A few months ago, Gordon Brown took time out to chat to members of Mumsnet, and the media thought it was such a hoot that he was asked what his favourite biscuit was, and couldn?t remember, that it got lots of press coverage.
Shortly afterwards, a report was released by a group called the Neonatal Taskforce. It had been appointed by the Department of Health in response to criticism by the National Audit Office of standards of care for sick babies, and after a year-long review it repeated what medical organisations and charities have been saying for years: that neonatal services need more money and that babies should have one-to-one nursing in intensive care, the same standard given to children and adults.
The sums of money involved are not huge, still ministers refused to allocate any extra money and the media barely noticed.
?The death of a child is an unbearable sorrow that no parent should have to endure,? Gordon Brown told the House of Commons after the death of David Cameron?s son, yet less than a year later, and not for the first time, he ignored an opportunity to prevent many deaths and reduce the risk that lots of other babies will suffer severe disability, including, like Ivan Cameron, cerebral palsy. Thousands of babies die in the neonatal period each year, and many more are stillborn, and as I cannot ask Gordon Brown why he is not prepared to pay for enough nurses to give sick babies the same standard of care everyone else is entitled to, I set up a petition on the 10 Downing Street website petitions.number10.gov.uk/nntaskforce/ and created a website www.signitgordon.org/
Mumsnet has proved with its childcare vouchers campaign that it is possible to get the Government?s attention and to get them to backtrack on bad decisions. That campaign was about saving people money. This is about saving lives and a health service that treats the tiniest, sickest patients as second class.
Please help me send a message to Gordon Brown that his moral compass isn?t working.