Daylight robbery ... and not a penny of fees goes to the NHS

THE issue of bedside television charges in hospitals was highlighted when I recently visited Raigmore to see a friend, a countryman who longed to go home and found being in hospital difficult.

I tried to cheer him up by saying that at least he had a bedside television; his response was a wry laugh.

He asked me why I thought it possible he would be able to pay the £9.90 a day needed to watch it. I had no idea the daily charge actually exceeded the monthly costs for internet television services.

For those who have not spent long periods in hospital it is perhaps difficult to understand how critical TV is to breaking the boredom of the daily routine of treatment, eating and sleeping.

I know my father, who spent the last few weeks of his life in hospital, would have welcomed the opportunity of the distraction a TV would have offered.

Many NHS boards in Scotland decided some 15 years ago to enter into unbreakable contracts for the provision of bedside TV, a decision that has resulted in the situation we are in today.

Patients are charged to a level that is prohibitive and punitive and frankly no more than daylight robbery.

What is also unacceptable is that not one penny of the income raised from bedside TV goes to the NHS.

But we now have a chance to break this appalling deal. In June of this year, the contract for bedside TV in NHS Highland ends and we need to look at the options. The contract with other health boards will also end in 2019. The Health Secretary, in response to a question I raised last week, promised to work with NHS Highland to make patient TV more affordable. She also promised to try to roll out free wifi, with sufficient speed to allow patients to stream TV programmes to their tablets.

The simple solution is to ensure that when contracts are awarded, the charges for patient TV are significantly cheaper and that wifi in hospitals can be accessed by all patients.

The contract for the provision of bedside TV for patients in hospital might have worked well at the outset but now it looks like something that would make Dick Turpin blush.

It is not right that patients are made to pay extortionate fees for the simple pleasure of keeping in touch and being entertained while they recover. Edward Mountain is Conservative MSP for the Highlands