Hospitals

Freddie van Mierlo Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)]

Hospitals matter to everyone, but hospitals falling apart help no one—not patients, not staff and not the economy. The Government have called the NHS “broken”. They rightly blamed the Conservatives, and criticised the NHS’s management under their leadership, so why are the Government now making the same mistakes?

Under the revised new hospital programme, the building of the Royal Berkshire hospital will not commence for another decade. There is little prospect of a new Royal Berkshire to serve the communities of Henley, Reading, Newbury, Bracknell and Windsor until the 2040s. Doctors who have worked in the NHS for over 30 years believe that they will never work in modern buildings. The cancer centre alone is 164 years old.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

My hon. Friend talks of members of staff with long service. A former nurse with 40 years’ experience in the NHS recently contacted me. She took her husband, who has complex needs, into hospital, as he had a hand infection, and they were forced to wait for over 12 hours in a tiny cubicle with no ventilation. It pained me to hear that story. She worked so hard for the NHS, which she felt was down on its knees. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a damning indictment of the state of our hospitals, and that we urgently need to pursue a major 10-year capital investment programme to get them back up to speed?

[Freddie van Mierlo]

My hon. Friend is right to point out the impact of the state of the NHS on the brilliant people who work there. My sister is a nurse in the Royal Preston hospital, and she tells me just how hard it is to walk past people who are being cared for in corridors. Every week at the Royal Berkshire, an operation is cancelled due to power cuts, water supply issues, broken lifts or malfunctioning temperature controls. Those are lost appointments and lost efficiency for the NHS. Floods and sinkholes plague the foundations of the Royal Berkshire hospital, which now requires relocation, and identified suitable sites are set to be put on the market at the end of this year. Further inaction by the Government will mean that those carefully laid plans and that funding will amount to nothing.

There are also hospitals that were never considered for the programme, as my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) pointed out. I recently visited the Warneford hospital in Oxford, which gives in-patient care to patients with severe mental health conditions, including schizophrenia, personality disorders and psychosis. I was shocked by the conditions that patients live in. They are in tight spaces in dark rooms, and the infrastructure is Georgian. There were rooms that reminded me of recent visits to HMP Huntercombe. I said that rather nervously to the member of staff showing me around, worried that I might offend them. They gently held my arm and said, “Freddie, why do you think we showed you these rooms?”

Staff told me that cramped conditions make it difficult to take breaks during the day. One worker showed me their windowless cupboard office—hardly great for their own mental health. Staff also told me how working in Georgian buildings impacts the quality of their work. Sight lines in common rooms are obstructed by pillars; rooms are difficult to heat; and security is difficult to maintain. A new Warneford would cost a fraction of the price of a physical health hospital, and the Government promised to put mental health on the same footing as physical health, so why does the revised new hospital programme not include a single mental health facility?

Both the Warneford and the Royal Berkshire have been devastated by the Government’s lack of foresight. The cuts to hospital spending are a decision made to save money, but that is a false economy. Over the next 10 years, repairs to the Royal Berkshire hospital are projected to cost £400 million—a quarter of the cost of a new hospital. Add to that the many other neglected hospitals, and the loss is unthinkable. Proper investment in modern infrastructure is needed now.

In my constituency we have the Townlands Memorial hospital, which shows how good the NHS can be with modern infrastructure. Anyone who receives care there, whether through the Royal Berkshire NHS foundation trust or the Oxford Health NHS foundation trust, sings its praises. It hosts over 30 specialities and plans to expand further. Let us give our hospitals the chance to excel.

[Several hon. Members rose—]