It’s official, we have a new hospital approved for the people of Blaydon and Consett. January proved one thing – we finally have a Government willing to listen. Trust in our nation’s politics has been damaged time and time again over the last 15 years, as successive Conservative Prime Ministers cut public services whilst failing to tackle major tax loopholes exploited by millionaires.
Take the NHS, where the Tories cut investment and froze staff pay year-on-year only to hand million pound contracts to their mates for dodgy PPE equipment during the pandemic.
All this means that when I am out in the constituency talking to people, many tell me that they feel disconnected from Westminster.
All too often I hear phrases like the ‘Westminster elite make decisions that don’t benefit local people’. That is what inspired me to become an MP. I wanted to be part of a Government that listens to people and brings real change to their lives. During the last General Election campaign, I spent every day out and about, knocking on doors and asking voters what their main issues were.
In Consett, one answer came up time and time again – people wanted to see spades in the ground for the new hospital, which had long been promised but never delivered upon. Within days of the election, I began arguing the case for just that as their new MP.
Shortly after Labour came into office, the scale of the challenge became clear. We would have to find savings to fill a £22bn black hole in the country’s finances, and one of the first things under review was the ’40 New Hospital Programme’ promised by the previous Government.
The problem with this programme was simple: there were not 40 projects, they were not new and some of them weren’t even hospitals. The title itself was a fiction dreamt up in the head of Boris Johnson.
Despite the difficult economic circumstances, the new Labour Government were determined to place these projects on a funded and deliverable footing. I had several meetings with the Health Minister to relay the information provided to me by the Shotley Bridge Hospital Support Group and argue the case for this project to be a priority.
For six years, the people of Consett were led up the garden path with false promises from the Tories about when this hospital would be built. But last month, the Labour Secretary of State Wes Streeting finally confirmed that the funding for the project had been secured. The new hospital is expected to begin construction in 2026, with completion by 2030.
It will provide a range of services including: an Urgent Care Centre; sixteen inpatient beds; outpatient activity; diagnostic services; a chemotherapy service and rehabilitation services along with capacity for third sector and social prescribing services.
The next step for the project will be the production of a full business case, and I look forward to continuing to work with the team throughout this process.
The proposed new site of the hospital, just off Consett Road, will drastically improve transport links to the site, open up capacity for further care infrastructure projects and enable all the communities of Consett and the surrounding villages to be better served.
This is proof that we now have a Labour Government that is listening to communities, addressing their priorities and investing in places like Consett. Each and every conversation I had during and following the General Election played a part in securing this announcement and I am grateful to all of those residents who have spent years pushing for this project to be approved.
We now need to make sure that alongside a Labour Government, we elect a Labour Council for Durham in May to carry on this work and see greater investment in Consett and the Derwent Valley.
I will continue to work with the Department of Health & Social Care, the local campaign group, and the project team to ensure that this happens as quickly as it can.