The Tories lied about Charing Cross Hospital. Labour will deliver on the rebuild. And we will be honest with people

Dear resident

My predecessor Greg Hands and the Conservatives repeatedly lied to us by claiming they had secured the funding for the rebuild of Charing Cross Hospital. Just as they lied to us before about plans to close the A&E and sell off most of the site to luxury property developers.

The truth, as we discovered on Labour taking office last July, was that there was no timetable and no money committed to the rebuild – despite the false claims in mountains of Conservative election literature.

In fact, the Conservatives had actually removed Charing Cross, St Mary’s and Hammersmith Hospitals – all part of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust – from the New Hospital Programme (the infamous Boris Johnson list of 40 hospitals that were either not 40, not new or not hospitals).

I’m angry that the Conservatives – with a wholly unfunded programme and a fictional timetable – felt it okay to lie like this. It is now Labour’s job to sort out the mess we inherited from the Conservatives.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has openly set out the scale of the hospital crisis and his plan to solve it. We will not pull the wool over people’s eyes.

The upside is that Charing Cross Hospital has been reinstated to the New Hospital Programme and its future is secure. But there is still an affordability problem – the Conservatives left the cupboard bare with no funding for the NHP and the public finances in a dire state.

The cost across the Imperial NHS Trust estate in West London – Charing Cross, Hammersmith and St Mary’s Hospitals – will run into billions.

The public purse is so weakened that the government doesn’t have the money to move as fast as we all want them to. That means pre-construction is now slated to start in 2030 and the physical works in 2035.

This announcement is very disappointing for residents, patients and healthcare staff across West London. It is a bitter legacy of the Conservatives’ failure to stick up for our local hospitals and their lies about having secured the funding needed.

As we face the scale of the problem head on, I will be challenging ministers to do more and will be working with the leadership team at Imperial to develop alternative funding approaches.

In particular, I am concerned about the state of St Mary’s, which Imperial has warned will not last until the 2040s.

Upon my election, I promised to be on the side of all residents and to always be honest with you. 

That is what I have attempted to do here.

I will not shield the facts from view nor lie as the Tories did when the truth is inconvenient.

Best wishes