Statement from St John Ambulance in response to comments made by David Cameron today on health and safety legislation in the UK
Tuesday, 01 December, 2009
Andrew New, Product Development Manager at St John Ambulance, said:
'Let's be clear that first aid is a vital part of health and safety. Underlying this whole debate is our attitude towards first aid. In the UK, first aid is often seen as fulfilling a legislative requirement rather than being a necessary life skill that saves lives. If more people were trained in first aid this would make a tremendous contribution to reassuring event organisers, businesses and the UK public that help was at hand to deal with everyday accidents - maybe they'd be less inclined to over-react to regulations if they had that confidence?
'As it stands at the moment, there is a great deal of confusion about the regulations and all of us working in health and safety need to do more to make clear how they should be interpreted. Organisations want to do the right thing, but don't always know how. Somehow common sense gets lost, and we end up with the stories we all see about 'health and safety gone mad'.
'Cameron has certainly opened an interesting debate and we look forward to seeing the results of Lord Young's work in this area.'
