MPs told to 'get a bit more serious' about calls to fund new hospitals
Sir Keir Starmer has told opposition MPs to "get a bit more serious" about their calls for extra funding to help reduce delays to building new hospitals
Sir Keir Starmer has told opposition MPs to "get a bit more serious" about their calls for extra funding to help reduce delays to building new hospitals.
The Liberal Democrats tabled a Commons motion which urged ministers to "reverse the delay" to the new hospital programme and create a "crumbling hospitals taskforce to bring construction dates forward".
The motion also condemned the previous Conservative administration for having "no realistic plan to fund or deliver" its hospitals programme.
But Labour responded by tabling an amendment which agreed with the condemnation of the Tories before insisting it had put the programme on a "sustainable footing" and brought forward construction work for hospitals affected by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) "wherever possible".
In January, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said building the 40 new hospitals promised by the previous government would take at least a decade longer than planned.
Mr Streeting said construction of the new hospitals would proceed in four "waves", with the final part not beginning until between 2035 and 2039.
The first wave is already under construction, and set to be completed in the next three years.
Speaking at Prime Minister's Questions, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: "I raised with the Prime Minister before the issue of North Devon District Hospital.
"The last government promised to rebuild it, as they did hospitals across the south west in places like Torbay and Musgrove Park. Unfortunately they broke that promise, leaving appalling conditions like sewage leaks and patients being treated in corridors.
"So will the Prime Minister reconsider his decision to further delay the construction of new hospitals and ask his MPs to vote for our motion today for new hospitals?"
Sir Keir replied: "The previous programme from the party opposite was undeliverable and unaffordable, as I think he knows and accepts. We put the new hospital programme on a sustainable footing with a timeline that can be met.
"We're not prepared to trade on false promises, as they did, and obviously we put record investment into the NHS.
"But I do just gently urge him to one day get a bit more serious about the funding of these measures, because every week he comes here to basically push me on two issues: to spend a lot more money, but at the same time, in the next breath, opposing the measures in the budget to raise the money that's necessary."
Sir Ed replied: "Unlike the Prime Minister, we had a funded programme at the election, and I'm disappointed with his reply and I hope he'll actually visit some of these hospitals to see the urgent need for rebuilding."
Opening the debate on the motion, the Liberal Democrats' health spokeswoman Helen Morgan said the start date for "many of the hospitals that urgently need rebuilding have been pushed back into the 2030s".
She said: "If the Conservative approach was contemptible, Labour's approach has been to procrastinate.
"The cost to the NHS of papering over the cracks and keeping hospitals running past their natural lifespan is enormous. That's why the Government must reverse the delay to the new hospital programme at once and urgently deliver the new hospitals that patients have long been promised."
Mark Ferguson, the Labour MP for Gateshead Central and Whickham, intervened and said: "I wonder if she could explain to me how spending £22 billion extra on the National Health Service this year can in any way be described as 'procrastination'?"
Ms Morgan said some of that figure had gone towards "the cost of the national insurance hikes and the cost of compensating other public sector employers for those hikes".
Health minister Stephen Kinnock said: "Our programme is a balanced portfolio of hospital schemes at different development stages being delivered now and into the future.
"It's the most efficient and cost-effective way of giving our NHS the buildings it needs whilst also giving the construction sector the certainty that it needs to deliver."
For the Tories, shadow health minister Caroline Johnson said: "The previous government had committed very clearly, the previous chancellor had committed very clearly to this money and to this hospital building project. The current Government have not chosen to meet that commitment.
"These are choices that are being made, so for now, patients and staff are being denied the quality facility they deserve for decades.
"For some hospitals, construction work will now not begin until 2039. Can the minister confirm, or confirm he will write to me, with a date for when each hospital will be completed?"
The Lib Dem motion was defeated by 307 votes to 77, majority 230, and the Labour amendment was approved unopposed.
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