Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of funding a new hospital to replace the University Hospital of North Tees.

Repairing and rebuilding our healthcare estate is a vital part of our ambition to create a National Health Service that is fit for the future through our 10-Year Health Plan.

We recognise that delivering high quality NHS healthcare services requires safe, sustainable, and effective infrastructure. That is why we prioritised investment in healthcare at the recent Spending Review, which delivered the largest ever health capital budget.

However, the New Hospital Programme (NHP) is the current mechanism for the delivery of hospitals and there are currently no plans to invite further schemes to join the NHP. The focus of the NHP is on delivery aligned to our Plan for Implementation. As such, the Department has made no assessment of the potential merits of funding a new hospital to replace the University Hospital of North Tees.