Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Jonathan Djanogly

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I will tell the hon. Lady what has happened to the Prime Minister’s pledge to protect hospitals: an extra £10 billion that we have promised for the NHS, which her party refused to promise. Her local hospital has 88 more doctors since 2010, and it is doing an extra 2,000 operations for her constituents year in, year out. I will tell her what makes the deficit problem a lot worse: the heritage of the private finance initiative, which means £73 billion of debt that her party bequeathed to the NHS.

[Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)]

In 2004 the then Huntingdonshire primary care trust said that it would give Hinchingbrooke hospital a grant of £8 million towards the cost of a new PFI treatment centre. Shortly before the PCT’s demise, it changed without discussion the terms of the grant and made it a loan, which has since been treated in its accounts as a deficit. If I write to my right hon. Friend, will he look into that patently unfair treatment?

[Mr Hunt]

Of course. One of my biggest concerns is that many of the hospitals now facing huge deficits are seeing their situation made infinitely worse by PFI debt. We will continue to do everything we can to help hospitals deal with that.