Mr Ewing has referred to the next petition, PE2101, which was lodged by Peter Earl on behalf of Troqueer primary school. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to provide primary and secondary schools with automated external defibrillators. When the committee last considered the petition, in September 2024, we agreed to write to the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health. Members will recall that we highlighted the UK Government’s provision of defibrillators to all schools in England and asked whether the Scottish Government would provide direct funding to do the same. I think that that might have been the example to which I was referring a moment ago.
The minister’s response reiterates that local authorities make decisions on purchasing, installing and maintaining defibrillators for schools in their area. The response also states that solutions to improve survival from cardiac arrest may differ between areas. The Save a Life for Scotland partnership takes a data-driven approach to working with local authorities to understand the chain of survival in their areas and how to improve it.
The committee has also received a written submission from Rodger Hill. Rodger, as most of us will now know, is the father of our late parliamentary colleague, the researcher David Hill, who died while playing rugby for the Scottish Parliament rugby team in Ireland. The submission outlines the work undertaken by the charity set up in David’s memory, the DH9 Foundation, which includes facilitating the installation of 42 defibrillators in Dumfries and Galloway. Mr Hill’s freedom of information requests reveal that, of 2,446 schools, 893 have defibrillators on site. The submission calls for a renewed commitment from the Scottish Government to deliver cardiopulmonary resuscitation training to every child in schools biennially, and it calls for grant funding to provide defibrillators in schools across Scotland.
Mr Ewing has suggested that we couple the petition with the previous one and advise the minister that we would like to take evidence on both of them. Do members agree with Mr Ewing’s suggestion?
Members indicated agreement.