New Hospital Programme Review

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the new hospital programme.

Of all the damage that the Conservative party did during their time in office—the broken public finances, the broken economy, the broken NHS—perhaps the most egregious was the broken trust between the British people and their Government, not just through their scandals or by breaking the rules they imposed on the rest of the country, but by making promises that they never intended to keep.

In 2019, the Conservatives told the British people that they would build 40 new hospitals over the coming decade, but there were never 40 new schemes and many of them were extensions or refurbishments. Put simply, they were not all new, some of them were not hospitals, and there were not 40 of them. Five years passed, start dates were delayed, spades remained out of the ground, and it became clear the announcement was a work of fiction.

Yet what did the Conservative party manifesto at last year’s general election say on the matter? It said:

“We will invest in more and better facilities, continuing to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030”.

They repeated the promise even though the Department of Health and Social Care was putting contracts out to tender for hospital building that ran until 2035. They repeated that commitment even after the National Audit Office found that the Government

“will not now deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030.”

They repeated it even though the Government’s own infrastructure watchdog deemed it to be “unachievable.” No one thought that the promise would be met, yet the Conservative party made it anyway time and again.

Despite knowing this, when I walked into the Department of Health and Social Care on 5 July, what I discovered shocked me. The scheme was not just years behind schedule; the money provided by the previous Government was due to run out in March, just weeks from today. On 25 May 2023, the then Health and Social Care Secretary, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), stood at this Dispatch Box and told the House:

“Today’s announcement confirms more than £20 billion of investment”.—[Official Report, 25 May 2023; Vol. 733, c. 480.]

The truth is that no funding had been set aside for future years; the money simply was not there. This was a programme built on the shaky foundation of false hope.

If I was shocked by what I discovered, patients ought to be furious—not just because the promises made to them were never going to be kept, but because they can see when they go into hospital how badly the health service needs new buildings. The NHS is quite literally crumbling. Lord Darzi’s independent investigation found that the NHS was starved of capital investment by the previous Government. Its outdated estate has hit productivity, with services disrupted at 13 hospitals every day during 2022-23. I have visited hospitals where the roof has fallen in and where pipes regularly leak and even freeze over in winter. The Conservatives literally did not fix the roof when the sun was shining.

On Thursday, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority published its annual report for 2023-24. Its assessment of the new hospital programme read:

“There are major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable. The project may need re-scoping and/or its overall viability reassessed.”

That is what this Government have done.

Our review of the new hospital programme and the announcement I am making today will do two things: first, it will put the programme on a firm footing with sustainable funding, so that all the projects can be delivered; and, secondly, it will give patients an honest, realistic and deliverable timetable that they can believe in. This Labour Government are rebuilding our NHS, and as we do so, we will also rebuild trust in politics.

The seven hospitals built wholly or mostly from reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—RAAC—were outside the scope of the review. These will be rebuilt at pace to protect people’s safety. Also out of scope were the hospitals already under construction or with an approved business case, where building works have continued without delay.

Working closely with my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, we have secured five-year waves of investment, backed by £15 billion of investment over consecutive waves, averaging £3 billion a year. That funding is in addition to the £1 billion that the Chancellor announced at the Budget to tackle dangerous RAAC and the backlog of critical maintenance, repairs and upgrades across the NHS estate. It is also in addition to the £1.5 billion we are investing in new surgical hubs, diagnostic scanners and beds. Together, it forms part of the £13.6 billion of capital investment announced at the Budget, which is the largest capital investment in our national health service since Labour was last in office.

I will now set out the new timetable. Projects in wave zero are already in the advanced stages of development and will be completed within the next three years. These are: the Bamburgh unit, phase 3 of the care environment development and re-provision, or CEDAR programme; the national rehabilitation centre in Nottinghamshire; Oriel eye hospital; Royal Bournemouth hospital; St Ann’s hospital; Alumhurst Road children’s mental health unit; and Dorset county hospital.

Wave 1 schemes will begin construction between 2025 and 2030. These include the seven RAAC hospitals: Leighton hospital; West Suffolk hospital; Frimley Park hospital; Hinchingbrooke hospital; Queen Elizabeth hospital; James Paget hospital; and Airedale general hospital. The other wave 1 schemes are: Poole hospital, Milton Keynes hospital; the 3Ts hospital—trauma, tertiary and training—in Brighton; the women and children’s hospital, Cornwall; Derriford emergency care hospital; Cambridge cancer research hospital; Shotley Bridge community hospital; North Manchester general hospital; and Hillingdon hospital.

Wave 2 schemes will now begin main construction between 2030 and 2035. They are: Leicester general hospital and Leicester royal infirmary; Watford general hospital, the specialist and emergency care hospital in Sutton; Kettering general hospital; Leeds general infirmary; Musgrove Park hospital; Princess Alexandra hospital; Torbay hospital; and Whipps Cross hospital, where I should declare an interest, as it serves my constituency.

Wave 3 includes nine schemes that will start construction between 2035 and 2039: St Mary’s hospital in London; Charing Cross hospital and Hammersmith hospital; North Devon district hospital; Eastbourne district general hospital, Conquest hospital and Bexhill hospital; Hampshire hospitals; Royal Berkshire hospital; Royal Preston hospital; the Royal Lancaster infirmary; and the Queen’s medical centre and Nottingham city hospital.

Following this statement, further details of the hospital building programme will be published on my Department’s website and a copy of the report will be placed in the House of Commons Library. In addition, the Minister for Secondary Care will hold meetings tomorrow, to which MPs of all parties are invited, to answer any further questions about these projects.

To ensure that every penny of taxpayers’ money is well spent and every hospital is delivered as quickly as possible, we will shortly launch a new framework for the construction of the new schemes. This will be a different way of contracting by working in partnership with industry to mitigate cost, schedule and delivery risks and saving money through a standardised design approach. That will speed up the process of opening new hospitals and provide a foundation for a collaborative supply-chain partnership. We will also appoint a programme delivery partner in the coming weeks to support the delivery of crucial hospital infrastructure across the country and provide programme, project and commercial expertise.

I know that patients in some parts of the country will be disappointed by this new timetable—they are right to be. They were led up the garden path by three Conservative Prime Ministers, all promising hospitals with no credible plan for funding to deliver them, and by Conservative MPs, who stood on a manifesto promise they knew could never be kept. We will not treat the British people with the same contempt. We will never play fast and loose with the public’s trust.

The plan that we have laid out today is honest, funded and can actually be delivered. It is a serious, credible plan to build the hospitals that our NHS needs. It is part of the biggest capital investment that the NHS has seen since Labour was last in office, delivering not just more hospitals but new surgical hubs, community diagnostic centres, AI-enabled scanners, radiotherapy machines, modern technology, new mental health crisis centres and upgrades to hundreds of GP estates. It will take time, but this Labour Government are determined to rebuild our NHS and rebuild trust in politics. I commend this statement to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

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[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: I think that will be a unique representation this afternoon. I can already hear the vultures swooping, looking for that capital allocation and slot in the pipeline. She has made the case repeatedly, forcefully and with conviction that these services should remain in a community with high levels of deprivation and high need. I know that the Minister for Secondary Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), has already committed to meeting her, and we are very happy to have those conversations with her.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

In Hampshire and across the country in 2019 and 2024, Conservative MPs stood on the promise of delivering new hospitals, including one for Hampshire. However, it turned out that there was never any funding for that, and that those were just false promises to try to get votes. I have fought tirelessly to save and improve Winchester’s A&E and consultant-led maternity unit. With the announcement that construction of a proposed new hospital in Hampshire will not even start until between 2037 and 2039, we absolutely need to ensure that the current services are invested in and improved so that they remain fit for purpose.

Given that the new hospital programme is delayed, it is more urgent than ever to increase capacity by fixing social care, so that those who are well enough to leave hospital can be cared for in the community, thus freeing up beds immediately. We cannot endure both insufficient social care packages and crumbling hospitals. Given this delay to the new hospital programme, will the Secretary of State commit to prioritising more social care packages now, rather than waiting three years for a review to be complete?

Although the Health Secretary is not responsible for the state of the NHS or the state of the economy, which the Government inherited, the new hospital programme was seen as part of the solution to the crisis in the NHS, and people across the sector have warned that delaying the programme will only mean more treatments cancelled and more money wasted plugging holes in hospital buildings that are no longer fit for purpose. We are therefore concerned that one of the biggest announcements to affect the NHS over the next few years is coming out right now, during Donald Trump’s inauguration, because it will not get the media attention it deserves. Liberal Democrats therefore urge the Health Secretary to promise to release a full impact assessment on how the delays to the new hospital programme will affect patients and NHS staff.

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[Wes Streeting]

First, I thank my hon. Friend for his strong representations on behalf of his constituents, not just since his election, but before it. Between the by-election and his election to this place, he did not give up; he continued to fight for his community.

I stood outside Hillingdon hospital, having had a good look around at the state of the hospital and the plans for the reconstruction of the site. I am delighted to have kept my promise and this Government’s promise, so that construction at Hillingdon hospital will begin in 2027-28. My hon. Friend is quite right to say that his predecessor and his predecessor’s predecessor made claims about Hillingdon hospital that were not true. This Government will not make those mistakes. We will keep our promise. What we have set out for all schemes in the new hospital programme is a credible, realistic, funded timetable that this Government, for as long as there is a Labour Government, will actually deliver.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State forgive me if I give the House a few seconds’ respite from the blame game by trying to make a positive suggestion? Everyone accepts that the real problem facing our hospitals is the number of frail and elderly people who do not need to be in hospital and should be in some sort of care facility. Does the Secretary of State agree that while building brand-new, all-singing, all-dancing hospitals is very expensive, there is a future for smaller cottage hospitals such as the one in Gainsborough and a case for opening other facilities so we can move elderly, frail people out of those big hospitals into a caring environment and free up space?

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. Members will have seen how many people are on their feet wanting to ask the Secretary of State a question. Could I ask Members please to try to keep their questions and answers quite short? I want to try to get everybody in, if at all possible.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Middleton South) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend’s statement stands in sharp contrast to that made on 25 May 2023 by the previous Secretary of State, when he completely forgot to put in his statement, both written and verbal, North Manchester general hospital. I am pleased that North Manchester general hospital is today in the first wave, but I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend could spell out in detail when the work will continue, because in one of the areas of the country with the worst health outcomes, it is not only a hospital scheme; it is an urban regeneration scheme, and some work has started. Will that work be allowed to continue? Can he give me some details, please?

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. I plan to run this statement until 6 o’clock, so I ask Members to please help each other out by keeping their questions and answers short.

[Rosie Wrighting (Kettering) (Lab)]

My predecessor told my constituents that the work on Kettering general hospital was ready to go. It is shameful that, in reality, the Conservatives had no credible plan, and the money was going to run out in March this year. Does the Secretary of State agree that people in Kettering are right to be angry at the previous Government for breaking their promises, and can he reassure my constituents that they will see a realistic, deliverable timeframe for the rebuild of our hospital?