Life-saving Skills in Schools

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I cannot tell you how important I think this debate is, Mr Deputy Speaker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) on securing it. I also congratulate the hon. Members who have spoken—with a great deal of knowledge and personal experience—about how important this issue is. The hon. Lady made an excellent speech, touching on all the key issues, and asked most of the key questions.

I will speak from personal experience. I qualified as a lifeguard in the mid-1990s. I did it to support my daughters, who were in a swimming club that needed voluntary lifeguards. I trained every two years and did the exam. During that process my children trained with me—we used to practise the various required skills on the front room floor. I was fortunate that there were no major incidents in the pool during the almost 10 years in which I turned up five nights a week to lifeguard—as parents do from time to time. However, on dry land it was altogether different. Let me cite some examples.

I remember stepping off a London bus one day to see a woman lying on the pavement, literally in front of me, and five people standing around, before doing the basic checks and asking people, “Has anybody done anything? Has anybody moved her?” Everybody stood there, shook their heads and said no, either because they were too scared or because they did not know what to do. The lady was unconscious, and was still unconscious when the ambulance arrived. Again, it was people’s lack of knowledge that prevented them from doing even the basic checks—that her pulse was there and she was breathing.

On another occasion I was on a train, travelling into London, sitting opposite a very large gentleman who was clearly in difficulty. My assessment was that he was having a cardiac episode of some kind. We cleared the area around him. I asked whether there were any doctors or nurses on the train; there were not. People were coming up to me as I was in the middle of it all, asking, “Shouldn’t you ring his wife?” I got someone to stay with the man and keep him calm, went down the carriage with the woman and said, “Well, what do we tell her—that her husband is having an episode on a train in the middle of nowhere and we don’t know which hospital he is going to?” “Oh,” she said. Common sense, I am afraid, rather goes out of the window when these things happen. He was a very large gentleman and I was worried that if he actually went on me, he would not fit in the gap between the seats so that I could do CPR. So I was struggling about how I was going to do it, but fortunately we got to a station and the ambulance got there and took him away for expert treatment. Again, at the end of that, people came up and said, “Thank God you were there. We didn’t know what to do. We were scared”—exactly the same comments.

The final example was in Brighton, at the Grand hotel, when I was having a dinner during conference. One of the guests started choking, slumped and started to go blue. So it was a Heimlich manoeuvre. I have to say it was my boss, so it was probably just as well I did it, not least because he is alive and I have now just married him; but that is another story.

[Valerie Vaz]

Too much information.

[Alison Seabeck]

Yes. But again, the comments came back, “Thank heavens. We didn’t know what to do.” The basic skills are so simple and so easy to teach, and once you have them you almost automatically go into support mode, as I did in the hotel in Brighton. I admit that afterwards I was shaking a bit, but none the less you just do it, because that is what you have been trained to do.

Children are like sponges. They soak up information, and if they can see a practical use for it, they will learn even more quickly. This week, I am going to talk to pupils at Manadon Vale primary school about this very issue, as part of the discussion. Knowing basic techniques, such as being able to administer support when someone is having a cardiac arrest, is absolutely vital. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) said, being in a situation where a loved one is having a cardiac arrest or perhaps where the baby is choking and not knowing what to do is unimaginable. I really cannot imagine how someone must feel in those circumstances. Teaching the basics is so important.

Of course there are people who say, “I don’t want to do the mouth-to-mouth bit.” They could do hands-only, as a number of Members have said. I still walk around carrying a British Red Cross Resusci-Shield for mouth-to-mouth, because I do think it is important to have one, but it is possible to do it hands-only, and one certainly should try.

The hon. Member for Newton Abbot spoke about the lesson in which these skills should be taught being flexible. I think that is a really good proposal. We need to move towards ensuring these skills are taught as a matter of course in our schools. Pregnant mothers should have a basic training as well, because there are lives to be saved. The idea that such training is too onerous is a perennial excuse. I ask the Minister not to hide behind that.

Importantly, I would ask the Minister to go away and talk with colleagues in other Departments—in Health and in Communities and Local Government—because there are benefits across other Departments and there are possibly even some cost savings, ultimately, which the Government are obviously very interested in. Most important of all, lives will be saved. Children and young people are very capable of using these skills, and that is the time to teach them.