Knife Crime: First Aid in Schools

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the number of schools offering pupils advice on what first aid to deliver, and how to communicate clearly with emergency services, when someone has been stabbed.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, we know that first aid saves lives. That is why life-saving skills are part of health education, which we are introducing in all state-funded schools. Pupils will be taught first aid, how to make efficient calls to the emergency services and, in secondary schools, CPR. We are also introducing relationships education in all schools. That will help pupils to form and maintain healthy relationships, manage conflict and get help when it is needed.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Children are learning in school how to deliver first aid to knife crime victims because they increasingly find themselves affected by violence. I commend the important work being done in schools by the charity StreetDoctors. Last week, the Prime Minister denied that there was a direct link between reduced police numbers in communities and increased knife crime and, although that was widely refuted, not least by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, many usually linked causes contribute to knife crime. One of them is permanent exclusions from school, which have risen sharply in recent years; there is a shortage of registered provision for excluded children, some of whom are thus unsupervised. Exclusions are a necessary and important sanction, but does the Minister agree that it is not acceptable or indeed legal to exclude without due regard for the impact on and risks to the child being excluded?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the noble Lord raises a very important point on exclusion. It is always a last resort to use a permanent exclusion for a pupil. Just to give some context, the percentage of permanent exclusions last year was actually less than it was 10 years ago. In 2006-07, it was 0.12% and last year it was 0.10%, so we need to keep that in perspective. We are pretty confident that there is no causal link between permanent exclusions and knife crime. However, we are alert to the need to provide better specialist provision for children who are permanently excluded. That is why we announced a number of initiatives in October, including an extra £100 million in capital for special provision for schools.