MP calls for formal enquiry in Paddington Health Campus project.

Before going into politics, I spent 18 years in business. I learnt that if you make people accountable for failure, you are more likely to get success.

Before going into politics, I spent 18 years in business. I learnt that if you make people accountable for failure, you are more likely to get success. It is a lesson that our public sector needs to take on board. Take the Paddington Health Campus project, which would have meant the closure of Harefield Hospital. In a letter to me, The Auditor General described it as "a catalogue of missed opportunities; inadequate programme management and fundamental weaknesses". Cost to the tax payer? Several hundred million pounds when you take into account how much more expensive it will be now to upgrade St Marys, Brompton and Harefield hospitals. In the private sector heads would have rolled: in the public sector someone writes a report and life goes on. I have written back to the Auditor General asking for a formal enquiry because it is in the national interest that there is accountability to Parliament for the chronic mismanagement of this scheme. On a brighter note, I was delighted to hear that the new Chief Executive of the Brompton & Harefield Trust spoke at the last Board meeting of the need to develop both sites. It seems that good sense is beginning to prevail at Harefield. I wish it were so at Mt Vernon, where the same Strategic Health Authority wants to close all cancer services. What does that mean if you are one of the million people for whom Mt Vernon is the most convenient place for treatment today? As your intrepid reporters on the Gazette have proved it means an inconvenient and stressful journey to Hammersmith or Hatfield. That is unacceptable, as will become very evident during the period of public consultation. Mt Vernon enjoys massive public support and is a site of underexploited potential. It is time that someone gripped the opportunity. "