Cardiovascular Disease: Prevention

Debate between Stephen Kinnock and Jim Shannon

Thursday 13th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I am indeed starting with an apology. I am very embarrassed by the fact that the debate was put by my officials in my diary as starting at 3.30 pm, and it is completely unacceptable that I arrived late. I apologise to you, Mr Mundell, and to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). It is a very embarrassing situation, and I am not happy about it at all.

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford for securing this debate on such an important issue and for the vital work he does as the chair of the APPG on vascular and venous disease. For their excellent contributions, I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar), who spoke powerfully on the basis of her extensive real-world experience and expertise, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal), who spoke so movingly about his family and personal experiences, and the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett), who spoke passionately about the shocking health disparities that blight our country, caused by 14 years of Tory neglect and incompetence.

Before I begin my remarks, I want to pay tribute to people working in local government, our NHS staff and GPs up and down the country for their efforts to find, treat, and manage people at risk of cardiovascular disease—also known as CVD. As hon. Members will know, health is a devolved issue, so my remarks will be limited to matters in England; however, I am happy to pick up on many of the broader points that the hon. Gentleman for Strangford has made.

The last Labour Government made significant progress on reducing premature deaths from CVD through the introduction of big-hitting interventions such as the ban on smoking in public places and increases in statin prescribing. However, as the hon. Member for Strangford said, among the many appalling findings of Lord Darzi’s report, there is clear evidence that progress on CVD stalled, and even went into reverse in some areas, between 2010 and 2024. That is why it is this Government’s mission to invest in the health service, alongside fundamental reform to the way that healthcare is delivered. We will build a health and care system fit for the future by moving from sickness to prevention, hospital to home, and analogue to digital. Tackling preventable ill health is a key part of these shifts.

As part of our 10-year health plan, we are committed to helping everyone to live a healthy life for longer, and as the hon. Gentleman also outlined in his remarks, too many lives are cut short by heart disease and strokes. In 2022, one quarter of all CVD deaths in the UK occurred among people under the age of 75. Tackling CVD is not just the right thing to do for patients; CVD is also having an impact on growth. People with CVD are more likely to leave the labour market than people with poor mental health, and we must dispel the fiction that people with CVD are always old and infirm. Around one in three people who have a heart attack, one in four people who have a stroke, and two in five people with coronary heart disease are of working age.

The hon. Gentleman referred to premature deaths, and we know from the most recent figures that I have, from 2023, that in England alone over 130,000 people died from CVD and over 30,000 people died before they turned 75. The best estimates show that the annual cost of CVD to the NHS is a staggering £8.3 billion, with knock-on effects of £21 billion to the wider economy. This is a huge challenge, which is why we are meeting it with great ambition: to reduce premature deaths from heart disease and stroke in people under 75 by one quarter within a decade. The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), will be spearheading our work in this area, and will also be picking up on many of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised in his speech.

We know that around 70% of the CVD burden is preventable and due to risk factors such as living with obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking—all of which can be reduced by behaviour changes, early identification and treatment. In England, the NHS health check is a free check-up for people between 40 and 74. The NHS health check is a wide-reaching programme delivered by local authorities in England. This CVD prevention programme aims to prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and kidney disease—and also dementia for older patients. 

In the very short period of time that I have left, I just wanted to say that the hon. Member for Strangford called for the introduction of Lp(a) tests. As I understand it, lipoprotein(a) measurement is not currently recommended by NICE guidance, and there are no treatments available that specifically target Lp(a).  Instead, our focus is to improve the uptake of lipid-lowering therapies for prevention of CVD and to treat people with established CVD to NICE treatment targets. We will look closely at new tech and innovation and the essential role they will play in reducing health inequalities.

[Jim Shannon]

I apologise, but at the end of my speech I asked for three things. I asked whether there would be a willingness to meet me and representatives from the Lp(a) taskforce to discuss the essential steps that are needed, and that—

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Money)

Debate between Stephen Kinnock and Jim Shannon

Money resolution
Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

I thank Members for their continued contribution to the debate. The Government are of the view that the Bill is an issue of conscience for individual parliamentarians and it is rightly a matter for Parliament, not the Government, to decide. The money resolution allows the Bill to be debated in Committee, where its detail will continue to be scrutinised. As I have said, the Government will also be assessing the impact of the Bill and we expect to publish an impact assessment before MPs consider the Bill on Report. I therefore commend the money resolution to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) made a comment that I feel impinged upon my integrity. I have spoken to the right hon. Gentleman and he knows what I am referring to. I underlined and highlighted that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill Committee went into private session; some 15 Members, who support the Bill, voted for the private session and nine Members, who oppose the Bill, voted against the private session. The record must be corrected about what the right hon. Gentleman said about the comments I made about that. Facts are facts; they matter to me, as does my integrity.

Hospice and Palliative Care

Debate between Stephen Kinnock and Jim Shannon

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

The Government announced a commission on the future of adult social care. A separate commission was announced by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) on palliative care. We will certainly monitor the findings of that commission very closely.

We will set out details of the funding allocation and distribution mechanisms for both funding streams in the coming weeks.

[Jim Shannon]

In my contribution, I made the House aware that the Northern Ireland hospice has to cut its beds from seven to six for five days of the week, and at the weekend, there are only three. The Minister knows that I respect him greatly. It is all very well to have capital money available, but there has to be money to run the system and provide beds. Otherwise, we can buy beds, but might not be able to keep them and run a service. There must be something seriously wrong with what he is putting forward.

[Stephen Kinnock]

As I said in a previous answer, hospices face a range of pressures that financial contributions from the Government will help to ease. The funding will, of course, have a knock-on impact on hospices budgets in the round.

In spite of the record-breaking package that we have announced, we are certainly not complacent. There is more work to be done, and through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Department is investing £3 million in a policy research unit on palliative and end of life care. The unit launched in January 2024 and is building the evidence base that will inform our long-term strategy. A number of hon. Members requested a long-term strategy and plan, which is sorely missing after 14 years of Conservative neglect and incompetence. I agree that we need a long-term plan, and assure Members that conversations are taking place between my officials and NHS England. The research needs to be based on evidence and facts, which the unit will help us to get.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Kinnock and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is right. South Yorkshire has the highest level of hospital tooth extractions in England, and I want to assure him that we will target interventions at the areas of greatest need. For example, integrated care boards have started to advertise roles through our “golden hello” scheme, which will drive recruitment of graduate dentists to areas of greatest need for three years. We have inherited a mess and we are working at pace to clear it up.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The Minister is right to underline the issues for children, but can I remind him of the issues for those above the state pension age—which is increasing to 67, including for ladies—in particular when it comes to certain benefits, such as attendance allowance? Will he look at the contract for those who are elderly and in receipt of such benefits?

[Stephen Kinnock]

We are in a situation where a staggering 28% of the country—13 million people—have a need that is unmet by NHS dentistry. There are so many issues that we need to resolve. We are looking at the contract with the BDA and I am more than happy to look into the issue raised by the hon. Gentleman.

Unpaid Carers

Debate between Stephen Kinnock and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 3rd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She is absolutely right that many such networks, often informal, play a vital role in the community in providing that support and peer-to-peer support. So often unpaid carers can end up feeling quite isolated. Informal networks like the one she describes are vital and I commend the work of that network in achieving the objectives we all want to see.

[Jim Shannon]

The Minister outlines the need for reform. I think many of us in the Chamber would like compassion and understanding to be key to that. Reforms are okay, but they need compassion and understanding to make them work.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. He has reminded the House that caring for friends and family is an important part of what it means to be human. It is at the heart of the desire to support one’s community, as well as one’s friends and family.

We must always approach this issue with compassion. We know that we have certain constraints as a Government in terms of what we are able to do, but I can assure the hon. Member that we are absolutely committed to fixing what is, broadly speaking, a broken system; indeed, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has described the health and social care system as broken. We have to fix the foundations of that system, and unpaid carers are absolutely part of those foundations. We also have to ensure that unpaid carers have a strong voice in the consensus that we want to build around fixing the system. We know that if we are to build a national care service of which our entire country can be proud, we will need those reforms, but they must truly embody person-centred care and the role played by unpaid carers. To achieve that, I will engage with my counterparts across Government, with unpaid carers and with sector partners such as Carers UK and Carers Trust to ensure that their voices are heard.

I know that many of us were profoundly moved by the experiences of caring shared by the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) during the general election campaign. As we have heard this evening, this is a subject of great significance for, and close to the heart of, Members on both sides of the House—including, of course, the hon. Member for North East Fife. I look forward to engaging with colleagues throughout the House on a cross-party basis, because we know that the consensus we need to build transcends narrow party political partisan divides. This is about building a system that is truly fit for the future, and fit for the country in which we live. So let us forge ahead together with the promise of that future in which unpaid carers are visible, valued and supported.

Question put and agreed to.