Compulsory Emergency First Aid Education (State-funded Secondary Schools) Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Friday 20th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I will not delay the House for too long, lest I be perceived as the Mini-Me to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I was arguing that the Bill puts those of us who feel passionately about first aid and its importance to all of us as citizens, parents and Members of Parliament in an invidious position. The heart agrees that this must be taken forward and given greater prominence, and those engaged in it given greater support, whether by Government, councils, school or any voluntary groups involved, but I am not at all convinced that the current Bill is the answer.

As I said before the urgent questions, I have consulted my local headteachers. I will not reprise what I said earlier, other than to say that in each of those conversations a range of interesting and valuable ways in which first aid and CPR can be furthered was put forward. One school has a first aid-themed day and asks pupils to go in voluntarily on a Saturday to do first aid training. Teachers nobly agree to come in and man the school for that day. St John Ambulance comes in and assists.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an important point. What people do voluntarily they do with more enthusiasm than that which they are ordered to do by the state. Is it not right therefore that that is a better model?

[Robert Jenrick]

I agree wholeheartedly. Not only do the people who engage in these activities when inspired to do that voluntarily do so with greater appetite than if they were compulsory, but when it is not mandated in a prescriptive manner in the national curriculum, there is far more opportunity for teachers and community groups to blossom and come up with interesting and innovative ideas, rather than following tired templates.

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[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend may be better informed than I, but I believe that that is done in Germany and some other countries around the world. Such policies may be good ones. They may be things to consider. However, I do not think that the national curriculum is necessarily the lever to use to pursue this because, as I say, none of the headteachers wants that. They want to continue to do the training in their own—in my experience—innovative and local manner. They also want to work with local groups. As I said earlier, there are some superb ones in my constituency. I am sure that every hon. Member has such groups in their constituency. It is those groups I want to see given greater support, whether by councils, the Government or any other organisation, so that they can continue to blossom and flourish.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Following on from what my hon. Friend has been saying, does he agree that this is actually a very bureaucratic response requiring lots of guidance from the Secretary of State? It is back to the bad old days of schools being lumbered with endless instructions and directives from Whitehall.

[Robert Jenrick]

I quite agree. I wonder whether some of those positive and innovative examples that I mentioned earlier, such as the school in Sutton Coldfield that offers such training on a voluntary basis and sees vast numbers of students take it up, the prefect programme and the weekend activity programme, would have happened if there were a simple prescriptive national curriculum approach to the problem.

The final issue I want to discuss is the fear of the tick-box culture, and this crosses over to other issues. It is one of the most corrosive aspects of our society, whether it is in education, financial services or any other form of regulation. So many professionals, when faced with a box to be ticked, do the bare minimum, rather than seeking to do the best or to offer the most innovative answer. I fear that the vague nature of this Bill, which allows maximum flexibility to our schools—which may appear ostensibly positive—in fact will not ensure that quality prevails. If those groups that I have seen in my constituency provide extremely high-quality CPR and first aid, and I am sure they do, I want to see that continue and be made available to young people, not eroded by the need of some schools—although I am certain it would be a minority—to pursue a tick-box culture.

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[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

I am pleased to be able to contribute to this important debate and would like to start by thanking the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on taking this Bill forward.

Every year some 30,000 people in the UK have cardiac arrests outside of a hospital or associated care setting, but, at present, fewer than one in 10 of them survive. With a current ambulance target response time of eight minutes, time is of the essence, so acting quickly is essential because for every minute that passes in which immediate CPR is not given, the survival chance falls by 10%. However, if immediate CPR action is taken, the chances of survival rise threefold. Furthermore, it is estimated that 150,000 people die every single year in situations where their life could potentially have been saved if someone with an understanding of first aid was on hand to act quickly.

We will all have our own experiences of family and friends who have had accidents or fallen into difficulty and required urgent first aid. Very recently, a close friend of mine collapsed while playing sport. Thankfully, there were qualified professionals close at hand to assist and my friend now continues to make a recovery. However, such was the seriousness of the situation that it could have been very different if medical assistance had not been on hand. Many people, however, are not so fortunate. Thousands of lives are lost every single year because people do not have the knowledge or the confidence to intervene in such circumstances.

The Bill, of course, is about equipping our young people with the range of emergency life-support skills that are needed to keep somebody alive in such circumstances until professional help arrives. Depending upon the situation, the range of skills and knowledge which such training could provide may well prove to be the difference at a time of a cardiac arrest or a serious accident, when every second counts.

We all appreciate the importance of ensuring that as many people as possible are adequately equipped to assist in such situations, should they be required to do so. Indeed, I wholeheartedly agree with those hon. Members who have suggested that this process needs to start in schools to ensure that all of our young people are taught the life-saving skills that will remain with them through the rest of their lives. Ultimately, the question becomes: how do we encourage schools to teach these vital skills to our young people?

Earlier this year in the last parliamentary Session, the Education Committee, of which I was a member at the time, published a report regarding the teaching of PSHE in schools. PSHE covers a wide programme of learning through which our young people acquire the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to manage their daily lives. Among the various topics taught in our schools as part of this broad subject area is life-saving skills, which include CPR and more general first aid training. While it is up to individual schools to determine how they deliver PSHE, the Committee’s report makes it clear that this is an important part of the curriculum and that the Government should take various steps to improve the quality of provision in schools.

The final recommendations from the Committee cited a number of key steps that are required to improve the quality of PSHE in schools. These included formally measuring the quality of provision, incentivising schools to improve the way in which they deliver PSHE, and the need to ensure that appropriate curriculum time is devoted to the subject.

I was pleased to see that the Government welcomed the report’s findings when they set out their initial response in July on improving the quality of that education in schools. They made it clear that they want all schools to put high-quality PSHE at the heart of the curriculum. In March, before formally responding to the Committee’s recommendations, the Secretary of State announced new measures to improve the quality of PSHE, including the development of a new, rigorous PSHE quality mark and working with the PSHE Association to help them to quality-assure resources. The new PSHE quality mark will be brought in line with similar accreditations of this type that require schools to provide evidence of the depth and quality of their teaching in a particular area. That includes first aid training.

As part of the Government’s initial response to the report in July, they stated that they will work with Ofsted on how best to capture evidence of the quality of PSHE education in schools. They also acknowledged the importance of schools publishing the relevant information about their PSHE curriculum on their websites, and they have indicated that they are considering options to further strengthen schools’ compliance with the current requirements.

In the longer term, the Government have now indicated that they want to go further and that they will work with the sector to develop further measures to improve quality. Indeed, the Secretary of State made it clear that she wanted to make significant progress on this issue during this Parliament and would consider in full the arguments put forward by the Committee as part of that work to ensure that PSHE is taught well in every school. I have alluded to the Committee’s report, and to the assurances that have been provided by the Secretary of State in response to it, in order to make clear the Government’s commitment to enhancing this education, of which life-saving skills are an integral part.

Along with other hon. Members, I look forward to seeing what steps the Secretary of State will take further to improve the quality of PSHE education in schools, but I am somewhat reassured by her commitment to take this work forward throughout the duration of this Parliament. Given the Government’s commitment to improving this provision, the delivery of first aid training and its role within the wider subject area may well be part of the Secretary of State’s report. It might therefore be somewhat premature to consider the question of first aid training in schools while we are still awaiting her report on the wider subject area, of which first aid forms an integral part.

According to research by St John Ambulance and the British Red Cross, only 7% of the UK population have the skills and the confidence to carry out basic first aid in an emergency. We all agree that starting early and providing training in schools is absolutely key to changing that situation in the longer term, but we must not forget the need to raise awareness of the issue throughout the wider community as well. Indeed, even if the Bill were approved, it would take many years to improve the degree to which life-saving skills were common among the general population. Surely we need to start now by raising the profile of this issue, and not only in schools.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is making the crucial point that people might have had first aid training at school, but many of them will have left school quite a long time ago. What efforts does he think could be made, without resorting to heavy-handed legislation, to encourage people to renew those skills?

[Craig Whittaker]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. I myself have been on retraining courses over the years since I left school—although, as hon. Members can see, that was not so many years ago. [Laughter.]

As I was saying, surely we need to start now by raising the profile of this issue, not only in schools but in all parts of society from the workplace to voluntary clubs and places of worship. A number of organisations, including the British Heart Foundation, the British Red Cross and St John Ambulance, already work with thousands of people up and down the country to provide these skills and raise awareness of this issue. Those three organisations in particular work with a plethora of voluntary groups and organisations across my constituency, and I am sure that all Members will join me in paying tribute to the work that they do throughout the United Kingdom.

However, we have a long way to go in complementing the work of these charities and working alongside them to raise awareness of these issues and to further promote first aid training among the wider adult population. As MPs, we have a role to play. During a Westminster Hall debate earlier this year, my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) revealed that she had written to all her local schools and colleges about installing defibrillators. Today, other Members have talked about doing that. I recall my hon. Friend saying that a number of schools had subsequently taken her up on that offer as a result. Along with our local councillors, we can have a role in working alongside schools, local authorities, community groups and voluntary organisations to encourage them to consider the provision of first aid training. Following the example set by my hon. Friend, I have written to all my schools within the Calder Valley—and I will do so again—to raise awareness of these issues.

I am pleased that a number of hon. Members have mentioned the availability of defibrillators. While their presence on their own is clearly not enough, particularly in the absence of adequate training, they are an important part of the jigsaw puzzle. My own local authority, Calderdale, has taken steps to increase the number of defibs in public buildings and in places that experience high footfall. This has been an important and welcome first step. Local authorities have a key role to play and it is important that they take these issues seriously and consider how they can work with schools and other stakeholders to promote the wider availability of defibs throughout the community.

We have heard harrowing statistics and personal stories from hon. Members which speak for themselves. We all agree on the need to ensure that more people are first aid trained, and the arguments in favour of providing training in schools have been accepted by all. I commend the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead for introducing the Bill and for allowing us this opportunity to discuss, and raise awareness of, these important issues.

Many schools already teach CPR and more general first aid training as part of their delivery of the PSHE curriculum, and the question is whether that should be prescribed in law as outlined by the Bill. The Government have accepted the concerns about how PSHE has been delivered in the past, and they have made it quite clear that they are committed to working with the sector to develop further measures to improve the quality of PSHE in schools. Indeed, the Secretary of State has indicated that she wants to make significant progress on this issue during the course of this Parliament. To approve legislation relating to first aid training in schools before the Secretary of State has reported back on her development plan for the teaching of the subject area of which this forms a constituent part is, I feel, somewhat premature.

It is up to individual schools to determine how they deliver PSHE. I am pleased that the Government are looking closely at provision in this area with a view to raising standards, but it is important that schools retain the ultimate right to deliver the curriculum in the best way they see fit. It is the professionals, our teachers and headteachers, who are best placed to decide what is most suitable for their students, and they need the flexibility to deliver PSHE, including CPR and first aid training, in a way that is appropriate for their school environment.

The national curriculum creates a minimum expectation for the school programme. Indeed, it does not seek to prescribe everything that a school should teach, but rather, creates a structure and a framework around which the professionals working in a school environment can tailor a programme that works best for their students. We must also remember that schools do not have a monopoly on the provision of education to our children. Parents, grandparents and voluntary groups outside the formal school environment have just as important a role to play.

Let me return to the Education Committee’s report of earlier this year, which recommended putting CPR and first aid on a statutory footing in the curriculum. What Members who served on that Committee have not mentioned is that we stopped short of recommending that that should be done provided we extended the school day. There is a real risk here in terms of a plethora of high-profile issues. I recall discussing the curriculum in 2011, when there were high-profile campaigns for a number of things, such as PSHE, life skills, road safety, financial literacy, advanced technology and even Latin.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend has suggested something that would break my rule of not legislating for specific subjects; to have Latin on the curriculum must be an advantage.

[Craig Whittaker]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I recall that when I was at school—that very short time ago—Latin was not my most favourite of subjects. Some people would say neither was English, but there we go.

The Government have been called on to include many similar subjects in the national curriculum. Simply having this long and overly prescriptive list of compulsory subjects that must be taught could easily lead to a tick-box exercise, as has been said, and to schools being prevented from focusing on what is important for their pupils and their communities. Schools should be encouraged to, and supported in, teaching vital skills such as first aid, but forcing them to do so in law may not be the best way to achieve the outcomes we all desire, unless we have a serious think about extending the school day.

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[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who knows I have a high regard for him, even though he did not give way to me during his speech. He said that the Bill has strong cross-party support and he talked about the will of the House, which presumably will mean that 100 MPs out of the 650 will be here—it is not a great total to reach—to vote for it today. I am sure that if those 100 MPs are here, it will go through. That is a matter of fact, so if 100 MPs troop through the Lobby, that will be the will of the House and that will be it. We will see just how much cross-party support the Bill actually has, rather than what he asserts.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

In looking for these 100 MPs, how many does my hon. Friend see on the Opposition Benches currently?

[Philip Davies]

I see four, but I am not going to get sidetracked on to the number of people on the Benches, as I am sure you want us to get into the meat of the debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. You know how anxious I always am to get cracking into the meat of the debate, and I am not going to disappoint you any longer.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on introducing this Bill. It may have strong cross-party support, but it certainly does not have mine.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is congratulating the hon. Lady, but he has not yet congratulated the Chairman of Ways and Means, who conducts the draw. It has become something of a tradition to congratulate him on the way in which he does the draw.

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[Philip Davies]

I am not capable of conducting this in Latin, Mr Deputy Speaker—some would say I am not able to conduct it in English. I am getting sidetracked again by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), and I hope you appreciate that it is certainly not of my doing.

The flavour of most private Members’ Bills that come before the House is that they are backed by a worthy sentiment, but are not really fit for purpose when given any great scrutiny. I fear that we are in that situation today. What we have been offered by a number of Members is what we normally get in this place on private Members’ Bills, which is a painless panacea. Politicians will always offer a painless panacea. With this Bill, I have heard that we can save lives, save money, save time and save absolutely anything. It has been said that there are no concerns and no downsides to this Bill, which will stipulate that it is compulsory for schools to provide first aid education. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), I have spoken to the schools in my constituency, and I wish to share some of the feedback that they have given to me.

If this Bill is so easy for schools to implement—it is said that it will save time, save money and save lives—then there is absolutely nothing to stop them introducing first aid courses now as part of the existing curriculum. We have heard that already today, and we have heard that many schools already do that. Why on earth would we need to make compulsory something that is so wonderful and that has no downsides? Surely we can just sit back and wait for every school to implement it themselves.

One thing I always say is that we should trust the people who are doing things every day. They tend to be the ones who know the best about what goes on and what works. When I worked for Asda, I found that it was the checkout operators who were the best people to ask about what was going wrong or right in the store, because they saw it every day with their own eyes. I certainly believe in trusting the professionals. My father was a teacher for that matter, so I am all for trusting teachers to get on and do their job. I do not really want the Government to be sticking their nose in at every single turn, trying to lecture them every five minutes about what they should be doing when they are perfectly capable of making those decisions for themselves.

If we think that we have recruited the right people to be teachers, then we have absolutely nothing to fear from leaving them to get on and do their job. If we feel that we have recruited the wrong teachers and that we need to lecture them every five minutes about what they should be doing, the problem is in the recruitment process. We should not need to look over their shoulder all the time, telling them what they should and should not be doing. I fear that we have made that particular mistake with this Bill.

I should make something very clear now, because, doubtless, Opposition Members will try to misconstrue my remarks. First aid, as everyone has acknowledged, is a very important life skill. I encourage as many people as possible to learn that skill. I am, and remain, a supporter of first aid, and certainly do not think that it is unimportant. I do not want to prevent anybody from learning first aid if they wish to learn it. I want people to have that opportunity.

Every year, there are 5.5 million attendees at A&E departments, 3 million of whom have the types of accident and injury that first aid treatment could have helped. For example, there are about 2,600 open wound injuries, 2,400 bone injuries, about 40 incidents of choking and more than 290 injuries from burns. Every year, about 66,000 die from heart attacks and seizures. They are all compelling statistics that endorse the increased use of first aid within society. Indeed, those statistics seem a valuable reason to encourage more members of society to learn first aid, but they do not in themselves justify the reason why first aid should become compulsory in the school curriculum, and that is what I wish to focus on today.

This Bill is not starting out from here. In the previous Parliament, Julie Hilling, the former Member for Bolton West, introduced a very similar Bill as a ten-minute rule Bill, which provided amendments to the Education Act 2002. She also brought in an amendment during the Committee stage of the Education Bill to make provision for teaching emergency life support skills in the national curriculum. The response of the then Minister for Schools, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), highlighted some of the same reservations that should be drawn to this debate today. He said:

“I agree that emergency life support skills can have an immensely positive impact on pupils’ families as well as schools and the wider community. It is encouraging to hear about the excellent work in schools…I am also aware of the invaluable support that organisations such as the British Heart Foundation and St John Ambulance offer individual schools or groups of schools to enrich curriculum work. I applaud them for their important work, but I do not agree that making emergency life support skills a statutory part of the curriculum is the right approach.”

I absolutely endorse what he said. He went on to say:

“We are clear that the national curriculum should set out the essential knowledge and understanding that all children should be expected to acquire in the course of their school lives. It is for teachers to design the wider curriculum in the way that meets the needs of their pupils, taking account of the views of parents, the wider community and local circumstances.”––[Official Report, Education Public Bill Committee, 5 April 2011; c. 990.]

That is the nub of my argument today. It should be a schools’ prerogative to incorporate extra-curricular activities, such as first aid education, into the school calendar, and they should not be forced to substitute other lessons to fit them in. That has been confirmed more recently—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is saying, and I agree with him, that it should be for schools to decide. Does he think that it should be a voluntary activity for the pupils, or is he suggesting that they should be compelled to participate?

[Philip Davies]

It absolutely should be a voluntary thing. I was struck by my hon. Friend’s earlier intervention when he said that people who volunteer for things tend to enter into them with much more gusto than if they are compelled to be there. That is self-evidently the case. I do not see why that should not be the case for the teaching of first aid as well.

I should say that when the Government were pressed on this matter by Bob Russell, the former Liberal Democrat MP for Colchester, the Secretary of State made it clear that her Department was prepared to help schools teach life-saving skills more generally if that was what schools wanted—again, that is very laudable. She also made it clear that the Government had negotiated a contract so that schools could obtain defibrillators at reasonable rates and train their pupils in the use of them.

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[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I do not know. Schools would presumably have to muddle through as best they can to meet the requirements of the Bill. I am sure teachers are very good at chopping and changing and muddling through.

As I made clear at the start of my speech, I have contacted all the schools in my constituency and got feedback from some of them. One of them had a “requires improvement” judgment in February 2014, and one reason was that the students’ achievement in both maths and English has not been good enough since 2012. The priority for the school and its leadership team is not to expand the curriculum to make us all feel better about ourselves because we are fulfilling a worthy sentiment; the teachers are working incredibly hard to ensure that their pupils leave as young adults who are equipped with the right level of maths and English to set them up for the future. That is the first priority of our schooling system in this country. We should not sit here and think everything is hunky-dory in all our schools; it is not. Those teachers want help do that difficult job, dealing with some difficult pupils, but the Bill does not give them that support.

The National Literacy Trust states:

“Around 16 per cent, or 5.2 million adults in England, can be described as ‘functionally illiterate’. They would not pass an English GCSE and have literacy levels at or below those expected of an 11-year-old.”

That is a serious problem, which schools should be addressing. The importance of that form of education, which is what parents expect when they send their children to school, cannot be overestimated.

As we have heard from various Members, many people learn their first aid skills with the guides or the scouts. The nub of one of my arguments is that children do not need to learn first aid at school, as there are many organisations and clubs which teach it, including St John Ambulance and the Red Cross. The first aid badge is one of the most important badges that people can get in those organisations. Individuals must show a thorough range of first aid knowledge before they are entitled to the badge. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) referred to the pride that people take in displaying their badge on their uniform when they have earned it through those sessions. The guides first aid badge is valid for only two years, at which point they are required to take the test again in order to keep the badge up to date.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is making such an important point. When things are done well by the voluntary sector, is it always necessary for the state to come in in a heavy-handed way, get rid of all the good work that is being done by others, and impose its own solution? Is it not better to encourage voluntary activity to flourish?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right.

It is clear from what happens at the guides that first aid skills need to be updated My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall touched on this in an intervention. The guides do it every two years. For it to mean anything at all, schools will have to teach first aid every two or three years, which will mean even more time out of the curriculum. I remember doing a first aid course at school, but I have to admit that if I were faced with a medical emergency, I would struggle to remember all the training I received. In that sense it would be rendered completely useless. That would apply to many of those who would go through first aid training at school, particularly if they were not paying attention because they did not want to be there in the first place.

We in this place would be far better advised to encourage young people to go out and join the guides or the scouts, or to do the Duke of Edinburgh’s award—the bronze, the silver and the gold. That would be a very worthwhile thing for them to do, and as part of that they would get all the emergency first aid training they would ever need. That would be a much more worthwhile message for us to send out—