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

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Friday 20th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing the time for this debate. I would like to make a relatively brief contribution in support of the Bill.

I was a personal first aider, and I believe I still carry some of the skills with me today. I joined St John Ambulance—not for first aid skills, but because we used to go to the motor racing every other week! I remember now how important acquiring those skills was, and I have carried them through my life. Media stories down the years have shown how young people have saved lives just by having a little bit of knowledge. We know that boy scouts, girl guides, Boys’ Brigade members and all manner of young people have, with training, been able to accomplish that. So we could be saving so many more lives if we gave more young people the necessary skills.

In February 2015, a report on PSHE and sex and relationships education by the Education Committee, of which I was a member, recommended that PSHE should be made a statutory subject, but that schools should retain a little flexibility over what is taught as part of it. With a little encouragement, first aid training and CPR could be included. This Bill does exactly that. It provides for emergency first aid education to be a compulsory part of the national curriculum at key stages 3 and 4. It also provides for academies, which do not have to follow the national curriculum, to be required to teach EFAE at those key stages. To impart those skills, it does not take half an hour a week for three years; it takes an hour a week for about three or four weeks.

We have already heard that current survival rates from out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK are extremely low.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree—he has mentioned his St John Ambulance background—that work towards first aid certificates lasts for three years, as does CPR training, and that things change within three years? Is he suggesting that schools continue to renew these certificates?

[Alex Cunningham]

I most certainly am. I believe that all young people should have updated training as they grow up—as should we all. Would it not be a great thing if we Members of Parliament led the way and did our first aid certificates? Perhaps, Mr Speaker, you could arrange through the House for some form of training to be imparted to MPs so that we can lead by example in our constituencies.

Of the 30,000 people who have out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK each year, fewer than one in 10 survive. In countries such as Norway, where CPR is taught in all schools, survival rates are up to three times higher. That is why I support the Bill, and why I have championed the British Heart Foundation’s campaigns to make CPR training available in schools, workplaces and community groups, including the call push rescue kit mission and European Restart a Heart day on 16 October 2015. St Michael’s Catholic academy, Northfield school and sports college, and Red House school in my constituency have all acquired a CPR kit award. I want to see those skills used and I want to encourage other schools to follow their example.

There are tens of thousands of medical emergencies every year in the United Kingdom, resulting in deaths, injuries and disabilities. For instance, 250,000 people suffer burn injuries of varying severity each year, and 175,000 of them attend emergency departments. Too many of us, however, do not know how to help someone who is having a cardiac arrest, choking, bleeding, or having an asthma attack or seizure. In the case of cardiac arrest, about 75% of people would not feel confident about performing CPR. Bystander CPR doubles survival rates, but is attempted in only 20% to 30% of cases. Lack of knowledge, fear of causing harm and failure to recognise cardiac arrest are all factors.

The Bill will give young people the skills and confidence to know what to do. It could help a young person to save a life. Giving young people the opportunity to learn simple first aid skills need not impose a burden on the school day, as the skills are quick and easy to teach and learn. As we have heard, the British Heart Foundation estimates that ensuring that all school leavers are trained in CPR could save 5,000 lives every year. The foundation has campaigned tirelessly to improve survival rates, and is aiming to create a nation of life savers to ensure that every young person leaves secondary school knowing how to perform CPR. We should stand by the British Heart Foundation, and stand by our young people. We should support this Bill.

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[Alex Cunningham]

Let us get down to basics: this is about time versus lives—a few hours a year in schools to impart basic knowledge that could save 5,000 lives a year. Does my hon. Friend agree, as chair of the all-party group on first aid?

[Peter Aldous]

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. Thirty-six US states, Germany, France and several Scandinavian countries have compulsory first aid education on the curriculum. If we did in this country, it would bring significant benefits. Today, I should be with members of Waveney youth council on its youth breakout day. When I explained to them why I would not be with them, I sought their views on the Bill, although the situation in Waveney schools appears to be better than it is across the country as a whole. I received a very clear message: “Go for it.” In that context, I urge the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

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[Robert Jenrick]

If we believe in the principle of training in first aid for young people, or indeed people of any age, we want to ensure quality, and quality is clearly very variable. If we provide maximum flexibility so that a school can take it very seriously or not seriously at all, then the whole scheme could be jeopardised.

I want to refer Members to my local group, Newark Community First Aid, and what it considers to be high quality. In its training it uses qualified doctors, nurses and extremely experienced first aiders. Its minimum course lasts two and half hours and has to be re-done regularly. Its preferred course lasts four hours. If we want good-quality training, some minimum standards are involved. I do not want thousands of young people to believe that they have had high-quality first aid or CPR training when they have had a half-hour video presentation—although I am sure that would be better than nothing—rather than having gone to one of these superb local community groups and spent a whole afternoon or day being trained.

[Alex Cunningham]

The hon. Gentleman has talked about headteachers being opposed to compulsory training in schools. Which schools in his constituency have said that they are not prepared to spend a few hours a year in order to save thousands of lives?

[Robert Jenrick]

All the schools I spoke to are trying in their own way to provide training, doing what they believe is appropriate and working with local groups. However, the point remains that none of them wants it to be a compulsory part of the national curriculum, believes that that is the appropriate and best way of furthering the cause, or, given their awareness of young people, believes that forcing them is the best way of inspiring and motivating them to do it, to take it seriously, and to really believe in it.

Other headteachers raised with me the point that many other important issues could persuasively be suggested for the national curriculum, such as PHSE, biology—