VAT on Defibrillators — House of Commons, 2022-06-22
Topic: Health
Ruth Rosamond Edwards (Conservative, Centre-right): It must be every parent’s worst nightmare. Last September, Dylan Rich—a talented 17-year-old footballer from Rushcliffe—was playing in a FA youth cup game between his club, West Bridgford Colts, and Boston United at the Colts’ ground in Regatta Way. Out of nowhere a couple of minutes into the match, he suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed. His brave mother Anna performed CPR on her own son. Dylan was treated with a defibrillator at the scene and an ambulance arrived within 10 minutes. He regained cardiac output and was stabilised in intensive care, but tragically he died three days later in hospital Words cannot express the depth of sorrow that his death has caused—to his family, his friends, and the community at West Bridgford Colts. In their tribute to him, the Colts said: "Dylan was one of those players that team mates love for his commitment, coaches for his attitude and adaptability, and supporters for his reliability. A fantastic club player." Tributes followed from Nottingham Forest and Notts County. Ahead of their World cup qualifier against Poland, the England players held up a shirt with "For Dylan" printed on it But the tribute that his family and his club most want is to increase the number of defibrillators across the UK, to make them cheaper for communities to buy, and to increase people’s awareness and confidence in using them. Until Dylan’s death, I had never looked at the figures for the scale of cardiac arrests. Sudden cardiac arrest is one of the leading causes of death in young people, and almost never has any prior symptoms. Officially, about 32,000 sudden cardiac arrests occur in England every year. When combined with figures from across the UK, it is estimated that the true number is as high as 60,000. There is an important caveat to this figure: it only includes incidents where resuscitation was attempted. In the UK, only 8% of people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest Cardiac arrest can happen to anyone. This was brought home to us again in Nottinghamshire last month, when 13-year-old Samuel Akwasi collapsed from a cardiac arrest during a Young Elizabethan football league game and tragically later died in Queen’s Medical Centre. In fact, only yesterday, as I was writing this speech, I read of an assistant referee, Andrew Jarvis, who suffered a cardiac arrest while officiating at a game in Mansfield last August. Mercifully, he survived. He says he was saved by good-quality CPR, the football club’s defibrillator, and the quick arrival of the air ambulance team On average, as I said, a person in the UK has an 8% chance of surviving a cardiac arrest if it happens out of hospital, but this is vastly increased to as high as 70% if a defibrillator is used within the first three to five minutes of the cardiac arrest occurring. Conversely, survival rates drop by 10% for every minute of delay after this time. This further highlights why it is essential to have a defibrillator on every sports pitch and street corner possible—because these machines save lives. Average survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests vary across the country, ranging from 0.6% to 25%. The Government are doing so much to address regional inequality across the country, but we must also address regional inequality in defibrillator access and survival rates The main barriers to accessing defibrillators have been shown to be cost and awareness. In a survey by Vitreous World, 42% of people said that cost was the main barrier to owning a defibrillator, while 62% of people do not know how to use one and 27% are worried about how to do so. Defibrillators vary in cost, but the average unit is about £1,250. This is a considerable expense to many community groups, charities and sports clubs, especially considering that a sizeable portion of it, 20%, is VAT. Clearly, £1,250 is a lot of money for organisations raising funds through cake sales, individual donations and raffles. Some charities are exempt from paying VAT on defibrillators: not-for-profit hospitals, charitable institutions that provide care or medical or surgical treatment for disabled people, and rescue or first aid services. However, most sports clubs and community groups do not qualify There are several options for reducing the cost of defibrillators. The first is to apply a zero rate of VAT to all defibrillators in line with that already applied to a range of medicines and medical products, including prescription medicines and drugs. A blanket rate would be a simple and straightforward solution to cover anyone and any organisation wanting to buy a defibrillator.