Almost casually, and with no real coverage in the mainstream national news media, the Labour Party has abandoned its previous reluctance to commit to spending, and its caution on promising new hospital projects – and committed to delivering the new hospital projects notoriously promised by Boris Johnson.
A patchily-covered series of statements targeted at areas where new hospitals are planned has been followed up by a new paragraph in Labour’s 2024 Manifesto which states:
“It is also clear that NHS estates are in a state of disrepair after years of neglect. Labour is therefore committed to delivering the New Hospitals Programme.”
Like so many other Boris Johnson statements and promises, the pledge in 2019 that the Tories would build “40 new hospitals” has proved to be worthless. Instead the Johnson government set up the New Hospitals Programme (NHP).
By July 2021, Natalie Forrest, leader of the NHP, admitted that the ‘brakes had come on’ for some of the Pathfinder projects, most notably Princess Alexandra, where a ceiling collapsed recently on an ICU patient.
Full article in The Lowdown, 13 June 2024