The health secretary has admitted the government will not build 40 new hospitals by 2030, as long promised, but said the projects involved “a range of things” including new wings and refurbishments. Steve Barclay, who nonetheless insisted this did not break the Conservatives’ manifesto promise for 40 new hospitals, also argued that the public were not concerned about the distinction as long as the facilities they used were new. The debate over the accuracy of the government’s hospital-building pledge was resurrected this week when Barclay told MPs that eight of the 40 “new hospitals” would be delayed into the next decade. The change to the programme involved some of the 40 originally listed being replaced by schemes to refurbish or replace hospitals built with a type of concrete that is well past its expected 30-year lifespan, with roofs and ceilings at risk of falling down. Despite the changes, the wider pledge remained, Barclay initially told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme. “We’re committed to 40 new hospitals by 2030. That is the biggest capital investment the NHS will have seen, and we set out the details of that in the house on Thursday,” he said. Kuenssberg pressed the health secretary on whether he was being “completely straight with viewers”, given some projects are for refurbishments, while others involve only new wings. “If you save up and you get a new conservatory on the back of your house, you don’t have a new house,” she said.
Barclay replied: “Some of the schemes include, for example, a hospital being gutted and fully refurbished. If you look at Charing Cross [hospital in London], for example, that’s exactly what we will be doing. We’ll be starting work to decant some of the facilities and then refurbish. So there’s a range of things within the scheme.” Asked to explicitly say it was not 40 new hospitals, Barclay said this was “a debate that was had in 2020”, and that patients would not mind either way. “Well, if it’s a new wing, a new facility, a women’s and children’s hospital, for example, as part of a wider campus … what matters to you as a patient is whether the facilities are state of the art, whether they’re new,” he said. The change to the plan announced on Thursday added five hospitals with crumbling concrete and three mental health facilities to the list, in effect replacing eight that have been pushed back beyond the 2030 deadline. Among those now with longer deadlines for work are St Mary’s hospital in Paddington, west London, parts of which date back to 1845. Over the last year, ceilings have collapsed in two wards, sewage has leaked into the pharmacy and parts of the Cambridge wing – the oldest part of the hospital – have had to be mothballed because the floor was no longer strong enough to support the clinical services there.