John Slinger

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) for securing this important debate. There can be no overstating the importance of publicly accessible defibrillators. If used within the first three to five minutes of a cardiac arrest, as hon. Members have said, they can increase the chance of survival by up to 70%. For a device that costs only a few thousand pounds, that is a truly remarkable statistic. I was told that stat by a remarkable constituent of mine, Naomi Rees-Issitt, at a defibrillator and CPR training session that she had arranged for the community. She knows more about the critical importance of defibrillators than most people, because she set up the OurJay Foundation after the tragic death of her son Jamie, who suffered a cardiac arrest. Although a defibrillator was nearby, it was inaccessible. It is clear that a lack of accessible devices continues to hinder lifesaving intervention, but thanks to the incredible work of Naomi, her family and the OurJay Foundation, Rugby now has a significant number of accessible defibrillators. But it should not fall solely to charities and grieving families to bear the cost of this vital equipment. When the OurJay Foundation was established, Rugby had just seven 24/7 defibrillators for a town of 80,000 people. Today, thanks to its efforts, the number has risen to more than 170. They are triggered six to seven times a week. I welcome the Government’s commitment to improving access to automated external defibrillators, as hon. Members have referred to, so I will not rehearse that. The Government have also committed to providing a defibrillator in every state-funded school in England. Sadly, there remains no legal requirement for organisations to make AEDs available on their premises, although many have done so voluntarily. Could the Minister comment on whether the Government are considering this? Naomi and the OurJay Foundation are also campaigning for AEDs to be put in every police car. Recent Home Office funding, which was very welcome, has enabled additional defibs for every force. Warwickshire police has secured 30 new defibs, which it is putting in specialist operations vehicles. I saw that for myself, alongside Naomi, and met the officers whose dedication to the public I commend. The urgency is underlined by recent figures from the Resuscitation Council, which show that out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK have risen to 40,000 each year. The survival rate remains a devastating one in 10.