Heart Disease and Stroke: Premature Deaths

Alison Bennett Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Westminster Hall

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship this afternoon, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster) on securing this important debate and thank him for sharing his story. Like so many families across the country, mine has its own history of heart disease, either with tragic, early death or, for my father, a triple heart bypass in 2012. He celebrated his 80th birthday this year.

Reducing premature deaths from heart disease and stroke is one of the defining public health challenges facing our country. It is also one of the greatest opportunities. We know what works and where the risks lie; the question is whether this Government are prepared to invest in preventing illness rather than simply responding to it once people become sick. Cardiovascular disease remains the second biggest cause of death in England; every day, around 390 people die from a heart attack or stroke. Heart and circulatory diseases are responsible for one in four premature deaths, while more than 6.4 million people in England are living with cardiovascular disease.

It is particularly concerning that progress has stalled. After years of improvement, premature mortality from cardiovascular disease has begun to rise again. The latest figures show that rates have returned to around where they were over a decade ago. Behind those statistics are families who have lost loved ones far too early; many of those deaths could have been prevented.

Perhaps the greatest injustice is that outcomes are not evenly distributed. People living in the most deprived communities are twice as likely to die prematurely from cardiovascular disease as those in the least deprived areas. If we are serious about reducing premature deaths, we have to be serious about prevention. Too often, prevention is spoken about warmly but funded poorly. We hear Ministers say that they want to shift healthcare from hospital to community and from treatment to prevention. Those are welcome ambitions, but ambitions alone do not reduce blood pressure, identify atrial fibrillation or prevent strokes.

The reality is that the NHS and local government continue to struggle to fund many of the programmes that are proven to save lives. Freedom of information data published earlier this year reveals that more than 70 local authorities are limiting the number of NHS health checks that GP practices can carry out because of financial pressures. The programme designed to identify people at risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease, which is credited with saving hundreds of lives every year, is being rationed because councils simply cannot afford it. That is the direct consequence of years of underfunding in public health.

A straightforward first step would be restoring the public health grant to its 2015 level, which would give local authorities the resources they need to expand NHS health checks and deliver wider prevention programmes that reduce smoking, improve physical activity and help people to manage the risk factors that lead to cardiovascular disease. The Liberal Democrats have also proposed widening access to blood pressure checks by making them routinely available in community settings such as pharmacies and libraries.

An estimated 7 million people are living with undiagnosed high blood pressure. Many of them have no idea that they are at increased risk of suffering a devastating stroke or heart attack. Detecting hypertension earlier is one of the simplest and most cost-effective interventions available. However, prevention is about much more than screening alone. If we want to tackle heart disease properly, we must also be far more ambitious in addressing obesity and the wider causes of poor health.

The evidence is clear that obesity is closely linked to deprivation. A poor diet often begins in childhood, and families facing food insecurity are more likely to rely on cheaper foods that are higher in fat, salt and sugar. That contributes to stark inequalities in health outcomes later in life. That is why we believe that more children living in poverty should receive free school meals. We would also do more to protect children from the relentless marketing of unhealthy food, including supporting councils to restrict outdoor junk food advertising and maintaining stronger protections on television advertising.

For those already living with heart disease or recovering from a stroke, continuity of care is equally important. The Liberal Democrats want everyone living with a long-term condition to have a named GP. Continuity improves outcomes, reduces unnecessary admissions and ensures that patients receive co-ordinated care over many years, rather than fragmented treatment from multiple clinicians. Recovery following a stroke also deserves much greater attention. Around 60% of stroke survivors leave hospital with a disability. Rehabilitation cannot be treated as an optional extra. Every stroke survivor should have access to personalised, high-quality rehabilitation services that help them regain independence and improve their quality of life.

Finally, I want to touch on emergency care. When someone has a stroke, every minute matters. Rapid assessment and treatment can mean the difference between a full recovery and lifelong disability. I pay tribute to Olivia, the wife of the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), for the work that she and her team do at Queen’s hospital. I pay tribute to all practitioners carrying out the same work across the country.

Ambulance delays and overcrowded emergency departments continue to place patients at unnecessary risk. We know that too well in my village, where, a few years ago, we lost a dear friend far too young as a result of a slow ambulance response time. We need action to reduce ambulance handover delays, expand staffed hospital bed capacity, improve social care so that patients can be discharged safely, and ensure that every A&E waiting room has a qualified clinician able to identify patients whose condition is deteriorating while they wait.

Preventing premature deaths from heart disease and strokes will require action across the whole health system. It means investing in prevention rather than allowing it to become the first casualty of financial pressures. It means tackling the inequalities that leave poorer communities carrying the greatest burden of disease. It means strengthening primary care, community services, rehabilitation and social care rather than focusing solely on elective waiting lists.

The Darzi review warned:

“Care for cardiovascular conditions is going in the wrong direction.”

That warning should not be ignored. If the Government are serious about achieving their ambition to reduce deaths from heart attacks and strokes, they must match warm words with sustained investment in prevention, public health and community care. The best way to reduce premature deaths is not simply to become better at treating illness; it is to prevent people from becoming ill in the first place. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Mrs Sharon Hodgson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Dame Siobhain. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster) for securing this debate on such an important issue. I also commend him on sharing his own personal experience with his diagnosis of a congenital heart defect. I thought, as he was speaking, that it just goes to show that we should never judge solely based on how someone presents on the outside, because we never know what is going on inside; I know he served in the Royal Engineers, and he is also very fit and active. He rightly highlighted why this Government are determined to tackle cardiovascular disease head on through earlier prevention and diagnosis, because that is what is really going to make the difference.

I also thank all hon. Members for their valuable contributions this afternoon. It is clear that far too many lives are still being cut short by cardiovascular disease. In recent years, heart disease and stroke caused around 33,000 premature deaths per year, and it is the second leading cause of death in England after cancer.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) gave a powerful speech, bringing this issue into stark focus with regard to Northern Ireland. I have to say, I share his pleasure in spending so much time in these important debates in Westminster Hall; he and I are usually the common denominator. I want to refer to some of the things that he said, specifically about the ticking time bomb that cardiovascular disease can be. He mentioned that 225,000 people—one in 10—in Northern Ireland live with heart and circulatory conditions. That was very sobering; this is not a niche condition at all. He said that it accounted for 24% of deaths in Northern Ireland—one in four—and that most of those were premature. As always, I will commit to ensuring that key learnings and best practice are shared between both our health services and, indeed, with the other devolved Administrations. I always learn a lot from the hon. Member’s contributions, so I thank him for them. That is why, as part of our 10-year health plan for the NHS, we have committed to shifting from sickness to prevention and to ensuring that fewer lives are lost to the biggest killers, including cardiovascular disease.

I have made so many notes, but the trick is now whether I can find the right note for the right person and not just forget about them all; I am trying to be too clever for my own boots here. The hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) who speaks for the Lib Dems, spoke a lot about prevention and about the shift from treatment and sickness to prevention. She asked me whether the public health grant would go back to 2010 levels. I cannot commit to that. Obviously, something did happen in 2010 and, as much as I like and admire the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Daventry (Stuart Andrew), there were big cuts to the public health grant—although I think the biggest cut was in 2015. However, we have provided the first three-year public health grant settlement in over a decade. That will give surety and confidence to the local authorities and public health directors in all our areas for the three years.

[Alison Bennett]

For the record, my request was that the public health grant be restored back to 2015 levels, not 2010 levels.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Right, the hon. Lady said 2015. I am being too clever for my own boots. I wrote down 2010, but of course, as I said in correcting myself, the big cut was in 2015. I am pleased that the hon. Lady has corrected the record for us all.

As I say, we have set an ambitious goal to reduce premature mortality from heart disease and stroke in the under-75s by a quarter in the next 10 years. As part of the first wave of the new generation of modern service frameworks, we will publish a cardiovascular disease modern service framework soon.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble asked me about that, and I shall move on to answer his questions. He asked when; the answer is soon. The Department and NHS England have engaged widely to consider a range of conditions that are most likely to drive progress on the Government’s ambition and the CVD MSF—if Members do not mind me using the acronym to save words—will set out 12 high impact priority action areas, descriptions of how unwarranted variation should be addressed and a road map for the next 10 years. The framework will be backed by clear accountability and routine monitoring of progress using existing NHS performance and oversight arrangements.

To support the delivery of the framework across the system, we will launch a series of ambitious strategic partnerships between Government, the NHS, industry and the voluntary sector. We thank the British Heart Foundation for its support and participation as a task and finish group member for the CVD MSF.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble asked about type 2 diabetes. I pay tribute to and thank his friend Jared, who is with us today, and who I am aware is a type 1 diabetic. Type 2 diabetes is very prevalent in cardiovascular disease. We are taking steps to reduce overall prevalence of type 2 diabetes by supporting programmes such as the NHS health check and the highly effective “Healthier You” NHS diabetes prevention programme. I will talk more about obesity prevention and the obesogenic environment if I have time.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble asked me about cholesterol. We know that addressing raised cholesterol is key to preventing CVD. Statins cut CVD risk in just four to six weeks, and are readily available and quite cheap, as interventions go. As of December 2025, 85% of people with CVD were being treated with cholesterol-lowering therapy, including statins, across England. He also asked me about arterial fibrillation. The Government recognise the importance of optimising arterial fibrillation treatment. As of December 2025, 92% of those with high-risk arterial fibrillation were being treated with anticoagulants, which was an increase from 87% in March 2020.