Children could be taught to treat life-threatening stab wounds under new law debated in Parliament today

A Conservative MP's bill set to be debated in Parliament today would require schools to teach pupils how to recognise and treat "life-threatening bleeding" from stabbings and car crashes. Neil Shastri-Hurst, a former British Army major and trauma surgeon, warns that a person can bleed out in four minutes — well under the average eight-and-a-half-minute ambulance response time. The Emergency and Life-Saving Skills (Schools) Bill would build on existing CPR teaching already embedded in the curriculum. It will need government support to pass.

Shastri-Hurst served as an honorary trauma co-ordinator at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, one of England's regional major trauma centres.

He says he watched patients die at the QE who could have survived had bystanders intervened before paramedics arrived.

The bill aims to create a 'critical mass' of young people trained to stop catastrophic bleeding, mirroring how CPR became standard school teaching.