Wes Streeting

I was delighted to visit Milton Keynes hospital with my hon. Friend before the general election. It is doing incredible work in the conditions that he describes; in particular, its innovation in the application of smart, everyday, practical technology to improve patients’ experience is to be commended. I share my hon. Friend’s anger, his constituents’ anger and the anger of people right across the country in every community—including mine, by the way, where a hospital upgrade was promised. We were told there was a plan and a timetable, and we were told that the programme was fully funded. Then we came into government to find that the timetables were a work of fiction and that the funding runs out in March. That is something else that the shadow Secretary of State should apologise for, and I look forward to hearing her apology. People across the country are owed an apology. Let me say to every hon. Member who is in the same position that I, my hon. Friend and people across the country are in that we will not play fast and loose with the public’s trust, and we will come forward with a plan for the upgrade of hospitals that is credible, achievable and funded. That is the difference between the way that this Labour Government will behave, in terms of both public trust and public money, and the way that the previous Conservative Government behaved, which was a total disgrace.