Written question asked by Baroness Featherstone (Liberal Democrat) on Tuesday, 18 July 2006, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 20 July 2006. It was answered by Andy Burnham (Labour) on Monday, 24 July 2006 on behalf of the Department of Health.

Hospital Telephone Calls

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the charge was per minute for telephone calls made (a) by patients from and (b) to patients in hospital, in each primary care trust in each of the past five years; and if she will make a statement.

Answer: The NHS Plan, published in July 2000, announced bedside televisions and telephones would be available in every major hospital by 2004. The systems have now been installed in around 80,000 beds in 160 major national health service hospitals.Three private companies are licensed to provide bedside entertainment systems to major hospitals in England. They set the call charges.The cost for patients to make telephone calls to these hospitals has remained constant at 10p per minute (minimum 20p) for local and national calls.The incoming call charges have remained constant for two of the service provides at 39p per minute off peak and 49p per minute peak. Charges per minute for the third service provider were; 14p 2002, 17p in 2003, 20p in 2004 and they currently charge 35p.Primary care trusts fall outside the NHS Plan remit for the availability of bedside televisions and telephones and they would therefore make their own provisions for telephone systems.

Secondary information