173 Days. Two Health Secretaries. Still No Answer.
We asked one Health Secretary to call in the decision on our children's A&E. He quit. We're still waiting on the second.
It has been 173 days since Lancashire County Council's health scrutiny committee did something you don't see often: every single councillor on it, from every party, voted the same way. On 30 March 2026 they asked the Health Secretary to call in the decision to move Ormskirk's children's A&E to Southport. West Lancashire MP Ashley Dalton sent her own request the same day.
That's not a fringe objection. That's the cross-party body whose job is to scrutinise NHS decisions, saying in one voice: this one needs a second look.
The desk changed hands. The silence didn't.
Six weeks after the request went in, the government reshuffled and a new Health Secretary, James Murray, took over the brief. Multiple outlets covering the appointment confirmed he succeeded Wes Streeting in the role. That means our call-in request has now sat on two different ministers' desks — and neither has given West Lancashire families a yes or a no.
We're not asking for a favour. Call-in is a normal, legal check that exists precisely for decisions like this one: contested, high-consultation-response, cross-party-flagged. Using it isn't obstruction. Not using it, for 173 days, is its own kind of answer — just not one anyone has had the courtesy to put in writing.
What the silence costs
While the letters sit unanswered, the clock on the £33 million, three-year move keeps running. NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria's own chief commissioning officer has said Ormskirk Hospital "will remain open and continue to provide key services" — outpatients, urgent treatment, diagnostics, inpatient care. We believe him on that. Nobody in this campaign has ever said the hospital is closing. What's moving is the children's A&E, and every week without a decision is a week our kids' care planning stays stuck in limbo instead of being either confirmed safe or sent back for a proper look.
Families in Ormskirk, Skelmersdale, Burscough and Tarleton don't get to pause their emergencies while Whitehall works out who's picking up whose inbox. A minister moving jobs shouldn't mean a scrutiny committee's unanimous vote quietly expires by default.
What we're asking for
We're asking Health Secretary James Murray to do what his predecessor never got round to: read the call-in request from Lancashire County Council and West Lancashire's MP, and answer it. Not eventually — now. Two health secretaries and 173 days is long enough for a straight yes or no on whether this decision gets called in.
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