Sudden Cardiac Death: Young People
House of Commons · Commons Chamber · 1 Sep 2026 · 19 speeches · Official Report
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. -(Jade Botterill.)
I have initiated this Adjournment debate on behalf of my late constituent and his family. It concerns a tragic case that raises serious questions about emergency response, clinical training, information sharing, and whether the systems meant to save young lives are fit for purpose. On 31 January 2024, Adam Ankers, aged just 17, collapsed while playing football for the Wycombe Wanderers Foundation’s under-19 development team. He was a much-loved son, brother, friend and team-mate. He dreamed of a career in professional football, and on the captain’s armband that he was wearing that day he had written the words “strength, inspiration, leader, desire.” Despite the presence of first-aid-trained coaches, despite a defibrillator being brought straight to the pitch, and despite multiple calls to 999, no one recognised that Adam was in sudden cardiac arrest. No cardiopulmonary resuscitation was started. The coroner found that Adam’s brain had been was starved of oxygen for about eight minutes because no one had attempted CPR, and heard evidence that for every minute without CPR, the chances of survival decrease by 10%. South Central Ambulance Service’s serious incident review reached the same conclusion independently, acknowledging an eight-minute period in which CPR should have started and did not. The ambulance arrived within 11 minutes of the first 999 call, at 2.31 pm, but by then the critical window in which to act, having been led by telephone, had already been missed.
The hon. Member has raised a heart-rending and very difficult case, and I congratulate him on that. The British Heart Foundation estimates that in Northern Ireland one person under the age of 35 dies every month from an undiagnosed heart condition. In view of that, does the hon. Member agree that more must be done to ensure that the public are equipped to perform effective CPR and to use a defibrillator, and are confident about carrying out bystander CPR?
I do agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I will explore many of those issues later in my speech. When paramedics arrived, they found Adam cold, blue, not breathing, and without a pulse. They immediately started CPR, and took him to Harefield hospital, with the support of Thames Valley Air Ambulance. Despite the best efforts of clinicians, Adam was declared brain-stem dead on 4 February-in law, that was the moment of his death-and his heart stopped for the final time on 5 February, when life support was withdrawn. His parents, Alastair Ankers and Naomi Wakefield, both work in healthcare. Through devastating experience, they came to the conclusion that Adam’s death could have been prevented. Adam’s parents fought for more than two years for a proper, in-depth inquest, rather than the four-hour online hearing first offered. They were represented by a single barrister, paid for by remortgaging their house, against an array of solicitors and counsel for the NHS bodies and the Football Association. That is not a fair fight. The underlying condition was arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy-ARVC, a genetic heart disease, the first sign of which can be sudden cardiac arrest. This was a failure to identify a life-threatening emergency in real time, and it is why recognition, escalation and response matter so much. The inquest raised serious concerns about the handling of 999 calls and the ability of call handlers to recognise abnormal breathing and cardiac arrest. Ambulance...
The hon. Gentleman is making an incredibly powerful case. The tragic case of Adam will be felt across the country, including by my constituents in Sandhurst where we remember the tragic death of Lewis Marsh in not dissimilar circumstances while he was taking part in a sporting activity. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that screening is available for young people who might be at risk of cardiac death. I pay tribute to the work of the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young. Does he agree that we should see more of that rolled out, so that young people, in particular those who might be at a heightened risk, have screening made available so that they know they face that risk?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I agree with him on that point and I will come on to screening in one or two moments. Families should not be left to act as their own caseworkers in the aftermath of grief. We need to review how genetic findings are communicated to all relatives, and how families can be properly supported in doing that work; we should not simply be told, as NHS England and the British Society for Genetic Medicine have both said so far, that a service specification is under review with no date attached. The coroner also asked whether there is adequate sudden cardiac arrest training for coaches and referees at organised football matches. If young people are taking part in organised sport, those supervising them must know how to respond when something goes wrong. I welcome the fact that the Football Association is exploring improvements and that Adam’s parents have engaged constructively with that work, but this should not depend on a grieving family campaigning after a tragedy. It should be standard for every club, not just the accredited ones. I am also concerned that the English Institute of Sport, Sport England and the Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine UK-all recipients of this prevention of future deaths report, and all in receipt of public or national lottery funding-did not respond to it at all. Public funding should carry a basic obligation to engage when a coroner writes to them about a child’s death. Finally, I come on to the point made by the...
My constituent Sue Carter lost her son Ryan, aged 25, to sudden arrhythmic death syndrome, and her friend Charlie Gradidge lost her brother, Danny, who had been a friend of Ryan’s when they were at scouts together. Had they been screened, both those relatives believe that their lost ones would still be alive. They now spend their time fundraising, £7,000 at a time, and they have done this three or four times to enable CRY to screen 100 youngsters and pick up people with irregularities. That is great work, but it ought not to be done by private individuals, ought it?
I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend and commend his constituents’ wonderful fundraising, but his master point that it should not be left to individuals to have to fundraise for that is absolutely correct and well made. To conclude, I have seven requests: first, that the CQC regularly assesses call handlers’ skill in recognising cardiac arrest and abnormal breathing; secondly, a fully independent review of NHS Pathways’ effectiveness and culture; thirdly, a correction to the record on which triage system was used, and how that error occurred in Adam’s case; fourthly, a dated review of how genetic findings are communicated to relatives, including funding-currently dependent on British Heart Foundation charity money-to embed genetic testing into coronial pathways; fifthly, proper consideration of the FIFA 2025 statement and the JACC study by the National Screening Committee before it reaches its conclusion in November; sixthly, a statutory duty requiring NHS hospitals in one devolved UK nation to co-operate with coronial inquests in another, so that no hospital anywhere in this United Kingdom can again refuse to disclose records relevant to a child’s death; and seventhly and simplest, a meeting between a Minister and Adam’s parents. The Football Association has already met this family, and I struggle to see why the Government cannot manage to do the same. Adam’s family deserve answers, and they deserve action. Every organisation that responded to the coroner has been...
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I am conscious that another Member has risen, but we have only 10 minutes left. The hon. Lady might prefer to confine her comments to an intervention on the Minister in the interests of time.
I am honoured to be standing at the Dispatch Box as the new Minister for Health Innovation. Let me start by thanking NHS staff for their heroic shifts over the summer months. I also thank the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) for bringing this debate forward and speaking with such deep conviction. I am humbled that this is the subject of my first outing in this new role, and I thank him and other Members for their work in this important area. I know that the hon. Gentleman, through his work on the APPG, already met a previous Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), in July. Reading about it and then listening to the hon. Gentleman’s account again in this debate, we agree that Adam’s death was an absolute tragedy. As a dad, I cannot begin to imagine what Adam’s mum and dad continue to go through, and I pay tribute to them. It goes without saying that I would of course be happy to meet with the hon. Gentleman and Adam’s parents to discuss what more we can do to change the system, to go through the seven requests in detail, and to help save other parents from the same heartbreaking loss that they have endured. I am determined that the benefits of innovation are felt first and fastest by patients and families, as quickly and safely as possible. That means accelerating the adoption of technology, digital services and the Government’s single patient record, and better integration between our national platforms, so that...
In January 2023, Mia Jennings died suddenly from a cardiac event. She was a swimming instructor, star apprentice, and, by all accounts, a wonderful young lady. Since her passing, her family have made incredible efforts to raise money for CRY-over £50,000-bringing screening directly to communities across Macclesfield. Will the Minister join me in commending Mia’s family for their extraordinary efforts in her memory?
I never fail to be impressed by the sheer determination of humans who have endured the worst of losses to turn such loss into a positive contribution. Without hesitation, I pay tribute to Mia’s family for their fundraising efforts. Done properly, innovation can support more joined-up care and personalised services, and faster sharing and implementation of new guidance and learning. Let me now turn to some of the specific points raised by the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire. NHS England has made changes to the call script in response to new advice from Resuscitation Council UK, issued in November 2023. That advice was given just two months before Adam’s death. It is tragic that it had not yet come into force by the time that Adam stepped on to that pitch. As healthcare professionals, Adam’s mum and dad will know that those changes would have given him a much better chance of survival, as callers now receive advice to begin life support, as well as the certainty of using a defibrillator on a teenager. The hon. Gentleman raised a number of important points about the NHS pathways system. The challenge we face in improving the sensitivity of cardiac arrest identification is to do so in a way that does not generate false positives. Ongoing performance monitoring of NHS pathways finds that the system accepts over-triage; this is an intentional safety feature of triage systems. As the hon. Gentleman knows, at a time when many ambulance services are under such significant strain,...
I am grateful for the opportunity to intervene during this important debate. This is an issue that I care about deeply, both because of the impact on young people in Barrow and Furness, and because I have the privilege of serving as chair for the APPG on cardiac risk in the young. I came to be chair of the APPG after learning about the tragic loss of two Barrow and Furness residents, Wilson Shepherd and Vicky Parker. Wilson and Vicky died only two weeks apart and a few miles away from each other in 2023, and both deaths should have been preventable. I pay tribute to their mums, Lesley Mease and Donna Parker, for their tireless campaigning. Will the Government commit to developing a national strategy for the prevention of sudden cardiac death in young people in places like Barrow and Furness and across the country, bringing together screening with experts on cardiac pathology and inherited cardiac conditions and on the identification and investigation of blackouts?
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I would be very happy to discuss those requests in person. I also pay tribute to the families of Wilson and Vicky. The impact of more and more defibs being available is incredibly important, and I am very happy to speak in more detail on that issue.
In the summer, I went to Glenfield hospital to talk to staff about the amazing genetic testing done there. Something that strikes me through all the conversations I have had as the former chair of the APPG is how much work could be done in A&E to strengthen that pathway. What can the Minister tell us about looking at ECGs after people have been tested in A&E, which could go back to cardiologists?
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention; I hope I will cover and do justice to those important points. NHS pathways also give providers call-level CPR data to support local reviews and improve quality, as well as reviewing data and emerging evidence to see where we must do better. They send quarterly reports to the national clinical assurance group, which is made up of senior clinicians drawn from royal colleges, professional bodies and urgent and emergency care services. These professionals can and often do submit constructive feedback on the way that pathways are run. At present, NHS clinical staff are trained in CPR, but from April 2027, this will be extended to all NHS staff, including those in A&E. The roll-out of this training will take time, but it will hugely increase the number of people in the country with valuable lifesaving knowledge. Finally, when it comes to recognising cardiac arrest, I can confirm that the Care Quality Commission does assess call handlers’ skill as part of its inspections. We know that no human system is perfect, and I am all too aware that a list or accounts like this can risk sounding defensive, so let me repeat my openness to sitting with the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire, Adam’s parents and other colleagues to see how and where we can do better and go further. Turning to the hon. Member’s points about genetics, I am hugely optimistic about the potential of genomics and life sciences over the next 10 years. The NHS clinical...
Order.
House adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 9(7)).