BOTH the University Hospital of North Durham and Bishop Auckland General Hospital were built under the private finance initiative.

And there are those who will hijack the issue of the proposed merger of the hospitals to attack the principle of private sector involvement in the NHS.

But while the crisis facing the hospitals is not exactly a fine advertisement for PFI, it does not necessarily point to any failures in PFI.

The crisis has been created by abject planning, rather than the manner in which the hospitals were funded.

It is not fair to judge the merits of PFI on the shambolic state of affairs in Durham and Bishop Auckland.

And we must not allow the investigation into the failings at these new developments to be turned into a debate on the role of private finance in the public sector.

The root of the problem is that the new hospital in Durham has fewer beds that the one it replaced.

To expect a lesser facility to cope with the increasing demands being placed on the NHS to treat more patients and reduce waiting times is ludicrous.

Also ludicrous is the prospect of a merger with Bishop Auckland, which will mean that some patients will have to travel past the gates of their new local hospital to be treated at a hospital at the other end of County Durham.

Yesterday, Health Secretary Alan Milburn was on national radio boasting of the new waves of investment being put into the NHS.

But, as the farcical situation in County Durham demonstrates, investment is ineffective unless the planning procedures are meticulous and the money is spent wisely.

Here we have a situation where £164m has been spent on building two state-of-the art hospitals with state-of-the-art facilities.

Yet, the public of County Durham are being given a poorer health service.

We sincerely hope lessons will be learned from this fiasco to ensure that, in future, real benefits are to be gained from investment in our health service.