§ Mr. MorganTo ask the Secretary of State for Wales what assessment he has made of the total number of forms collected by his Department for health service administrative purposes in each of the past five years, as measured by the(a) number of different forms and (b) volume and number of actual forms collected.
§ Mr. RedwoodAnnual figures are not available for the period requested. However, in 1993–94, I ordered a comprehensive review of 106 financial and statistical forms sent to the NHS in Wales by the Welsh Office. These returns consisted of around 220 pages in total and, taking account of the frequency of collection and the number of respondents, an estimated 6,800 completed forms were collected in 1993–94. As a consequence of the first phase of the review, 35 forms—47 pages in total—equivalent to some 1,300 completed returns, were discontinued.
A second phase of the review is in train and I expect to announce a further reduction in the form-filling burden on the health service in the near future.