This week's MP's column comes from Naz Shah, Labour MP for Bradford West 

OUR local hospitals at Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) and St Luke’s have a special meaning for many of us.

Maybe you or your children were born there, perhaps somebody you love was cared for there, or you might be an NHS worker who has worked there yourself. No matter what the connection, we all have one with our local hospital.

These places are more than buildings. They are an important part of our shared history and our culture, and we should be proud of them. But we also must be realistic about their future.

BRI has facilities from the 1930s, older than the NHS. And before it became St Luke’s in 1912, that hospital was a Victorian workhouse.

As a result, a huge amount of time, money and effort that should be spent improving and developing facilities instead gets spent repairing the bricks and mortar, keeping them safe and keeping the weather out.

Of course, there have been improvements and some new building projects on both sites to make them as good as they can be.

I’ve seen a lot of that for myself, on my recent visits to these hospitals, and it’s impressive. But there is a limit to how much can be done: you simply can’t deliver 21st century healthcare from a 19th century workhouse.

The construction methods of the past make it difficult to alter the structure of these buildings, and don’t support modern ways of looking after people.

It’s harder to manage the ‘flow’ of patients through the hospital, and essential maintenance can be costly, difficult, and even dangerous because of the presence of hazards like asbestos.

Important work to reduce greenhouse gases and introduce new technology has gone as far as it can, and the location of BRI in particular is not very accessible for the large number of people in our district who rely on buses to get to hospital.

There’s evidence to show many people do not attend their appointments because the travel is too difficult – those who need healthcare most are sometimes denied access.

This is what we mean when we talk about inequalities, and we simply have to do better.

So a decision is needed. Either continue to take lots of small steps, year on year, just to keep the show on the road, and accept that major improvements are very difficult to make.

Or, take a giant leap, combining St Luke’s Hospital and Bradford Royal Infirmary, and replacing them with a single integrated hospital offering world-class facilities on a single site, providing more integrated care, with better access and choice for patients, and a more efficient estate and workforce, that releases more time to care.

That’s what the team at Bradford Hospitals want to achieve for our city, and I am backing them 100 per cent.

The Trust’s ambition is for a new hospital for the people of Bradford and West Yorkshire – a zero carbon hospital that will transform the quality of healthcare for the people of West Yorkshire and across the North of England.

It will play a vital role at the heart of the community, putting Bradford right at the centre of health services designed to tackle inequalities and meet the needs of a growing population that is one of the youngest in England.

We have some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country, and these factors can lead to people in our district having more illnesses at a younger age, which affect their quality of life and increase the chances that they will need hospital care.

That’s why it is only fair, and right, that our community has the facilities it needs.

We hear a lot these days about ‘levelling up’.

There is no better example of levelling up than a world-class hospital for one of the 20 per cent most deprived districts authorities in England.

The gaps in our life expectancy, healthy life expectancy and inequalities between the most and least deprived areas are very significant. At a time of enormous pressure on public finances, new facilities at Bradford would offer major economic benefits, sustainable skilled jobs, and the cost efficiencies of smart buildings from savings in energy and other running costs.

There is a huge opportunity here to make an investment for the future, and we should all get behind this bid.

The Bradford Hospitals team have submitted an expression of interest to NHS England, for permission to take this proposal to the next stage, and I for one will be lobbying Ministers hard to ensure it gets the priority it deserves.