(Image: CHRIS BOOTH)
The latest revelations over breast cancer services at County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust should chill every patient who ever placed their faith in that organisation.
How can a hospital trust have no clear record of a surgeon said to have assisted in an operation, as explored in a trust investigation into a mystery surgeon linked to the hospital?
How can a private medical company apparently operate from staff accommodation on its own hospital grounds without those now in charge being able to explain who was responsible, who authorised it, or what oversight existed?
These are not technicalities.
They go to the heart of public trust.
A service already linked to missed warnings, avoidable harm, unnecessary mastectomies and a review extended after patient harm that could eventually involve thousands of women cannot be allowed to investigate itself in slow motion while patients wait years for answers.
A public inquiry into the breast cancer scandal is now unavoidable.
Only an inquiry with the power to compel evidence, examine leadership decisions and follow the paper trail can establish how such failures were allowed to develop, deepen and persist.
The women affected deserve more than apologies, helplines and internal reviews.
They deserve accountability.
That accountability must reach the top.
Former chief executive Sue Jacques led the trust during the period now under such grave scrutiny.
Honours are bestowed for public service.
If the system over which she presided failed patients on this scale, then serious questions must be asked about whether it is right for her to retain an OBE.
This is not about vengeance.
Read more
Mr Murray, open your eyes to why we need a public inquiry into breast cancer care
The terrible human stories of the women caught up in the Durham breast cancer scares
Durham breast cancer care: this is little short of a scandal
It is about truth.
It is about women who trusted the NHS with their lives and now face the awful possibility that their care, their surgery and their suffering were shaped by failures no one in authority properly confronted.
Those ultimately accountable must answer, in public, and without delay.