Oral Answers to Questions

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a long-standing advocate for a new general hospital for Warrington. The expression of interest from the trust has been received. We are currently in the process of reviewing expressions of interest for the eight new hospitals and aim to announce a final decision by the end of the year. I recently met him to hear about the plans, and the people of Warrington could not have a greater champion than him.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

May I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) about the need for investment in Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Trust? It is important that both hospitals have that investment. Part of the capacity problem is the lack of social care capacity in the community, whether in a home or in patients’ own homes. Just recently, I had an email from the chief executive of Whiston Hospital, a large acute hospital, where 115 patients were in beds when they did not need to be—they should have been going out of the hospital—out of a total of 721 adult acute beds. Is that not an example of where the Government are failing to provide enough social care out in the community?

[Will Quince]

We are investing £500 million to create another 200,000 social care placements, but we have significantly increased the number of physical beds available in our hospitals. In July, before we made the commitment to increase bed capacity, we had 96,375 general and acute beds; in October, we had 97,350. We are also delivering that increased capacity outside of hospital through this winter by creating an extra 2,500 virtual ward beds.