Oral Answers to Questions

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We are saving households across the United Kingdom, including in Scotland, £900 on their energy bills as a result of our energy bills guarantee. In the coming years, we will spend £12 billion protecting particularly the most vulnerable families and pensioners across the United Kingdom. But the best way to reduce people’s bills is to halve inflation, as we have promised to do, and to produce more home-grown energy here in the United Kingdom. That is something that this Government support; maybe the hon. Gentleman could confirm whether the SNP supports it.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

Q5. The Prime Minister will be well aware of the dogged campaign of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) for a rebuild of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn. That hospital is constructed from failing aerated concrete, and its ceilings are now supported by more than 3,000 wooden and metal props. Is the Prime Minister also aware of the strength of feeling locally in support of the rebuild, not just in North West Norfolk, but in Broadland, North Norfolk, Norwich North, Mid Norfolk, South West Norfolk, Huntingdon, North West Cambridgeshire and South Holland and the Deepings, whose populations are all served by that hospital? Will he support our campaign?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend and, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild), because I know that they are great supporters of this project. I know that over the last year or so the Queen Elizabeth Hospital has been allocated over £50 million to address the most immediate issues at the site. I also know that they have expressed their interest in being part of the new hospital programme—the Department of Health and Social Care is looking through all those bids. My hon. Friend will know that I cannot comment on specific bids, but the selected hospitals will be announced in due course.