I feel quite nervous about the Conservative Party's recently announced NHS database plans.

Whilst I welcome the concept of patients having access to their health records, giving hospitals the choice of IT equipment and the principle of local data storage I have concerns:

· How much of the £billions already spent since 2002 on the current NHS database scheme will be written off?

· What are the exit costs of leaving the pre-existing contracts?

· Do we really trust Microsoft or Google to keep patient records fully secure if they are awarded contracts to develop the system?

I do feel that irrespective of which party is in government that all large procurement and especially IT projects are fraught with risk and that they frequently become bottomless “money pits” into which taxpayers £'s disappear with alarming speed.

I wonder if there would be mileage in investigating if there is a real need for this whizzy, all singing & all dancing IT stuff in the NHS?

I am not sure I understand why huge amounts of money are spent on massive NHS procurement projects in the name of “efficiency” but the number of administrators and other back room staff seems to increase every year……………..

Once in a while you read a story in the press that makes you to check the date to see if it's April 1^st……………….

One such example is the widely reported story that Peter Mandelson wants to reduce the university entrance requirements for students from “poorer backgrounds – apparently this is called “fair access”.

Isn't this really just an admission that the various (mainly socialist) reforms of the education system in the last 30 – 40 years have failed those from “poorer backgrounds” – what we used to call the working class?

There used to be a way for people from “poorer backgrounds” to achieve their academic potential and go into higher education with good A level grades – it was called the grammar school.

I have long held the view that the demise of the grammar schools was more due to the poor standards and underinvestment in the secondary modern schools than anything that was intrinsically wrong with the grammars. (Well, that and socialist educational theory!)

Grammar schools were just one reflection of a society that awarded achievement and hard work, in other words a meritocracy – a word that doesn't seem to exist in New Labour's vocabulary.

The message that Mandelson's plan seems to send out is that you don't have to work hard to achieve good grades – all you need to do is claim you are from a deprived area and you win a “get into university free” card……………….