The closure of the Deerplay Children’s Ward at Burnley General and the transfer of in-patients to Blackburn will test to destruction the coalition’s ability to deliver on its promises.

Burnley’s increasingly ineffective Lib Dem MP, Gordon Birtwistle boasted on 2 November 2010:

“Once I have secured the stay of the children’s ward I will then begin heavy campaigning for the return of A&E services (to Burnley General).”

Pendle’s Conservative MP, Andrew Stephenson, tweeted on 8 December:

written again to Pendle's GP's asking them to help save Burnley Children's Ward...15 have already written to me to oppose the closure

A few days earlier, Stephenson had talked of 40 local GPs protesting about the proposed closure.

Inevitably, as is his way, he called on the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, to intervene:

“Hopefully the Secretary of State will step in and help resolve the situation in a sensible and common sense fashion.”

The closure decision is indeed going to be reviewed.

But the proposed changes to paediatric services are going ahead anyway, and in advance of the review’s outcome, on the grounds of “clinical safety”.

However, we are told that nothing will be done which is irreversible. Hmmmm.

I wonder where this leaves local doctors who are opposed to the closure? What weight do they give to those “clinical safety” arguments?

With the Government planning to put all future NHS commissioning into the hands of GPs, people in East Lancashire should be told, in detail, what local doctors think.

Time for our GPs to step up to the plate, speak out and be counted.

Who is watching the watchdog?

I read that the chief of Canada’s Public Sector Integrity Commission, Christiane Ouimet, “sat on her bum for three years, rarely rousing herself to investigate complaints”.

Until she resigned in advance of a highly critical report from Canada’s Auditor-General, Ouimet was responsible for investigating complaints by whistleblowers and others.

We learn that out of a total of 228 complaints, Ouimet launched a mere five formal investigations and none were substantiated.

What explains this torpor?

Were there no Parliamentary Committees in Ottawa to keep her on her toes?

Watchdogs need to bark, if only occasionally, to remind us they are there.

And doing their job.