Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Ivan Cameron, the son of U.K. Conservative Party leader David Cameron, died at the age of six.

“Ivan, who suffered from cerebral palsy and severe epilepsy, was taken ill overnight and died” early this morning, the opposition party said in a statement today.

Ivan had been severely disabled since birth, unable to speak or move. His condition meant he had regular life- threatening epileptic fits. He died 45 minutes after being admitted to hospital in London. Cameron had been at work yesterday as normal.

Cameron, 43, and his wife Samantha, have two younger children, Nancy and Arthur. The death will take the opposition leader away from his duties for at least a week, his office said.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah, who lost their first child days after she was born in December 2001, sent condolences to the Camerons. The weekly prime minister’s question time, a debate between Brown and Cameron, was cancelled, with Parliament suspended for half an hour after brief statements from representatives of the three main parties.

Brown’s Condolence

“The death of a child is an unbearable sorrow that no parent should have to endure,” Brown told lawmakers.

Conservative Foreign Affairs spokesman William Hague told the House of Commons that, “Ivan’s life wasn’t an easy one. While his parents lived with the knowledge for a long time that he could die young, this has made their loss no less hard to bear.”

Next week’s questions session had already been downgraded to feature deputy leaders of the parties because Brown plans to be in Washington.

Since the beginning of this year, Cameron has made inroads into Brown’s popularity by criticizing the government’s handling of the recession. The Conservatives hold a 12 percentage-point lead over the Labour government, according to a poll of 1,004 adults by ICM Ltd. conducted between Feb. 20 and Feb. 22.

Born in April 2002, 10 months after Cameron became a member of Parliament, Ivan was a disabled child who needed round-the- clock care. When he came under the spotlight with his bid for the party leadership in 2005, Cameron spoke publicly about the ordeal of learning about Ivan’s condition and caring for him.

Cameron’s Account

“We went to the hospital -- they did some tests and a brain scan and then they sit you down in this room,” Cameron said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph that year. “It’s when they move the box of Kleenex next to the sofa that you know that it’s not good.”

Almost a year later, in his first party conference speech as leader, Cameron referred to Ivan and his illness without mentioning him by name. The experience had led him to rely daily on Britain’s state-run medical service, the NHS.

“When your family relies on the NHS all the time -- day after day, night after night -- you really know just how precious it is,” he said. “I know the problems.”

“It had a profound impact on shaping who David Cameron is,” Conservative Treasury spokesman George Osborne told BBC News today. “David has often ended up sleeping on hospital floors.”

“You mourn the difference between the child you thought you were going to have and the reality,” Cameron told the Daily Telegraph in 2005. “But, then, there definitely was a moment. I remember driving along in the car with Ivan in the back and seeing him in the mirror and thinking: ‘Going to get through this. He’s lovely.’”

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Deen in London at markdeen@bloomberg.netRobert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 25, 2009 07:48 EST