§ Mr. Nicholas BrownTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the total budget for mobile telephones in the national health service; and how many are held by(a) medical staff and (b) administrators.
§ Mr. SackvilleFinancial responsibility for mobile telephones rests with individual users or their employers. From a limited expenditure survey of users, as part of a national initiative to minimise expenditure on telecommunications, total expenditure is estimated to be of the order of £24 million per year. Estimates of the number of mobile telephones held by various national health service groups are shown in the table.
Group Number Clinical Staff 30,000 Other Hospital Staff 19,500 Ambulance Services 500 1 Includes a variety of technical, clinical and non-clinical staff; administrators were not identified separately. The NHS Executive have recently negotiated substantial discounts with a number of suppliers. These offer individual user savings of between 8 per cent. and 19 per cent. and should provide an overall reduction in the NHS bill of 10 per cent. by 1997.