Facts

The health secretary made this fabricated claim in an interview with the BBC. He was repeating a lie uttered countless times by Boris Johnson and regularly exposed as deceitful on this website and elsewhere.

Steve Barclay repeated this claim later in the interview saying “we’ve got the commitment to 40 new hospitals”. 

In 2021, the government reinvented the definition of “new hospital” by ordering NHS Trusts to describe a “major new clinical building on an existing site or a new wing of an existing hospital” and a “major refurbishment and alteration of all but the building frame or main structure” as a “new hospital”.

On January 1st 2023 it emerged that work had started on just seven of the forty new hospitals promised for 2030 by Boris Johnson in his 2019 Tory general election manifesto, with two completed. 

Verdict

Disappointing that Rishi Sunak's health secretary should repeat Boris Johnson’s shameless lie about 40 new hospitals. Steve Barclay was misleading BBC viewers.

We emailed Steve Barclay’s office and the Department for Health and Social Care offering them the chance to respond. The email was received, but no reply.