Article For Folkestone Herald

11 November 2004

Last weekend’s train crash was a terrible tragedy. All our thoughts and prayers go to the families of those who lost their lives and to those who remain injured. Tragedies like this inevitably remind us of the frailty of the human conditions and of how vulnerable we are all are.

We are not strangers to this kind of event in Shepway. Just a few months ago a collision occurred between a car and one of the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch trains at a level crossing at Dymchurch. That too had tragic fatal consequences.

The possibility that last weekend’s crash was deliberately caused adds a chilling element to the tragedy. Whether this turns out to be true or not there will no doubt be a serious attempt to see what lessons can be learned.

Meanwhile the sense of security which we feel as we settle down in our seats for a long train journey will inevitably be disturbed.

Yet, hard though it is and terrible though last week’s tragedy was, we should make an effort to see it in context.

Ten people die every day on Britain’s roads. And even more people die as a result of infections acquired in hospital from one or other of the superbugs we hear so much about.

Some at least of these deaths can undoubtedly be avoided.

The Chief Executive of the National Health Service has admitted that the need to meet Government targets makes it more difficult to deal with infections. And the National Audit Office recently found that infection teams who want to close wards to deal with an infection are often prevented from doing so by local managers who say that to do so would cause them to miss these targets.

I have repeatedly raised these matters in Parliament and asked for an instruction to be given that the infection teams should no longer be overruled in this way. Every time I have made these pleas I have been turned down.

But I shall persist. We are right to mourn the loss of human life. But we must also do all we reasonably can do to save it.

That will rightly inform the investigation into last weekend’s rail crash. It should inform other areas of policy as well.