Health Infrastructure Plan

Debate between Karin Smyth and Edward Argar

Monday 30th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. This money will be hugely important to doing exactly what she says: investing in our NHS buildings for the long term, so reducing the reliance on expensive capital repairs.

With this plan, we are also looking to deliver a step change in how we deal with capital in the NHS, which is also hugely important. Instead of stop-start investment, we are looking for a rolling programme of investment to make sure we get those facilities up to standard in order to reduce the day-to-day spend on repairs. I will happily talk to my right hon. Friend about what we can do to ensure that we go through due process as swiftly as possible so that her hospital trust can get on with it.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

I worked on many business cases for capital projects during my long NHS career. These projects are important to local people, but local people across the country were misled over the weekend. This is a proposal to give permission to think about building a hospital; they are not new hospitals. The Government’s own response to the Naylor report said that sustainability and transformation partnerships are the chosen means of planning and delivering capital projects, so how were STPs consulted about which projects to progress?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Lady, as she says, comes to this with a wealth of experience. The bids were put forward by individual trusts working with their STPs, and in the context of the STPs that have been developed. There is a synthesis and a read across to ensure that, in this announcement, we have picked the trusts that put together the most compelling bids in order to deliver value for money and improvements where they are needed.

Children’s Funeral Fund

Debate between Karin Smyth and Edward Argar

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for updating the House on that.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East and others involved in this. What we are hearing from the Minister about how government works across England is really alarming. The fact that the Prime Minister driving a policy change is so complicated in England, whereas our friends and colleagues across the United Kingdom can make these decisions more quickly, is a lesson for Government in how England is represented in this place. I hope that lessons about the complexities through which the Minister has had to drive this will be learned for other policy areas.

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, but I would say to her that, as I mentioned earlier, we are not seeking simply to replicate what has been done by the devolved Administrations. We are looking at other aspects and seeing whether there are ways in which we might go a bit further. That does add complexity, so it is not exactly replicating something that is already there. However, she makes her point, as ever, courteously but forcefully.