Sudden Unexpected Death in Childhood

Connor Rand Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for securing this debate and speaking so powerfully, as he always does, about loss on these issues.

Frankie James Grogan lived in my constituency. He was three years old, and would have been 10 in January. Frankie was adored by his family, and everyone who met him said the same thing: that he was a joy to be around—always smiling, always laughing and always making his mum and dad proud. Frankie loved giraffes, as he loved most animals, and the only thing that could compete with them for his attention was his Lego.

Frankie was a special little boy, but in many other ways he was a normal little boy, like the millions of other toddlers who have just started nursery and have everything in life to look forward to. Then, one night, Frankie went to sleep and did not wake up: no explanation, no answers and, frankly, very little support—just an unimaginable loss. How does any parent come to terms with that? That is a question most of us cannot bring ourselves to even think about, but my constituent Sarah, who is with us today, had to face that reality. In a completely inspiring way, she turned her trauma into a movement for change, and working with SUDC UK she created Friends of Frankie, a brilliant local charity with a giraffe for its logo. The charity is dedicated to not just Frankie’s memory but his legacy, and that is the key point I want to raise today: Frankie’s legacy. When I have spoken to Sarah, she has articulated it better than I ever could: Frankie’s role now is to save other children and other parents too.

We need to make sudden unexplained death in childhood predictable, because when we can start to predict it, we can start to prevent it. First, as other Members have this morning, we need to recognise the scale of the issue and that these are not just isolated tragedies. We lose almost two children a fortnight to SUDC—in other words, more children than we lose to traffic accidents, fires and drowning. We work to keep children safe from those things—we have speed limits and fire alarms, and we teach children how to swim—but we do little to talk and think about or to research sudden unexplained death in childhood.

That is why we need action. As Members on both sides of the Chamber have discussed, we need a national plan with clear milestones for success that everyone can be held accountable for and that is based on research informed by quicker post-mortems, genetic data gathering and consistent, high-quality reviews. We can then start to understand, predict and prevent these deaths.

Take, for example, the link between febrile seizures and unexplained death. Frankie suffered 12 observed febrile seizures, yet the care he received for them was not informed by detailed research. One paramedic googled what a febrile seizure was in front of Sarah, shortly after Frankie had had one. I say to the Minister that we would not accept that lack of information—that ignorance—in any other part of children’s medicine, and we should not tolerate it when the consequences can be as tragic as these. Other Members have talked about how effective research has been when dealing with SIDS. If we had the same success here, we could save the lives of 32 children a year, which is surely as good a call to action as anyone can make.

It is great to see the Minister here so early in her new role, and I warmly welcome her to it. I urge her to meet SUDC UK as soon as possible and to pull the scientific experts together to agree a national plan that provides safety for every child and answers for every parent. That must be Frankie’s legacy—it is what Sarah and all friends of Frankie deserve.