THE new Labour government has announced it will be reviewing the troubled New Hospitals Programme, following the discovery of a reported £22 billion blackhole left by the Tories in the public finances.

The Bracknell MP Peter Swallow has written an opinion piece on the topic, and has vowed to lobby hard for the new hospital as there 'is no other option'. He writes:

Residents across Bracknell are rightly concerned about the future of Frimley Park Hospital. I am determined we deliver a new hospital, close to the original site, as quickly as possible. Because of the existence of RAAC on the site, there is no other option than a rebuild.

In the next few weeks, I will be meeting with Frimley Park Hospital and the Department for Health, and making the case to move as quickly as possible.

But I also want to see a credible plan for delivery, and that includes knowing how the new hospital is going to be paid for. Because it’s now clear that the previous government had no idea how they were going to fund the new Frimley Park.

We all knew, going into the election, that the Tories’ sums didn’t add up. This week, Chancellor Rachel Reeves set out the full extent to which they’d been cooking the books.

The cover-up is so bad that the OBR has ordered an investigation into what the former chancellor told them – and more importantly, what he kept hidden.

The Tories committed to completing 40 new hospitals by 2030. These false promises didn’t fool anyone, of course. I lost count of the number of people who told me during the election campaign, Frimley Park was not on track to be completed by 2030. We don’t even have a site identified yet – let alone spades in the ground.

The Tories had already delayed the rebuilding of Frimley Park once before – when then-chancellor Rishi Sunak blocked plans for a new hospital in 2020.

Unlike the previous government, Labour will not make flimsy promises we can’t keep. It’s time to be honest with the British people.

Labour’s review of the New Hospitals Programme will set out a costed plan with a realistic timeline. I will lobby hard to make sure we can finally get on and deliver the hospital Bracknell has been waiting for, for too long.

By Peter Swallow, MP for Bracknell Forest