Let's train more people in life-saving skills
4 min read
Civil resilience isn't built in Whitehall; it's built in our towns and villages.
Be prepared, not scared.
It’s the simple mantra of a charity teaching basic, but vital, lifesaving skills to young and old – no previous experience of trauma required.
It aligns perfectly with the Department for Transport announcement that CPR training will be included in the driving theory test.
The DoT plan is an idea everyone can get behind – easy, practical, and it saves lives. For years, charities and campaigners have argued that basic lifesaving skills should be part of everyday knowledge. Now, they are becoming just that.
But good ideas rarely come in isolation. This is a strong first step – so why stop here?
Every day across the country, someone is first on the scene of a serious accident. Often it’s a driver. Sometimes it’s a colleague at work, a fellow shopper, or even a family member at home. In those moments, the clock is ticking. CPR is vital, but it’s not the only skill that matters. Some of the most dangerous injuries are caused by catastrophic bleeding, and there are straightforward ways to stop it before help arrives.
That point was brought home to us recently when we met with citizenAID in Parliament. This charity exists to give ordinary people the confidence to act when someone is badly hurt. Its founders, Professor Sir Keith Porter and Major General Tim Hodgetts, are leaders in trauma medicine. Both have seen, in hospitals and on the battlefield, what the right action in the first few minutes can achieve.
Their training is not complicated. It’s clear, memorable, and proven to work. Teenagers, grandparents, people with no medical background – all have learnt these skills and used them to save lives before the ambulance arrived.
Adding CPR to the driving test is an excellent start. But imagine if every new driver also knew how to deal with major bleeding. The test reaches hundreds of thousands of people each year, often just as they are starting out in adult life. It’s the perfect moment to teach skills that last a lifetime.
Civil resilience is sometimes treated as a specialist topic. It isn’t. It’s simply about making sure ordinary people can act decisively when things go wrong. When floods hit, when storms knock out power, when an accident happens – it’s the people already on the scene who make the biggest difference. Britain has a long tradition of pulling together in tough times. We saw it in the Blitz, we saw it during the pandemic. The will is there. Now we need to match it with the know-how.
Other countries have already shown how it can work. In Norway, CPR is mandatory for anyone taking a driving test. In Israel, public access to trauma kits and bleeding control equipment is standard. These aren’t expensive measures. But they pay for themselves many times over in lives saved and injuries prevented.
Here in Britain, we’ve made progress. Defibrillators are in more public places than ever before. CPR is taught in schools. But when it comes to responding to major trauma, there’s still a gap in public knowledge. We can close it.
The benefits are obvious. More people survive serious injuries. Those who learn the skills pass them on to others. And because emergencies are unpredictable, spreading that knowledge widely gives us a kind of quiet insurance policy against the unexpected.
We can take this further. Workplaces, sports clubs, and community centres can run short training sessions. Schools can refresh pupils’ skills every few years so they don’t forget them. Service stations and transport hubs could display simple, clear guides – a modern version of the old St John Ambulance posters that once hung in factories and village halls.
Resilience isn’t built in Whitehall; it’s built in towns and villages, in offices and schools, and in the confidence of people who know what to do when someone collapses or is badly hurt. As MPs, we’ve seen what our constituents can achieve when they are given the right tools. The Department for Transport’s decision is a welcome start. But with a small step further, we could go from teaching one lifesaving skill to teaching several.
That would mean not just safer drivers, but a more capable public. It would mean that in a moment of crisis, help is often already standing nearby. And it would mean a Britain where every driver, every commuter, and every passer-by could be part of a quiet but powerful network – a nation of lifesavers.
John Cooper and Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst are the Conservative MPs for Dumfries & Galloway and Solihull West & Shirley respectively.
