Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to require all publicly accessible defibrillators to be registered on the Circuit network.

According to the British Heart Foundation, there are now over 110,000 registered defibrillators in the United Kingdom, which is an increase of 30,000 since September 2023.

The Government does not currently have plans to bring forward such legislative proposals. Local communities obtaining automated external defibrillators do so on a voluntary basis and introducing legal requirements could disincentive this voluntary action.