Compulsory Emergency First Aid Education (State-funded Secondary Schools) Bill

Will Quince Excerpts

Friday 20th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Teresa Pearce]

I understand what the hon. Lady is saying, but the Bill does list the things that will come under first aid and CPR training. It includes putting people in the recovery position, defibrillation and CPR. I have taken advice from the British Red Cross, St John Ambulance and the British Heart Foundation, and I trust what they have told me.

In only a quarter of the cases of cardiac arrest I mentioned did a member of the public attempt CPR. That is not because people do not care; it is because they are worried that they do not have the right skills or that their intervention might make things worse, not better. That is not only a bad thing for the person who needs attention; it is bad for the bystander who might go through the rest of their life worrying about whether they could have done something to save that person’s life, especially if it was a family member.

If we want to save more lives, the number of people learning life-saving skills needs to be higher and people need to feel more confident that they can intervene in a helpful way. The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh says that the Bill would massively increase the number of children who have the chance to learn life-saving skills. It believes that more lives could be saved in that way. The Resuscitation Council of the UK says that about 270 children die every year of cardiac arrest at school and that four out of five cardiac arrests happen outside hospital. It asks what better way there is to improve that situation than to teach schoolchildren the simple skills that might save a life.

We must remember that CPR can be taught in as little as 30 minutes. We are not talking about the need for extensive, complicated training. CPR can be taught straightforwardly and schoolchildren can learn it easily.

At the launch of the campaign for this private Member’s Bill, which was kindly hosted by the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), I had the privilege to be joined by Beth Chesney-Evans. Her son, Guy, died seven years ago when his heart stopped beating while he was riding his motorbike. He was 17. Guy’s friends did not move him, for fear of causing more harm, even though he had no other physical injuries. They had not been taught first aid or CPR and could do no more than sit with him and hold his hand while they waited for the ambulance. His mother believes that he would have had the best chance of survival if one of them had known what to do. She does not blame his friends at all. In fact, she feels bad about how difficult it has been for them to cope with the trauma of losing their friend and feeling so helpless.

When Beth talked at the launch, it resonated deeply with me, because it was hearing stories such as hers that convinced me of the need to make sure that the next generation of children grows up with the skills to help in emergencies. We have to act today to start a process that will transform passive bystanders into active potential life savers. The Bill does not expect the impossible to become possible. All of us in the Chamber know that not everyone can survive a serious accident or medical emergency and that not every intervention is successful. However, we can give people the absolute best chance of surviving by equipping people with the skills needed to keep them alive until the paramedics turn up.

The statistics on survival rates are telling. When someone has a cardiac arrest, every minute without CPR and defibrillation reduces the chance of survival by 10%. Every minute counts. Surely, therefore, we have to ensure that people nearby take action straight away to help keep people alive. That means increasing the number of people who know what to do in such an emergency. When CPR can be taught in as little as half an hour, do we have any excuse not to teach it to as many children as possible?

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

Countries such as Norway teach CPR routinely. How many lives does the hon. Lady estimate could be saved on an annual basis if we did the same?

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[Mrs Trevelyan]

I agree absolutely. My knowledge of first aid, which I was taught when I was 12, has stuck with and empowered me throughout my life, and I have had need to use it. My first aid education helped me and my fellow girl guides to prepare for life by developing our character and resilience to take on unexpected emergencies with a strength of purpose and enough knowledge to help others, but there are also broader health considerations and areas in which greater first aid knowledge could be of benefit. We all know that our accident and emergency departments are under increasing pressure to treat people.

[Will Quince]

We often talk about the cost of doing something, but we rarely talk about the cost of not doing something. Does my hon. Friend agree that there might be considerable savings to the NHS by taking this preventive measure?

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I absolutely agree: our A & E departments are under enormous pressure. Although the Bill is not a panacea, evidence suggests that greater knowledge of first aid can help to reduce the number of unnecessary visits to A & E and reduce the pressure on our paramedics.

Empowering people with quick and simple skills and the basic medical understanding to save lives is so profoundly important that it deserves a place in the school day. Some schools already do an excellent job of teaching these essential life skills, with the support of charities such as St John Ambulance, for instance. The Government have already mandated that all schools must provide swimming instruction, either in key stage 1 or key stage 2, to ensure that every pupil can swim competently, confidently and proficiently, and perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations. This Department for Education rule is for the purpose of saving lives. How much more of that goal might be achieved over the life of every child taught basic life-saving skills such as CPR, how to stem the flow of blood from a wound and how the recovery position can stop someone choking to death?

In my constituency, the St John Ambulance cadets in Alnwick learn first aid in their weekly meetings, and then go into their local schools, where invited, to share their knowledge. It is a wonderful example of teamwork and local knowledge sharing among peer groups that is helping children in my constituency to become life savers. However, despite widespread support for the idea of first aid education, only one in four secondary schools are taking it on. It is a very limited spread of life-saving skills.

The Bill is not about imposing even more targets on schools and teachers. Schools and headteachers would have the flexibility to decide when and how to impart these core skills—whether in morning assemblies, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) suggested, or as part of PHSE, physical education or biology. There are any number of places where this could be brought into the curriculum. It will not require teachers to have any prior medical knowledge, and neither will it take up a huge degree of the school timetable. As has been said, CPR can be taught in as little as 30 minutes—a small investment in a child’s school year for a huge reward, not just for the children and their families, but for the whole community as they grow up and become resilient members of our country.

These skills are quick and easy to teach and learn. The British Heart Foundation, the British Red Cross, St John Ambulance, for which I do a lot of work, and other organisations provide free resources for schools, so there is no cost implication for schools attached to this excellent Bill. There is cross-party backing for it, and I know many colleagues will, like me, have been inundated with messages of support from constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

All the schools I spoke to are trying in their own way to provide training, doing what they believe is appropriate and working with local groups. However, the point remains that none of them wants it to be a compulsory part of the national curriculum, believes that that is the appropriate and best way of furthering the cause, or, given their awareness of young people, believes that forcing them is the best way of inspiring and motivating them to do it, to take it seriously, and to really believe in it.

Other headteachers raised with me the point that many other important issues could persuasively be suggested for the national curriculum, such as PHSE, biology—

[Will Quince]

Why does my hon. Friend think that headteachers are out of sync with the 84% of teaching staff who hold a completely opposite view?

[Robert Jenrick]

I do not know. I have spoken only to my headteachers, as well as a range of other teachers. With great respect to my hon. Friend, it appears that he is relying on an opinion poll. I have spoken to my headteachers and to 10 other secondary school teachers in my constituency, and that, to me, as a constituency MP, is the best way of gauging the opinion of my constituents.

Many other issues could be put on the national curriculum. There have been recent campaigns in my constituency on several such issues, including road safety, respect for women, violence and knife crime, all of which are important. I suspect, as a parent, that first aid and CPR training should be very high on that list, if not at the top. However, there clearly has to be a limit on what can be in the national curriculum, and there are many competing demands on that time.