CHANGE doesn't happen quickly in the National Health Service, does it? When Darlington MP Alan Milburn took over as Health Secretary, he said transforming the NHS after decades of under-investment was like turning round a super-tanker.

The process of dealing with complaints and injustice in the health service is just as cumbersome.

The Richard Neale affair dragged on for several years before anything was done about it, and by that time, too many of his patients had suffered from his incompetence.

And we are still waiting for the Government to act on the recommendations made by the official inquiry into his ill-fated employment at the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton.

The inquiry was announced on 2001, and 2004 is drawing to a close without urgent improvements to the system being made.

We appreciate that many of the issues in the Neale inquiry overlap with the forthcoming fifth report into the Harold Shipman case, and that the Government is seeking to cover the lessons of both cases in its strategy for the future.

But more efficient ways of recording complaints, and tighter controls on the employment of doctors, shouldn't have to wait. We all know the old system is fundamentally flawed and patients are at risk with every day that passes.

We call on the Government to get on with it. This sorry saga has been blighted by delays and complacency for far too long.

The only thing that seems to have happened quickly in the Neale case is the decision to give him a glowing reference and a pay-off to shift the problem elsewhere.