Hospitals

Ben Coleman Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ben Coleman (Chelsea and Fulham) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Morgan]

I will make some progress.

One of the main reasons those problems have not been rectified is successive delays from successive Governments. Shropshire is, again, a prime example. This is not related to the new hospital programme, but none the less, £312 million was granted for the hospital transformation programme in Shropshire back in 2018. Seven years later, while the country has been through five Prime Ministers and eight different Health Secretaries, Shropshire is still waiting for that transformation to take place. Opposition from both the Labour and Conservative councils that serve the area, along with the ridiculously lengthy process that capital expenditure has to go through to be signed off, means that desperately needed improvements have been horribly delayed as construction costs rise. As a result, the original plans have been scaled back and their value diminished.

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[Helen Morgan]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) because he has tried to intervene before.

[Ben Coleman]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for her delayed response. I am struck by her lack of response to two of my colleagues. She did not acknowledge to my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) that in my constituency of Chelsea and Fulham, the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is getting money from the Government as a precursor to rebuilding the hospitals promised to it. More importantly, she did not address the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) that we are all reaping the whirlwind of the decisions taken by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government. The Liberal Democrats made a choice to go into that Government, to take on roles including as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and as Health Ministers, and to make those cuts and destroy the NHS. We are now reaping the whirlwind of the decisions that she and her colleagues made. Is it not a little bit cheeky of her to make some of the points and claims she is making today?

[Helen Morgan]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman’s hospital is being dealt with, but I am sure that the residents of Torbay will not feel the benefit of that. I am slightly surprised that he thinks that the decade since the Liberal Democrats were in power has had no impact whatsoever. I did address the point that when a party comes into government and has to clear up the appalling mess left by the previous Government, there are difficult choices to be made. His party knows that. Labour Members, for example, have voted to retain the two-child benefit cap and keep a quarter of a million children in poverty—something that no one in my party has ever voted for.

The last time I opened a Liberal Democrat Opposition day debate was in October, and the topic was primary care. I explained how the Government’s failure to invest in primary care was a false economy that increased pressures and costs in the critical parts of the system. The management of our hospital buildings displays that same false economy. Just as spending money on critical care instead of prevention and public health is a poor approach to managing a health service, waiting for the roof to collapse is an irresponsible way to manage NHS buildings. As problems are ignored and investment is poorly targeted, it is the patients and the hard-working staff striving to help them who are forced to suffer.

This is not just about the new hospital programme. Across the country, there are thousands of GP surgeries that need urgent improvement if they are to provide the care that patients deserve. More than 2,000 hospital buildings across England were built before the foundation of the NHS in 1948, while the state of GP surgeries varies wildly. Many surgeries are simply no longer fit for purpose, having been built in the 1950s. Prescott surgery in my constituency, for example, has long been recognised as somewhere that needs to drastically increase in size because the population of the village has increased drastically itself. Despite the land and the community infrastructure levy funding being available, there is no sign of a new surgery being built. As the delay continues, the costs are rising and the challenge grows for both the council and the integrated care board, which are already under immense pressure to cut their costs.

Instead of pursuing fantasies like the Conservatives or false economies like the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats would invest to save by starting construction now, and ending the epidemic of cancelled operations, closed-off wards and huge sums wasted on emergency repairs. That would save the taxpayer money in the long run and benefit patients much sooner.

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[Helen Morgan]

There have been successive failures in NHS management that all parties need to hold their hands up for—that is a fair point. We should, though, focus on the task in hand rather than continually going back decades, either to the coalition Government or to the Blair Government before that. That is not helpful to our constituents, who want a solution now.

[Ben Coleman]

On that point, will the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Morgan]

No. I have been very generous with my time and I am going to make some progress.

We are also campaigning for a review of outdated Government finance rules that prevent NHS trusts from investing the funds that they have raised into their own buildings. Even NHS managers struggle to access common-sense investment in their facilities due to overly complex rules and glacial processes. Trusts are prevented from using unspent funds on improving their buildings. We need root-and-branch reform, combined with our 10-year programme of investment, to bring our local health facilities up to scratch.

In conclusion, the recent history of the NHS is one of short-term decision making and of the failure of successive Governments to grasp the nettle of long-term sustained investment in the things that matter: hospital buildings, GP services, dentistry, pharmacy and, crucially, the unspoken crisis of social care. The outcome is an organisation that is spending millions of pounds to go backwards. It truly is a false economy.

This Government have spoken warmly of the need to reform the NHS and improve productivity, and we support them in that, but we cannot expect to retain staff and provide high-quality care when so many doctors and nurses are negotiating leaking roofs and sewage backing up on the wards. Dealing with the new hospital programme is a matter of urgency, and I urge the Secretary of State to, at long last, grasp the nettle.

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[Dr Johnson]

The previous Secretary of State made it clear that the hospital was fully funded and would be built. What has changed since then is that we have a new Government who made the choice not to build it. These are choices that the new Government must own.

When the Government came to power, the Secretary of State commissioned the Darzi review, which highlighted the need for more capital investment in the NHS, but decided not to prioritise the delivery of the new hospitals. To govern is to choose, and the Secretary of State has chosen not to deliver the hospitals. We set out our commitment to delivering them on time, with the agreement of the then Chancellor. Of course, spending decisions cannot be made for a future Parliament, but the Secretary of State has chosen not to make the same commitment.

[Ben Coleman]

It may be helpful I correct a couple of “facts” that the hon. Lady has given. In his election literature, my predecessor as Member of Parliament for Chelsea and Fulham made the clear statement that he had secured the funds for the rebuilding and refurbishment of Charing Cross hospital. When I spoke to the chief executive of the hospital, he said that he had received no such reassurance from the Government, and on coming to power we found that no money had been set aside for the guaranteed refurbishment.

Moreover, this did not just apply to Charing Cross hospital. Across the country, the last Government’s claims to have found the funding were discovered not to be true when we came to power. The right hon. Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar), who is talking to the hon. Lady at the moment, lives in my constituency, so he is well aware of the accuracy of what I am saying. [Laughter.] I know; I will get complaints about the bins again now. Would the hon. Lady like to reflect on the accuracy of what she is saying, in the light of the facts as I have set them out?

[Dr Johnson]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is not correct. The previous Government, and the previous Chancellor, made a clear commitment to providing the money, and to the hospital building project, but the current Government have not chosen to meet that commitment. These are choices that are being made. For now, patients and staff are being denied the quality facilities that they have deserved for decades. For some hospitals, construction work will not even begin until 2039. Will the Minister write to me, giving the date on which each hospital will be completed?

We can see the Labour Government’s lack of ambition. There are 40 hospitals in waves 1 to 3 of their programme—40 hospitals over 15 years—but there are 515 acute, specialist and community hospitals in England. At this pace, the replacement of the NHS estate will require a cycle of nearly 200 years. That is the equivalent of a hospital built in 1825 not being replaced until this year. That is Labour’s ambitious programme.

We can all see the pressures facing the Chancellor as her economic mismanagement hits the country. We cannot tax our way to growth. Perhaps that is yet another reason why growth forecasts have been cut yet again. How do we know that Labour will not come for those already delayed new hospitals in a year or two, and that there will not be further delays or cancellations? The Government have made it clear that the new hospitals are not their priority. Will the Minister give us that guarantee?