BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown led cross-party condolences to Conservative Party leader David Cameron and his wife, Samantha, before the Commons adjourned yesterday as a mark of respect for the couple’s six-year-old son Ivan, who died unexpectedly overnight.
Conservative spokesman William Hague thanked Mr Brown for proposing the “exceptional action” of suspending the normal exchanges of prime minister’s questions and for a “generous and heartfelt” tribute in which Mr Brown described the loss of a child as “an unbearable sorrow that no parent should ever have to endure”.
Ivan had cerebral palsy and epilepsy, and Mr and Ms Cameron knew it was possible he could live a short life, although friends said yesterday that nothing had prepared them for the sudden loss. He was the eldest of their three children.
Ivan took ill overnight and died yesterday morning shortly after arriving at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London. His parents were with him when he died.
Mr Brown, whose daughter Jennifer died in 2002 just 10 days after her birth, told a packed Commons chamber: “Our condolences go out to David, to Samantha and the Cameron family. I know that in an all-too-brief life, [Ivan] brought joy to all those around him and I know also that, for all the days of his life, he was surrounded by his family’s love.”
Visibly moved, the prime minister continued: “Every child is precious and irreplaceable and the death of a child is an unbearable sorrow that no parent should ever have to endure.”
Mr Brown and Mr Cameron had in the past disagreed about discussing their family lives in public.
Yesterday, however, the prime minister said: “Politics can sometimes divide us. But there is a common human bond that unites us in sympathy and compassion at times of trial and in support of each other at times of grief.”
Mr Hague, who spoke to Mr Cameron shortly before making his statement yesterday, confirmed that Ivan’s six years of life had not been easy, and noted the Conservative leader’s gratitude to National Health Service careworkers who “not only did their utmost for their son” during his final illness but had “helped every day since he was born”.
Mr Hague added: “Ivan their son suffered much in his short life but he brought joy and love to those around him. As David himself has said in the past, for him and Samantha he will always be their beautiful boy.”