Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

My hon. Friend has been the most tireless campaigner on this issue since coming to the House in July 2024, so of course I will continue to work with her to support her local hospital. The previous Government neglected the NHS: those buildings were left to crumble and their new hospital programme was neither affordable nor deliverable. We are committed to reversing that decline and repairing hospitals like Doncaster Royal infirmary. That is why the trust will receive over £105 million in operational capital across the next four years to be allocated to local priorities, including repairs at Doncaster Royal infirmary.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Epping Forest) (Con)]

7. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of the time taken to deliver the new hospital programme on maintenance costs across the NHS estate.

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

22. What progress his Department has made on the implementation of the new hospital programme.

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

In January we published an honest, realistic and deliverable plan that puts the programme on a sustainable footing, ensuring that taxpayers get the maximum value for money. We are committed to delivering all the schemes and are moving at pace, with funding in place for design work, construction and business case development. Outside the new hospital programme, we are investing £30 billion in day-to-day maintenance repairs of the NHS estate across this spending review period.

[Dr Hudson]

As my constituency neighbour, the Health Secretary will know that both his constituents and mine rely heavily on the Princess Alexandra hospital in Harlow and Whipps Cross in Leytonstone. Before the election, he promised the rebuild of the Princess Alexandra hospital and he supported the Whipps Won’t Wait campaign, yet under Labour it appears that both Princess Alexandra and Whipps must wait. Whipps Cross now faces an estimated £170 million in backlog maintenance, one of the highest figures in the country. Does the Health Secretary agree with me that rising maintenance costs must be taken into account when prioritising the new hospital programme?

[Karin Smyth]

Again, what the hon. Gentleman says is really quite astonishing: like everybody else, he knows that no money was allocated by his Government to the new hospital programme beyond last March. The Conservatives know that and they need to start being honest with their constituents—[Interruption.]