I congratulate Sarah Dyke on securing a debate on this vitally important issue. It is important not only for her constituents but for her personally, I think, given her family circumstances; I know she really spoke from the heart and we appreciate that.

Good health should be fundamental to all of our lives, but sadly that is not the case for too many people. Over 100,000 people have a stroke in the UK every year—one person every five minutes. One third of them will be left with some form of long-term disability. As the fourth largest cause of death for adults, stroke has a devastating impact on individuals, their families and wider communities across our country.

For decades the NHS has served us well, and it is one of the proudest achievements of the Labour party that we were at the foundation of our NHS. Our staff have tremendous expertise and dedication; they are working hard every day to make a difference. But we have to face up to the reality that we have had 14 years of neglect and incompetence on the part of the Conservative party. We are now facing a very significant set of challenges in looking to get our health and care system back on its feet and fit for the future. That is the important context for this debate.

I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton for giving me the opportunity to inform her and the House of the work that the Government have been doing since we came into office on 4 July, and particularly as today is World Stroke Day. The House will have seen that we have set out the three transformative shifts that we want to deliver in health and care, moving from care in hospitals to care at home, prioritising prevention over treatment, and advancing from analogue to digital solutions. These three strategic shifts will be the building blocks of our health mission, reducing time spent in poor health, tackling health inequalities and reducing lives lost from the biggest killers, which include cardiovascular disease.

We have to change the NHS so that it is no longer just a sickness service but a prevention service too. Prevention is always better and cheaper than cure. So we have to take preventive public health measures to tackle the biggest killers and support people to live longer, healthier lives. That is why in our health mission to build an NHS that is fit for the future, we have committed to reducing deaths from heart disease and strokes by one quarter within 10 years. The NHS health check, England’s flagship cardiovascular disease prevention programme, aims to prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease and some forms of dementia. Each year the programme engages over 1.3 million people and, through behavioural and clinical interventions, prevents around 500 heart attacks or strokes.

To improve access to and engagement with this life-saving programme, we are developing a new digital NHS health check, which will be ready for testing in early 2025. It will enable people to undertake a check at home. We are also trialling more than 130,000 life-saving heart health checks in the workplace. These checks can be completed quickly and easily by people at work so that they can understand and act on their cardiovascular risk and reduce their future risk of a stroke.

Around 50% of heart attacks and strokes are associated with high blood pressure. Community pharmacies are providing a free blood pressure check service for anyone over the age of 40. In cases where this results in a high reading, pharmacists can make sure people receive the right NHS support to reduce their blood pressure. We know that there is more to do to prevent the causes of stroke, and the Department and NHS England are working together to tackle this issue.

I am also pleased to announce that on Monday 4 November NHS England is launching a new Act FAST campaign to increase knowledge of the main signs of a stroke and to encourage people to dial 999 immediately in response to any sign. The new campaign builds on the success of the previous Act FAST campaign and uses a revised call to action:

“Face or arm or speech, at the first sign, it’s time to call 999”.