Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he has taken to increase to availability of (a) defibrillators and (b) other first aid equipment (i) across England and (ii) within Romford constituency.

The Department’s position is that local communities are best placed to make decisions about procuring, locating, and maintaining automated external defibrillators (AEDs) that are managed outside of the National Health Service, including in the Romford constituency.

There are over 110,000 defibrillators registered in the United Kingdom on The Circuit, the independent AED database, and over 30,000 of these have been added in the past two years. Additionally, decisions on the provision of first aid equipment are generally taken locally by communities, organisations, and site owners.