planning guidance to ensure complete rollout of fracture liaison services by 2030 [why didn’t you do it yesterday?]’.
He added: ‘We share people’s objectives. But they are going to have to work with us. They are going to have to bear with us.’
A source with knowledge of the meeting said the comments showed ‘immaturity, or arrogance or both’ from Mr Streeting.
FLS clinics are the gold standard worldwide for early diagnosis of the bone-thinning disease.
However, they are available only in about half of NHS Trusts in England. The charity estimates 2,500 fatalities will occur this year that could have been avoided if FLS were available across the UK.
Craig Jones, of the Royal Osteoporosis Society said: ‘We felt we had to voice concerns that the election pledge for universal fracture services by 2030 wasn’t being reflected in government policy.’
A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘We remain committed to rolling out fracture liaison services across every part of the country by 2030.’
