New Hospital Programme

Will Quince Excerpts

Friday 24th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) on securing the debate. He campaigns tirelessly for his constituents, and I know he recently met Lord Markham to discuss plans for the new hospital scheme. Although responsibility for this area sits with our Minister in the Lords, I am happy to respond to some of the points he has raised today.

We are working closely with Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust on its plans for a new specialist emergency care hospital in Sutton, with general acute services to remain at the current Epsom and St Helier hospitals. All schemes within the programme have been grouped into cohorts on the basis of readiness to progress and the extent to which the schemes can realise the benefits of the national programme approach.

Epsom and St Helier is a cohort 3 pathfinder scheme, as my hon. Friend said. This means it will be one of the first of the larger and more complex schemes to be taken forward, in line with the national programme approach. The trust is currently at outline business case stage, and we are working closely with it to incorporate the national standardised approach.

We have always been clear that, after entering the new hospital programme in 2020, any planned timescales for delivery will change to align with the national programme approach. As my hon. Friend said, the trust has received £20.5 million in public dividends to date to progress its scheme. This includes fees for design work and a contribution towards the cost of a new electronic patient record system. Further allocations for the scheme, including the total individual allocation, will be decided through the proper business case process. This will ensure deliverability, alignment with the national programme standards and, of course, value for money.

The programme has developed an integrated systems approach known as “hospital 2.0”, which spans the whole hospital lifecycle from business case and design through to construction, commissioning and handover. Hospital 2.0 is the vehicle through which the national programme approach can ensure we get the maximum value for taxpayers’ money and deliver more efficient designs. Our hospital 2.0 process will drive efficiencies by up to 25% compared with traditional methods of delivering infrastructure.

Lord Markham recently visited the manufacturing technology centre in Coventry, where he saw at first hand how this work is advancing. This includes prototypes of the standardised hospital rooms that will be part of the designs for the new hospital scheme. The Department is planning a range of events, communication pieces and milestone moments to show the progress being made on delivering these new hospitals. This will, of course, include a parliamentary event in the coming weeks to demonstrate what these new hospitals will look like, including standardised rooms, as well as roadshows at each of the new hospital locations. I hope my hon. Friend will be able to attend.

Lord Markham, our Lords Minister, has also agreed to visit the hospital when his diary allows—I can certainly agree to that request—to see at first hand how the new hospital scheme will benefit the staff and patients of Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust.

My hon. Friend asked about maintenance, and we certainly recognise that backlog maintenance can pose challenges to the efficiency, safety and quality of NHS services. Although individual NHS organisations are legally responsible for maintaining their estates, the Government have been clear that they expect NHS organisations to use existing capital budgets and assets to maximum effect. I am pleased to see that the level of backlog maintenance in the trust has decreased every year since 2016-17.

At the spending review we backed the NHS with substantial operational capital investment for trusts to prioritise and deliver locally to maintain and refurbish their premises. The Government are investing record sums to upgrade and modernise NHS buildings so that staff have the facilities needed to provide world-class care for patients, including £4.2 billion this year and £8.4 billion over the next two years.

While this major scheme got under way over the 2020-21 and 2021-22 period, we supported Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust with other capital investment, including £6.1 million to expand the emergency department and the same-day emergency care unit at St Helier Hospital, and to extend waiting room space and mental health cubicles at Epsom Hospital. We have invested £11.6 million to eradicate backlog maintenance across the trust’s estate.

The new hospital programme has been undertaking ambitious work. Two hospitals, the Northern Centre for Cancer Care and the Royal Liverpool Hospital, are now open to patients. Five schemes are in construction, with one due to complete shortly, and 22 schemes have received either full or outline permission, which is a vital step on the road to delivery. This programme will deliver facilities that are at the cutting edge of modern technology and will engage with clinical staff to ensure that we are providing them with a better working environment, enabling increased efficiency, promoting staff wellbeing and, importantly, improving staff retention.

Again, I thank my hon. Friend for his continued engagement on the new hospital scheme. I appreciate and recognise how tirelessly he campaigns for his constituents, and I assure him that we are committed to the delivery of a new hospital for Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust.

Question put and agreed to.