Leeds Children’s Heart Surgery Unit

David Ward Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

I add my thanks and compliments to my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) and all hon. Members who have engaged in this debate. The brevity of my thanks and congratulations in no way reflects my sincerity.

I want to make a brief point about where I believe responsibility for the decision lies. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 contains a contentious element concerning the Secretary of State. The contentious Bill was debated at length in the Lords, and in the Commons, but it remains within the legislation that the Secretary of State retains ministerial responsibility to Parliament for the provision of the health service in England. That is where I believe responsibility for the final decision should lie.

I turn to local circumstances. Most people will be aware that Bradford has the fastest-growing young population outside London. It has grown by 25% during the past 10 years. The issue is not simply the large number of young people in the area, but the incidence of the ailments that must be dealt with. As was said, 23% of Leeds cardiac surgery patients are south Asian, which is 6% of the population in the catchment area as a whole, but 23% are children on cardiac wards. Many come from Bradford and south Leeds—about 90 a year, and the number is increasing. Proportionately, those children have far more complex bowel deformities and facial deformities such as cleft lip and palate, and can be treated under one roof—that is the key—only at Leeds children’s hospital.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway) is not here. That is not surprising but it is a shame because two of the constituencies in Bradford are in the top 3% in terms of deprivation and unemployment in the country. Bradford is generally a community that is less well off than average, and people would face particular difficulties in having to travel more than 100 miles further, not only because of the cost of travel and accommodation, but because of lost income from having to be away from work to be with their children. Bearing in mind what I said about incidence, it does not make sense to move the children’s heart surgery unit away from the community that is statistically more likely to need it.

Finally, much has been said about the flawed process in the analysis, but I want to talk about the flawed process of the consultation. The review did not have any translated documentation. Of the families attending the unit, 23% speak Urdu at home. Translated copies were requested, and a small number finally arrived, but they arrived three months after the consultation had started. The translation was largely unreadable in Urdu because italics were used for quotes. The Safe and Sustainable review tried to rectify that by holding separate events for black and minority ethnic participants, but they were told that that community would not travel to Newcastle. They were clearly given that strong message. The community indicated that to the review team, and it was shown clearly in the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis and in a Mott MacDonald study, which stated that children from that community would be worse off and would not travel north.

The message has been consistently clear. Unfortunately, there has been an unwillingness to listen to that message, and I hope the Minister has taken it on board now. The community has largely been ignored in the process, and that shows that the process outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey and others was flawed not only in its methodology, but in the consultation exercise.