Compulsory Emergency First Aid Education (State-funded Secondary Schools) Bill

Debate between Anne-Marie Trevelyan and David Nuttall

Friday 20th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I absolutely agree: our A & E departments are under enormous pressure. Although the Bill is not a panacea, evidence suggests that greater knowledge of first aid can help to reduce the number of unnecessary visits to A & E and reduce the pressure on our paramedics.

Empowering people with quick and simple skills and the basic medical understanding to save lives is so profoundly important that it deserves a place in the school day. Some schools already do an excellent job of teaching these essential life skills, with the support of charities such as St John Ambulance, for instance. The Government have already mandated that all schools must provide swimming instruction, either in key stage 1 or key stage 2, to ensure that every pupil can swim competently, confidently and proficiently, and perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations. This Department for Education rule is for the purpose of saving lives. How much more of that goal might be achieved over the life of every child taught basic life-saving skills such as CPR, how to stem the flow of blood from a wound and how the recovery position can stop someone choking to death?

In my constituency, the St John Ambulance cadets in Alnwick learn first aid in their weekly meetings, and then go into their local schools, where invited, to share their knowledge. It is a wonderful example of teamwork and local knowledge sharing among peer groups that is helping children in my constituency to become life savers. However, despite widespread support for the idea of first aid education, only one in four secondary schools are taking it on. It is a very limited spread of life-saving skills.

The Bill is not about imposing even more targets on schools and teachers. Schools and headteachers would have the flexibility to decide when and how to impart these core skills—whether in morning assemblies, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) suggested, or as part of PHSE, physical education or biology. There are any number of places where this could be brought into the curriculum. It will not require teachers to have any prior medical knowledge, and neither will it take up a huge degree of the school timetable. As has been said, CPR can be taught in as little as 30 minutes—a small investment in a child’s school year for a huge reward, not just for the children and their families, but for the whole community as they grow up and become resilient members of our country.

These skills are quick and easy to teach and learn. The British Heart Foundation, the British Red Cross, St John Ambulance, for which I do a lot of work, and other organisations provide free resources for schools, so there is no cost implication for schools attached to this excellent Bill. There is cross-party backing for it, and I know many colleagues will, like me, have been inundated with messages of support from constituents.

[Mr Nuttall]

Is my hon. Friend suggesting that a 30-minute lesson will be all that is required to meet the imposition of the Bill?

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I think 30 minutes, where presently children are given no indication that life-saving skills can be understood, would be valuable. It is the confidence in the child that is important—confidence that they can be part of a life-saving situation. It could be an annual subject, but there are any number of ways to achieve this. The St John Ambulance programme is broad and flexible for when it goes into schools to support children better to understand what life-saving skills can mean and how they can carry them out when faced with a challenge.

I do not believe that this is a controversial issue and it should not be viewed as political; it will touch each and every one of us. I therefore urge all my fellow MPs to join me in support of the Bill to give every child the opportunity to be a life saver.