Heart Disease and Stroke: Premature Deaths

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Siobhain McDonagh

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Hodgson]

My private office will have made note of that. I would be happy to pay a visit to the hospital and am interested to look at that work.

My hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire asked about ambulance wait times. NHS England is working with East Midlands ambulance service to support improvements in response times, which will increase frontline ambulance availability, improve productivity and strengthen performance. I can assure her that that work is under way.

In England, the NHS health check for individuals aged 40 to 74 is designed to assess the top risk factors for cardiovascular disease and refer people to further support where appropriate. The NHS health check is wide reaching it engages more than 1.4 million people a year and, through behavioural and clinical interventions, prevents around 500 heart attacks or strokes a year. We know that there is more to do to improve uptake of the health check. As part of our efforts to make the shift from analogue to digital, we are developing the NHS health check online and increasing the flexibility of the programme so that people can complete it at home at a time more convenient to them.

Finding and supporting people with undetected high blood pressure early is, as a number of colleagues mentioned, critical to preventing heart attacks and strokes. I think we can all remember the former shadow Health Secretary, Jonathan Ashworth. He had undiagnosed high blood pressure and recently had a heart attack. We cannot just assume, from what someone looks like on the outside, what is going on inside. It is so important that we all take up those health checks when we reach the grand old age of 40, which I have not yet reached myself—I see my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) laughing; he must think I am over 40.

We have invested heavily in blood pressure checks in community pharmacy so that we take up those opportunities for detection in the community. Over the last year in England, 82% of pharmacies were delivering the service, with more than 3 million blood pressure checks taking place.

We are also committed to tackling obesity, and have made significant progress by restricting junk food advertising targeted at children on TV and online, along with banning volume price reductions on less healthy products. NHS England has expanded access to the NHS digital weight management service, doubling the number of people supported. Some 1 million adults in England with established CVD who are overweight or living with obesity are also now eligible for semaglutide—Wegovy—to reduce major cardiovascular events.

We have taken firm action on smoking, including the landmark Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026, which will protect future generations from the harms of smoking. To help people quit smoking, we have also ringfenced funding for stop smoking services in the public health grant, protecting at least £150 million per year.

Our work does not stop there. I have mentioned the shift from treatment to prevention, incentivising earlier identification and better management of CVD risk. The elective reform plan committed to modernising cardiology pathways, and we are working closely with clinicians to implement reforms, ensuring that care is delivered in the right place and at the right time. We have an ambitious target to reduce premature mortality from heart disease and stroke by 25%, and the CVD MSF will provide the tools required to achieve this.

The shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Daventry, raised the women’s health strategy. He is right to mention the disparity in women’s diagnosis and treatment. The renewed women’s health strategy sets out how we will redesign services, improve diagnosis and embed women’s voices so that care improves across all conditions. Priority examples where women are most poorly served are included, and progress will be judged against three overarching measures of success, the main one being to reduce the amount of time that women spend in poor health.

I will finish here so that there is time for my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble to make some closing remarks. I again thank him for bringing this important matter to the House.

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

I call Paul Foster to wind up, very quickly.

Educational Performance: Boys

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Siobhain McDonagh

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I apologise for being brusque. I would like to challenge the assertion made by the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) that educational attainment is about gender: it is about social class and it is about the white working-class social class.

To quote the educational warrior Sir Michael Wilshaw from a speech in 2013 on his report “Unseen children: educational access and achievement 20 years on”:

“Let me emphasise, this is not a gender issue. Poor, low-income White British girls do very badly. So we should stop talking about ‘white working class boys’ as if they are the only challenge.”

Indeed, while boys receiving free school meals are consistently in the lowest-performing overall group at GCSE level, white girls receiving free school meals are consistently the next lowest-achieving group of girls. The attainment gap between children receiving free school meals and those who are not is evident even before a child reaches the age of four. The pattern continues throughout a child’s life. Only 32% of white working-class British students receiving free school meals achieved the GCSE benchmark last year. That is compared with 44% of mixed race students, 59% of Bangladeshi students, 42% of black Caribbean students and 47% of Pakistani students—all receiving free school meals. This is because the educational attainment of white working-class students of both genders has improved much more slowly than that of almost any other ethnic group over the past 10 years.

Optimistically, there is a world of difference between the performance of white working-class students in inadequate and in outstanding schools. What works for all, works even more with working-class students. I will just take the Harris Academies in south London. Last year, about 56% of white British students nationwide secured five A* to C GCSEs including English and maths, but at Harris Academy Greenwich 60% of white British students secured those grades. Just five years ago, the school was under special measures—not now. Under the excellent leadership of a strong principal, George McMillan, the school has undertaken an unimaginable transformation. Harris Academy Falconwood, just a mile away, has a staggering 73% of white British students securing those grades. Yet again, the rate of success at that school is incredible. In 2008 only 17% of its students achieved those grades, but under the leadership of the female principal Terrie Askew, the school is now judged “outstanding” by Ofsted.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

In the time allowed, my hon. Friend will probably not be able to go into what is making the difference at those academies, but if she is able to, I would really appreciate it.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

It is about doing more of what we know works for everybody else: more extra lessons, more tutorship and more assistance.

The two schools are very different and the gender of the head makes no difference; they are both excellent heads achieving excellent results for the white British, and therefore all other, students. It is about social class, and the sooner we recognise that and stand up and do something about it, the sooner we will make it better for everyone.