Life-saving Skills in Schools

Debate between Andrew Bridgen and Andrew Smith

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I warmly welcome this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) and other hon. Members on bringing this issue before the House, and commend all the newspaper and petitioning activity that led to that. It is not every motion before the House of which we can say it will save thousands of lives and cost very little, but that is precisely what this motion will do if the Government follow through on it, as the hon. Lady has been advocating. I wholeheartedly agree with everything she said about making it mandatory and with her demolition of all the arguments against it.

In the brief time allowed, I want to refer to a programme that originated 15 years ago at the John Radcliffe hospital in my constituency, which has been extended to nine other centres in the UK and emulated overseas in Hong Kong and Belarus. The injury minimisation programme for schools was, like most of the best ideas, very simple and obvious once someone was clever enough to think of it. The idea is that if we educate children in accident prevention and what to do when there is an accident, and at an age when they are old enough to understand and apply the lessons but before they become especially sensitive about their bodies, that will cut accidents and save lives. The programme works by combining work in the classroom with a visit to hospital to learn emergency life skills. Approximately 5,000 10 and 11-year-olds in Oxfordshire take part each year. Children enjoy it, teachers value it, and, most importantly, it works.

I congratulate all who work on the programme—its administrators and volunteers, as well as the medical staff and teachers. I have met children on the course, and it is uplifting to see their enthusiasm for the knowledge and practical skills that they have learned, and how proud they are to go home and tell their parents that they know how to save their life. I have one feedback message from a youngster who went on the programme:

“I have shown my mum how to do the recovery position! She was very impressed! I told her about CPR and I now know that if someone has collapsed then I could save their life. Hope you enjoy my feedback. Please carry on teaching children to save people’s lives.”

[Andrew Bridgen]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if the practice were adopted and made mandatory, it could improve social cohesion? Young people could have the skills to save the lives of people from the older generation, and that would change perceptions in society.

[Mr Smith]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. It is vital to understand what children are capable of, and that we do not underestimate the live-saving skills they can learn. There is hard evidence for that. In a scientific abstract to the international conference on emergency medicine in June, the journal Academic Emergency Medicine reported on a study assessing whether children can defibrillate. The study was done properly and rigorously, with control groups and so on, and chi-squared analysis of the conclusion. In concluded:

“This study demonstrates that children aged 11-years-old can use a defibrillator effectively and safely, and retain this knowledge over several weeks”—

and that active training, unsurprisingly, is the most effective way of teaching it to them.