First Aid Techniques: National Curriculum

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Julie Hilling

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Julie Hilling]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I congratulate him on Millie’s campaign, because it is absolutely crucial that people do not die when they could be saved. Currently, 7% of the population know how to save a life. Surely we could do much better.

We could join other countries such as France, Denmark and Norway, where emergency life support skills are already part of the curriculum, as they are in various states in Australia and in 36 states in America. In Seattle, children have to learn first aid skills before they can graduate from school, and it is also part of the driving licence requirement. More than half of the population in Seattle is now trained in emergency life support, so people are rarely more than 12 feet away from somebody who could save their life.

However, it is not enough to learn CPR. Michelle, a staff member at Rivington and Blackrod high school in my constituency, knew what to do when her dad had a cardiac arrest. She and others did CPR for a long time before the ambulance arrived far too late to make any difference. Had there been an automatic external defibrillator, they might have been able to shock his heart back into rhythm, but there was not. That is why I applaud the work of the Bolton implantable cardiac defibrillator support group, who work so hard to raise funds and have just donated their 67th defibrillator.

The chain of survival is just that—a chain of action that needs to be undertaken for a person to survive a cardiac arrest. It needs someone to call for help, someone to do CPR, a defibrillator and someone confident enough to use it, and an ambulance to take the person to hospital for treatment. That is why children need to learn how to do CPR and how to use a defibrillator.

The British Heart Foundation is giving Resusci Annies—the resuscitation dolls—to high schools and has produced a CD that teaches those skills in just half an hour, but we should be more ambitious. It is essential that we also teach children to deal with choking and bleeding and to put somebody in the recovery position. Nine out of ten 11 to 16-year-olds have been confronted with a medical emergency, often when no adults are around. Even when there are adults, it is often the child or young person who takes control and, for instance, delivers back blows to stop someone choking or deals with a serious bleed.

According to research by St John Ambulance and the British Red Cross, only 7% of the UK population have the skills and the confidence to carry out basic first aid in an emergency, but 91% of pupils want to learn first aid at school; 98% of parents want first aid on the curriculum; and 96% of teachers think it is important for students to learn first aid. Ninety-five per cent of teachers agree that first aid teaching develops the general confidence and optimism of young people, yet only 21% of our schools equip young people with first aid skills.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I am enjoying the hon. Lady’s speech immensely; she is making a very powerful case. An argument against having CPR training in schools is that it would take up too much time, but surely what she is saying is that it would not require that much teaching time to get across to young people the skills that they need.

[Julie Hilling]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I will go on to say more about that in a moment, but let me reiterate the point now: if someone goes for half an hour’s training a year over their time in secondary school, we are talking about two and half hours. If they stay on, it is three and a half hours. If they go for an hour’s training, we are talking about five, six or seven hours. In terms of a school day, it is quicker than going on a cross-country run. We are talking about schools being able to take this skill into the national curriculum and to train people in it.

St John Ambulance and the British Red Cross believe that CPR and public access defibrillator training are important, but that other skills, such as the ability to deal with choking, bleeding and burns, and the ability to place somebody in the recovery position, must also be taught in schools. They believe that that could be done for just one hour a year, some of which could be delivered during an assembly. They, too, have provided free resources online for schools to use.

We still have Heartstart schools, where that range of skills is taught for two hours a year. It would take a tiny amount of the time that children are in school utterly to transform our society and have a nation of life savers. First aid provision also helps to meet Ofsted’s requirement on school safety and on the promotion of pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

We need to end the scenario in which, when somebody collapses or has a road traffic accident, we all stand around in a circle waiting for someone to act because we are too frightened to intervene. We need to end the fear of companies and organisations that are worried about the consequences of having a defibrillator. No one has ever been successfully sued for attempting to save someone’s life, and as one of my local firefighters said, “If someone’s heart has stopped, they are dead. You cannot make them any deader.”

Schools, companies, businesses and community groups should be far more worried about how they would feel if someone died when, if only they had invested in an AED and someone had known what to do, they could have saved them. Indeed, I believe that we should make AEDs compulsory, like fire extinguishers.

I cannot imagine anything worse than watching a loved one die and finding out that if only I had known what to do, they could have survived, so I have put my money where my mouth is. I have trained as a Heartstart tutor, so that I can teach people to do CPR and deal with choking and bleeding. My staff are Heartstart-trained and all the secondary schools in Bolton West have committed to or have become Heartstart schools.

I have worked closely with Sara Harris and the North West ambulance service to encourage the teaching of emergency life support skills and the roll-out of defibrillators. Sara works closely with the British Heart Foundation on its programmes. I have worked with Greater Manchester fire and rescue service, many of whose firefighters go into schools to teach life-saving skills. I have worked with Bolton Wanderers community trust, which is doing a great job in teaching life support skills and promoting defibrillators. I am working with Bolton implantable cardiac defibrillator support group, who are doing such an amazing job in raising money for defibrillators.

Recently, I have started to work with Lagan’s Foundation, which is a foundation that supports parents of children with heart disease and is also doing CPR training. I have campaigned with The Bolton News for every school leaver to be a life saver, and I have met with Ministers and shadow Ministers, and spoken on the subject many times in this place, including introducing a ten-minute rule Bill.

However, that is not enough, because every time there is a change of head teacher or the staff member responsible for emergency life support skills leaves, we have to start again. The only way to ensure that all children learn how to save a life is to put life-saving skills into the national curriculum. The only way to ensure that a defibrillator is available in our schools and other public buildings is to legislate for them to be a requirement. Since I started campaigning for that four years ago, I have heard some tragic and inspirational stories. I appeal to the Minister and to the shadow Minister to commit to introducing emergency life-saving skills to the national curriculum and, as a bare minimum, to ensuring that pupils know how to do CPR and how to use a defibrillator.