Tory election promise to construct 40 new hospitals might be 5 years late
The Tory promise to build 40 new hospitals by 2030 has been put in fresh doubt by documents suggesting the project could slip by five years.
Boris Johnson put the pledge at the heart of the party’s manifesto at the 2019 election. Rishi Sunak doubled down on the pledge the day after he called the election, saying it still stood.
But the small-print of contracts quietly published by the government reveals they’re preparing for the possibility they are not completed until 2035. The documents for the New Hospital Project “reserve the right to extend the term of the contract, in whole or in part, for up to a further four years, to no later than 31 March 2035”.
Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “Last Thursday, Rishi Sunak promised voters to build 40 new hospitals by 2030, despite his government planning to delay it for another five years. He is either lying to the public or doesn’t have the first clue what’s going on in his own government.
“Rishi Sunak has failed to meet his promised to cut waiting lists or build a single new hospital. Given another five years in power, he will fail again and waiting lists will hit 10million. Only Labour can deliver the change the NHS needs.”
The new small-print appears in the mammoth contract for a “Programme Delivery Partner” for the project, put out to tender in November last year. Previous contracts made no mention of an extension to 2035.
The price tag for the Programme Delivery Partner is advertised at an eye-watering £307 million, but that only covers the first four years of the contract. If it’s extended until 2035 that price could balloon to more than £800 million. The Government has not yet announced a winning bidder.
The Public Accounts Committee in November said it had “extreme concerns” about the “lack of progress” on the new hospitals programme. They said: “Given the prominence and importance of this commitment, progress has been worryingly slow.
“Furthermore, with a very large number of hospitals planned to be in construction simultaneously in the last years of the decade, we have no confidence that even the reduced target of 32 new hospitals is achievable by 2030.”
