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

Debate between Will Quince and Philip Davies

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.