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

Will Quince Excerpts

Friday 20th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

It is not often that my hon. Friend makes a ludicrous argument, but I am afraid he has just done so. That would be like saying that any Bill should automatically be nodded through on its Second Reading because then we can amend it to how we would like it in Committee. That is not how this place works, as he well knows with his 32 years of service; I hope there will be another 32 years. The point of the Second Reading debate, as he helpfully identified, is to decide whether we agree with the Bill in principle. The principle of this Bill is given away by its title—the Compulsory Emergency First Aid Education (State-Funded Secondary Schools) Bill. I do not agree with the principle of compulsory emergency first aid education in schools, so why on earth would I want to allow such a Bill a Second Reading, any more than he would vote for the Second Reading of a Bill whose principle he disagrees with? That is how this place works.

If this subject is to be added to the national curriculum, as proposed in the Bill, will Ofsted be required to assess and monitor its teaching to see whether schools are fulfilling their obligations under a revised Education Act 2002? Surely it follows that Ofsted must check to ensure that students are being taught appropriately, taught to a high standard, and taught well. It will have to be trained to judge the teachers to assess the level and quality of the first aid lessons they are offering to students. That seems to be another bureaucratic nightmare that Ofsted, and the teachers in the schools it is inspecting, could well do without. Nor do we know how much support the Government are going to give to allow that to happen. That is why I believe that this is better done on a voluntary basis.

[Will Quince]

My hon. Friend seems to suggest that education is valid only if it is tested. Sexual education is compulsory, so how did he perform in his sexual education tests?

[Philip Davies]

I should point out to my hon. Friend that, as it happens, sex education is not compulsory in schools, and long may that be the case, but that is a debate for another day; I am not going to get side-tracked.

The final point I want to make in my brief remarks, during which I have been interrupted on a number of occasions, is about the Bill’s legal consequences for schools. That is one of the serious fears that my schools raised with me when I asked them to consider its implications. In its submission to the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Public Bill Committee in September 2014, St John Ambulance mentioned that 34% of people said that the primary reason people are deterred from intervening in any situation requiring first aid was concern about the legal repercussions. I am glad to say that we have in the Chamber one of the finest legal brains in the country, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) —and, I might add in passing, the most expensive.

Such a concern was also raised during my consultation with local schools. One headteacher told me that they

“would have concerns that a school could be liable to be sued or held accountable if a student carried out first aid and ‘got it wrong’ and the school had delivered that training”.

That covers the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall, but it has not been touched on during this debate. We must consider such matters in a Bill before we press ahead with a worthy sentiment.

Clause 1(3) specifies that children will be taught which emergency first aid actions are

“appropriate in each such scenario, including the best management of circumstances where a person is or appears to be…unconscious and not breathing,…unconscious and breathing,…choking,…bleeding severely,…having a heart attack, or…having an episode arising from an underlying condition such as asthma or epilepsy”,

and also taught the appropriate deployment of emergency first aid education

“procedures and equipment including…cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and…defibrillators.”

Given that the text in the Bill explicitly sets out that schools will be responsible for teaching when first aid is appropriate as well as how to administer it, the concern raised by the headteacher of my local school is very real. What securities will be put in place to ensure that headteachers, staff and schools are protected from legal action should any first aid be incorrectly administered by a student, given that the Bill, by making it a compulsory element of education, directly creates a point of responsibility? I cannot find any such protections in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce). I am not entirely sure how to follow the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). This campaign was kicked off by my predecessor in 1997. I suspect that one of his biggest regrets is that he did not see it succeed. I hasten to add that there are not many of his campaigns that I will continue, but this is certainly one of them. I therefore support the Bill.

The Bill defines emergency first aid education as

“formal lessons to equip pupils with age-appropriate skills and knowledge required to provide assistance, in the absence of a competent adult, to a person in need of emergency medical attention until medically-qualified personnel are present.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) said, doing this is a no brainer. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said, it is obvious. The sad reality is that it is neither of those things, because it is not a statutory obligation.

There are cost implications, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley rightly pointed out, although I suspect that some of the costs he raised could be negated through the work of charities and social enterprises. Of course some headteachers will be against this move because there are implications of cost, time and resourcing. Nevertheless, that is not a reason not to support the vital aim of upskilling pupils in our schools and helping them to develop important life skills. Fundamentally and most importantly, this will save lives.

I accept that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) said, the Bill is not without its issues. I mean no offence to the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead in saying that. The Bill puts the onus on teachers to learn and teach first aid. In my view, it should be more flexible. I hope that that can be addressed in Committee to allow social enterprises, volunteers and charities to help. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) might even want to go to her local school and impart some of her considerable knowledge in this area. My wife is a teacher, albeit at primary level, so I fully understand the pressures on teachers and on the curriculum. There is a part for the third sector to play and the Bill could be tweaked to take that into consideration.

It is a shame that we have to consider legislating on first aid education to make it part of the curriculum. Ideally, I would want it to be part of the citizenship scheme. The national curriculum framework is clear that every state-funded school should teach a curriculum of subjects that

“promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society”

and

“prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life”.

First aid education clearly fulfils both criteria.

I can understand Ministers’ reluctance to add anything to the curriculum—it is already pretty jam-packed—but let us not forget that swimming is compulsory, as is sex education. Despite what my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said, there is a statutory obligation to provide sex education; it is just that parents can opt out. It seems to be an anomaly that we teach pupils how to make life but not how to save it.

The Bill seems to be a common-sense piece of legislation that would ensure that all school pupils who go through our state system have the chance to learn life-saving skills. It is right to focus on secondary school, where the pupils are sponges for this kind of information. It has been asked whether this education would be limited and whether the quality would be high enough. Often, pupils get a taster of something in school and then go on to do far more and to expand their breadth of knowledge. If people get a taste for first aid education, I suspect that there will be a much higher take-up in the scouts, guides and St John Ambulance, because they will want to expand their skills.

A number of hon. Members have touched on the Red Cross poll, which showed that 85% of adults agree with this proposal, 84% of secondary school teachers agree, 95% of parents agree and 97% of 11 to 16-year-olds agree. That is pretty compelling.

It is important to recognise that life skills are as important as academia. That is why citizenship is on the curriculum in England. The cost of implementing this measure has been raised—including by me in an earlier intervention—but what about the cost of not implementing it? What about the cost to A and E of all those additional visits that could have been prevented if young people in this country had those initial first-aid skills? What price do we put on life? My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham made that point eloquently when she spoke about her personal experiences.

There are, of course, worthwhile areas of study that are not specifically related to pupils’ academic development, so why not include first aid education on that list? I strongly support the Bill. Indeed, I will upset my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley and say that I think we should go further. We have a big problem with knife crime in this country, and I would like weapons awareness to be included in the curriculum. A fantastic charity in my constituency, Only Cowards Carry, incorporates first aid and weapons awareness within its lessons in schools, but at the moment that is entirely optional.

I do not want to take up too much time, and I would love the Bill to be passed if put to the vote. This seems like a common-sense Bill, and we could create a potential new generation of life savers, starting in our schools. I urge Members to support the Bill.