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

Debate between Robert Jenrick and David Nuttall

Friday 20th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank my right hon. Friend; I was coming to that. Like many private Members’ Bills, this Bill is challenging: our instincts tell us to support it, but on closer examination, particularly after having talked to the people on the ground who would have to implement it, our heads tell us that there may be better ways to address the issue. I shall come to that in a moment.

A constituent of mine, Mrs Harriet Smith of Southwell, emailed me after my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) had made his speech last week. She asked me to request his permission to market it as a cure for insomnia, although she added that admittedly he was right in almost every respect.

I want to emphasise that first aid is incredibly important, and that is recognised in my constituency. In my local experience, awareness of first aid and training is increasing. The Newark Community First Aid project, founded almost 10 years ago, has trained thousands of my constituents on a voluntary basis. Individuals of all ages take part, including the young; I agree with my hon. Friends that 11, 12 and 13-year-olds can and do take the training. Thousands of young people are now fully trained members of our community and are there to help should emergencies arise. The Prime Minister met the founders of the Newark Community First Aid project a year ago to praise it as one of the leading groups in the country to have seen non-compulsory training really take off in a community.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does my hon. Friend share the concern that those valuable groups might suffer if first aid became compulsory in schools?

[Robert Jenrick]

That is certainly a concern. In the experience of those groups—I shall come to the experience of some of my local schools—a compulsory element has diminished the training. When young people are asked whether they want to do the training on a voluntary basis, more have come forward and done it in the spirit that it really deserves.

A huge number of groups offer first aid training on a voluntary basis: the scouts, the girl guides and the sea cadets, for example. Workers at our district council of Newark and Sherwood are mostly fully trained, while the University of the Third Age in Newark and Southwell has trained hundreds of people in large groups very effectively. Many rural parish councils are purchasing or being donated defibrillators, which are often placed in redundant telephone boxes and other rural locations and marketplaces. A Chinese restaurant that I am due to open with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) in a couple of weeks’ time is the latest example. Many parish councils are training or providing in their village halls a community voluntary opportunity to learn how to do CPR when the defibrillator is installed. I have been to a couple of those voluntary community events, and they are great—people really enjoy them and the community gets behind them.

Workplace schemes are also taking off; we have seen them in a number of employers, large and small, in my constituency. Generally, again, they are voluntary rather than compulsory and are done during lunch hours—sometimes during working hours—or after work. They are popular and worth while. That work is ongoing, and I do not want to it to be diminished. I want it to be encouraged by the Government, and I hope, if nothing else, that this Bill, whether it succeeds or not, will push it forward.

However, we have to ask ourselves whether enacting this Bill is the right answer. In answering that question I have done something that I have not heard every Member say they have done, which is to ask for the views of the headteachers in my constituency. I am all in favour of opinion polls, and I do not dispute the veracity of those that have been mentioned, but nothing is better than a face-to-face conversation with one’s local headteacher. In my constituency, I have five highly respected and competent headteachers of secondary schools whose views I want to share with the House.

[Robert Jenrick]

I appreciate that. I did say that not every Member had done it. I would be interested to hear the remarks of those who have spoken to their local headteachers about their views.

I have spoken to my local headteachers, or most of them. Four out of the five I spoke to support the principle of the Bill and want to see more first aid training, particularly CPR. Three out of the five already do quite a lot of this activity to differing degrees. However, none of them was in favour of its being compulsory. I do not say that with any pleasure, in speaking against this Bill, but those are the facts. The highly competent and respected headteachers with whom I work are not in favour of this Bill. That needs to be said, alongside the statistics that we have heard, which are clearly less precise than the conversations with our own headteachers.

One of my headteachers, from Southwell Minster school in Nottinghamshire, said that the school already has quite a significant first aid programme. It takes place as part of extra-curricular activities, and sometimes in PSHE and biology classes, and through some of its sports clubs. He does not think that a headteacher such as himself who is taking this issue seriously and working with valuable local community groups needs to be told that it is a compulsory element of the national curriculum. He and his teachers are behind the idea already, and he is doing what he thinks is appropriate for his local community. He is also concerned that while schools such as his might take the issue very seriously and do a good job, the national curriculum can sometimes lead to a tick-box exercise, whereby some will take the requirement seriously, but quality will vary dramatically across the country.

The Bill, in its effort to provide maximum flexibility, which is entirely understandable and logical, opens up the possibility that some schools, such as Toot Hill in my constituency, will have a superb programme that we would all be proud of, while others might provide 30 minutes of training every now and again, leaving quality in doubt. Toot Hill, an outstanding academy in Bingham outside Nottingham, provides a range of first aid training on a voluntary basis. It offers it to its prefects as part of the prefect programme, so it is a reward. It also offers it on a voluntary basis to all its year 8 and 9 students. The training is extremely popular but it is not made compulsory.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes the very interesting point that the training is seen as a reward rather than something to be endured, as I fear it would be regarded if it became a compulsory lesson.

[Robert Jenrick]

I do think there is a lesson to be learned there.

On the news this morning I heard cited a school in Sutton Coldfield that has built a very strong alliance with St John Ambulance. The school offers training on a voluntary basis to all its year 9 students. It has found that when training is compulsory, students are often less excited about it, as we can all remember from our own schooldays, but that because it is voluntary almost all students choose to take it up. If I were a headteacher, I would offer the programme to students on a voluntary basis and hope that almost all of them took it up.