Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Derek Twigg and Will Quince

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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Derek Twigg and Will Quince

Monday 11th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman, the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, for his question. He knows that we introduced an agile, dynamic online system because the legacy benefits system, which was largely paper-based, was fraught with issues and errors. That is why we moved over. Notwithstanding the points that he has made, I stress that the previous, paper-based system, which relied on face-to-face contact, would not have coped in this situation. It is because of universal credit that we have been able to process more than 2 million claims since mid-March.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

What recent discussions local officials of her Department have had with operators of food banks on referral of benefit claimants to food banks during the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Will Quince) [V]]

Ministers and officials have had regular discussions with food bank providers and other stakeholders during this time. Flexibility and innovation in local jobcentre arrangements for signposting to food banks, within the parameters of the existing guidance, is encouraged during the covid-19 outbreak.

[Derek Twigg [V]]

[Inaudible.] In my constituency, the jobcentre is not referring people to the Widnes food bank. It is important that the Minister intervenes and ensures that referrals do take place so that the people who need help get it quickly.