Health Infrastructure Plan — House of Commons, 2019-09-30
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I welcome the Minister to his place and thank him for advance sight of his statement. I know him to be a decent man—we have worked together on many joint Leicester and Leicestershire campaigns—and I consider him a friend, but I am afraid that we have to hold him and his Government robustly to account. What was announced yesterday was not in fact 40 guaranteed new hospitals but six hospital reconfigurations. It was also not the biggest hospital rebuilding programme in history, because that happened under the last Labour Government Of course, I welcome investment in Leicester Royal Infirmary—it is a big investment and to have won it shows what an effective Member of Parliament I am—but will the Minister be clear that that also means a downgrade of Leicester General Hospital, with services closing, including maternity services, and a loss of beds? Will he also tell us what happened with the Epsom and St Helier reconfiguration? Will he confirm that that means moving from two acute services to one in a part of London where accident and emergency pressures are increasing? Will he tell us today whether, across these reconfigurations, the end result will be more beds or fewer We know that the NHS is facing a repair bill of £6 billion after years of capital cuts under this Conservative Government, but the Government have so far refused to publish the capital allowances for between next year and 2025. Will the Minister guarantee that the £2.7 billion allocated will be additional to the capital baseline, and will he undertake to publish the NHS departmental expenditure limits on capital spending so that we can be reassured, rather than our assuming that this is all smoke and mirrors The Minister has also invited 21 other trusts to make use of a £100 million fund to prepare plans for future upgrades, yet he has just admitted that that will be subject to "business case review". Is not the truth that the Minister and the Secretary of State cannot give any cast-iron guarantee that each and every one of these hospitals will be upgraded between 2025 and 2030, because not a penny piece of extra investment has been allocated to the programme for 2025 to 2030 Finally, how were the 21 trusts chosen? In our mental health hospitals, 1,000 patients are forced to stay in old-style quite dire dormitory-style wards—the Minister might have seen the ones at the Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust, for example—yet not a single mental health trust is on the list of 21 produced yesterday. Does that not show yet again that this Government neglect mental health services and some of the most vulnerable patients in the land What is on this list, Mr Speaker? I will tell you. We have: Hastings and Eastbourne—marginal constituencies; Winchester—a marginal constituency; Plymouth—a marginal constituency; Reading—a marginal constituency; Truro—a marginal constituency; Torbay—a marginal constituency; Barrow—a marginal constituency; and Uxbridge—a marginal constituency. What a spooky coincidence it is that all these marginal constituencies are on the list. This is not a serious plan. It is a wing and a prayer ahead of a general election. The Prime Minister over-spins, under-delivers and is not straight with people—the truth is that you cannot trust the Tories with the NHS.