New Hospital Programme Review

Debate between Wes Streeting and Damian Hinds

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the representations that she has consistently made since before the general election. I think her constituents will particularly welcome the investment in Shotley Bridge community hospital, which will be in wave 1, with construction starting in 2026-27. I know that that is not the only need for health and care provision in her constituency; we will continue to work together to make sure that her constituents experience an improving NHS, as opposed to being lumbered with the broken one that was left behind by the Conservatives.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

This announcement will come as a terrible blow to the people served by Basingstoke and North Hampshire hospital, particularly after the very personal commitment made by the now Prime Minister in June 2024. We assume from what the Secretary of State has said today that, come the spending review, the Government will set out detailed capital budgets stretching into the 2040s. Can he tell us in the meantime what his announcement will do to his projections for operating costs, for repairs and maintenance costs and for the provision of stopgap facilities where they are needed?

[Wes Streeting]

Given that the right hon. Gentleman served in the Cabinet under successive Conservative Governments, he has some brass neck, frankly, in turning up today and complaining in the way that he has. He wants to talk about the costs placed on the country, but he should look in the mirror and consider the costs that he and his colleagues in government lumbered this country with when they imposed over a decade of austerity, of Trussonomics and the worst sort of kamikaze ideological project that this country has experienced in modern times.

I would just remind the right hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] I remind him and those on the Conservative Benches who are living in an alternate reality where they bear no responsibility for their actions of only months ago, that the National Audit Office said:

“By the definition the government used in 2020, it will not now deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030.”

The Infrastructure and Projects Authority gave the scheme a red rating, saying that

“the project appears to be unachievable… The project may need re-scoping and/or its overall viability reassessed.”

What on earth does he think that record did for NHS managers, given the stop-start, stop-start? What on earth does he think that did to communities who were seeking certainty and assuming that the promises made by the Conservatives would be kept? They said in their manifesto only last July that they would deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030. Well, according to the NAO’s definition and the IPA’s report, that promise was never going to be kept. They knew it. They did not care. They just said what they wanted to try to win votes, and that is disgraceful.