Physical activity should be treated as a core part of NHS care for older people – on a par with prescribing medication – according to a new report from the Health and Social Care Committee.
MPs argue that improving strength, balance and mobility through regular physical activity will be essential to helping the UK’s ageing population remain healthy, resilient and independent for longer. The Committee says boosting activity levels could significantly reduce illness, frailty and falls, easing pressure on health and social care services.
The recommendations follow the Committee’s cross‑party Healthy Ageing inquiry, which examined how the NHS and wider system can better support people as they grow older.
Crucially, the report links physical activity to the Government’s ambition to shift the NHS from treating illness to preventing it, while also helping to stabilise the rising cost of running the health service as demand continues to grow.
Exercise to become routine NHS support
Among its key recommendations, the Committee says:
- Advice and social prescribing of physical activity should become a core, routine offer for older people from GPs and other clinicians.
- Stronger links should be built between NHS services, leisure providers and community groups to make exercise easier to access locally.
- The Care Quality Commission (CQC) should be given responsibility for checking that exercise programmes are provided in care homes.
The report also calls for a national conversation about ageing, alongside a broader cultural shift in how later life is perceived.
MPs warn that negative stereotypes around ageing can lead older people to feel resigned to inactivity at precisely the stage of life when a sedentary lifestyle increases vulnerability to illness and loss of independence.
‘Exercise can be more effective than medication’
Health and Social Care Committee Chair Layla Moran MP said:
“Healthcare experts and the Government are all agreed that staying physically active can help older people to live not just longer, but healthier, happier, more sociable lives.
“Promoting active lifestyles among older people would also tackle two policy objectives at once – shifting the NHS’s focus to prevention, and bringing services closer to home, not the nearest hospital.
"Experts told us that exercise can be more effective than medication, and these changes would also cut the NHS’s vast expenditure on drugs. It’s a win-win, and this report sets out how the Government can make it happen.
“We have set out practical recommendations for Ministers to rethink how the NHS and social care services help older people, from training for GPs to help individuals make their own healthy choices, to greater accountability in care homes and making our public spaces more accessible.
“As a growing proportion of society becomes older, we need to have a national conversation and a generational change in attitudes towards ageing. Assumptions that elderly people are left to fade away quietly lead to harmful behaviours that cause unnecessary suffering for individuals and their families. These retrograde ideas must be upended.”
Implications for NHS and social care leaders
For NHS managers and commissioners, the report raises important questions about workforce training, local partnerships and accountability. Embedding physical activity into routine care would require closer collaboration between primary care, public health, local authorities and voluntary organisations.
The Committee’s recommendations also place renewed focus on the role of care homes, community infrastructure, and social prescribing as part of a preventative health system – with implications for inspection, commissioning and outcomes measurement.
As the population continues to age, MPs argue that failing to act now risks locking the NHS into an increasingly reactive and unsustainable model of care.
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