Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to increase the (a) provision of defibrillators and (b) number of people trained in (i) first aid and (ii) CPR.

To improve survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cases, NHS England have assessed the benefits of providing Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) in public places and have included improving bystander use of AEDs as part of the NHS Long Term Plan. The NHS Long Term Plan sets out that a national network of community first responders and AEDs will help save up to 4,000 lives each year by 2028.

No specific assessment has been has made of the availability of defibrillators across regions of the United Kingdom. The treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease is a priority for the Government, access to defibrillators is an important part of that commitment and it recently agreed to provide funding of £1 million to design a grant scheme for the expansion of AEDs that expands publicly supported access to defibrillators. We will set out agreed criteria to ensure that the delivery of AEDs in the community is based on being accessible on a 24 hour seven days a week basis and are equitable both nationally and socially.

Working with St John Ambulance, 141 community advocates have been recruited to deliver sessions in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and defibrillator use. As of December 2022, 163 sessions had been delivered and 3249 people had been reached by these advocates. The first responders programme also had a key involvement in restart a heart day.