Cardiovascular Illnesses

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Booth, for arranging this Question for Short Debate on cardiovascular disease and for sharing his emotional and personal experience. The statistics about cardiovascular disease paint a stark picture of a health crisis that demands urgent and comprehensive attention. My thanks go to the British Heart Foundation, the Stroke Association, Diabetes UK and the House of Lords Library for excellent briefings.

The facts are that every day in the UK 240 individuals wake up to the catastrophic reality of a stroke. Stroke remains the fourth-leading cause of death in our nation and a primary cause of disability. Every three minutes, a family loses a loved one to cardiovascular disease and CVD causes more than a quarter of all deaths in the UK.

However, nearly nine out of 10 strokes are preventable, often associated with modifiable risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking and physical inactivity. High blood pressure alone is the largest risk factor for stroke, contributing to 50% of all strokes. The number of people living with diabetes, or pre-diabetes, now exceeds 12 million in the UK, equivalent to one in five adults. Their risk of death from CVD is 4.2 times higher than for those without diabetes. Each week, diabetes leads to 812 strokes and 568 heart attacks. It is therefore vital that we optimise the detection and management of high-risk conditions such as high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation and high cholesterol.

As part of that, we need strongly to support the measures in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill to further reduce the prevalence of smoking in this country, as we have done through successful regulatory measures over the past few decades. We need to support the reduction of other modifiable risk factors, including drinking alcohol to excess and obesity. The measures put forward by the House of Lords Select Committee on Food, Diet and Obesity, which was chaired by my noble friend Lady Walmsley, need to be given much more respect by the Government than has so far been the case.

The current system for health checks, such as NHS Health Check, has the potential to screen for conditions such as diabetes, but more needs to be done to expand those checks, particularly to those at highest risk, including individuals under 40. It remains alarming that millions of people with diabetes are missing essential health checks annually which are crucial for detecting and preventing serious long-term complications.

Beyond prevention, we need to consider many issues concerning treatment and care. There is still a critical lack of imaging capability for diagnostic testing, all of which delays patients’ access to specialist stroke units and time-sensitive treatments such as thrombectomy.

We need to ensure 24/7 access to acute stroke treatments, including thrombectomy and thrombolysis, through pre-hospital video triage and access to specialist stroke units. We need a dedicated plan to drive action to address CVD and its risk factors. I know that the Government have committed to a 25% reduction in deaths from CVD and stroke by 2035 but, to achieve this, we need steps to reduce disability.

Scientific research and innovation are the basis of progress in this field. The British Heart Foundation, a leader in cardiovascular science, funds more than half of independent cardiovascular research in the UK. It has powered advances that have nearly halved the number of people who die each year from cardiovascular disease. We are in an era of immense scientific opportunity, with revolutionary advances in areas such as artificial intelligence, genomics and regenerative medicine. BHF-funded scientists are already using AI to better predict heart attack or stroke risk.

For those who have suffered a stroke, prioritising and investing in rehabilitation, in line with national guidelines, is critical to prevent recurrent strokes, as one in four survivors will experience another one within five years. Every stroke survivor should be offered a six-month post-stroke review to tailor recovery plans. Beyond this, we must continue to inspire the nation to learn CPR and continue to ensure greater provision of public-access defibrillators, as survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests are significantly higher in countries where bystander CPR is more prevalent. We must address the basic glaring issues of health inequalities in order to address these problems.