Health: Cardiac Arrest

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, I believe this is the noble Baroness’s 1,000th contribution to your Lordships’ House, so I congratulate her—that is some feat. She asked a very good, topical question. All state-funded schools are required to teach first aid as part of the mandatory relationships, sex and health education curriculum. This involves children aged over 12 being taught CPR and how to use a defibrillator.

To improve survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cases, the NHS long-term plan sets out that a national network of community first responders and automated external defibrillators will help save up to 4,000 lives each year by 2028. NHS England are working with St John Ambulance to increase the awareness of the importance of CPR in England. Learning from other countries, as the noble Baroness said, is exactly right and it is very important that the NHS does learn from other countries to continually improve. With regard to first responder vehicles, including in the police and fire service, carrying defibrillators, it is a very good question and I will take this back to my colleagues in the Home Office.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very glad that the Minister said that this was a priority for the Government, but can I ask him to look at the UK out-of-hospital cardiac arrest outcomes project? The current 2023 figures show that the survival rate after 30 days is 11% in London but 5.3% in the West Midlands. Will he call in the integrated care systems in the West Midlands to see what they are doing to improve? That is a very big discrepancy between those two rates.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

The noble Lord is very knowledgeable about the West Midlands. I will certainly take that specific point back to the department.