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Defibrillators in Police Vehicles

It is not a comprehensive view across policing; there is a general concern about the role of policing versus other emergency services. We often have a wider debate within policing about the huge quantity of time that is spent responding to mental health issues, when other services should be doing that, so there is a general nervousness about that.

I am in the process of writing to police forces and having a conversation with them, so that we can answer the hon. Gentleman’s point and find out whether there is a concern when it comes to defibrillators. The Our Jay Foundation would say that, where it has engaged with police forces and given them defibrillators, that has been welcomed and it is useful. I want to find out what the concerns are, if they exist, and I am in the process of doing that.

I have said to the Our Jay Foundation—and I also say it to the hon. Member for Torbay and others here today—that of course we want every piece of first-aid equipment that could possibly save lives to be as widely available as possible. In police cars there are already first aid kits, and a lot of police officers carry tourniquets. It is not uncommon for police to conduct CPR on people relatively regularly; that has to be their job when they arrive before other emergency services.

The step to then funding defibs—since we are talking about the funding question here—and putting them into all response cars or a proportion of response cars is the next stage we will look at. There are two stages. The first is talking to police to see what they think. As we have already given the police 750 defibs, it would be interesting to understand what they have been using them for.

Moving on to the next stage, we are going through a very significant period of reform, setting up a national police service. That service will procure the kit we need for the whole of policing, so it presents a really good opportunity to consider what should be standard in all our police vehicles, response cars and uniforms, and to have a conversation with the police. We are going to have a national police service and make decisions nationally about what we need across the police service, and whether we want to use some of our funding to put defibs into all police cars.