Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made in the creation of a register of defibrillators throughout the UK.

The NHS Long Term Plan recognises the importance of fast and effective action to help save the lives of people suffering a cardiac arrest.

The British Heart Foundation, in partnership with the Resuscitation Council UK (RCUK), the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives and the National Health Service, have set up the Circuit: the national defibrillator network. This is now live in five ambulance services: the West Midlands, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the East Midlands. The Circuit supports the ambulance services to identify the nearest defibrillator at the time of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. It will also lead to a national dataset which when combined with other relevant national datasets will inform national policy and support research.