Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to provide a sufficient number of public defibrillators to ensure that one is always accessible within five minutes of a cardiac arrest.

The Government is committed to improving access to Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) in public spaces and reducing inequalities in access to these life saving devices. We have made a further £500,000 available to fulfil existing applications to the Department’s Community AED Fund, launched in September 2023. The criteria specified for the original £1 million grant continues to apply, and this additional funding will go to those applications for AEDs where there is greatest needed, including in areas of high footfall, hot spots for cardiac arrest, and areas that already have low access to AEDs.