Water Safety

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

1st reading
Wednesday 5th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the installation and maintenance of, and access to, safety equipment at reservoirs; to create an offence of damaging or destroying safety equipment near bodies of water; to make provision about the teaching of water safety in schools; and for connected purposes.

My son phoned me last week to share the news that he had passed his driving test at the first time of asking. Personally, I think the best drivers are those who pass it on the second attempt, but there we are. This week, he dropped my talented and beautiful daughter—his sister—at school, and then took me to the station for the first time so that I could return to this place. He carried on to his sixth-form college, and the offers have started to come in from universities. He has the whole world ahead of him.

My children are my world. Seeing their remarkable achievements, and watching them grow into the most amazing, special human beings, is the most wondrous thing that any parent could ever hope and pray for. I am sure that, when the time comes, every parent awaits that call when their child passes their driving test, gets their exam results or goes off to work or study for the first time on their own. No parent should await a call to say that they will never see their beautiful baby again. No parent should outlive their child and have to say goodbye to them, so, in what I bring before the House today, I hope to start the process of preventing that from happening in the awful circumstances I will talk about.

Today, I shall talk about Sam. Sam was a similar age to my son, and he should also have had his whole life ahead of him. Sam, a 16-year-old, went out with his friends one day and never returned after tragically drowning in a South Yorkshire reservoir. I met Sam’s father, Simon, for the first time at Thorne fire station last summer. He handed me the sweetest picture of his gorgeous boy and bravely retold the story of what had happened. I knew there and then that, should I be so honoured as to reach this place, I would do something for Sam, for his parents and for every family who has lost a loved one in a similar way.

I begin by acknowledging the work that has already been done on this matter, both here and outside Parliament, to campaign for what has become known as Sam’s law. In particular, I want to highlight the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who is a sponsor of this Bill, and by Sam’s father, Simon Haycock, who I know is watching today.

In May 2021, Sam had just finished his GCSEs. It was summer, it was hot, and he and his friends did what countless teenagers have done before them: they found a body of water and decided to go swimming. When Sam got into difficulty, his friends tried to help. They found that the safety equipment was locked. They had to ring 999 and, once the operator had verified that it was a genuine emergency, they were given a code to unlock the equipment before they could use it. In an emergency such as that, every second counts. In the wake of Sam’s death, his father Simon has become a champion of water safety, going into schools and communities to talk about the dangers of entering open water and to campaign for Sam’s law.

There were 141 deaths in inland open water bodies in 2023, and 1,455 over the last 10 years. That is about 146 people dying every year, most of them children or young adults. Search, rescue and emergency services respond to over 100,000 calls related to water rescues annually. As we continue to have longer, hotter summers, with more people looking for ways to cool off, there is a risk that those numbers will only increase further. Those are worrying figures, but the one that struck home the most for me was the estimate from the Royal Life Saving Society that for every person who dies by drowning, there are more than 10 near misses. That is shocking. It is too many near misses, and too many people just one step away from leaving this world unnecessarily early. That is why I am proposing these measures today.

The first is to create a legal responsibility to provide, maintain and ensure easy and rapid access to safety equipment around reservoirs. Too many reservoirs do not have safety equipment, and where there is equipment, it cannot always be accessed in a timely manner. It is frequently vandalised—an issue I will come to in a moment—and not replaced or repaired. The equipment is often locked away, with a laborious protocol for access. Simon Haycock, Sam’s father, has a simple and creative but game-changing plan for this, using state-of-the-art technology. I hope to help him to progress this concept into reality, to save precious seconds and precious lives. I absolutely understand why these protocols are in place. They were introduced to safeguard lifesaving equipment, which is why we need to turn to the second point of the Bill.

I propose to create a specific criminal offence of the vandalism of safety equipment around bodies of water. It has been recognised that some specific instances of crimes, while covered by a broader category, are so abhorrent that they should exist as a crime in themselves. We have recognised, for example, that assaults on emergency workers who are risking their lives to save others are particularly heinous. We have recognised that domestic abuse cannot just be prosecuted as if it were a simple assault, and we have recognised that slavery is more than just kidnapping and forced labour. It is time to recognise that to destroy, damage or remove lifesaving equipment, and therefore endanger lives, is not simple vandalism.

Finally, the Bill seeks to expand the national curriculum’s water safety learning outcomes to include a requirement to understand the dangers of swimming in open water. Water safety outcomes are already mandated in the national curriculum, and I acknowledge the work of Lord Storey in pushing for the teaching of those outcomes to be mandatory in all schools. When it becomes law, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will ensure that all children receive that education, which is a major step forward.

However, the current learning objectives do not go far enough, as they are about being able to swim and self-rescue. I do not suggest for a moment that having those skills is not important, but there is nothing in the curriculum that requires children to be taught about the dangers and risks of swimming in open water, from cold water shock to invisible currents and hidden objects.

If we want to stop children, especially teenagers, putting their lives at risk, saying, “Don’t do it,” or, “It’s dangerous,” is not the way forward. The best thing we can do is to empower them by giving them the skills and knowledge to recognise the risks and understand the dangers for themselves. Many schools already do this. They go above and beyond the baseline teaching required, working with groups such as the RLSS, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and the Canal & River Trust. I take my hat off to every school that has led the way, but now it is our job to lead the way by making sure that this life skill and safety education is not left to chance.

There will be a cost to landowners in adding and maintaining safety measures, but reservoirs are fundamentally different from most other bodies of water. They are not naturally occurring; they are created. They are managed and operated as part of an intentional and usually profit-making enterprise. I therefore do not think it is unreasonable that those who own or operate the asset should play their part in installing and maintaining lifesaving equipment.

Ultimately, we are talking about people’s lives—not just the lives that are lost, but the lives of those who lose sons like Sam or who lose daughters, brothers, sisters, friends or partners. There are 146 deaths a year, but how many lives are devastated by those deaths? How many lives are changed forever? And how many more will there be before we do something different?

Simon Haycock, Sam’s father, has channelled his grief into doing something positive, but his words still ring in my ears: “It’s the absence that gets you. One minute your son is there, looking forward to the summer holidays and the next chapter of his life at college, and the next he is gone.” From the moment the first tear fell down my face as he started to retell that story, I knew I had committed to helping him achieve his goal.

I ask all Members to support this Bill today and, more than that, I ask them to take up its proposals and principles by being alive to the need for change and by being aware that there is more that we can and must do.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Lee Pitcher, Calum Miller, Sorcha Eastwood, Sally Jameson, Sarah Champion, Dr Roz Savage, Jim Shannon, Ben Coleman and Andy Slaughter present the Bill.

Lee Pitcher accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 20 June, and to be printed (Bill 178).