First Aid Techniques: National Curriculum

Debate between David Amess and Julie Hilling

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

There is wide interest in the debate. From the Chair’s point of view, it would be helpful if colleagues quietly let the Clerk know who wishes to make a speech and who intends merely to intervene. Aside from the main speakers, it looks as though there will be about five minutes each for the rest.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I am grateful for the opportunity to have one last go in this Parliament to persuade the Government and my Front Benchers that there is a chance simply, easily, cheaply and immediately to save lives and to transform society.

Teaching emergency life support skills in schools and the community is

“a no brainer, it’s just common sense”.

Those words are not mine, but those of Dr Andy Lockey at the Resuscitation Council. There are 150,000 people a year who die in situations in which, if only someone had known what to do, their lives might have been saved. There are 30,000 people who have out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, but fewer than one in 10 survives. If only someone knew how to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, and if a defibrillator was available, survival rates could increase to 50%.

Emergency life support skills are a set of actions needed to keep somebody alive until professional help arrives. They include performing CPR, putting an unconscious person into the recovery position, dealing with choking and serious bleeding, and helping someone who might be having a heart attack. Such skills are particularly crucial at the time of a cardiac arrest, when every second counts. For every minute that passes in cardiac arrest, the chance of survival falls by 10%. If CPR is started immediately, the time that the person remains in a shockable, and hence reversible, condition will be prolonged. It also means that there will be more of the person’s brain function left—more of them left—if they are resuscitated. At the moment, it is down to luck.

Three years ago, Fabrice Muamba had a cardiac arrest when he was playing for Bolton Wanderers against Tottenham. Fabrice was lucky because he had his cardiac arrest where there were people who were trained in what to do. He was lucky because the club medics and the paramedics gave him immediate CPR on the pitch, so his brain was saved. He was lucky because medics did not give up on him and worked on him for 78 minutes until his heart restarted. Because he was with people who knew what to do, we still have the charming, intelligent Fabrice in this world with us.

My sister’s friend, Malcolm McCormick, was also lucky. Just a month after Fabrice’s cardiac arrest, Malcolm went to school to pick up his grandchildren and he keeled over, effectively dead, not breathing, heart not beating. Malcolm was lucky because one of the people waiting to collect children was a retained firefighter who started to give CPR. He was very lucky because once a month another firefighter volunteers in the school tuck shop, and it was his Friday to be working, so he came and took control of the situation.

Malcolm was also lucky because a defibrillator was available, and he was rushed to a specialist hospital. Three days later he left hospital with very sore ribs, but alive and with his brain intact. Four months later, he was a Games maker at the Paralympics.

Public Sector Funding

Debate between David Amess and Julie Hilling

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on securing the debate. I want to follow what seemed to me to be her theme—what on earth are the Government playing at? In their wholesale rush to get rid of everything that the Labour Government did, they are destroying structures that would help to deliver the big society. I shall talk specifically, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), about vinvolved—the national young volunteers service. Its aim was to get 500,000 young people into volunteering. It developed out of millennium volunteers and was directly funded by the Government. It has eight days left to be saved.

The initiative was funded by the Government and run by v, the independent charity. There were 107 vinvolved teams nationally. Its focus was on creating new volunteering opportunities, including working with community and voluntary organisations, to create more high-quality, diverse volunteer opportunities for young people; supporting local organisations that work with young volunteers; brokering 16 to 25-year-olds into volunteering opportunities; finding the right opportunities for new and existing volunteers; helping young people to set up their own voluntary projects; and championing youth-led action, with each team including a youth action team made up of young volunteers giving advice on what projects and work vinvolved teams should get involved in.

What happened? Young people were matched to opportunities that suited their interests and aspirations, and that were sensitive to their individual circumstances. That was particularly important for young people with multiple barriers to participation—for example, people leaving care, asylum seekers, refugees and people with mental health issues. The vinvolved project particularly targeted young people who would not normally be involved in volunteering and who faced great difficulties in their lives. Such young people were at risk of being socially marginalised. However, apart from the effect on the young people themselves, there is also a real cost to society when young people are no longer part of it and have additional needs, which society must then tackle.

In matching young people with appropriate and fulfilling volunteering opportunities, which in turn acted as a stepping-stone for their progression, vinvolved allowed many young people to find a new, positive direction. The project enhanced employability and provided references for young people who had problems and who may never have completed their secondary education. Those young people may have had nobody in their lives to provide a reference for them, but they got one through their volunteering opportunities. The project also supported those at risk of social exclusion, increasing their confidence, helping to overcome feelings of isolation and loneliness, and improving community relations as young people from different communities came together to work across communities and with people from different backgrounds, including with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people, and black and minority ethnic young people. I should add that the voluntary work brokered by Manchester vinvolved equates to £232,380—I like the precise figure it has produced—based on salaries at the national minimum wage.

I could speak for a great deal longer about vinvolved, but I am aware of the time. I could also speak for a long time about the wonderful young people who have been involved in the project, whom I had the honour of meeting at an awards event for Greater Manchester a few weeks ago. Those young people have overcome their disabilities and other issues, such as the need to care for relations or the fact that they have come from broken homes or experienced homelessness, and they have gone on to contribute enormously to the society they live in. Without projects such as vinvolved, such young people will not get involved in volunteering, because they need organisations to support them, bring them together and give them the chance to make a difference to their lives and the lives of people in the community.

The vinvolved initiative is the sort of project that the Government need if they are ever to deliver their big society. I agree with my hon. Friends that we already have the big society, but if we want to extend and expand it, we must have projects that support the voluntary sector and that help young people and adults into volunteering. There are only eight days left to save vinvolved, and I really hope that the Minister will act so that we can continue a project that serves the needs of young people and their communities in such a splendid way.

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

I call Catherine McKinnell.