The leader's announcement came as the Liberal Democrats revealed the number of DHSC staff working on the New Hospital Programme (NHP) fell by 60 to 22 in the past two years.

Davey said: ‘Ministers should make building these hospitals an urgent priority, with a new taskforce at the heart of Government to drive them forward. Otherwise we will only see more patients suffering and costs spiralling further out of control.'

The Liberal Democrats said there had been 506 infrastructure incidents, equivalent to 32 days of lost clinical time, at the hospitals pushed back under the NHP.

The research also found there were almost 100 floods at these sites, accounting for a quarter of all floods in NHS England buildings last year despite making up just 1% of all sites.

Over one in seven NHS buildings are older than the health service itself, founded in 1948, with the cost for all the repairs at a record £13.8bn.

Davey has called for the delayed projects on the NHP to be brought forward.