Defibrillators

Lewis Cocking Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I commend the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) for securing this important debate.

I want to focus on a local charity in my constituency, Hearts for Herts. In 2017, my constituent Justin Honey-Jones, an experienced paramedic, began the mission to provide an inclusive education programme of lifesaving skills and to champion the provision of public access lifesaving equipment, all from his garage in Hoddesdon. Since then, he has personally trained more than 1,000 people in lifesaving skills, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds, with every penny used to provide and maintain lifesaving equipment.

In the last 18 months alone, the charity has installed 75 public access defibrillators across Hertfordshire, and it will install another 55 before February next year. I have been proud to attend many of the openings of those vital defibrillators across my constituency, including at Barclay Park, where the first solar-powered defibrillator in Hertfordshire is now in place, and at the Methodist church in Hoddesdon. Incredibly, just 36 hours after the defibrillator was installed at the church, it was used in a medical emergency.

Hearts for Herts rightly focuses its efforts on making defibrillators as accessible as possible and installing them where they are most useful to nearby residents. That aim is justified by stories such as that of the Methodist church defibrillator, and is driven forward by the charity’s unique aim to make all school defibrillators publicly accessible. At no cost to the school, Justin will organise the entire conversion process, ensuring that the crucial equipment can be accessed all year round, at any time of the day. That has saved lives: a converted defibrillator at Broxbourne school was activated on Christmas day, and over this year’s summer holidays the defibrillator at Wormley primary school has been used three times.

Hearts for Herts goes further: alongside the defibrillators, it places bleed control kits in its cabinets. The ability to control heavy bleeding is the difference between life and death following, for example, a road traffic collision. That is why Justin has included 200 bleed control kits alongside his defibrillators and has plans to provide even more. The kits buy injured individuals valuable time until an ambulance can arrive. I hope all hon. Members will join me in commending Justin for his incredible work. I look forward to supporting him and Hearts for Herts for many years to come.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lewis Cocking Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

The Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee is right that investment is vital, but so is reform. We tasked ICBs with leading the development of the new neighbourhood health service. We are removing their responsibility for performance management of trusts in order to free up their focus, so that primary and community services have the attention that is desperately needed. In the coming weeks, we will be talking to the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners about how we ensure the investment announced by the Chancellor leads to improved patient care and a reformed neighbourhood health service.

[Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Goff’s Oak, in my constituency of Broxbourne, has seen a lot of development. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that GP surgeries are delivered before hundreds of new homes are built?

[Wes Streeting]

Of course we need to deliver both new homes and GP surgeries, but the previous Conservative Government delivered neither. We have a housing crisis and an NHS crisis in this country; I would have thought Conservative Members might have shown some humility and responsibility for those facts before challenging a Government who have been in office for only four months.