Reid gives go-ahead to 15 NHS hospital building projects

Fifteen new hospital building projects, worth £4bn, were given the go-ahead in England yesterday by John Reid, the Health Secretary.

The decision brings to 132 the number of NHS hospital developments authorised by Labour and puts it on track for opening 100 by 2010. Mr Reid said investment in new NHS hospitals had exceeded £16bn since 1997 in what was "genuinely a renaissance in hospital building".

Most of the money will come from developers under the Government's private finance initiative (PFI), which led the unions to describe the announcement as "good for patients but bad for taxpayers". Dave Prentis, of the public sector union Unison, said: "The public has a right to know money is being spent wisely. The Government should carry out an independent inquiry into all PFI schemes as a matter of urgency."

The new projects include a £225m in-patient block for Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, a £148m modernisation of the Papworth heart hospital, Cambridgeshire, and a £204m maternity and children's hospital for Leeds. Mr Reid said the projects had been proposed locally. Details would be finalised over one to two years.

A senior official said delays caused by a "period of indigestion" last year, when there were too many projects for developers to handle, had been overcome. "We are confident ... that there will be capacity in the industry to develop these schemes in the timescale we need," he said.

The Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, said contracts had to be transparent so value could be judged.