Too often, people think of accidental deaths as tragic misfortune. But they are often ordinary moments – a fall at home, a collision on the road, an accident at work, a lapse in safety in a familiar environment – that devastate lives in the blink of an eye.
Every Member will recognise the pattern. We hear it in our advice surgeries, we receive the letters, we take the calls. We meet parents who have lost children, spouses who have lost partners, children who have lost a parent in circumstances that are sudden and preventable.
We tend to think of preventable accidents as unlucky outliers – rare exceptions to the common norm. Alas, statistics tell a different story. Preventable accidents are a spiralling crisis.
I led a debate in Westminster Hall to shine a light on the growing scale of the challenge based on the mounting evidence in my own constituency, Sutton Coldfield. Recently, there were two road fatalities in our community in the same week. One of these horrific accidents took place on Friday 22 August last year, when tragically 21 year old Natasha Thorpe was struck by a car and died shortly afterwards.
Road traffic accidents are, sadly, not isolated events, and nor do accidental deaths and injuries only happen on the roads, as the recent drowning of a teenager in Sutton Park starkly shows.
In Birmingham, we have the seventh highest number of accidental deaths in England. Each year, more than 550 families in our city lose a loved one due to a preventable accident – that is more than one death, every single day.
Across the West Midlands, over 2,000 people die annually due to accidents – the equivalent of wiping out a small village, year after year.
Nationally we have seen an 8% rise in accidental death rates and a 3% increase in hospital admissions in just one year.
Over the past decade, accidental death rates have risen by over 40%. That is not a blip, not a statistical anomaly, and not a short-term fluctuation. It is a serious problem that has been brushed under the carpet for too long.
There is also a wider national cost to this issue: Accidents place a significant and growing burden on the National Health Service. Every preventable injury that results in an emergency admission adds pressure to already stretched A&E departments, ambulance services, and hospital wards.
Accidents now are believed to cost us at least £6 billion annually in NHS medical care.
The impact on NHS staff is also profound. Doctors, nurses, paramedics, and support staff are dealing daily with injuries and emergencies that, in many cases, could have been prevented. That is not only a clinical challenge, but also a human one, placing additional strain on a workforce that is already under pressure.
The burden extends across the economy. When people are injured, they are often unable to work, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. Families lose income. Employers lose skilled workers. Productivity falls.
The country loses millions of working days each year due to accident-related absence. The combined cost to UK businesses is now about £6 billion every year.
The truth is that we can do better. What is currently lacking is a clear, coherent, and sustained national strategy to bring these efforts together.
That is why I believe there is now a compelling case for a National Accident Prevention Strategy. Such a strategy would have benefits across the whole of government, be it safer roads for Department for Transport, reduced pressure on the NHS for Department of Health and Social Care, less spending on benefits for people unable to work due to accidents for Department for Work and Pensions, and higher productivity for the Treasury.
It should be based on a few clear principles including ministerial leadership, a focus on prevention, rather than reaction, public education and using the evidence to determine the appropriate interventions.
We must remember that preventable accidents are ordinary stories with tragic endings. Far too many lives are being lost unnecessarily, and that this does not have to be the case.
