Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce pressures on NHS cardiovascular care services.

The Government is taking action to reduce pressure on NHS cardiovascular care services by: supporting local authorities to recover NHS Health Checks, England’s national cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention programme; investing nearly £17 million for the development and roll-out of an innovative new digital NHS Health Check that will enable more people to have a check and free up NHS staff time; rolling out free blood pressure checks to people over the age of 40 in community pharmacies to detect thousands more people living with hypertension earlier. CVD will form a part of the Government’s Major Conditions Strategy which will focus on conditions that contribute most to morbidity and mortality across the population in England. The Strategy will set out a strong and coherent policy agenda that underpin a shift to integrated, whole-person care, building on measures that we have already taken forward through the NHS Long Term Plan. Interventions set out in the Strategy will aim to alleviate pressure on the health system, as well as support the government’s objective to increase healthy life expectancy and reduce ill-health related labour market inactivity.