EDM 749: Hospital maintenance

That this House notes the appalling state of repair of NHS hospitals across the country; notes that the NHS maintenance backlog has reached £13.8bn; further notes that decaying and inadequate facilities threaten the safety of patients and staff; believes it is an outrage that overcrowded hospitals must close operating theatres because they are no longer fit for use; regrets the last Conservative government’s record of starved repair budgets and exploding maintenance backlogs, which made sewage leaks, cracked walls, crumbling ceilings, and sinking floors commonplace; further regrets that patients have suffered a double betrayal on the New Hospital Programme, of broken promises under the last Conservative government and of dither and delay under this government; also regrets the cost to the NHS of papering over the cracks and keeping hospitals running past their natural lifespan; calls on the government to ensure no one is treated in broken, uncomfortable and unsafe facilities; and further calls on the government to reverse their delay and urgently deliver the new hospitals that patients have long been promised.