Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals on the mandatory registration of newly installed public-access defibrillators on The Circuit database.

According to the British Heart Foundation, who operates The Circuit, there are now over 110,000 registered defibrillators in the United Kingdom. This is an increase of 30,000 since September 2023.

Many charities which supply defibrillators through a fund require those defibrillators to be registered on The Circuit. Many defibrillator charities also promote The Circuit on their website.

The Government considers introducing legislation to require publicly accessible automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to be registered on The Circuit or other independently owned AED databases at this time to be disproportionate. Local communities obtaining AEDs do so on a voluntary basis and introducing legal requirements could disincentive this voluntary action. Therefore, there are currently no plans to bring forward such legislation.