Lynne Featherstone

Local Haringey Police Chief, Simon O'Brien, came up to Parliament for one of our regular meetings. I usually go to him at Tottenham Police Station - so it was a nice change. Issues of discussion included the changing police estate (i.e. police stations and other land and buildings) in Haringey, the re-offending rate, youth courts, knife crime and anti-social behaviour.

Zoom back to Haringey to go to the new wing (long time coming) of the Whittington Hospital. Some real design thought and talent has gone into creating state of the art facilities at this much loved, but somewhat run down, hospital.

A wow factor entrance - with double height spaces, huge and voluminous, where outpatients will wait for imaging (x-ray) or other. High tech - the patients will be given a pager which allows them to go to the new restaurants or shops whilst waiting - and they will be paged just when they are next but one to be called.

The critical care area (intensive care in old jargon) is large and spacious - which will cut down on infection. The equipment should always be right up to date as the contract contracts the supplier to keep it up to date - no more purchasing and having to keep beyond sell by date stuff. And perhaps most of all - it has all been thought through so that form follows function - and the needs of the patient are at the forefront.

There have been huge problems getting to this stage – and all sorts of things wrong and should have been done differently with the Jarvis contract, the timings and costs etc – but finally we're there.

Excuse the not fantastic picture - the girl who kindly agreed to take the photo sadly seems to have missed the splendid surroundings and just got me and the escalators!

Back to Westminster for briefing on tomorrow's Queen's Speech and a phone call to say that Iain Dale has invited me to co-present tomorrow's (Wednesday's) show on 18 Doughty Street. I phone Iain to say willing to give it a go!