New Hospital Programme Review

Lincoln Jopp Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has raised this issue consistently and persistently with me since she was elected. I can reassure her and her constituents that pre-construction work will begin from 2028 to 2030, with construction starting in 2031 and lasting until 2032. I am extremely sorry that my hon. Friend’s constituents were led up the garden path; I rather feel that they have already rumbled the Conservatives by sending her to Parliament, but for as long as there is a Labour Government, we will deliver for the people of Kettering.

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I will say it, because no one else has: many happy returns for tomorrow. I genuinely thought that you were in your mid-30s—that the Secretary of State was in his mid-30s.

[Edward Argar]

And Madam Deputy Speaker. [Laughter.]

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

She’s happy with that!

[Lincoln Jopp]

I also congratulate the Secretary of State on coming to the Chamber with such a massive capital expenditure announcement and eliciting a saving with his answer to the first question from the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh).

One of the plans that went by the board in May, for reasons I have not quite got to the bottom of, was for the Staines health and wellbeing centre, which is one of only six community diagnostic hubs that NHS England has allocated in England. The funding got pulled in May; will the Secretary of State please have another look at it?

[Wes Streeting]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for that question. I think he is going to go far in this place, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I would be delighted to look favourably on his representations about his local facilities.