National Accident Prevention Strategy

Debate between Lee Pitcher and Andrew Mitchell

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sir Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of a national accident prevention strategy.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. Today, I want to draw the House’s attention to what can only be described as a silent and spiralling crisis in our country: the devastating human cost of preventable accidents. This is not a new issue, but it is getting worse and, crucially, it is still not given the level of sustained national attention that its scale demands. Too often, people think of accidents 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.

Every Member here will recognise the pattern: we hear it in our advice surgeries, we receive the letters and we take the calls. We meet parents who have lost children, spouses who have lost partners and children who have lost a parent in circumstances that are sudden, awful and preventable. Towards the end of last year, following two road fatalities in the royal town of Sutton Coldfield in our community over the course of a week and the drowning of a teenager in Sutton park, I had the valuable experience of meeting a long-standing resident of Royal Sutton Coldfield, Becky Hickman, who is the chief executive officer of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and has championed accident prevention at the national level for over 20 years. Indeed, she is in the Public Gallery today.

One of those horrific accidents took place on Friday 22 August last year, when, tragically, 21-year-old Natasha Thorp was struck by a car on Brassington Avenue in my constituency and died shortly afterwards. I have had the privilege of getting to know her family a little and of joining Natasha’s father and other members of her family at the recent installation of a memorial bench in Sutton Park overlooking Blackroot pool. It is hard to describe the life-changing trauma they have suffered, but they are not alone.

RoSPA and I welcome the Department for Transport’s new road safety strategy, but it is a small part of a much bigger issue and strategy. Road traffic accidents are sadly not isolated events, and accidental deaths and injuries do not only happen on the roads. Tragedies can occur at home, at work and when out in open spaces.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

One of the gaps that we consistently see is in water safety, where interventions are often reactive rather than preventive. Following the tragic death of a young boy in a reservoir local to me in Yorkshire, I have been working on Sam’s law and with organisations such as RoSPA, the Royal Life Saving Society, and the fire and rescue services to develop a clear, risk-based approach for water safety, including guidance on when and how lifesaving equipment should be provided. Does the right hon. Member agree that the national accident prevention strategy must bring together those kinds of organisations, which have the experience and knowledge to make sure that these sorts of incidents never happen again?

[Sir Andrew Mitchell]

As the hon. Member will see as I develop my speech, I very much agree with him.

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 day. Across the west midlands, more than 2,000 people annually die due to accidents, the equivalent of wiping out a small village year after year. Nationally, there has been 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 more than 40%. That is not a blip, a statistical anomaly or a short-term fluctuation; it is a serious problem that has been brushed under the carpet for too long.

There is 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. We are talking about millions of bed days every year linked to accident-related admissions. 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 a human one, placing additional strain on a workforce who are already under great 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 business is now estimated at about £6 billion every year.

Taken together, this represents a hidden but substantial cost to the country—to our health service, economy and public finances. The truth is that we can do better. Indeed, we have done better before. We know what works: safer homes, stronger product standards, effective public awareness campaigns, improved design of public spaces, better data collection, and co-ordinated action across Government and local agencies.