Independent wrong on NHS IT debacle

The Independent has today rightly highlighted the waste of £6.4 billion on the attempt to create a national NHS IT system.


This waste, and the range of failures that caused it, have been highlighted in a report by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.


The leader article in the Independent, however, includes a bizarre comment in its concluding paragraph.


The paragraph starts:

"Away from the blame game, however, the bottom line is that this waste has to end."

Fair enough.  But then it continues:

"In an era when the economy was booming, IT faragos, though scandalous, were tolerable."

Apart from questioning how something 'scandalous' can, at the same time, be 'tolerable', this is an utterly bizarre comment.


It is NEVER tolerable for the Government to waste billions of pounds.  Never.  Every pound the Government wastes is a pound that could have provided a much needed service, could have reduced taxation on the less well off, or could have reduced the deficit by a pound.