'The promise of 40 new hospitals didn’t involve 40, didn’t involve hospitals, they weren’t new, and they weren’t funded'

Labour leader Keir Starmer took the Tories apart at PMQs earlier today over their failure to build 40 hospitals as they had pledged, as their attack on the Labour government backfired.

During PMQs, the Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire, Gagan Mohindra, asked why the government was cancelling funding commitments for new hospitals, and “spending billions of pounds giving pay rises to train drivers instead”.

Mohindra said: “The commitment of £400 million of funding for new hospital in Watford General was one of the many brilliant things the previous Conservative government and my good friend former Member of Parliament for Watford Dean Russell MP did and would’ve been life changing  as well as life saving for so many of my constituents.

“Why is the Prime Minister cancelling this funding commitment and spending billions of pounds giving pay rises to train drivers instead?”

Starmer replied: “Because the promise of 40 new hospitals didn’t involve 40, didn’t involve hospitals, they weren’t new, and they weren’t funded.”

The Tories had promised to build 40 new hospitals in their 2019 manifesto under Boris Johnson.

In November last year, the Public Accounts Committee warned that it had no confidence that the Tory Government will deliver the new hospitals it promised.

The committee warned at the time that the Tory government was highly unlikely even to construct the 32 new hospitals that it was 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”.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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