Fury as planned Wynyard Park Hospital axed

The region's Labour MPs reacted with fury to the news that the Wynyard Park project, north of Stockton - to replace outdated general hospitals in Hartlepool and Stockton - was among 12 schemes being axed.

The MPs directly linked the announcement to Mr Cameron's pre-election warning, in a celebrated interview with the BBC's Jeremy Paxman, that state spending in the North-East was too high and must be reduced.

Three other new hospital schemes, two on the edge of London and one in Liverpool, were given the go-ahead - even as Wynyard Park bit the dust.

Alex Cunningham, the Stockton North MP, said: "Yet again, the North-East has proved an easy target for a Tory government, this time aided and abetted by their Liberal Democrat colleagues.

And Phil Wilson, the Sedgefield MP, said: "David Cameron said during the election campaign that the North-East was going to be a target for cuts and what's happened has proved that."

But the department of health (DoH) said the decision was made because the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust had asked for all of the cash for the new hospital upfront, from Whitehall.

A spokeswoman said the trust - as a semi-independent 'foundation' trust' - was expected to show "reduced reliance on departmental support". Other new hospitals are being built under the private finance initiative (PFI).

She added: "The trust needs to act independently. That was the straw that broke the camel's back."

A further factor was the plan's failure to meet DoH criteria for the way services had to be significantly reconfigured, criteria that focus on; patient outcomes, patient choice, support from GPs and clinical evidence.

A spokesman for NHS Hartlepool and NHS Stockton-on-Tees said: "We understand that in the current financial climate the government has some tough decisions to make. We will continue to work closely with North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust on delivering the wider Momentum programme and will be discussing with the trust options now available to us in light of today's announcement.

In the Commons, Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem Treasury chief secretary - who scrapped, or suspended, projects worth £10.5bn - pinned the blame firmly on Labour's irresponsible "pre-election spending spree".

He told MPs: "The last government committed to spend money it simply didn't have. It made commitments it knew the next government could not fulfill and, in doing so, cynically played politics with the hopes of many communities."

Andy Burnham, Labour's Health Secretary, announced the go-ahead for Wynyard Park on March 19, promising a new hospital with an accident and emergency department, supported by a minor injury unit.

The move marked a significant break from the past, with many services for people in north Teesside, Hartlepool and east Durham moving out of a hospital environment and into local clinics.

Health bosses promised to invest £10m to improve transport links, to counter criticism that people in Hartlepool and Stockton would have to travel further to reach the hospital.

Reacting to the announcement, Mr Burnham,, now Shadow Secretary of State for Health, said: "This scheme is a vital part of building a modern NHS for the people of the North East. It would have saved the NHS millions in reduced running costs. That's why it passed the necessary value-for-money tests and it is simply untrue to suggest otherwise.

"This is a cruel and unnecessary cut to make. It is a bitter blow to patients and staff in the region and who will now be left with old and outdated facilities.

"This shows that Labour was right to warn that the Tories would impose cuts in the North East. But I don't think we could ever have envisaged that the Lib Dems would do their dirty work for them. The Lib Dems have hit a new low today and are now indistinguishable from the Tories."

The decision to cancel the Wynyard Hospital project places a huge question mark over the rest of the Momentum project which the local NHS has been working on for years.

With the new hospital as the centre-piece the rest of the plan involved building substantial new integrated care centes in Hartlepool, Billingham and Stockton.

The £22n One Life Hartlepool centre is opening this summer but it is not clear whether the other two will now be built.

Keith Fisher, chairman of the Save Our Hospital (Hartlepool) campaign, which opposed the closure of the University Hospital of Hartlepool and collected a 30,000 signature petition, said: "I could have told you this would happen. The new hospital was seen as a compromise but it wasn't as big as the two hospitals it was meant to replace. It was in the middle of nowhere and the locals didn't want it."

He called on health officials to restore Hartlepool hospital services transferred to North Tees Hospital in Stockton.

"If they try to move everything to North Tees now we will get our banners out again," he added.

Chief executive Alan Foster for North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust said: "Naturally we're disappointed but we welcome the Department of Health's offer to work with their officials on alternative funding solutions."

Royal College of Nursing regional director Glenn Turp said: "We are obviously disappointed that a high quality NHS capital investment that would have benefited tens of thousands of people in the local communities will now not be going ahead. The hospital would have provided services to the communities around Middlesbrough and Hartlepool, areas that have extremely high levels of social deprivation and health inequalities. It is important that, as the government seeks to pursue its stated agenda to tackle health inequalities, the communities around Middlesbrough and Hartlepool are not left behind".

But the Conservatives - while promising that new hospitals would go ahead elsewhere, because health spending was "ringfenced" - stepped back from supporting Wynyard Park, because of significant local opposition.

In a letter to local MPs yesterday, health minister Simon Burns highlighted the "record levels of debt that we inherited", writing: "The government has decided that it cannot support the scheme going ahead as currently proposed.

"I know that this will be disappointing to you and your clinical colleagues who have worked hard to progress this project."

There was better news for other important North-East schemes caught up in the review, which were cleared to proceed, including: * A £56.7m scheme to overhaul bus services across the Tees Valley, given the go-ahead in March after five years in development.

* A £350m upgrade to the Tyne and Wear Metro.

* An £18.5m grant for an offshore wind test site at the New and Renewable Energy Centre (Narec) in Blyth, Northumberland.

* An £11.5m grant towards the launch of the £25m Clipper facility in Newcastle, to build the world's largest turbine blades.

A review of 217 projects - totalling £34 billion - was ordered last month. Of those, 12 have been scrapped to save £2bn and a further 12 suspended until the autumn spending review, worth a further £8.5bn.

Particularly painful for the Lib Dem side of the coalition was the axing of an £80m loan to Sheffield Forgemasters, an engineering company that employs 800 people in the city where the party's leader, Nick Clegg, is an MP.

The announcement triggered furious exchanges in the Commons, with Labour treasury spokesman Liam Byrne describing it is a "moment of abject humiliation" for the Lib Dems.

He told Mr Alexander: "Both the country, and the Liberal Democrat party beyond, will be aghast this afternoon at your attack on jobs, your attack on construction workers, your attack on the industries of the future and the cancellation of a hospital."

Mr Cunningham immediately pledged to lead a fight to save Wynyard Park, tabling a parliamentary motion and applying for a Commons debate - and challenging Conservative James Wharton (Stockton South) and Lib Dem Ian Swales (Redcar) to support it.

Grahame Morris (Lab; Easington) called the decision "unjustifiable, senseless and immoral", while Pat Glass (North West Durham) said: "The decision will have a massive impact. How does that sit with the promises made by government Members not to cut health spending?"

There was also anger at the surprise announcement that free swimming for under-16s and over 60s - introduced by Labour last year - will end from August 1.

Hugh Robertson, the sports minister, said the scheme was a "luxury we can no longer afford", adding: "Research shows that the great majority of free swimmers were swimming already - and would have paid to swim anyway."

A total of £40m will be snatched back from local councils who administer the scheme - leaving town halls with £25m to run it until July 31.