Three Health Secretaries. 170 Days. Still No Reply.
We asked the Health Secretary to call in the Ormskirk decision on 30 March. Since then the job has changed hands twice — and nobody has told us where our letter stands.
Our letter has outlasted two health secretaries. It still hasn't had a reply.
On 30 March 2026, every party on Lancashire County Council's health scrutiny committee agreed on something for once: the decision to move our children's A&E to Southport needed a second look. They voted unanimously to ask the Health Secretary to call it in. West Lancashire MP Ashley Dalton sent her own request the same day. Both letters went to one desk: Wes Streeting's.
That was 170 days ago. Today, Streeting isn't the Health Secretary. Neither is the man who replaced him. A third minister now holds the job — and as far as we can find, none of them has confirmed, in writing, that our request is even being looked at.
Three ministers, one unanswered letter
Six weeks after the vote, Streeting resigned as Health Secretary on 14 May 2026. James Murray was appointed in his place — and lasted 67 days in the job before Keir Starmer himself resigned as Prime Minister on 19 July 2026. Andy Burnham became Prime Minister the next day and appointed Yvette Cooper as the new Health Secretary. She remains in post today.
That's not a complaint about who sits in Westminster. It's a plain description of what's happened to a single unanswered letter about our kids' safety: it has sat in an in-tray that has changed occupants three times without anyone confirming it survived the move.
Why the six-month clock matters
Under the Health and Care Act 2022, once a Secretary of State formally accepts a call-in and issues a direction letter, the law gives them six months to reach a decision. But that clock doesn't start on the date of the vote — it starts the day a minister formally responds. Every handover resets the risk: if Yvette Cooper is only now opening the file, the six-month clock some families assumed was already ticking may not have started at all.
Meanwhile the decision itself is 187 days old. £33 million and a three-year build are moving forward on a timetable the public never chose, while the one formal check on that decision — a call-in that every party on the scrutiny committee backed — sits unacknowledged.
We love the doctors and nurses at Ormskirk. Our fight has never been with them. It's with a process that can survive three changes of Health Secretary and still leave a family with nothing in writing about whether their nearest children's A&E is safe from a £33 million move nobody asked for.
What we're asking for
We're asking Yvette Cooper to do one simple thing this week: confirm in writing to Lancashire County Council and to Ashley Dalton MP that she has received the call-in request lodged 170 days ago, and tell them when she will respond. A change of minister should never be the reason a community waits half a year to hear whether anyone in government is even reading their case.
Spread the word — share this briefing: