Life-saving Skills in Schools

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I shall speak very briefly; I am a late interloper into the debate, but I wanted to raise two points. Actually, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) has touched on them already. I recently attended a demonstration of CPR. The instructor was at pains to say that mouth-to-mouth was not essential but CPR was, and that some people are put off volunteering for such courses because they are fearful of engaging in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. That is what my hon. Friend said, so she emphasised, “Do not press the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) on launching this superb debate, and all those who spoke so excellently. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View deserves a medal because she has saved several lives.

I want to speak specifically about water life-saving, because 55 years ago I acquired an intermediate life-saver’s certificate. I have never had to use it, but I think even now I could do the basics and get someone out of the water without drowning myself, and get them breathing again—free their tongue, and all the things that I remembered when I was 14 or 15. That is a subset of life-saving, but it is very important and I hope that the Government bear in mind the encouragement for people to take up life-saving in water as well as dealing with cardiac arrests.

Those were the two points that I wanted to raise. I promised to speak for two minutes, and I hope I was not too long.