§ 34. Mr. K. Robinsonasked the Minister of Health if he will state the approximate aggregate value of development schemes which have now been eliminated from the original Hospital Plan, and, of those, which have now been deferred for three years or more but remain included in the 1964 revision of the plan; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. BarberThis year's revision of the Hospital Plan assumes expenditure on hospital building in the forthcoming decade of £750 million compared with £500 million in the decade referred to in the original plan. This difference of £250 million in money terms is equivalent to about £160 million in real terms. In the course of the revision, schemes to the value of about £20 million have been eliminated either because the needs have been changed or because they have been met in other ways. Since the Plan and its revisions relate to quinquennia, not to individual years, it is not possible to give a specific answer to the second part of the Question.
§ Mr. RobinsonPerhaps I can help the right hon. Gentleman. Is he aware that such evidence that I have suggests that schemes totalling about £300 million have now been deferred beyond the date of the original ten-year plan? Is he further aware that the document he published on Friday, dealing with the 1964 revision of the Hospital Plan, is remarkably misleading—more remarkable perhaps for what it conceals than for what it reveals? Is he also aware that there is mounting evidence that the original estimating for the Hospital Plan, carried out by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), is about as far from the mark as we are now accustomed to expect from the Ministry of Aviation?
§ Mr. BarberThe hon. Gentleman has asked a number of questions. Of course, it is the case that several schemes which have not been eliminated have been deferred, and that some have been deferred beyond the present decade, either because they or others have been increased in scope and cost or because new schemes are now considered more urgently.
The revised Hospital Plan, published last Friday, in broad terms follows a pattern similar to that of last year and in some ways goes a little further. With regard to the actual figures, I have already mentioned that the expenditure over the next decade will amount to £750 million compared with £500 million of the original decade. I would have thought that the hon. Member would have been cheering and not complaining.
After all, the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), on 908 the hospital programme, could not be behalf of the Opposition, has said that exceeded by any party with any degree of responsibility. If the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) is opposed to the development of some schemes but is not prepared to spend any more in total, it must follow that he would not have brought forward all the new maternity schemes and various other schemes set out in the document.
§ Mr. RobinsonIs the right hon. Gentleman aware that one can hardly be happy about costs having increased if the price of meeting them is the cutting out of dozens and dozens of major schemes which hospital authorities had expected to start within the original ten years?
§ Mr. BarberBrick by brick, the cost of hospital building has increased no more than that of other forms of building. The increased cost of the Hospital Plan is due mainly to more being provided, often within schemes rather than through additional schemes.