The Minister We Wrote To Doesn't Have The Job Anymore
We asked Wes Streeting to call in the decision to move our children's A&E. He resigned three months ago — and nobody has told us if the request survived the handover.
On 30 March 2026, Lancashire County Council's health scrutiny committee did something rare: every party on it agreed. They voted unanimously to ask the Health Secretary to call in the decision to move Ormskirk's children's A&E to Southport. West Lancashire MP Ashley Dalton made the same request the same day. The letters went to one man: Wes Streeting.
Six weeks later, he wasn't the Health Secretary anymore.
The handover nobody told us about
Wes Streeting resigned as Health Secretary on 14 May 2026, in the middle of a leadership crisis inside the government, and Keir Starmer appointed James Murray in his place. That's a matter of public record. What isn't on the record anywhere we can find is what happened to our call-in request when the desk changed hands. Did it move to Murray's in-tray? Did it get answered and we simply weren't told? Or is it sitting exactly where it was left, addressed to someone who no longer has the power to act on it?
Nobody has said. Not the council, not the MP's office, not the department. Four months after the vote, we still don't know if the question was ever actually received by someone with the authority to answer it.
Why the gap matters
The law gives a Health Secretary six months to decide on a call-in once they've confirmed they're considering one. That clock doesn't start on the date of the vote — it starts when a minister formally responds. A change of Secretary of State mid-request doesn't just risk a paperwork delay. It risks the whole six-month process quietly restarting from zero the day Murray, or whoever holds the job next, finally opens the file — if he's even seen it yet.
For context: this is the same Lancashire and South Cumbria board that, this July, had a feasibility study land on Murray's desk about restoring Chorley Hospital's overnight A&E — and he responded, on the record, that there was "an evidence-based case to explore" giving it back. He can engage with this board. We're asking why our letter hasn't had the same treatment.
What we're asking for
This isn't complicated. James Murray should confirm, in writing, to Lancashire County Council and to Ashley Dalton MP, that he has received the call-in request for the Ormskirk decision and tell them when he'll respond. A change of minister is not a reason for a family to keep waiting to hear whether their children's A&E is safe from a £33 million move nobody asked for.
Our fight was never with the people running the ward. It's with a process that can survive a change of government and still leave us with nothing in writing.
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