Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made on determining the successful bids for the government's New Hospital Programme.

We received 128 expressions of interest for new hospitals and the Government has now confirmed that five of these schemes will join the New Hospital Programme.

These hospitals all have significant amounts of Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete, and have been independently assessed as unsafe to operate beyond 2030. Government is therefore prioritising these major rebuilds. Considering this, the Government is not inviting further schemes to join the programme at this time. Going forward, new schemes will be considered through a rolling programme of capital investment in hospital infrastructure to secure the building of new hospitals beyond 2030.