Hospital Building Programme

Robbie Moore Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) on securing this important debate. I am glad to speak once again in this place about my campaign for a new Airedale hospital in my constituency. I have raised the subject in Westminster and met the Minister on several occasions.

To set the scene about why we need a new, rebuilt Airedale hospital, similarly to the case that has just been made, my hospital suffers immensely from aerated concrete. The hospital opened in the 1970s, construction having started in the 1960s. Although the hospital’s original life expectancy was 30 years, we are now in its 51st year. The 1960s design sadly leaves a huge legacy of structural failings. Some 83% of the hospital is constructed from aerated concrete, which is in the roof, floors and ceilings. In total there are 50,000 aerated concrete panels in the hospital—five times more than any other hospital affected by that issue.

Aerated concrete is not the only unfortunate hangover from 1960s hospital design. The Airedale is also the largest flat-roofed hospital of any NHS asset in the country and, given that my constituency has some of the wettest weather in the UK, that leads to severe leakage. Unfortunately, the Airedale has more recorded leaks than any other hospital in the UK. Since being elected I have made several visits to the hospital, including up to the roof, where I have seen these issues for myself. I have also been shown parts of the hospital that are closed to the public to mitigate the risks from the aerated concrete and the flat roof.

Aerated concrete panels, such as those found in Airedale hospital, are prone to fail when deflections are recorded between 50 mm and 90 mm. More and more panels are constantly getting to this risk deflection. To put it bluntly, if swift action is not taken then the possibility of a collapse within the structure of the Airedale will constantly rise. We only need look back to 2019, when a school roof unfortunately collapsed because it had been constructed from aerated concrete. Such a collapse would be unthinkable, which is why we need to take swift action.

The Airedale trust has informed me that if it were to experience a closure, even a temporary one, then 45,000 referrals to treatment, 60,000 diagnostic tests, including MRI scans and ultrasound therapy treatments, and 2,000 maternity deliveries would be affected. That cannot arise and I cannot stress how important it is that it is avoided. I firmly believe that that can only be done by delivering a new Airedale hospital.

The catchment area for Airedale hospital covers a huge rural area. I have the full support of my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) and my hon. Friends the Members for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) and for Shipley (Philip Davies), all of whose constituents use the Airedale hospital alongside mine. We also have to look at the wider area. The local authority has proposed plans for 3,000 new houses to be built in my area alone, which will add pressure on existing hospital services.

It is fantastic that the Government have announced that there will be a further eight new hospitals, on top of the 40 already announced. I was proud to see that in September the Airedale trust submitted its bid for one of those final places. It is an ambitious bid, detailed and affordable. The plans are convenient, in that they will not disrupt the current workings of the Airedale and are following a fully strategic outlined case.

A full appraisal recommended that the most cost-effective and future-proofed solution would be a new Airedale hospital on the grounds already owned by the trust. Indeed, the trust owns 43 acres of land and can build a new hospital while keeping existing operations until a transfer to the new build. The plans have a strong environmental case and outline the Airedale trust’s vision to be Europe’s first carbon-neutral and fully digitally enabled hospital, with the capability to generate renewable energy on site.

May I once again request a visit to Airedale hospital by my hon. Friend the Minister? I want to raise again the urgency of the case, as I did last week in the main Chamber to the Prime Minister. The Airedale needs and deserves a rebuild, and I will continue to do everything that I can to stand up for my constituents and press the case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Edward Argar]

I did not regret giving way to my right hon. Friend quite as much as I feared I might, although he may yet come back to me. As ever, he makes his point powerfully and clearly, and I suspect that, as well as my having heard it, his trust will also have heard it.

As the shadow Minister said, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) made broader points, in addition to points about her local hospital and trust, about health inequalities and the role that the right infrastructure and staff—the right people in the right place—can play in tackling that. I have to pay tribute to her. Within a day of her arriving in this place following her fantastic by-election victory, she had pinned me down so she could come and see me and talk about Hartlepool and health services there. Her constituents are extremely lucky to have her. She hit the ground running and has not stopped working since on behalf of her constituents.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke and I, as she alluded to, have spoken a number of times about her trust. How can I not accept her kind offer of going to the site and seeing her in her constituency? I have known her for a long time, so it is a pleasure to say yes. I would like to go there and do that, then perhaps we can discuss the plans further. She and I have met on several occasions. She is a great champion for the new hospital in her area, so I am grateful for the invitation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley—I almost said “my hon. Friend the Member for Airedale”, given the frequency with which, he raises and champions in the House at every opportunity the need for a new hospital at Airedale—is right to highlight the challenges that his trust faces, as he has done on many occasions, particularly in the context not only of the needs of his population, the challenges of an old building that has long exceeded its intended lifetime, but also the RAAC plank issue. I know that his trust is keen to be one of the eight. I will only say to him, I am afraid, what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich, which is that the bids will be considered very carefully. I know that he will continue making the case, as he has done in the past.

[Robbie Moore]

Will the Minister give way?

[Edward Argar]

I will give way briefly to my hon. Friend, then I will turn to the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild).

[Robbie Moore]

Can the Minister clarify how the final eight will be decided and will structural risk profile be a key consideration?

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend, quite wisely, presses his advantage. I can give him some reassurance on that, as I did to the shadow Minister when talking about the criteria, that safety and risk will not be the only criterion, but that will be a key factor in the consideration.

I turn now to the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk. The other day in the Chamber, I inadvertently paid tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) for the work being done by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk in one of my responses. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for North West Norfolk, who has quite rightly raised with me on several occasions the Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn and the challenges posed by RAAC planks there. I know he is campaigning both in Parliament and locally on that issue. Courtesy of him, I have met his trust in the past and we have provided more than £20 million in this financial year for critical risk remediation. I know that, quite understandably, my hon. Friend is saying very clearly that that is welcome and will help, but it will not solve the problem. He will continue to press the case for a new hospital. He, too, has kindly invited me to his constituency, so I think I am due to go on tour around the country at some point, visiting various hospitals and colleagues.

Turning to some of the broader underlying themes that have emerged in the debate, I will seek to answer some of the questions posed by the shadow Minister. He gently tempted me on definitions. I am clear that the definitions we have—the three key elements he alluded to—not only pass the common-sense test and the understanding of what the reasonable person in the street would consider a new hospital. Equally, he teased me gently about VAT notice 708. I mentioned that at the Dispatch Box because—he says that we should be transparent and have a logical reason for how we define, do and choose things—our starting point was that there can be a VAT exemption for new builds, but not necessarily for refurbishment. I took that as a starting point for developing the common-sense definition. A lot of what he sees in the definitions is reflected in the same one used there, so there is consistency.

The shadow Minister talked about skills and inflation and whether we will have the people to build the hospitals. He is right to do that, because, as we have seen following the bounce back after the pandemic, builders and construction firms are very much in demand. There is pressure on materials as well, not just inflationary pressure, but on quantities. That is one of the reasons why, even before the impact of the pandemic, this is a phased programme. These hospitals will be built over a period of years up to 2030, allowing for market capacity.

Equally, one of the reasons why we have set out this long-term plan is so that we can make the market aware of what our plans are. If there is certainty in the market that the hospitals will be coming through, we will see firms investing, because they know there is potential for long-term business and work for them. That is one of the ways in which we have helped to handle that.

The shadow Minister asked about funding, and what would be available for what period. He will be aware of the initial £3.7 billion that has been allocated to this project, which takes us to 2024. Future funding will be subject to future spending reviews for that period. Between the 2024 period and 2030 there will be a general election at some point, and I suspect that may play a part in the spending review as well. We have the funding up front to get going with this programme, and off the top of my head, I think we already have eight hospitals in construction. The Cumberland Cancer Hospital has already been opened by my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary. Over this period, we will continue to start further construction of new hospitals.

The shadow Minister also alluded to geography and the distribution of the hospitals. Off the top of my head, 30 of the 40 are outside London and the south east, so we have sought to achieve geographical spread for the new hospitals and, equally, will seek to do that with the new eight. He also asked about the quantum needed for a new hospital, and he had a particular figure in mind. If he looks at the list of 40, many of them are very different hospitals, from the major acute district general hospital to a community hospital with in-patient beds; it is clearly a new hospital. The costs vary in the nature of what is built, its scale and size.

The shadow Minister also asked whether there would be a cap and whether trusts have complete freedom. No—as he would expect, there is a balance is to be struck between delivering what a trust wants for its plans and the need for financial prudence and recognition of the need to safeguard taxpayers’ money; it is not a limitless amount. Conversations are going on between the national team and local projects to ensure that their schemes are affordable and not hugely over budget. That is a pragmatic, ongoing process.

The shadow Minister also touched on some of the criteria for the scheme and how we are making the national scheme work. We include in this modular build modern methods of construction. We have a national set of standards for what we would expect from a new hospital, but a degree of local flexibility for the delivery of that. We recognise that each trust is slightly different, but we want to standardise where we can, because that keeps costs down and provides certainty in the market and speeds up construction. We have also built into our plans, since they were originally announced, even more ambitious green targets and energy efficiency targets for those trusts.