The Health Minister’s visit to the Treatment Centre last week was suitably low key and one encouraging outcome was demonstration of commitment by local managers supported by the Minister to develop services here for prostate, hip and knee operations in otherwise fit people. I am still getting sad, frustrated letters from patients and their families about inexcusable delays in treatment and allegations of poor care. These remain the strongest driver to increase our local services for the benefit of the whole County.

I was very pleased to meet eight members of the new Primary Care Trust Patients Forum and was delighted to discover that they are dedicated to improving the scope and quality of local health care and impatient because administrative delays impede their enthusiasm to take up some of the challenges we face. The meeting was supported by a member of the Birmingham staff of the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health and he promised to cut through some of the red tape and facilitate their work. I look forward to meeting with them occasionally but hopefully regularly in the future.

At the Health Select Committee we met Sir Ian Kennedy, the Chairman with the new Chief Executive of the Commission for Health Care Audit and Inspection (CHAI) which takes over in April from the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI).

One crucial difference between these organisations is that CHAI will carry out inspections of all health care providers including those in the private sector and that it can actually investigate the quality and outcomes of the care provided. CHI was limited by its remit to reviews of clinical governance only. Governance means the method of governing an organisation so in effect CHI could only assess the measures managers use to control their organisation – a far cry from looking at the quality of care patients receive and the outcomes of that care.

CHAI has also taken over responsibility for the NHS complaints procedure. This is long overdue and removes that incomprehensible anachronism that a Trust’s complaints’ convenor was on that Trust’s payroll and yet had the power to block a complaint completely.

My second-hand car salesman simile has come true sooner than I expected. 

The Government minister in the House of Lords has acknowledged the unconstitutional error in the Asylum and Immigration Bill of removing the right to independent review of appeals and will amend this clause before the Bill returns to the Commons.

The Fire and Rescue Services Bill passed its third reading unopposed on Monday and the Traffic Management Bill, which eases the burden on the police of traffic control, passed its third reading on Tuesday only opposed by the Conservatives. Gwyneth Dunwoody, that doyenne of ‘independent’ Labour MPs, described the Bill as a sensible attempt to organise traffic management properly.