Sudden Adult Death Syndrome

Debate between Andy Burnham and Lord Dodds of Duncairn

Monday 25th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

We have heard some outstanding speeches this afternoon, and a good deal of consensus, which I am sure will be encouraging for the thousands, indeed millions, of people throughout the country who are campaigning on the issue that we are discussing. We must not forget that we are here for this debate because 110,000 people have signed a petition, in the belief that lives can be saved if Parliament will give the issue more attention and make changes. The debate would not be happening without the outstanding campaigning efforts of the OK Foundation and other heart organisations. I pay tribute in particular to Councillor Jake Morrison, one of the youngest councillors in the country and a shining example of the difference that councillors can make when they dedicate themselves to a campaign.

If it does nothing else, today’s debate will have achieved something, because the official record will contain a permanent memorial to Oliver King, and to the other young people mentioned in the debate, whose lives have tragically been lost. I want the debate to achieve far more than that, however, which is why I am leading for the Opposition today. I want today to be the start of a parliamentary journey in which the issues we are debating here will soon move to the Floor of the House and then, finally, into legislation supported, I hope, by a cross-party campaign. The debate is changing in the country. Every Member of this House will have seen campaigns in their local paper when lives have been lost, and those campaigns are calling for something to be done. It is now time for Parliament to show more leadership on the issue, which we have brought up the parliamentary agenda, and to make changes that will save lives.

We have heard from many hon. Members today, and the attendance of so many Members, not all of whom have spoken, shows the level of interest within Parliament. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) introduced the debate with a customarily outstanding speech, and he set out the issues very clearly. The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) spoke from personal experience, and given his commitment, we should all listen to what he has to say. My right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) and my hon. Friends the Members for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper), for Bassetlaw (John Mann) and for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) have all made outstanding speeches.

The reason why people talk with such conviction and passion is that we have all seen the devastating effect of the unexpected loss of a life, particularly of a young person, but not necessarily so because this affects young and old. People have seen the inexplicable grief that a family feel when someone is brought down in their prime, often at the peak of their powers, playing sport.

That was certainly the case with Daniel Young in my constituency. He died in 2005 playing football for Leigh RMI football club. He was an outstanding young footballer, and at the time his mother, Dionne, told me that she bought everything for him to make his young football career a success. He had all the latest gear, but she said, “If somebody had just told me to pay for a screening test, it would have been the best £30 I could ever have spent, but I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know he was at risk.” My journey began there, and I started to look into the issue.

When I held office in the Department of Health, I asked the Department to look at the issue and to consider the case for screening, as proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton. While that work has been taking place, we have sadly seen further tragedies. Of course, we have spoken today about the loss of Oliver in Liverpool. He was another outstanding young sportsman whose talent was taken away from us. Oliver’s dad, Mark, was in a similar position to my constituent: he was not warned about the potential risks and, obviously, I am sure he now thinks about that all the time.

Close to my constituency, we have also recently lost a very young boy. Ciaran Geddes was seven years old, and he died in April 2012 playing football on his own. He was a member of the Winwick junior football club, who play in the same Warrington junior league in which my son used to play. That brings it very close to home, and it was such a young life. Ciaran’s mum, Marika, is now campaigning through the Ciaran’s Cause charity, which has given 27 defibrillators to schools across Warrington, with 10 more to be given soon. Marika says that, with every defibrillator the charity gives, she feels that Ciaran lives on. Three of the defibrillators donated to schools by the Oliver King Foundation have already been used, which brings home just how important it is to support those campaigns.

As my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton West and for Liverpool, Walton have said, we all saw the case of Fabrice Muamba—what an inspiring story that is —which shows just what can be achieved, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley said, he was saved only because he fell at a premier league football ground. Obviously, he did almost die, but he survived because he was at the ground and because back-up was on hand. The poor kids who fall at grass-roots football locations are not so lucky, but simple support could be in place that might save many more lives.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I tried to be here for the start of the debate to hear the speeches that have been made on this most important subject.

There have been a number of high-profile deaths of young sportspeople on playing fields in Northern Ireland, where we have a very high rate of death by cardiac arrest anyway. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would agree that there have been positive outcomes from those tragedies—we have heard of examples from across England—and in Northern Ireland a new community resuscitation strategy has been launched that aims to train people in emergency life support and to provide more defibrillators. So, positives are coming out of those tragedies, and we must all redouble our efforts, as the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) said, to press people to really deliver.

[Andy Burnham]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely spot on, because we see incredible activity across all four nations of the United Kingdom in the wake of those tragedies. Communities are pulling together, raising funds and donating defibrillators to schools and sports clubs, which brings me to my main point: leadership is now needed at national level to co-ordinate that activity and to bring clarity to the whole situation so that the public know where to find a defibrillator and how to use one. I hope I can persuade the Government to work with Opposition Front Benchers on that. There is no politics involved here; this is about saving lives where we can and doing things to make human progress in this country. Other countries are more focused than we have been, and because of that they are saving more lives.

My feeling is that provision is too random at the moment—it is happening in some places and not in others—and we need clarity on policy at a national level so that we can piggyback on all those local campaigns to make progress. I do not think there is a funding issue, because communities will find the money to put these things in the right places, but we must know where they need to go.

It is crucial to understand that, with the best will in the world, the ambulance service is often unable to make a difference for the people who sadly fall in a busy shopping centre, railway station or sports ground. Why? Because they are unable to get there within the Government target time of eight minutes, which is too late. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West said, it is about that chain of survival; it is about equipping people with the knowledge and the kit at local level to start making a difference so that, when the professionals arrive, there is somebody there to save. That is what we have to do.

If we look at the statistics, 12 young people, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton said, die from sudden cardiac arrest in the UK every week. We underplay that problem. Until recently, the Department of Health NHS Choices website stated that the figure was 12 young people a year. The figure was corrected after it was pointed out to the Department, but it is important that the problem is not underestimated.

The clinching fact for why we should do more is that across the world, survival rates are very variable. According to the British Heart Foundation, in this country between 2% and 12% of people who suffer a sudden cardiac arrest survive, which is way too low. Elsewhere, in Seattle, as has been said, 50% of people survive, and in Japan, a public access campaign for AEDs has resulted in an immediate increase in rates of survival with minimum neurological impairment for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.

The evidence is absolutely clear, so what about policy? What did we do while we were in Government? We must be honest. I am not here to say that we did everything right, but we did something. On the back of the focus on heart services, we introduced the national defibrillator programme in the middle of the last decade. It made a modest amount of funds available to purchase defibrillators to give to local organisations. However, I think that a mistake was made. As the programme was wound down, responsibility was passed to ambulance services.

There are two ways of looking at that. On the one hand, ambulance services have been doing brilliant work ever since as they have taken on the responsibility to improve communities’ capacity to respond. It is fantastic to see representatives of the ambulance service here today. I have certainly been impressed by what I have seen in the north-west. The team there is working with communities across the region to build their capacity to respond. The ambulance service has done good work, but national focus on the issue was lost when responsibility was passed down to the ambulance services, and we must acknowledge that.

That brings me to the crux of what I wanted to say, particularly to the Minister. I think that, between us, we can develop a set of simple policy calls that could make a difference and save lives. I will identify three in particular. As hon. Members have said, there is a compelling case for putting emergency life skills on the national curriculum and for making time available, perhaps as part of the personal, social, health and economic education component, to provide training for all young people. No young person should leave school without knowing how to provide CPR and use a defibrillator, because it is not all about defibrillators or CPR—the two together are important. If we train young people in those skills, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw said, they will go home and talk to others about them.

I have seen what the British Heart Foundation does in schools. The courses that it delivers for young children are outstanding. It would be easy to add such courses to the national curriculum. My children tell me all the things that they are doing in school: the things that they are learning to make in home economics, and the kings and queens that they know about. It is odd that we do not ensure that every young person in this country leaves school at 16 knowing how to save a life. What more basic skill could we give them during their school years?