Summer Health and Resilience

Steve Darling Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I know this is an issue that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education already takes very seriously. She recognises the importance of keeping children in school. Just as we are ensuring that the NHS is sufficiently resilient, public buildings across the country need to take seriously how we deal with the changing weather and climate that we face.

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

The tower block at Torbay hospital was like an oven this summer; it is no longer fit for purpose, and it is even seen to be a fire risk for staff and patients alike. On 5 February, myself and my hon. Friends the Members for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) and for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) wrote to the Government backing the foundation hospital’s bid for funding for a new ward tower block. Secretary of State, is the cheque in the post?

[Yvette Cooper]

As the hon. Member knows, we have different waves of work as part of the new hospital programme—which depends on prioritisation being done within ICBs and regions—and for the first time, this Government have set up a dedicated fund for safety improvements, the estates safety fund, which is worth £6.75 billion. The first wave of £1.5 billion in funding will deal with the 950 projects I have announced. We are turning around the substantial under-investment we inherited from the previous Government, but I would again gently point out to the hon. Member that Ara Darzi’s report identified that the big drop in capital investment in our national health service that has led to many of these problems started after 2009, as part of austerity under the coalition Government.