THE future of the North-East's only child heart surgery unit has been thrown into question once again after the Government ordered a review of plans to close three other units..

It means an Independent Reconfiguration Panel will look again at how a decision to recommend closure at units in Leeds, Leicester and London was made.

Earlier this year the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle emerged as one of the winners from a national review of child heart surgery.

An exhaustive examination by a panel of experts, on behalf of the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts, recommended that this specialised surgery should be concentrated at fewer hospitals.

This process resulted in a recommendation that the Freeman Hospital's unit should remain open and the Leeds General Infirmary's child heart surgery unit should close.

The JCPCT also recommended that specialist units should be closed at Glenfield Hospital, in Leicester and the Royal Brompton Hospital, in London.

While this came as a relief for families in the North-East, the closure plans were strongly opposed by campaigners in Leeds, who are seeking a judicial review to stop their local unit being closed.

Now, after a major campaign by protesters in Leicestershire, who used an e-petition with more than 100,000 signatures to force a Parliamentary debate, the Government has intervened in the process.

Health Minister Anna Soubry told MPs the new review would "look at all the decisions" taken by the JCPCT.

Sir Edward Garnier, the Conservative MP for the Leicestershire town of Market Harborough, told the Commons: "The current decision is frankly wrong and Parliament is required to change that decision."

The Government's decision to order a new review was welcomed by Save Our Surgery (SOS), the campaign group calling for the Leeds General Infirmary unit to be retained.

Sharon Cheng, from SOS, said while the group was "delighted" she feared that the IRP "will simply repeat the same flawed process" unless it looked closely at the way each centre was assessed.

Sir Len Fenwick, chief executive of the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: "The review into children's heart surgery has been extremely thorough, time-consuming and evidence-based."