Health: Children's Heart Services

Lord Woolmer of Leeds Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

I agree that transparency in the process is vital, and I have no doubt that NHS England, in saying what it has today about its general approach to this, will bear that very point in mind.

[Lord Woolmer of Leeds]

My Lords, does the noble Earl recognise that in Leeds there will be a great sense of justification regarding the criticisms of the process previously followed and a welcoming of the forensic critique by the latest panel of that process? While it is certainly important that collocation of services is not essential to the provision of children’s heart surgery, does the Minister agree that, where there is outstanding and deliberately engineered collocation of high quality, that is an important factor in the future location of children’s heart surgery?

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord makes another very good point, and Recommendation 3 of the IRP report focuses on that very issue. It says:

“Before further considering options for change, the detailed work on the clinical model and associated service standards for the whole pathway of care must be completed to demonstrate the benefits for patients and how services will be delivered across each network”.

Therefore, that point has been explicitly recognised.