An ambulance driver speed-trapped at 104mph on a crucial transplant dash faces court in a test case with implications for emergency drivers across the country.
Senior ambulance officer Mike Ferguson, an advanced driver with 36 years' service, was clocked at 3.30am as he sped down the A1 in an official car with blue flashing lights. He is being prosecuted after a dossier from Lincolnshire police was sent to the crown prosecution service despite health service protests that the transplant liver he was ferrying had to reach Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge, urgently from Leeds.
A second summons from Cambridgeshire police, whose cameras caught the car at the same speed at 4am, has been withdrawn after an explanation from West Yorkshire ambulance service.
The case was condemned yesterday by Mr Ferguson's union, the GMB, and Wakefield's Labour MP, David Hinchliffe, who chairs the Commons select committee on health.
John Durkin, Yorkshire regional secretary of the GMB, said: "This clearly was an emergency and we are in the business of saving lives, not trying to destroy them. I hope that common sense prevails."
The union added that Mr Ferguson was a highly experienced emergency driver, operating in very light traffic conditions in a car specially adapted for rapid journeys ferrying blood transfusions and transplant organs. A spokesman said that similar vehicles had regularly been clocked before but no action had been taken.
Mr Ferguson, whose case was to be heard tomorrow but has now been deferred, said that if he lost his licence he would also lose his job. "I am angry simply because I've had an unblemished driving licence for almost 40 years and it would be the first time I've had points or a fine," he said.
Mr Hinchliffe described the decision to prosecute as "absolutely astonishing" and said it was "normal and reasonable" for emergency vehicles to exceed speed limits when life was at stake.
The liver had been delivered successfully by Mr Ferguson in time for a team of transplant surgeons at Addenbrooke's to operate.
"It's just like the police prosecuting the police for speeding in an emergency," Mr Hinchliffe said. "It is disgraceful that somebody should be prosecuted in these circumstances."
The GMB said that a conviction of Mr Ferguson, who has a clean licence and no previous convictions in his 36 years with the West Yorkshire ambulance service, could have "serious implications for organ transplants".
Emergency deliveries might not be able to guarantee arrival in time if drivers were obliged to obey speed limits, with serious consequences for the transplant programme.
Mr Ferguson agrees: "When a patient donates organs it's usually not just the one. So what are you going to do? Have half a dozen helicopters out there?"
