Hospitals

Emily Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for introducing the debate. We will be talking a lot about Milton Keynes, because if you wait for a speech about its hospital, you get two at once.

For me, the story about Milton Keynes hospital is really personal, as it involves my family and my in-laws. Unfortunately, I lost both my in-laws in the years leading up to my being elected to this place. What I would like to say about the care my family, my in-laws and my children have had is that the team at Milton Keynes hospital—the staff from the chief executive to the consultants, the doctors, the nurses and the porters—are all so professional. I am sure everyone in this House would want to join me in thanking them for their absolute persistence in the work they have had to do just to keep the NHS going over the last 14 years.

I worked closely with the hospital in my constituency for many years as deputy leader of Milton Keynes council, and the council had to step in when the Government did not. It was with funding from the council that we were able to build the new cancer centre and the new radiotherapy unit that will open very soon. It is because of the close working relationship with the council that the hospital has some of the lowest bed blocking waits in the country. With our teams integrated into the hospital, we make sure that the people who are able to go home go home with a care package as soon as possible, because it is our belief in Milton Keynes, and it was my belief as deputy leader, that people want to be in their homes.

Despite all that work, Milton Keynes hospital has had some of the longest waiting lists in the country. That is partly due to the 14 years of underfunding of Milton Keynes. When there are over 30,000 people waiting for non-urgent elective operations, with 1,762 of them having been waiting for more than a year, these do not feel like non-urgent cases, because those people are not allowed to live a proper life, to play with their grandchildren or to go back to work as fast as they should. There is both a social cost and an economic cost. I am pleased to say that, with the investment by this Government to reduce waiting times, we have seen waiting times go down, but they are still too long.

Unlike a lot of other hospitals we will talk about today, much of the issue for Milton Keynes is that it serves the fastest growing area in our region. In fact, it is growing at double the rate of anywhere else in the greater south-east. That means that our population is set to double to 410,000 people by 2050. On average, 11 people move to Milton Keynes every single day. That is not new in Milton Keynes, because we have been developing communities, homes and businesses for quite some time under the leadership of the Labour council. What has failed time and again in Milton Keynes is the investment that we need in our local hospitals, but this Government and these Milton Keynes MPs will actually deliver what was promised over and over again but never delivered by the Conservative party.