During Treasury questions in the House of Commons James made the case for QEH to benefit from the funding announced in the Budget and Spending Review last week for the new hospitals programme.
He set out the compelling case and highlighted that given the inevitable need to rebuild QEH it made sense to have a properly funded new hospital rather than using emergency funding to patch up the buildings.
James’ question:
“I welcome funding for the new hospitals programme and highlight to the Minister that the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn - with 200 props holding up its structurally deficient roof - has a compelling case to be one of those new schemes. Given the inevitable need to rebuild the Queen Elizabeth, does my Honourable Friend agree that it’s far better to have a properly funded new hospital using Modern Methods of Construction rather than it being an unplanned cost with emergency funding constantly needed to prop up this failing building?”
In response from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rt Hon Simon Clarke MP said:
“I thank my Honourable Friend for his question and he has an obvious passion for improving the lives of his constituents. As well as committing £3.7 billion to make progress on the 40 hospitals named last year the government has committed to funding a further 8 new hospitals by 2030. The process for selecting those 8 is being led by the Department for Health and Social Care, and will be based on a range of criteria including clinical lead and deliverability. I would encourage my Rt Honourable Friend to engage in that process but obviously I’d be happy to have any further discussions if that would be useful.”
