Future Fit: Shadow minister 'unable to make commitment' as MP calls for increased involvement of private sector in NHS
A Labour shadow minister is "unable to make a commitment" that her party would commit to spending £312m on the Future Fit hospital reorganisation if it wins the next General Election.
Questioned by Shrewsbury's Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski in a debate on the future of the NHS on Tuesday, the shadow minister advised the Shropshire MP to speak to the health minister.
Mr Kawczynski had made an impassioned speech in Westminster Hall on the failure of the local NHS to spend the £312 million Future Fit in the seven years since it was secured.
He asked the shadow minister: "Bearing in mind that the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust is the worst-performing for A&E in the United Kingdom, will the honourable lady commit, if there is a Labour Government, to backing the £312 million investment in our local trust - yes or no?"
Birmingham, Edgbaston MP Preet Kaur Gill MP, the Shadow Minister for Primary Care and Public Health, said: "I thank the honourable gentleman for his question, but I do not have the level of detail to be able to make any such commitment.
"He needs to speak to the Minister to ensure that the valuable investment they have been able to obtain for people in Shrewsbury is actually realised. That is really a conversation for him to have with the Minister."
Later in the debate Mr Kawczynski did get the chance to put the question to health minister Will Quince, the Conservative MP for Colchester.
He said: "I am very grateful to my honourable friend for highlighting the extraordinary increases in Government funding for the NHS, but has he recognised during the course of this debate my concern that, seven years after securing the £312 million for modernisation of A&E services in Shropshire, not a single brick has been laid?
