Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:43 pm on 21 October 2020.
Alun, I'm delighted that you brought this to the Chamber today. Nothing is more powerful than personal testimony, personal experience that has inspired you to try and change something that really does need changing. Unfortunately, as you said, 97 per cent of those people who suffer a cardiac arrest aren't here to share testimony in the way that you've been able to do.
I think your call for a strategy and a pathway is really well made. Personally, I'd like to see it sit alongside a new disease-specific heart condition delivery plan. Cardiology is not something that can be cut and shut with other delivery plans, and yet what you're talking about should certainly be part of this, because cardiac arrest is not the same as heart failure or a heart attack. You can be as fit as a flea, as you discovered, and you can still have this. You can't prepare for it, and that's why I'm going to be supporting these proposals.
In so doing, though, I hope you won't mind, Alun, allowing me to remind you all that I introduced some very compatible legislative proposals right at the beginning of the process when you were able to do that. And one of the elements of that—because there were many that were in common with what you're asking for today—was for basic lifesaving skills to be mandatory on the curriculum. And, at the time, the Assembly was in favour of that, which is why I'm pleased you've raised in the debate today the need for Welsh Government to explain what it would do instead—something that would achieve the same results as efficiently and as cost-effectively. To be honest, I'm not sure that anything would be quite as efficient and effective in overcoming the bystander CPR problem, as two hours of training every year in schools is a pretty tiny amount of time to be spent on it. I think two hours is not cluttering up a curriculum. And what it does, of course, is introduce or create that ability to step in, just like the people who stepped in to save you. And I don't think a general availability of training will quite create that.
The Members of the Youth Parliament get that and that's why it's their top ask in terms of curriculum—delivering on a promise to give young people the skills for adult life. And I suppose the question that springs from that is: why should delivery of their top ask be pretty much a postcode lottery, where Scotland and England are making sure that their children know how to step in and save a life? Denmark is an exemplar in this—mandatory curriculum training is part of why they are so great at this and why their survival rates are so high.
But I want to finish, if you don't mind, Llywydd, with a big shout out to all our communities who actually put their money where their heart is. You'll know what I mean, Alun: hundreds and hundreds of people in our communities have been fundraising to put defibrillators into places where the community can benefit from them? I wouldn't want any legislative proposals to take away from the social capital, and I'm sure that's not your intention. Let our constituents be active players in solving a problem, and I'm sure that anyone watching today will be more than willing to support your legislative proposals. Thank you. Oh, I only had three minutes.