Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the progress of the cardiovascular disease prevention programme.

We are committed to ensuring that fewer lives are lost to the biggest killers, including from cardiovascular disease (CVD). That is why, in our Health Mission to build a National Health Service fit for the future, we have committed to reducing premature deaths from heart disease and strokes by 25% in the next 10 years.

The NHS Health Check programme, England’s CVD prevention programme, engages over 1.4 million people a year and, through behavioural and clinical interventions, prevents approximately 300 premature deaths, and 500 heart attacks or strokes a year. Data reported by local authorities shows that between April 2013 and December 2024, over 13.6 million NHS Health Checks have been delivered.

To improve access to the NHS Health Check, we are developing a new NHS Health Check Online service, which people can use at a time and place convenient to them, to understand and act on their risk of CVD.

For the 2025/26 contract year we have also brought in changes to shift care from sickness to prevention by incentivising general practitioners to focus on the most common killers, such as heart disease. Knowing that prevention is better than treatment, we have raised the upper threshold of CVD indicators in order to stimulate performance gains and improve CVD care for patients.