§ Mr. MillerTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list all cases where spare computer capacity has been sold to other Departments since 1987, giving the Department and value of each contract. [14089]
§ Mr. HoramWe have not sold and do not sell spare computer capacity. The Department of Health's information technology infrastructure comprises personal computers on the desk, linked to servers in each office via local area networks which in turn are linked nationally via a wide area network. Any spare capacity, such as there is, does not lend itself to being sold for both technical and security reasons. The Department outsourced its mainframe computer capacity to the private sector last year following a market test.