The National Health Service

Phillip Lee Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

There speaks the voice of Scotland. As we have put record amounts of funding into the NHS in England, that funding proportionately flows through the Barnett formula to Scotland, but the Scottish Government have refused to increase NHS funding in Scotland. I wish that they would increase it as quickly as we have in England, where we have seen a faster increase in the numbers of doctors and nurses than in Scotland.

[Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (LD)]

Will the Secretary of State help me by pointing me towards an online resource that provides the evidence base for his decisions on the locations of A&E departments and the like? Any medical professional will say that we need a regional and, dare I say, national plan in order to make sure that access to emergency care is equal for every citizen in England and Wales.

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point that capital investment needs to be strategic, and the new health infrastructure plan, which I was discussing at the Health and Social Care Committee yesterday, is intended to put in place that long-term plan for capital investment, and we are building 40 new hospitals over the next decade. It may be fair to say that I got some flak from Labour Members for proposing 10 years’ worth of new hospitals, because they said that only the first part of the health infrastructure plan—the so-called HIP 1—should be announced. I do not think that that is true, however, because we need a long-term approach to capital investment, with 40 new hospitals over the next decade.