22.11.12
SOS judicial pause denied
A child heart surgery campaign group has been denied its request to pause a judicial review into the Safe and Sustainable decision on the unit closure in Leeds.
Save Our Surgery (SOS) sought to pause proceedings until after the Government’s Independent Reconfiguration Panel (IRP) review was complete and had reported to the health secretary.
However, Jeremy Hunt wrote to the court highlighting the overlap between SOS’s legal case and the conclusions of the IRP. He stated that the outcome of this judicial review case is relevant to the IRP recommendation and thus the court declined SOS’s request for a pause.
A date for the judicial review is now to be set, probably in early February 2013.
SOS have stated that the pause was intended to try and avoid court action if possible, dependent on the results of the IRP review. The IRP referral had not been made when their judicial review was launched.
Sharon Cheng of SOS said: “Seeking a judicial review has always been our last resort option, hence today’s court case. However, given today’s events we understand that the health secretary agrees that there is overlap between our case and his referral to the IRP, and the Court would therefore like the case to proceed. We feel that this is a positive step forward, especially as we now have a timescale for the hearing.
“To be clear, our request for a pause in proceedings would have had no significant impact on the timescales for the implementation of the Safe & Sustainable review, if this goes ahead. We are acting on behalf of concerned families and clinicians, and will continue to argue that children and patient’s rights should be the priority in determining where heart surgery services are located, over and above individual agendas.”
Last week, the Children’s Heart Federation criticised the SOS for appearing to be delay the process, stating that any such delays could be damaging to child heart surgery, and equated to “playing with the future of children and their parents”.
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