Cardiovascular Illnesses

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I start by expressing my gratitude to and respect for my noble friend Lord Booth for being so honest and brave with us in this Committee about his experience. I know that we all wish him well.

I intend to concentrate on the prevention of cardiovascular illness and the importance of regular physical exercise in the overwhelming majority of cases of CVD; physical exercise is widely considered the most effective preventive measure against CVD. I declare my interests in this subject as a former Minister for Sport and as the chairman of the British Olympic Association in the build-up to, and during, 2012. Also, thanks to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, I fortunately succeeded in a campaign to make defibrillators available in every school.

Unless we address prevention with as much urgency as detection and treatment, we will be left lagging behind other countries in a critical area of health policy where we have no excuse not to lead. For, as has been evidenced in multiple randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, it is indisputable that exercise reduces the risks of hypertension, cholesterol, BMI values and diabetes, all of which are linked to the development of CVD.

After the first major lockdown of 2020, Sport England commissioned the Sport Industry Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University to assess the social impact and economic importance of sport and physical activity in England. There were two fascinating parts to the research. Part 1 measured the social impact of sport and physical activity, including on physical and mental health, and part 2 measured the economic importance. The results showed that, for every £1 spent on community sport and physical activity in England, an economic and social return on investment of £3.91 is generated. From the point of view of the NHS, the report stated that a huge £9.5 billion was generated through the physical and mental well-being impacts, which included the prevention of 150,000 cases of heart disease and stroke, 900,000 cases of diabetes and 8,500 cases of cancer.

It is important to look at why there are various barriers to achieving activity levels, including motivation, perceived capability and lack of facilities, because the landscape of the UK’s level of physical fitness is bleak and deteriorating. We face high and growing rates of inactivity among both adults and children—both aligned to a growing obesity problem. Although there are tangential positive trends, such as increased gym membership and the rise of digital fitness, a significant proportion of the adult population in England is classified as inactive.

What is worse is the growing representation of health disparities, as the noble Baroness, Lady Winterton, pointed out in her excellent speech. It is the relatively well-off who join gyms. It is the independent sector of education that has overwhelmingly provided the best sports facilities for young people. It is the private sports clubs that have been the backbone of UK sport. Therefore, it is no surprise that we face what is known as the Jubilee line of health inequality, where life expectancy decreases as you travel east along the Jubilee line from Westminster to Canning Town, and where approximately one year of life expectancy is lost for every two Jubilee line stops heading east.

Socioeconomic conditions, access to healthcare, environmental factors and the inequalities that arise from a lack of school and local authority sports facilities, along with a lack of a national culture of sport, health and well-being, drive the high level of cardiovascular illness.

Prevention is essential. In Committee on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I are proposing a national school strategy for sport, health and well-being. After all, well-being is in the title of the Bill, yet in this key cornerstone of the Government’s schools policy there is not a single mention of physical education, physical fitness or sport.

A National Plan for Sport, Health and Wellbeing, published by your Lordships’ ad hoc Select Committee in 2021 stated:

“We are concerned about the high levels of inactivity at the grassroots level, particularly among women, ethnic minorities, disabled people and those with long-term health conditions, the elderly, and people from less affluent backgrounds … Numerous underwhelming attempts to boost activity rates and improve population-level physical and mental health and wellbeing have not been as successful as hoped … Our overarching recommendation is the need for a new ambitious national plan for sport, health and wellbeing and a new approach within Government to deliver and fund it”.


That is why the committee on which I sat believed that sport should be moved from the DCMS and placed at the centre of the Department of Health and Social Care. There, it should be aligned with health and well-being at the epicentre of government.

Today, we have rightly focused on the gravity of the CVD problem. Yet we are doing nothing to match or exceed the CMO’s physical activity guidelines, which would prevent many cases of CVD. More than a quarter of adults in England, some 11.9 million people, are classified as inactive. A further 5.1 million average 30 to 149 minutes of activity a week. In a country that has prided itself on sport, fitness and well-being over the generations, successive Governments seem blinded into passive acceptance that 17 million adults in this country do not meet the CMO’s basic recommendation for physical activity. What is in some ways worse is that 30% of children do fewer than 30 minutes of exercise a day and a further 22.7% average between 30 minutes and one hour. This means that more than half our children, some 3.9 million, do not meet the CMO’s recommendation.

It is time to act. It is time to elevate the importance of this subject, which was so well introduced by my noble friend Lord Booth.