George Osbourne delivered an excellent address on Monday at the Institute for Chartered Accountants on how the Conservatives plan - if elected - to instil discipline in those who spend public money. Of course I would say that, wouldn’t I. I am a member of the Party and on the List of approved candidates.

Nevertheless, he spoke for every value I - and many millions of others - hold dear. He stressed the paramount need for accountability. We all know there are vast areas of waste in the public sector: where our money is spent in a way which is neither judicious or prudent.

The Shadow Chancellor said the Conservative Party intended creating strong incentives to prevent spend-thrift ways such as introducing clauses in employment contracts which would ensure government workers spent money as though it were their own. He wants to see clear information of how our money is managed and he wants to investigate wasteful spending and reward workers who come up with proposals to save money.

All of this makes perfect sense. I can’t think of a better way way to act. Treat others as they would wise to be treated and spend their money the way they would wish to have it spent.

Repeating the same word three times for emphasis has become a common device in public speaking: what about three different ones. Empathy, Consideration and Integrity. That’s what Mr Osbourne is talking about.

But here’s the rub….and the responsibility. You have to define what is waste and what is real endeavour. As Francis Maude, who spoke shortly after Mr Osbourne said, it is often failures in business which teach you as much as the success. And, sometimes, you have to stumble before you succeed.

Under the Roll Call of Waste listed in the booklet I took home with me, is listed the NHS Super Computer. There is no such thing. Under the NHS’s National IT programme an attempt is being made to consolidate summaries of patients’ care records across the UK onto a national database. It is not one big computer but - in part - a way of linking the headline details of patients’ records stored on computers at GPs’ surgeries across the UK.

Once again I have to declare an interest. I have carried out the presentation and media training for many of the spokespeople involved. Among them are surgeons, GPs, mid-wives and pharmacists. In other words those at the sharp end. They all believe - to one degree or another - that it will work in the end. Many have said until it is achieved we will not be able to realize the full potential of some scientific developments.

Bu there is a danger this whole enterprise will be left for dead in the water because few people have looked at it clearly and put it in context. The NAO said neither the treasury department nor the Department of Health attempted to quantify the benefits of the scheme. Then do so. Talk to the psychiatrist whose wife nearly died in ER because the crash team working on her after a road accident did not realize she was diabetic. They would have done if they had had immediate access to her records. They found out only because her husband got to casualty in time and knew how to intervene. Talk to the eye surgeon who has reckoned that summary care records would slash costs in cataract surgery, the NHS’s most regularly performed surgery and a huge cost to the tax-payer.

The attempt to centralize patient records is part of the biggest civilian IT project in the world. We forget that the NHS is smaller only than the Peoples’ Liberation Army of China and Wal-mart worldwide. As one surgeon said to me this project is as though he has been put down in the middle of moorland where there are no roads and he only has a compass. There is no map. Nothing like this has ever been done before. Does that make it wrong? Let’s hope not. It is just as well the pioneering transplant surgeons didn’t think that way.

The NHS is full of waste. It has some hugely expensive and pointless proceedures and practices. The effort to centralize records is behind schedule. It has driven many to the edge of distraction. It may take years to accomplish. But, let’s not chuck the baby out with the bathwater.