Helen Morgan

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman’s hospital is being dealt with, but I am sure that the residents of Torbay will not feel the benefit of that. I am slightly surprised that he thinks that the decade since the Liberal Democrats were in power has had no impact whatsoever. I did address the point that when a party comes into government and has to clear up the appalling mess left by the previous Government, there are difficult choices to be made. His party knows that. Labour Members, for example, have voted to retain the two-child benefit cap and keep a quarter of a million children in poverty—something that no one in my party has ever voted for. The last time I opened a Liberal Democrat Opposition day debate was in October, and the topic was primary care. I explained how the Government’s failure to invest in primary care was a false economy that increased pressures and costs in the critical parts of the system. The management of our hospital buildings displays that same false economy. Just as spending money on critical care instead of prevention and public health is a poor approach to managing a health service, waiting for the roof to collapse is an irresponsible way to manage NHS buildings. As problems are ignored and investment is poorly targeted, it is the patients and the hard-working staff striving to help them who are forced to suffer. This is not just about the new hospital programme. Across the country, there are thousands of GP surgeries that need urgent improvement if they are to provide the care that patients deserve. More than 2,000 hospital buildings across England were built before the foundation of the NHS in 1948, while the state of GP surgeries varies wildly. Many surgeries are simply no longer fit for purpose, having been built in the 1950s. Prescott surgery in my constituency, for example, has long been recognised as somewhere that needs to drastically increase in size because the population of the village has increased drastically itself. Despite the land and the community infrastructure levy funding being available, there is no sign of a new surgery being built. As the delay continues, the costs are rising and the challenge grows for both the council and the integrated care board, which are already under immense pressure to cut their costs. Instead of pursuing fantasies like the Conservatives or false economies like the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats would invest to save by starting construction now, and ending the epidemic of cancelled operations, closed-off wards and huge sums wasted on emergency repairs. That would save the taxpayer money in the long run and benefit patients much sooner.