Infant First Aid Training for Parents

David Linden Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is telling me that I will get endless amounts of time, but I will not indulge the House and will try to be relatively brief.

It is, as always, an immense pleasure to serve under your chairmanship and to see you here today, Mr Hollobone. Can I, as others have done, congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) on securing the debate? I always thought she was a conscientious Minister. I was annoyed that the week she resigned I had had a productive meeting with her about taking forward some changes to regulations. I hope the Government will appoint a new Minister soon and that we can follow that up. In one respect it is sad that she has left Government, but, as Members have said, it is good to see her on the Back Benches pursuing this issue. We wish her well, not just for this campaign but for her future time here.

In opening the debate, the hon. Lady spoke movingly about the story of Rowena. There was something incredibly encouraging and powerful about the story, which leads us to think about how many of us have received infant first aid training. It certainly gave a lot of us food for thought. Her asks of the Government are modest. She is not asking for billions of pounds of spending—perhaps if her colleagues from the DUP did it, they might have more success—but in all seriousness, she is looking for a modest change. I hope that the Minister is taking note and will take that back to the Department.

The hon. Lady was right to highlight the fact that it is great that organisations such as St John Ambulance and the Red Cross offer training on a commercial basis—they are charities and they have to cover their costs—but it is a bit sad that people have been asked to pay £30 or £40. As the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) highlighted, it is not just the cost of the courses that must be considered; if people travel to Edinburgh, Dundee or Aberdeen there are travel costs as well, which will be more than £40. He was right to put that on the record.

When we discuss the health service, I try to focus on the preventive spending agenda. As the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) said, this idea backs up preventive spending. If we empower parents and give them first aid training, it means that fewer people will present at accident and emergency at hospitals, and that can only be a good thing further down the line. There is a safety aspect to the argument, but also an economic aspect. The hon. Lady was right to put that on the record.

We had interventions from the hon. Members for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns), for Henley (John Howell), for Cheadle (Mary Robinson), for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) and for Strangford. We also had two excellent contributions from the hon. Members for Moray and for Sleaford and North Hykeham. As we know, the hon. Member for Moray has become a dad recently and has joined the club of dads who are also MPs. I know that he will be having sleepless nights at the moment. I sometimes tell my wife that I come to Westminster for a rest and a good night’s sleep. I am sure he is doing that as well.

A new parent spends so much time preparing for the arrival of a child, whether it is painting the nursery or getting the pram, but we miss out something as basic as first aid for infants. We now have two children, one of three and one of six months. Jessica was born in September. I had moved into a new house and was bolting drawers and wardrobes to the wall. As I was listening to this debate, I thought about how I spent so much time thinking about how to bolt IKEA furniture to the wall and yet I have done no first aid training, which is absolutely bonkers.

The hon. Member for Moray is right to say that there is a tremendous opportunity at antenatal classes. I know that the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth does not want to be too prescriptive, but it is certainly something that we should look at in Scotland, and I would be happy to work with the hon. Gentleman on making representations to NHS Scotland. He was right to put on the record the case of Dr Gray’s in Moray. Every time I have spoken in these debates and mentioned it, I get in trouble for not trumpeting the Scottish Government line on it, but as a constituency MP he is absolutely right to put it on the record. He is a powerful champion for his constituents and it is good that that is on the record again.

The hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham spoke with her professional expertise as a paediatric consultant. I have the great pleasure of chairing the all-party group on premature and sick babies—something that I will talk about later. As for paediatric consultants and neonatal staff, certainly in my experience of two occasions, we see those guys as gods when we are on the neonatal units, so it is really encouraging to have the hon. Lady in the House using her professional expertise in this debate. She was right to put on the record some of the public health messages that we as politicians can get out to our constituents, whether it is about cutting up grapes or highlighting the dangers that come up around Easter with mini-eggs.

One of the reasons I was asked by my party to sum up the debate is because I have a personal interest in the subject. I have two children, both of whom were born prematurely. On both occasions, there was a stay in the neonatal intensive care unit. We had two similar but slightly different experiences, the second of which was in September when my daughter was born and spent almost a month in hospital. She came home on oxygen and is still on oxygen at six months old. She gets it 24 hours a day. Before leaving the hospital, we were given an excellent document from the charity, Bliss, “Going home on oxygen”. Before we got that document, we had done the car seat test. For my daughter to leave hospital, she had to be able to be in a car seat for an hour to make sure she did not stop breathing. The last thing that we did before taking my daughter home was to practise CPR on a dummy, which is an incredibly stark experience. On the one hand, you are there as a dad getting to take your daughter home. You have been on the neonatal unit and have put all of your trust in the staff, but you have to go home. As I was preparing for this debate, it struck me that it is good to provide CPR training and to practise on a dummy, but even now we are not yet at the stage where we have had the full infant first aid training course.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth on securing this debate and moving the issue up the agenda. There is much that we can do, even if it is simple things such as making sure we use our voices as politicians to encourage training. Her asks are very modest and she certainly has our support to further the agenda.