Hospitals

Debate between Mark Ferguson and Helen Morgan

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan]

The hon. Member will be aware that there were not 40 new hospitals—they were not all hospitals and there were not 40 of them. The issue here is that the start dates for work on many hospitals that need urgent rebuilding have been pushed back into the 2030s, long beyond the life of this Parliament. The people who are served by those hospitals were promised new facilities and have not had them. That is devastating for those communities.

If the Conservative approach was contemptible, Labour’s approach has been to procrastinate. The cost to the NHS of papering over the cracks and keeping hospitals running past their natural lifespan is enormous. That is why the Government must reverse the delay to the new hospital programme at once and urgently deliver the new hospitals that patients have long been promised.

[Mark Ferguson (Gateshead Central and Whickham) (Lab)]

I wonder if the hon. Member can explain to me how spending £22 billion extra on the national health service this year can in any way be described as procrastination.

[Helen Morgan]

It is important to recognise that the additional investment in the NHS amounts to about £10 billion a year—according to Office for Budget Responsibility numbers, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman has looked at—because of the cost of national insurance hikes and of compensating other public sector employers for those hikes. The £22 billion figure is somewhat misleading. The point that we are making is that it is a false economy to keep those buildings going, to keep repairing a crumbling estate, to keep patching up and putting a sticking plaster on those problems. Those buildings need to be demolished and rebuilt, so that approach is a false economy. It would be much better to build new buildings up front and save on future repair costs. We need to ensure that no one is treated in broken, uncomfortable and unsafe facilities. Repairing and replacing crumbling, substandard hospitals is not only vital for delivering better care and treating-more patients, but crucial for rebuilding the economy after years of Conservative economic vandalism.

How much would all this cost? In my county of Shropshire, the cost of the maintenance backlog across all sites has reached about £75 million. I am sure that everyone here would agree that £75 million is a lot of money—indeed, it is so much that it is the total amount of Government capital investment for hospices this year—but in terms of hospital maintenance it is a drop in the ocean. Torbay hospital needs more than £50 million to clear the backlog, Watford hospital has a backlog of £63 million, and Hull royal infirmary requires an eye-watering £70 million. Across England, the figure is a colossal £13.8 billion—and that is just to bring our existing hospital estate to the minimum standard.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Ferguson]

If we want the tone to be constructive, we should be constructive about the fact that Labour is going to be building hospitals, when no hospitals were constructed over the last five years. The reality is very clear: hospitals do not simply appear; we cannot wish a hospital into existence. They require two things: money and time. If we wish that there were more new hospitals in this country, we should go back in time to 10 to 15 years ago. That would have been a fantastic time, when borrowing was much cheaper than it is today, to have invested in hospitals in all our communities. Unfortunately, the cancellation of the building schools for the future project was basically the first act of the coalition Government, and there was a lack of investment in schools and hospitals. As the shadow spokesperson the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) has said today, we are cleaning up the mess that has been left. That was the characterisation of the early 2010s, but it is very much more realistic today. The shadow spokesperson accused the Government of a lack of imagination. Well, there has been no lack of imagination here; there has been magical thinking from the Liberal Democrats, who apparently believe that a taskforce will generate the billions of pounds necessary to build hospitals immediately.

[Helen Morgan]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mark Ferguson]

I am keen to make progress.

I have repeatedly made this point to Conservative Members, who I do not feel are taking the advice, but I will repeat it to the Liberal Democrats, who I equally do not think will do so. I have a huge amount of experience in opposition—a lot of us on the Government Benches have a lot more experience of it than we ever wanted. If we are really serious about what this country needs, we cannot just say that we want to have hospitals now and expect them to be delivered if we simultaneously oppose revenue-generating measures in the Budget. I am afraid that what this motion is about, which has been revealed by many of the speeches, is opportunism.

We all want more investment in the NHS and that is what this Government are delivering. A great point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) when he said that it is not simply a matter of buildings, but a matter of people too. The best maternity facility in the country is in my constituency at the Queen Elizabeth maternity hospital, yet it is in a very old building. I want a new building for that maternity hospital. I want far better resources for the staff. I hope that it will come in time, but they are doing a fantastic job with what we have got. We need to support those in the NHS rather than knocking them down.