Perhaps the most interesting section of PBD’s “age of austerity” speech at the weekend has gone largely unreported.

It’s the section sub-titled “Technology“:

There’s one more way to combine financial discipline with our positive vision.

Today, technology means everyone can have the information that was once kept by the privileged few.

In the hands of a party like Labour, that believes in central control, this opportunity is stifled.

Just look at computerising the NHS.

Labour say: let’s call in the expensive consultants. Let’s commission a massive IT project. Let’s make the state more powerful with a new, centralised computer to store everyone’s health records.

The result: NHS Connecting for Health, costing over twelve billion pounds.

One part of it is the Electronic Patient Records system – a central state-run database designed to let GPs, hospital doctors and nurses share your medical notes.

Now I want you to imagine how we’d have gone about it, if we’d had the chance.

We would have said: today, you don’t need a massive central computer to do this.

People can store their health records securely online, they can show them to whichever doctor they want.

They’re in control, not the state.

And when they’re in control of their own health records, they’re more interested in their health, so they might start living more healthily, saving the NHS money.

But best of all in this age of austerity, a web-based version of the government’s bureaucratic scheme services like Google Health or Microsoft Health Vault cost virtually nothing to run.

So this is where some really big savings could be made.

Not just shaving a bit off this budget here; that cost there.

Instead replacing whole chunks of the expensive, bureaucratic government machine with more modern methods – for a tiny fraction of the cost.

But it will only happen if you have a government that actually believes in giving power away.

So it’s clear: when the Eton Trifles are elected next year, they will trust unto Google’s and Microsoft’s “cloud” servers Britain’s medical records.

Because it’s cheap.

We’ll be in the very safest of hands.

What could POSSIBLY go wrong…?