Hansard

I congratulate Cathy Jamieson on raising the issue of home safety, which tends to fall off the agenda and is never debated properly. Members' business debates such as this give us an opportunity to discuss such issues.

Cathy Jamieson rightly highlighted the vulnerability of young people and older people to accidents in the home. Research shows that there is a link between levels of poverty and the incidence of accidents in the home and surrounding area. I want to address that issue.

It is right that we deal with this subject at this time of year, as—to put matters into perspective—ROSPA, which does a great deal of work in this sphere, estimates that about 80,000 accidents in the home occur across the UK over the Christmas and new year period. Those accidents are caused by anything from people staggering around the house as a result of having had too much to drink to Christmas trees going on fire and accidents with toys and the like.

ROSPA estimates that 33,000 children across the UK are affected by poisoning, mainly from medication, in any given year. It is ironic that children are most vulnerable because their grandparents do not lock up medication. According to ROSPA, 94 per cent of people who are aged over 60 do not lock up their medication. Accidents often arise as a result of children who are staying with or visiting grandparents gaining access to medication that can poison them or do a lot of damage. Something like 500 children a year also die as a result of accidents at school or at home, which costs the UK health service around £300 million a year.

According to the Department of Trade and Industry and the Health Education Authority, around 2,000 older people die each year in the UK as a result of a fall in the home. It is estimated that one elderly person dies from a domestic accident every five hours. Members can see that, by any stretch of the imagination, the issue is serious. I endorse everything that Cathy Jamieson said—her analysis of the problem and the solutions that she suggested.

I would like to keep this contribution short to allow as many members as possible to speak. According to Government figures, of the 500 youngsters who die annually because of an accident, most are from poor backgrounds. Children of poorer parents are five times more likely to die in accidents than children from better-off families. According to research undertaken by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in December 1999, poorer children are more at risk because they are more likely to live in houses with old wiring and because their parents have little money to spend on stair gates, smoke detectors and things of that nature. Their environment may also be more hazardous than that of other children because there are more main roads where they live, because they do not have a garden, and because of a lack of safe play areas. The number of children who died in fires between 1981 and 1991 fell by 28 per cent in social class I. In social class V, the number of deaths rose by 39 per cent—the figure did not fall; it rose. We should recognise that there is a link between poverty and the incidence of accidents in the home. We should press for the measures that Cathy Jamieson has outlined.