'I know it was a number of years ago and I know it was under a previous leadership, but where are those 40 hospitals?'
Tory Health Secretary Victoria Atkins endured a car crash interview on LBC earlier today, after being grilled on yet another failed Tory pledge.
In the run-up to the last general election, the Tories had promised to build 40 new hospitals in their 2019 manifesto under Boris Johnson, yet no one in the government seems to know how much progress has been made towards the target.
On LBC earlier today, presenter Nick Ferrari asked Atkins: “I know it was a number of years ago and I know it was under a previous leadership, but where are those 40 hospitals?”
Atkins replied: “Well we are making progress and we will be opening, I think, four of these hospitals this year and there will be many other sites around the country.
“I’ve been to visit one or two of them that are not completed but very much rising out of the ground. Alongside that we have the programme of works to upgrade existing hospitals.”
Ferrari hit back: “Of the 40, how many will be built by the time we come to a general election?”
A clearly frustrated Atkins replied: “We’re opening four more this year, so depending on when the election is … we will have around four this year, we’ve already opened a few more.”
Asked precisely how many, the health secretary said: “Nick you’re doing this thing where you ask me to remember all the stats in my brain.”
In November last year, the Public Accounts Committee warned that it had no confidence that the Government will deliver the new hospitals it promised.
The committee warned that the government is highly unlikely even to construct the 32 new hospitals that it is now aiming to complete by 2030, after the commitment to build all 40 by then was abandoned in May last year.
Furthermore, analysis by the National Audit Office found that of the 32 projects announced in 2020 that are being taken forward, just 11 qualify as “whole new hospitals”.
It said 20 amounted to rebuilds of existing hospitals, erecting major new buildings at existing sites or a major redevelopment of existing buildings.
The PAC committee also said that even after the target number of new hospitals was reduced to 32 in July, even getting that far is “highly unlikely.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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