First Aid Techniques: National Curriculum

Debate between Justin Tomlinson and David Rutley

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure both to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and to follow the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling). I am getting déjà vu; I think this is our fourth debate on this issue—it would be easy just to dust off our previous speeches. I have been supporting this campaign passionately, and I am delighted that next Wednesday, I will be turning up at the Minister’s office to have yet another push. It is a relentless campaign from us, and like “The Shawshank Redemption”, surely it would just be easier to agree with us.

As the hon. Lady said in her excellent speech, 30,000 people a year will have a serious cardiac arrest outside hospital, and disgracefully, only one in 12 can expect to survive. Ambulances take six to 12 minutes to arrive, and for every minute that passes in which immediate CPR is not given, the survival chance falls by 10%. If immediate CPR action is taken, the survival chance rises threefold. It is a great, crying shame that most people are simply not able to help or will walk by, not having the confidence to step in. In previous debates, we have heard horror stories of groups of people standing around and taking photographs, with nobody being willing to step forward. Therefore, it is perhaps no surprise that we have such a disgraceful survival rate of just one in 12.

We are all committed to trying to empower people with the skills and confidence to step in. As the hon. Lady so eloquently put it, frankly, anything is better than doing nothing. Someone cannot be deader than dead.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) on securing the debate and on her stirring words, and I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) on the speech that he is making. I have learned a lot not only from this debate and the campaigns that they have put forward, but from St John Ambulance and British Red Cross locally. They have taught me what more I need to do. Will he join me in congratulating them on their work across countless constituencies? Is there more that we can do to support their efforts in helping this important campaign?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent intervention. I think we would all join together in congratulating St John Ambulance on their brilliant work, not just in his constituency, but right across the country, and a number of organisations are desperate to step in and support the activities that we are pushing for in schools. This is a win-win for so many different people.

One reason why I am so passionate about this issue and have worked so closely with the hon. Member for Bolton West, a number of other MPs, and particularly, the British Heart Foundation—it has been fantastic in providing statistics and doing work that I will come back to—is that I found my father after a critical cardiac arrest. I was aged 12. I came into the shop where he had been collecting the money, and I kicked into autopilot. I probably was not particularly good, but it was better than nothing until passers-by came by. When we see the statistics, we are often blinded by the numbers, but I can personally vouch for just what happens when someone is in that situation.

Our aims are simple: we want people to recognise an emergency, to know that they should contact an ambulance immediately, and to administer CPR. Things have changed—it is not the kiss of life now. Simply by doing compressions in the right place, we can potentially keep people going for 15 minutes or even longer and give them a good chance of survival. We want people to use an automated defibrillator, and of course I support the campaigns to put them into as many public places as possible. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) has been tireless in raising that issue in debates and parliamentary questions.

We have pushed on this matter time and again. We had the e-petition with 100,000 signatures. We have had visits to Downing street. This is, I believe, our fourth debate. We have had parliamentary questions. We have had meetings and, as I said, there is another one in a week’s time. And we have responded; we have listened. The challenge is that people do not like to be prescriptive in the national curriculum. I understand that. I also understand that at one point there were 150 campaigns pushing for things to be in the national curriculum, and that when we asked for two hours in the curriculum, that was too much. We have gone away and turned that two hours into 30 minutes—the British Heart Foundation in particular has been fantastic on that point. A one-off 30-minute session can equip people with the skills to be life savers.

We are flexible. We are not proud. We do not mind whether the training takes place in biology or physical education lessons. It could take place during a school assembly. It could happen at the beginning or end of term. It could be given at any age. It could be part of citizenship education. We do not care, as long as there is a 30-minute window at some point during the school cycle. Even more impressively—this is for the Treasury—the British Heart Foundation has already purchased all the packs, so there would be no cost to the Exchequer, and each pack includes a DVD, so staff would not need extensive training. As long as they can put a DVD in, we will be well on the way.

The hon. Member for Bolton West reeled off statistics that showed how supportive of the idea teachers, children and parents are. Her statistics were even more favourable than mine, so I have put a big red line through mine in my notes. Importantly, we as politicians are not used to being popular, and this is an opportunity for us to garner huge support from teachers, children and parents.

We have to make this training compulsory. It needs to fit somewhere in a child’s education. We can create a generation of life savers. We have seen that, in countries such as Norway, survival rates reach as high as 50%. In this country, that would mean something like 5,000 more people surviving every year, because of a simple 30-minute gesture. We have a duty to create the next generation of life savers, and I hope that we seize that opportunity.