§ Mrs. GillanTo ask the secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the total cost to the National Health Service of millennium compliance. [19201]
§ Mr. BoatengInformation is not available to estimate accurately the total costs of millennium compliancy. The best estimate available from industry and other sources is that the total cost of resolving the problem for Information Technology systems in any organisation will be equivalent to the annual expenditure on those systems, For the National Health Service as a whole this amounts350W to between £200 and £300 million. This does not include expenditure in resolving the embedded chip problem for which no estimates are currently available.