The government’s official spending watchdog is to launch an inquiry into Boris Johnson’s claim that 40 new hospitals will be built by 2030, as concerns grow in Whitehall that the pledge is unaffordable and has been greatly oversold to the public. In a move that could prove hugely embarrassing for the prime minister, the independent National Audit Office (NAO) has decided to conduct a “value for money review” into the entire scheme, which was a cornerstone of the Conservative party’s 2019 general election manifesto.
The NAO has also made clear that it is concerned at how the government still maintains that it will build 40 entirely new hospitals, when in reality many will merely be extensions or refurbishments of existing ones. The NAO’s intervention will raise further questions about honesty and standards inside the Johnson government following the long-drawn-out Partygate controversy and a series of recent sex scandals involving male Conservative MPs.
Many Tories fear their party is now becoming more widely distrusted on policy, having broken pledges not to raise national insurance, abandoned the “triple lock” on pension increases last year, and scaled back high-speed rail projects in the north of England.
Last year, it emerged that ministers had been instructing trusts to give an exaggerated impression to the public of the scale of the projects by referring to refurbishments as “new hospitals”.
A guidance document, distributed to trusts and entitled New Hospital Programme Communications Playbook, said a “new hospital” could be “a major new clinical building on an existing site or a new wing of an existing hospital, provided it contains a whole clinical service, such as maternity or children’s services; or a major refurbishment and alteration of all but building frame or main structure, delivering a significant extension to useful life which includes major or visible changes to the external structure”. Staff were told that all the schemes “must always be referred to as a new hospital”.
Last month, the BBC’s Reality Check programme emailed every NHS trust involved in the scheme, asking which of three categories their project fitted into. Of the 34 trusts which replied, only five said they were building a whole new hospital, 12 said they were building new wings and nine said they were rebuilding existing hospital buildings.
Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, recently cast doubt on whether many schemes would get off the ground. “The government launched these flagship new-builds with much fanfare, but NHS leaders are becoming increasingly frustrated that the money isn’t following through,” he said. “The fear now is that some of these schemes may never see the light of day.”
Yet more prevarication from BJ and his government … 
