Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of the delayed completion of the programme of works at the Royal Liverpool Hospital.

The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust are currently working closely with the replacement contractor Laing O’Rourke and external advisors in undertaking a fully costed assessment of all the works needed to complete the new Royal Liverpool Hospital. This includes significant works required to fix the structural issues and defective works that have been identified following the termination of the Private Finance Initiative contract in 2018 in addition to those identified at termination and firming up the scale of works for issues previously identified. The work also includes an assessment of the additional revenue expenditure associated with the existing hospital facility to maintain patient safety and business continuity. Additional capital funding has already been provided by the Department for this purpose.

The finalised costings and the additional capital and revenue funding required, to come from Departmental budgets, will be set out in a business case which the Trust are aiming to submit to NHS Improvement and the Department for approval in April 2019. The Department will continue to support and fund the Royal Liverpool Trust to get the new hospital built as quickly as possible, while making every penny of taxpayers’ money count.