Continued Petitions

Our next continued petition is PE1989, which was lodged by Mary Montague, who I should say is known to me, as the constituency member for Eastwood, because she is the provost of my local authority, East Renfrewshire Council. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to support the provision of defibrillators in public spaces and workplaces.

We last considered the petition in December 2023, when we agreed to write to the Scottish Government. We received a response from the then Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health, Maree Todd, which stated that defibrillators are purchased

“mainly through fundraising in the community”

or are funded by business and organisations. It also stated that the Scottish Government is

“working alongside the Resuscitation Research Group at the University of Edinburgh to better understand the evidence around placement of defibrillators in Scotland and to develop a tool, which would help defibrillator guardians make informed decisions about where best to place their device in order that it could have most impact.”

That sounds a bit like gobbledegook. Anyhow, the committee had asked whether the Scottish Government would consider making representations to the United Kingdom Government to update the legislation on health and safety at work to include defibrillator provision as part of the minimum first aid requirements. The minister’s response stated that

“As the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1947 is a reserved policy area it would be the responsibility of the UK Government to consider the evidence”

and that the Scottish Government’s priority is its collective partnership approach.

In considering the petition, members will have in mind that we recently asked the minister whether the Government would provide direct funding for primary and secondary schools to purchase and install defibrillators, under PE2101. The minister’s response reiterated that it was for local authorities to make decisions on purchasing, installing and maintaining defibrillators for schools. I think that the committee has been quite charged on the aims behind the campaign for defibrillators but a bit underwhelmed by the response.

Do members have any comments or suggestions for action??

I wonder whether colleagues would be content for us to frame this with slightly stronger language—to say that the committee is concerned about what appears to be growing evidence of a lack of urgency behind the will to take forward the issues. Given that we all support a preventative health agenda, the provision of defibrillators not only saves lives but is, potentially, through preventing the subsequent need for hospital admission and other interventions, a preventative measure that we should encourage. Taken together with the evidence that we heard on the petition in relation to schools—that Scotland seems to be lagging significantly behind the rest of the UK, for whatever reason—it seems that the impetus is just not being put into this programme in Scotland. Are members content to frame our questions in that way?

Members indicated agreement.