It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and particularly to follow the remarks of the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) about children’s heart surgery at Glenfield hospital in Leicester. In view of the time limit, I will not repeat the issues to do with the Safe and Sustainable review, because those have been well rehearsed by other Members.
It is no great surprise that all Members, as well as all patients, all staff, all parents and all families, want the best services when dealing with children’s heart surgery. We are talking about very sick young babies and children, and there is no doubt that high-quality services are wanted across the country. At the same time, we have to recognise that in the 21st century national health service there are bound to be reconfigurations. The reconfiguration that has been worked on by the Safe and Sustainable review arises out of what happened in Bristol, and there is a very good reason for what it proposes. As we have heard, there are some serious questions still to be answered about the process and the way in which decisions have been made.
In the debate in this Chamber in June 2011, I talked about the ECMO—extracorporeal membrane oxygenation —service offered in Leicester, which the hon. Member for Leicester South discussed. It is a world-class, excellent service, and the question is what will happen to it if the children’s heart surgery unit is moved from Leicester to Birmingham. Like the hon. Gentleman, I thank the Minister very much for meeting a delegation of east midlands MPs this afternoon to talk about this. ECMO is a nationally commissioned service and the Secretary of State is therefore required to sign off the move. I understand that he accepted the recommendations of the panel last Friday.
Those of us who are most interested in this and have been listening to constituents and to consultants and staff at the Glenfield unit have a number of questions to raise with the Minister. I would like to be sure of three things before I can be happy with how the decision has been taken. First, before the Secretary of State signed off the move, was he aware of the misgivings of experts that have been described by the hon. Member for Leicester
South? Letters are still arriving from international experts. Indeed, since I have been sitting in the debate I have seen a letter that has arrived from the medical director of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. I should like to read out a couple of quotes. The first is from Stephen Conrad, who is chairman of the steering committee of the Extracorporeal Life Support Organisation and who says that
“moving an ECMO program is non-trivial and amounts to much more than moving equipment and some key personnel. Excellent outcomes that are now characteristic of the Leicester group, whose work was instrumental in the worldwide adoption of pediatric and adult ECMO, would not be maintained following such a move.”