Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that the improvements for heart and circulatory disease services set out in the NHS long term plan can still be met in the context of covid-19 and the backlog of care.

The restoration of services, including those for cardiovascular disease, is priority for the National Health Service, with local teams working throughout the pandemic to provide diagnostic and treatment services.

NHS England and NHS Improvement are working with regional and local teams to develop cardiac networks and integrated stroke delivery networks in England. These networks have been developed to take an evidenced-based, clinically led, whole pathway approach from prevention, diagnosis, treatment to end of life care. The NHS is establishing 44 community diagnostic centres which could deliver over one million additional scans and tests by the end of March 2022.