Emergency Life Skills

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

I commend this fantastic speech. I raised the same subject in a Backbench Business debate recently, and I know at first hand what a difference it can make. On the specific point about PE, the actual training required is the equivalent of just one PE lesson. Therefore, while we acknowledge that the Government are trying to streamline the national curriculum, we are not asking for very much, but it can make a real difference.

[Julie Hilling]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. He has had personal experience of the need for emergency life skills, and I am very pleased that we can work together to try to get this issue higher up the agenda.

Smithills school aims to widen the scheme so that, during the school holidays, parents and siblings are able to learn these vital skills, too. The teacher responsible, Adrian Hamilton, told me that learning how to save a life in an emergency really engages the kids. He believes that ELS go a long way towards helping them become better citizens, and that learning ELS should be an expected part of what happens in schools.

The Government talk about wanting to compare themselves internationally, but ELS are already a compulsory part of the curriculum in France, Denmark and Norway. They are included in a number of states in Australia, and in the US they are part of the curriculum in 36 of the 50 states. Seattle is supposed to be the best place in the world to have a heart attack. It is impossible to get a driving licence or graduate from school in Seattle without being able to do CPR. Imagine a situation where one is rarely more than 12 feet away from somebody who can save a life. I hear, though, that there is a down side, because it is a very bad place in which to just faint.

Schools deliver ELS in a variety of ways and settings. Commonly, pupils enjoy the lessons, which increase confidence and self-esteem, and which are particularly important for children who have special educational needs. Sheringham Woodfields, a school for children with complex needs, told the Education Public Bill Committee about the enormous sense of achievement its pupils feel when they realise that they can save a life. One of its pupils received a bravery award when he saved somebody in the Norfolk broads. One of the most telling submissions to the Public Bill Committee was from Archbishop Ilsley Catholic technology college in Birmingham, which told us that it decided to teach ELS after a parent died from a heart attack in front of his family. The school felt that something positive should come from that tragedy. St Aidan’s primary school in St Helens told us about a year 6 child who was in a restaurant with her parents and 15 other adults when her eight-year-old brother started to choke on his food. He went blue and virtually collapsed at the table. All the adults stood around not knowing what to do, but the year 6 child jumped into action, put her training into use and saved her brother’s life. If she had not been there, 15 adults might have stood by and watched a little boy die in front of them.

I do not have time to list all the things that people have told me, but a common theme is that children who were taught ELS went on to practise them and either saved the lives of family members or helped in serious situations. A couple of weeks ago, I was in a meeting with Tabitha. When Tabitha was 17, a week before the summer holidays, she ran to join her friends and teachers during a fire drill. She does not remember anything else that happened, but apparently she collapsed with heart failure. She had been born with a congenital heart condition, but no one knew about it. Fortunately, her school secretary had been taught CPR, which they administered until an emergency responder and then paramedics arrived. Tabitha made it to hospital with all of her facilities still intact. She had emergency surgery and made a full recovery. Tabitha is now a voluntary emergency responder and is working hard to get ELS taught in schools.

I also met Beth at the same meeting. Beth is the mother of Guy Evans, who sadly died at the age of 17 in 2008. Guy was riding his motorcycle when he had a sudden cardiac arrhythmia. He fell off his motorbike and laid there while his friends stood around not knowing what to do. They were told by the 999 operator not to touch him—people thought that he had had a motorbike accident. If only they had been taught emergency life skills, they would not have faced the trauma of watching their friend die and experienced the trauma of living their lives with the thought that maybe, if they had known what to do, Guy would still be alive. Beth has been campaigning ever since to get ELS into the school curriculum and into driving tests.

Cardiac arrest does not discriminate between young and old, or between gender and race—it can happen to the very fittest of us. On average, heart attacks are suffered by men in their 50s, and so should be of keen interest to many MPs in this House. On average, it takes approximately five to 10 minutes for an emergency ambulance to arrive. For every minute that passes in cardiac arrest, the chance of survival falls by 10%. CPR increases survival and prolongs the time a person remains shockable. If a defibrillator is used to administer a shock, the survival rate increases to 50%. When we watch “Casualty”, it looks as though CPR is actually the thing that makes people suddenly wake up—it is not. CPR keeps blood and oxygen pumping around the body, which means that the heart can still be shocked back into a rhythm. All the time that people are not breathing and their hearts are not pumping, parts of their body and brain are dying. CPR keeps people alive and keeps them going until they can be shocked, and until they can get to hospital.

I have been told about a mother who collapsed at the school gates. Instead of everyone standing around not knowing what to do and watching her die, children sprang into action and administered CPR. The school brought out their defibrillator, which they had purchased for £1,000, and saved the mother’s life. Just last week, 15-year-old Patrick Horrock had a heart attack in Hindley leisure centre, which is just next door to my constituency. A member of staff performed CPR and another used a defibrillator to restart his heart. Patrick is alive and well because people knew what to do and had the tools available to do it.

I had a meeting with some local firemen last week. They are Heartstart tutors and deliver classes to adults and young people in the fire station. They told me that approximately 7% of people know any first aid. Together, we are going to take ELS into local schools. They told me that two young people had been involved in saving a dog. As their reward, they were invited to the fire station for the day. The thing that those kids enjoyed most during that day was learning how to do ELS. It is something that children enjoy doing—it enhances them and gives them the confidence to save a life.

The firemen told me something that really made me think. One reason why we do not act when someone collapses is because we are scared of making things worse. Has their heart really stopped? Am I going to do them damage? The firemen told me that if a casualty stops breathing, “They are dead, and you can’t make them any deader.” That phrase resonated with me. If we do something, we may be able to save that life; if we do nothing, they are dead.

As the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) has said, CPR can be taught in two hours. That is the equivalent of one PE lesson—one cross-country run, or two hours a year. That is something like 0.2% of national curriculum time. Surely we can afford that amount of time to save lives.

I will end with a statement from Abbey Hill primary and nursery school:

“A lot of our children are brought up in an extremely deprived area and are not always adequately supervised. ELS gives them the confidence to deal with an emergency, should one arise, and no adult was around...The silence in the room when the children are watching the DVD from the resource pack is remarkable! They watch it avidly and are always keen to take part in the sessions. They are also very impressed when we get the dolls out to practise resuscitation and can't believe they get to have a go on a ‘real live’ doll!”

I could say a great deal more, but I will finish. I ask the Minister to put emergency life skills in the national curriculum. If he will not, what will he do to promote the teaching of emergency life skills in schools and throughout the whole of education, in youth centres, colleges and community colleges? Will he also encourage the Government to think of other ways of embedding such skills in society, perhaps as a compulsory part of the driving test?

It is frightening to think that something like 7% of the population believe they could save a life. Many of us have done life-saving—I did it many years ago—but do not feel confident about using those skills. However, having now had less than half an hour with a dummy and looking at what to do, I now feel that I could do something—I could get that defibrillator off the wall, because instructions on exactly how to use it are written on the packet.

We need people in this country to feel confident about being able to save a life. I ask the Minister to consider that we could save 150,000 lives a year—just think how many lives that would add up to over anyone’s political career. I hope that the Government will do something—they could go down in history as a Government for saving people’s lives—and I urge them to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his positive comments. I have often been guilty of sending in requests, and I understand what he said about being inundated, but surely there is no greater or more important skill to equip a young person with than the ability to save someone’s life. I am sure that replacing one cross-country run a year would be welcomed across the board.

[Tim Loughton]

I sympathise with my hon. Friend’s suggestion, and I want schools to implement it, but not because an edict from Ministers says that it should be part of the national curriculum so that they think, “Where can we fit that in?” I want them to do so because it is a good thing to do, and a good way of engaging young people who might be more difficult to engage. The subject might be a good way of enticing their interest in the classroom.

During the consultation, we received proposals that the compulsory part of the national curriculum should include chess, knitting and pet care, which I am sure are all worth while. I am sure that my hon. Friend and the hon. Lady would argue that they should not have the same priority as life-saving skills, but people argue that a whole load of things should be a priority. I want schools, and heads and teachers who know their children, to have the freedom to deliver the subjects that they believe are most important and that children will most relate to and benefit from. That is what the Government are trying to do.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady has answered her own question. I entirely agree about the importance of the subject, but we are trying to make the national curriculum tighter and more concise with a smaller range of subjects, giving more freedom to teachers to take on that subject, which I agree is a priority. We want a slimmer curriculum, and we do not want to add more subjects to it. However important the subject, it would add to the national curriculum.

There can be no more important training than that which allows someone to save the life of another who is injured, ill or otherwise in danger, and we must do all we can to ensure that children learn the basic skills that they might need in case of emergency. We all agree on that, but the best way is not through the academic base of knowledge that the national curriculum contains, but through the broader curriculum. Just because the skills are not specified in the national curriculum does not mean they will not and should not be taught, or that the Government are downplaying or undervaluing them. The reverse is true. I implore all schools to ensure that their pupils develop the personal and social skills they need to become responsible citizens, and to lead healthy and safe lives, and that includes being able to encourage and enable others to lead healthy and safe lives.

[Justin Tomlinson]

On the specific point about outside organisations, such as the British Heart Foundation, surely the Government could play a role in providing information so that schools can access it. When I visit my schools, they agree that it is a good scheme to take up, but do not necessarily know how to do so. Perhaps the Government could be proactive in encouraging that.

[Tim Loughton]

That is the point that I intended to end on. It is a fair and practical solution. We are not proposing to make the subject, along with pet care, knitting, chess and thousands of other helpful suggestions, part of the core national curriculum, but there are other things we can do. The hon. Member for Bolton West asked me to look at other ways of promoting the subject, and we will do so, for example, by asking individual MPs and Ministers to go into schools and ask what they are doing to teach first aid, and whether they are part of a local appeal to install a defibrillator in the town centre, and are ensuring that their children know how to use it. We can also send strong messages in our work on the PSHE review.

I think the hon. Lady suspected that we would not be able to deliver her request today, but that in no way downplays the importance of the issue that she has rightly and usefully raised. There are many other ways of promoting the subject to ensure that we have a far better educated and engaged population in our schools who will take on those skills because they want to, because it is the right thing to do, and because they will all benefit.