An organisation as important as the NHS deserves vigorous independent examination of its standards

Clinical excellence should be rewarded, but the conditions that lead to clinical scandals also need to be found and punished

The NHS treats more than one million patients every 36 hours (PA)

In recent weeks, two major scandals, both appalling in their different ways, have emerged from the NHS. The latest, in east Kent, centres on the treatment of babies, and allegations that some died needlessly through lack of care. The earlier story, broken by The Independent, concerned perhaps decades of failures in maternity care at what is now the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust.

Such failings are not new. The names of previous episodes echo down the years: Alder Hay (callous use of body tissues); Stafford (widespread neglect of patients); the Bristol heart scandal; the casual misuse of opiates in Gosport; even the mass murders of Harold Shipman, the incubation of so-called superbugs and the infected blood scandal can be mentioned in the same context.

This is because one common factor throughout is the way a certain kind of complacent institutional culture was allowed to develop that made such failings possible, if not inevitable. As a result, people suffered, lives were lost, and families destroyed.