 The next item of business is members' business debate on motion 16822, in the name of Miles Briggs, on Scotland and the nation of lifesavers. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. May I ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to please press the request-to-speak buttons? I call on Miles Briggs to open the debate for around seven minutes, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Every day on average, there are 10 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Scotland. That represents three and a half thousand of our fellow Scots every year whose hearts stop working and who need rapid resuscitation attempted in the community to help to save their lives. Many of us will have been in a situation where this is presented to us as such an emergency situation and need to step up to respond. I recently faced such a situation at a bus stop on London Road when a lady called me across to help her husband who had collapsed. I am pleased to say that the Scottish Ambulance Service had literally arrived within seconds, but I, however, felt confident enough, having attended a training session to attempt CPR. Research shows that, when somebody is having a cardiac arrest, every minute of delay, in resuscitation or defibrillation, reduces their chance of survival by 10 per cent. Today, as things stand, for every 12 cardiac arrests that occur in Scotland, statistically only one person will survive. Those statistics compare unfavourably with the rest of the UK and internationally. I therefore like to pay tribute to the whole team at the British Heart Foundation Scotland for initiating the campaign in response to Scotland's poor out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates and welcome them today to the public gallery. The nation of lifesavers campaign aims to ensure that every pupil is trained in vital CPR skills before they leave secondary school and has been praised by international experts and medical professionals. It is therefore a very welcome news that, after the positive campaign and well-received campaign by the British Heart Foundation Scotland at every local authority, across our country has now agreed to sign up to be part of the nation of lifesavers campaign. The campaign will now see all secondary pupils trained in CPR before they leave school, resulting in 50,000 young people receiving this life-saving skill every year. I have seen, at first hand, just how passionate our young Scots are in learning CPR and equipping themselves with life-saving skills. The Parliament's Public Petitions Committee recently heard evidence from two of my constituents, eight-year-old Millie Robinson and Ellie Meek, pupils from the Parkhead primary school in West Calder. Millie and Ellie were highlighting the campaign by St John's Ambulance to also teach first aid in schools. I want to take this opportunity to commend Ellie and Millie for their enthusiastic campaigning. I know MSPs from across the chamber and those on the committee were hugely impressed by their passion and to see how first aid in life-saving skills is something all the young people want to see. Deputy Presiding Officer, I think that it really does also go to show the passion of our young people have and the opportunity to learn this life-saving skill that they would go to such lengths as extreme lengths as bandaging Brian Whittle's smelly feet. I digress, but one of the aspects that I think is important to return to this debate is around hospital cardiac arrests in Scotland, which is perhaps not widely known, and I know that the ministers raised this as well, is around inequalities in attempted resuscitation. Cardiac arrests are therefore also an issue of social justice and contribute to Scotland's health inequalities. Someone living in one of the country's areas of high deprivation is twice as likely to experience a night of hospital cardiac arrest, while statistically experiencing a cardiac arrest seven years earlier and will be 43 per cent less likely to survive to leave hospital following a cardiac arrest in comparison with people from more affluent areas. That has to change. Deputy Presiding Officer, I also believe that Scotland's nation of lifesavers campaign can also present a wider opportunity for all of us and present a real challenge, regardless of age, to learn CPR and for companies and employers to also consider the potential benefit of providing CPR training opportunities. The retailer ASDA, for example, was the first large retailer to commit to having public accessible defibrillators, CPR trained colleagues in all stores back in 2014. I would like to congratulate them on this positive move. Since ASDA introduced the DFIBs and rolled out their training through a partnership with the British Heart Foundation, several lives have been saved in stores as a result. Only last month, a customer collapsed with a heart attack in ASDA Elgin, with a first-aid or colleague using CPR and a DFIB, while the ambulance was called, thankfully managing to save that individual's life. Therefore, this debate is an opportunity to thank and congratulate British Heart Foundation Scotland on their successful campaign, which has recently been shortlisted as a finalist in the 2019 Scottish Charity Awards. It is thanks to the commitment from all 32 local authorities in Scotland that thousands of young people across our country will now be empowered to step in and perform potentially lifesaving CPR with the knowledge and skills to keep themselves and other people around them safe. Scottish Government has committed to training half a million people in CPR by 2020 through its out-of-hospital cardiac arrest strategy. I welcome the positive progress that has been made in trying to realise that. The opportunity now to create a nation of lifesavers is within our grasp. We should all be rightly praised that Scotland can and will become a nation of lifesavers. I hope that we will soon see that Scotland is able to achieve the highest number of citizens equipped with this lifesaving skill. I would like to congratulate the Government for the work on that and for the British Heart Foundation Scotland for all that they have done, and I move the motion in my name. I see that we have a very well-behaved public gallery tonight. I did not have to tell them not to make a noise. We move on to the open debate now, and speeches are four minutes please. Bill Kidd, followed by Annie Wells. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and thank you very much to Miles Briggs for bringing that motion forward for debate. There will be one or two statistics repeated here from what Miles has already said, but I think that, as Miles knows well, if I am saying again what he has already said, he is doing well. I like that one myself. Anyway, this debate provides us with the opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of CPR training and allows us to highlight how the commitment to provide this in schools across Scotland will save many lives. I thank the British Heart Foundation for Scotland's nation of lifesavers campaign, which the motion being debated today is centred around. Due to the determination of the British Heart Foundation, we are able to celebrate the fact that all children in Scotland attending local authority secondary schools will receive CPR training. The British Heart Foundation has offered all local authority schools in Scotland free CPR training kits. I am proud that Glasgow City Council was the first local authority to commit to training all secondary school pupils in CPR, but I am even more pleased that this commitment has now been adopted by all local authority areas across the Lent and breadth of Scotland. Our next generation will truly become a nation of lifesavers, and I thank the British Heart Foundation again for that on-going accomplishment. The campaign complements the work of St Andrew's First Aid organisation, which over the past four years has trained 45,000 people in Scotland with CPR skills. Together with organisations like the British Heart Foundation and St Andrew's First Aid are active participants in the Scottish Government's out-of-hospital cardiac arrest strategy. Through proactively working in line with the Scottish Government strategy, they have helped to improve survival rates from cardiac arrest in Scotland from 1 in 20 to 1 in 12. Going forward, we know that that can be improved even further. I believe that this roll-out of training will encourage the next generation an outlook that is community-orientated, where people will be quicker to intervene and perform emergency first aid. CPR training prepares people technically, and it also challenges us to act when we see someone in need, as Miles said, that was the situation with himself. The British Heart Foundation has highlighted that many members of the public feel afraid of helping, and that that can consequently lead to a delay in a person who is suffering a cardiac arrest from receiving the necessary CPR or defibrillation. 3,500 people in Scotland experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and have a resuscitation attempt in the community each year. I encourage us all to use the nation of lifesavers campaign as an opportunity to consider how we can become not only technically prepared, but also mentally prepared to perform CPR so that we can jump to action should the need ever arise. For every minute without CPR following a cardiac arrest, the person's chance of survival decreases by 10 per cent. I believe that mental preparedness will come hand in hand with the roll-out of CPR in school training. However, I would also like to encourage adults to be inspired to take up available opportunities to refresh their first aid training. Many workplaces will offer first aid training such as we do here in the Scottish Parliament, so please do not pass on this opportunity. You never know when your preparedness could save a life. Collectively, we have a duty in our community to look out for our fellow neighbours and help where we can. Equip yourself to save a life and thank you very much. Annie Wells, followed by Emma Harper. I am extremely chuffed to be part of this debate today. I was one of the first MSPs to back the campaign when the evening times in Glasgow ran with it last year. I big thanks to the British Heart Foundation for organising this campaign, as well as all those involved in making it happen. CPR, which stands for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, is a life-saving medical procedure that is given to someone who is in cardiac arrest helping the blood around a person's body when their heart cannot do it. In Scotland, as we have heard, there are over 3,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests each year. It was upon learning that Glasgow has the highest number of cardiac arrests in Scotland that the evening times launched its Glasgow's Got Heart campaign. By putting pressure on the council to take action, as we have heard, Glasgow became the first city in Scotland to roll out CPR training to all secondary schools. I am delighted to have supported that campaign, which has since evolved into the BHF's nation of lifesavers drive, and it now has commitment from all 32 local authorities a massive achievement indeed. Why is this campaign so important? Because it puts power in children and young people's hands to save lives. That could be a family member, a neighbour or a stranger in the street. Currently, fewer than one in 12 people survive cardiac arrest in Scotland, and for every minute without CPR, the chances of surviving drop by 10 per cent. In Glasgow, people living in the city are less likely to survive a cardiac arrest because research shows that CPR training levels are lowest in cities with a high deprivation quota. That is a statistic that could so easily be improved upon, where CPR is taught universally such as Denmark and Norway. Survival rates are much higher, as high as 25 per cent, with bystanders far more likely to take action. By teaching young people those skills, skills that will stay with them their entire lives, we are giving pupils the confidence to perform CPR, giving everyone in Scotland a greater chance of survival. I know from personal experience that CPR training lasts a lifetime. I learnt it as a teenager and I never thought that I would have to use it, but 30 years later I did. I am with instinct kicking in and me knowing what to do. The British Heart Foundation has pledged to supply every secondary school in Glasgow with a £1300 training kit, which includes a DVD, reusable and inflatable mannequins. Although the training just lasts 30 minutes and requires no staff training, it is fully comprehensive, hopefully giving pupils the confidence to put their new skills into practice when needed. I understand that individual schools have already begun offering training, but full council roll-out is not expected to start until August this year in January 2020. Looking at where Scotland goes next in terms of improving cardiac arrest survival rates, I was pleased to hear from the British Heart Foundation that its next campaign will focus on defibrillators. Although its chances of survival increase by up to 70 per cent when defibrillators are used properly, currently they are only used in 2 per cent of CPR cases. BHF wants to look at barriers to their usage. That is where they are, what they are and how to use them properly. I think that that will be a great campaign and I will be once again happy to support it. To finish today, I thank my colleague Miles Briggs for bringing this topic to debate, as well as the evening times and the British Heart Foundation for their tireless campaigning. Although it is in early stages, I have no doubt that this campaign will be a life-saving campaign. Emma Harper, followed by Colin Smyth. I thank Miles Briggs for bringing this debate to chamber this evening and highlighting the figures and the statistics related to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, so I will not repeat them. I would like to start by thanking the British Heart Foundation for their tremendous work in lobbying all the Scottish local authorities to teach CPR to all secondary school pupils. That is an action that will undoubtedly save lives and has been mentioned already. Indeed, I congratulate all local authorities such as Dumfries and Galloway and South Ayrshire Council in my South Scotland region for signing up to this important commitment. Last year, when a similar debate was brought to chamber by my colleague Stuart McMillan, he highlighted the Jadon or campaign show some heart. In that debate, I spoke about the work of Dr Richard Cummings from Seattle, which I think is worth highlighting that his work again. Almost 30 years ago, Dr Cummings discovered that if a series of events takes place in a set sequence, a patient who is suffering a heart attack stands a greater chance of survival. Those events are now known as the chain of survival. That chain is early detection and call for help, early cardiopulmonary resuscitation, CPR, early defibrillation and early advanced care. The chain has led to more successful survival rates of persons having cardiac events in hospital and since the advent of community defibrillators to better out-of-hospital survival rates as well. Following that debate last year, I contacted Dumfries and Galloway Council to ask if CPR was taught in the secondary schools in D&G. I was pleased to hear that all but one were already participating. Presiding officers, schools across Dumfries and Galloway and South Ayrshire have committed to taking part in the Heart Start scheme since its inception by the British Heart Foundation in the early 2000s. The scheme's main aim is to increase cardiac arrest survival rates by creating a nation of lifesavers. The call push rescue training kit, which is available to any school as well as community group, provides all the specialist equipment needed to teach CPR and teaches trainees how to recognise cardiac arrest and carry out CPRs on adults and children. It uses a film tutorial to demonstrate CPR skills and participants watch the film and practice the skills on portable mannequins. It also shows how public access to defibrillators works and how their role in the life-saving process is essential, so trainees are aware of their importance and are more confident to use one if needed. I was pleased to have had the opportunity to attend one of the CPR Heart Start education sessions myself last year at WT High School, and all the young people were fab and enjoyed the process. I used to teach CPR and resuscitation skills myself when I worked in the theatre department in Los Angeles, so seeing the young folk at the school so engaged was great to see. I have been active in my efforts to support community defibs across the Freeson Galloway area, and I have been lobbying the Scottish Government to relax the planning roles around installation of these. At present, publicly accessible defibrillators are not covered by the permitted development rights, which means that the installation of a pad may require planning permission depending on the circumstances, location and type of building. However, if permitted rights are created, we would be able to have our defibrillators more accessible and readily available. It is important to protect the built environment, but we want to make sure that we can have our defibrillators in the right place. I am pleased that the Government has taken that into consideration in the planning bill, and I have asked for it to be made simpler and easier for communities to install pad devices. I support that motion again, and I thank Miles Briggs and the British Heart Foundation and, of course, all schools and young people across Scotland who will be taking part in the Heart Start CPR scheme. I support that the next generation of Scots will become a nation of lifesavers. The last contribution in the open debates from Colin Smith. Thank you, Presiding Officer. It is a privilege to speak in this debate and have the opportunity to celebrate the success of the fantastic campaign by the British Heart Foundation to bring CPR training to all of Scotland's secondary schools and to discuss what more can be done to improve cardiac arrest survival rates. I thank Miles Briggs for bringing forward his very welcome motion. A number of members have highlighted that the 3,500 people in Scotland who have a cardiac arrest outside of hospital each year are just one in 12 survivors. That is simply not good enough. There is plenty of international evidence that shows that, with the right measures, we can drastically improve those survival rates. That evidence highlights the strong correlation between CPR training in all of secondary schools and improved survival rates. When it was introduced in Denmark, the country's out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rate tripled and now sits at 1 in 4. Every minute, without CPR and defibrillation, reduces the chance of survival by up to 10 per cent after a cardiac arrest. Too often, people do not have the skills or the confidence, or as Bill Kidd highlighted, they are afraid to intervene when someone has a cardiac arrest and the chance of survival can often be lost. Ensuring that more people are trained in CPR will have a transformative impact on cardiac arrest survival rates. Teaching it in school is the most effective way to ensure better society-wide awareness and skills at the earliest possible age. The British Heart Foundation has done a fantastic life-saving piece of work campaigning for CPR training to be taught in every secondary school in Scotland. School is all about teaching life skills, and there is no better such skill than actually saving lives. The only disappointment is that BHF has to approach every individual local authority to sign up to the campaign. Instead of the Scottish Government ensuring that, at a national level, in the same way that it rightly signed up to the Thai campaign, CPR would be mandatory in every secondary school. I hope that, when winding up the minister, he will make a commitment to underpin the support of individual local authorities by stating that the Government will ensure that this training becomes mandatory in her school, making it more sustainable in the long term. It also needs to be followed through with broader improvements to the system of care for when cardiac arrest occurs, ensuring the chain of survival that offers early recognition, early defibrillation and good post-resuscitation care, not just early CPR. That means improving public awareness of the symptoms of cardiac arrest and the steps that should be taken. Crucially, it also means ensuring that defibrillators can be quickly and easily accessed. It requires an overall increase in the number of publicly available defibrillators and better awareness of where defibrillators are and how they can be accessed. They must be visible, well-publicised and we need to consider how information about their location is better shared. For example, ensuring that any public defibrillator can be searched for on Google Maps would help people to identify their nearest defibrillator in an emergency. The location of defibrillators is also important to ensure that rural areas and deprived communities are not ignored, particularly given the strong link between deprivation and risk of cardiac arrest. As Miles Briggs rightly highlighted, those in the most deprived areas are twice as likely to have a cardiac arrest and more likely to die as a result than those in the least deprived areas. It is a clear example of the unacceptable health inequalities that sadly continue to plague Scotland. Despite the progress made in recent years, heart and circulatory diseases remain the biggest killers in Scotland, causing almost a third of all deaths—almost 50 people each day. The rate of coronary heart disease deaths is 80 per cent higher in the most deprived areas. Constructive, evidence-led solutions and interventions such as the teaching of CPR in all secondary schools will play a key role in reducing those deaths. I warmly applaud the efforts of the British Heart Foundation in securing the commitment from each local authority to CPR training in our secondary schools and providing the resources to implement that commitment. I congratulate Scotland's local councils for embracing that initiative, but it is now our job to show that same level of commitment. That means that the Government is enshrining that commitment nationally and building on that initiative to take more action to improve the prevention of cardiac arrest and the care of those who suffer one, so that, just like Scotland's young people, we play our part in ensuring that more lives are saved in the future. I'm delighted to contribute and respond on half the Government on this important debate. I wish to add my congratulations to Miles Briggs for securing this evening's debate. I'd also like to thank all our partners who are working hard to help to equip many people with CPR skills, particularly our young people. Like others, I was delighted last week when Save a Life for Scotland announced that more than 430,000 people across Scotland have learned CPR since our out-of-hospital cardiac arrest strategy was launched in 2015. We know that prompt intervention by a by-stander can increase the likelihood of survival after cardiac arrest by two or three times. Calling 999, starting CPR and using an available defib in the minutes immediately following a cardiac arrest is where the greatest gains in survival will be achieved. CPR is a life-saving skill, as others have said, that practically everyone can learn. That's why we launched Save a Life for Scotland. As many of you will know, Save a Life for Scotland is a partnership of public and third sector organisations such as the British Heart Foundation, St Andrew's First Aid, the British Red Cross, the Royal Life Saving Society and Lucky to Be Here. Partners are working together to encourage and equip people with CPR skills and raise awareness and willingness to intervene at a cardiac arrest. The Save a Life for Scotland partnership is a unique model, building on a strong foundation of existing work by services, communities and individuals across Scotland. Equipping children and young people with a life-saving skills is a life-saving skill, as others have said. I thank the minister for giving way. I thank the firemen and women in all our fire stations, who, when the cardiac arrest strategy was launched, did a great deal of work initially in helping people to become confident in CPR skills. I absolutely would, and I thank the member for making the point that I think I was going to miss. That is an important point. The British Heart Foundation's successful campaign, which, as we have heard, has secured the commitment of all 32 local authorities in Scotland to teach CPR in their secondary schools, is also to be commended. It is an excellent example of the work being done. It is appropriate at this point to recognise the lead that is shown by Glasgow newspapers, highlighted by Annie Wells and Bill Kidd. It is fantastic that we have managed to get by in and right across Scotland. I hear the point that Colin Smyth was making about how we not just make the law, but the leadership that is shown by our local elected members right across Scotland is something that we should all commend and respect and encourage. I will make some progress. Under curriculum for excellence, health and wellbeing is one of the three key curriculum areas, along with literacy and numeracy, which is the responsibility of all staff in schools. One of the many benefits under curriculum for excellence is that schools already have the flexibility to provide first aid training. It is up to individual schools and local authorities to decide if and how best to deliver that. As Emma Harper has said, many primary and secondary schools across Scotland have already embedded CPR awareness and skills development. Save a Life for Scotland has worked with Education Scotland to develop a resource for schools. That is delivering our aim of making CPR learning easy, accessible and free. The learning does not stop at the end of class. Children are asked to go home and teach whoever is at home with them the recovery position and CPR using their teddy or a pillow. Feedback tells us that that is exactly what they are doing. In 2015, we launched the out-of-hospital cardiac arrest strategy with the commitment to improve survival and outcomes for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. To improve OHCA outcomes requires improvement to all six elements of the chain of survival, which Emma Harper mentioned earlier, readiness, early recognition and call for help, CPR defibrillation and pre-hospital resuscitation, post-resuscitation care and aftercare. One of the aims of the strategy is to equip additional 500,000 people in Scotland with CPR skills by 2020. I am so delighted that we are so far along that road into achieving those aims. Since 2015, Save a Life for Scotland partners have worked with schools, community and sports groups in workplaces, public places and at major events, as we have heard a number of members talk about, to equip over 430,000 people with CPR skills. That is a fantastic achievement, and I want to acknowledge the hard work of all the partners involved indeed. Miles Briggs. I thank the minister for taking this intervention. As much as I love consensual debate, I cannot let this pass without noting that the strategy comes to an end in 2020. In terms of taking the plans forward and a broader consensus and future vision around this, what work the Government is going to take forward with charities that, obviously, the British Heart Foundation has led on a lot of that positive work? All the work that we are taking forward in this area and in partnership, I know that you are maybe trying to get us to not be consensual, but this is an area that we all want to continue to be consensual on. I think that we have made the progress that we have made because there has been buy-in across not just this Parliament but across society that this is something that we want to do so importantly. The strategy, which I think was unanimously supported in 2015, has enabled more people to go home to family and friends. Since the start of the OHA strategy, data shows that more people than ever are being given by standard CPR an increase of 15 per cent to 56 per cent of OHA patients in 2017-18. That is really important statistics. Importantly, more patients had a pulse on arrival at hospital than in previous years, with return of spontaneous circulation up to 23.3 per cent in 2017-18, and one in 12 survived to leave hospital compared to one in 20 before the strategy was being implemented. That is really making a difference, but I absolutely accept the point that Miles Briggs was making that we need to continue to look how we can do more and continue to do that to get to that point where as many people can survive one of these events as we hear in other parts of Europe. It is important to remember that we can all learn from each other, and I strongly encourage anyone who learns these life-saving skills to pass that knowledge on and teach their family, friends and colleagues. It is helpful that Miles Briggs talked about his experience today in the chamber that he has recently experienced, because that is how we can overcome the fear of helping that Bill Kidd and Colin Smyth had mentioned. I want to touch on public access defibrillators. Members will recall the debate in the chamber entitled, Show some heart, the Jadin or campaign in April last year, which highlighted the importance of defibs. Our strategy recognises the importance of defibs and aims to make the most effective use of those that are available. As part of the strategy, the Scottish Ambulance Service has committed to mapping public access defibrillations through launching the registration of the solicitation campaign so that people know where defibs are at the point that they are raised by Colin Smyth. The campaign maps public access defibrillators into their call handling system so that bystanders can be directed to a nearby defib if required. Through the system, we can improve their use, and I urge everyone who is responsible for a public access defib to register it with the Scottish Ambulance Service. I am grateful to all the contributions from the chamber, and to all the community's voluntary organisations and individuals and businesses who have been fundraising to purchase those defibs and make them publicly accessible across Scotland. Last year, we published a guide to public access defibs, which provides practical advice for people who want to install a defib for their local community. We can all acknowledge that the strategy is making excellent progress in impacting out-of-hospital cardiac arrest outcomes for Scotland. I want to close the debate by thanking members and all those who are involved in improving outcomes for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. I am delighted that Scotland is well on its way to creating a nation of current and future lifesavers.