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Published: 12th May, 2011
by TOM FOOT

IT sounds like it could be the latest Harry Potter adventure: Ed Miliband and the Deviated Septum.

But the Labour Party leader is going to need a blast of Hogwarts magic if he is to get his “snoring surgery” for free on the NHS.

Mr Miliband, who lives in Dartmouth Park, announced on Friday that he will have a “routine operation to correct his deviated septum at the end of July with the NHS”.

Yet a controversial scaling back of so-called “Low Priority Treatments” (LPT) on the NHS in north London means the 43-year-old former Haverstock School pupil will have to convince his GP he is a “special case”.

Failing that, he will be forced to either go private or travel miles away from his home to get his nostrils treated.

“We do not intend to comment further,” a Labour spokesman said.

A blacklist of treatments, including “surgery for snoring” and “correcting deviated septum”, was drawn up by Mr Miliband’s local health body, the North Central London NHS sector trust, in February.

The restrictions were first introduced in September when GPs were told not to make referrals for 25 NHS procedures unless in “special cases”.

The LPT policy was then extended in February to include 13 further treatments with health bosses estimating savings of £2,535,480 for 2011/12.

It means the 38 procedures are unlikely to be available free of charge at the Whittington, Royal Free or University College Hospital – or through any NHS trust in the north London sector, spanning Enfield, Barnet, Haringey, Islington and Camden.

Earlier in the year, NHS bosses said the policy would only affect just a handful of patients. But they would not have been banking on one as high profile as the leader of the Labour Party.

Both Mr Miliband’s sons were born at UCLH in Euston and he was photographed drinking tea with nurses last month and quoted as saying: “I love UCLH.”

UCLH chief executive Sir Robert Naylor told the New Journal a fortnight ago he expected LPT to no longer be provided for free at the hospital. And the new chief executive of Whittington Health, Dr Yi Mien Koh, has also told the New Journal she expected to supplement a loss of public funding by charging patients for LPTs.

MP Frank Dobson, the former Labour health secretary, told an NHS meeting on Monday night that he had written to Dr Koh asking her not to implement that policy.

A deviated septum – when one nostril is narrower than the other – is one of the most common causes for habitual snoring. It can cause a number of breathing problems including sinus infections, allergies, bleeding and, if left untreated, a more serious and potentially fatal condition called sleep apnea.

A Labour Party spokesman confirmed that Mr Miliband had been diagnosed with sleep apnea and that the deviated septum surgery was to correct this.

The government is currently drawing up a national list of Low Priority Treatments to bring an end to regional variations.