Andy Slaughter defends Labour’s record on hospital funding

Image: Helen Morgan MP, (Liberal Democrat); parliamentlive.tv

The state of our hospital buildings is a “national scandal,” says Liberal Democrats, and Labour is just “procrastinating”

MPs debated the state of Britain’s hospitals on Wednesday (23 April). Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan opened the debate with a blistering attack on the previous  government’s failings:

“The appalling state of our hospital buildings is a national scandal,” she said, “the NHS maintenance backlog rose to £13.8 billion in 2023-24.”

There had been a “sustained pattern of cannibalising NHS capital budgets to keep day-to-day services running,” which had made “sewage leaks, cracked walls, crumbling ceilings and sinking floors commonplace.

“It is an outrage that millions of people are waiting for treatment, yet overcrowded hospitals have had to close operating theatres because they are no longer fit for use.”

But, she said, the Labour Government was not going the right way about solving the problems. They were “pursuing a false economy,” she said, “in delaying the desperately needed new hospital programme.”

Image: Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith & Chiswick (Labour); parliamentlive.tv

Hospitals are being funded under Labour, says Andy Slaughter

Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick said hospitals were now being funded under Labour.

“Money is being invested in my local hospitals, in the Imperial College Healthcare NHS trust, and it is preparing for major rebuilds,” he said.

The last government promised to build 40 new hospitals but then put the plan on hold. Labour has also postponed major investment since they came to power last summer. Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced a ten-year delay to the hospital building programme in January.

Charing Cross, Hammersmith and St Mary’s Paddington have the highest maintenance backlog in the country, and rebuilding them will be the biggest NHS project going forward.

Imperial College Healthcare Trust was expecting a new St Mary’s hospital to be built before 2030, which is now it is not scheduled to be built until 2035 at the earliest, but the Government has provided some funding. Since the Health Secretary’s announcement, the Trust has received a cash injection to continue with the detailed design and planning for the new hospital to be built on the site of St Mary’s in Paddington.

READ ALSO: Imperial College Healthcare Trust “devastated” at decade-long delay to hospital building programme

READ ALSO: Cash injection for St Mary’s hospital enables it to continue redevelopment plans

Charing Cross hospital, which is also in a considerable state of disrepair, is spending money on the refurbishment of the ground floor and first floor of the hospital, while having to deal with cuts to its budget at the same time.

READ ALSO: Charing Cross Hospital seeks public’s views on refurbishment

Image: Helen Morgan MP, (Liberal Democrat); parliamentlivetv

Lib Dems investment proposals “unrealistic”

Helen Morgan characterised Labour’s approach as procrastination.

“The point that we are making is that it is a false economy to keep those buildings going, to keep repairing a crumbling estate, to keep patching up and putting a sticking plaster on those problems. Those buildings need to be demolished and rebuilt,” she said.

“The Liberal Democrats would invest to save by starting construction now, and ending the epidemic of cancelled operations, closed-off wards and huge sums wasted on emergency repairs.”

Image: Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith & Chiswick (Labour); parliamentlivetv

Andy Slaughter suggested her proposition was “unrealistic.”

“I have three world-class hospitals in my constituency: Charing Cross, Hammersmith and St Mary’s Paddington. The repair bill is £874 million, but the rebuild or new build cost would be £4 billion. Yes, we are refurbishing parts of Charing Cross and putting a lot of investment into preparing for that work, but the idea that suddenly the hon. Lady is going to come up with tens, if not hundreds, of billions of pounds is unrealistic, is it not?

She then outlined the Lib Dems’ proposal for a ten-year capital investment programme for £10 billion:

“We are also campaigning for a review of outdated Government finance rules that prevent NHS trusts from investing the funds that they have raised into their own buildings… We need root-and-branch reform, combined with our 10-year programme of investment, to bring our local health facilities up to scratch.”

Image: Stephen Kinnock MP, Minister for Care; parliamentlivetv

£22 billion black hole in the public finances

Stephen Kinnock, Minister for Care, told the House when they came to power last summer the Government had discovered a £22 billion black hole in the public finances, “largely based on promises that had no funding whatsoever attached to them…

“The new hospital programme was announced by the last Government to much fanfare in October 2020, with a promise to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030. We were told that there was a plan and a timetable, and we were glibly assured that it was fully funded, but from the outset it was clear that there were not 40 new schemes—some were just refurbishments or extensions.

“To put it simply, there were not 40 projects, they were not all new and many of them were not even hospitals.

“The spin around the programme was widely questioned and challenged before the general election, but nevertheless we were truly shocked by what we found on entering the Department of Health and Social Care.

“The programme was hugely delayed, by several years more than had already been revealed by the National Audit Office. There was no credible plan to deliver the building projects, let alone to deliver them all in the next five years, and there was not even enough construction capacity in the UK to build all the hospitals in the new hospital programme by 2030…

“This financial year, we are backing NHS systems through over £4 billion in operational capital; a lifesaving cash injection of £750 million of targeted estate safety funding, as a vital first step towards fixing our crumbling estate; and £440 million to tackle crumbling RAAC, keeping staff, patients and their families safe,” he said.

Image: Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith & Chiswick (Labour); parliamentlivetv

Andy Slaughter added:

“My local hospitals were evicted from the new hospital programme when the RAAC schemes came along. There was nothing to delay—there was no money there at all.”

He talked about the scheme Imperial College Healthcare Trust has now started to raise private funding to rebuild St Mary’s hospital:

“We in the Imperial College healthcare trust are partnering with Paddington Life Sciences, Imperial College in South Kensington and White City, and the Hammersmith and Fulham industrial strategy to maximise the available resources so that we can rebuild three world-class hospitals.”

READ ALSO: Cash injection for St Mary’s hospital enables it to continue redevelopment plans

https://chiswickcalendar.co.uk/cash-injection-for-st-marys-hospital-enables-it-to-continue-redevelopment-plans/

Meanwhile hospitals have been told they are facing cuts to their operational budget this year:

“We must make a step change in efficiencies or cost reductions in some areas as well as incremental improvements across the board,” the chief executive of Imperial College Health Care Trust, Professor Tim Orchard, told staff recently.

READ ALSO: West London hospitals told there will be big cuts to their budgets this year

https://chiswickcalendar.co.uk/west-london-hospitals-told-there-will-be-big-cuts-to-their-budgets-this-year/

Claire Hook, chief operating officer and deputy chief executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust added:

“The Government has been clear that it expects the NHS to bridge the funding gap by returning closer to pre-pandemic levels of productivity. This means that NHS trusts must spend one per cent less money and do significantly more with the money we have.”

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