Give patients free TV

THE scandal of charging patients sky-high fees to watch TV has its roots in poor decision-making by NHS boards 15 years ago.

Barred from bringing in their own sets, the sick and elderly have been hit with huge bills to use pay-per-view bedside units.

How deeply telling that inmates in holiday camp jails pay only £1 a week for the same privilege, deducted from their ‘wages’.

That our society prizes the rights of convicted criminals over those of some of society’s most vulnerable citizens should be a source of deep shame.

The privately run scheme in NHS hospitals is aimed at people who are too sick or weak to walk to ward day rooms, which have a free communal TV. It is a giant rip-off, made all the more unpalatable by the fact that none of the income generated from bedbound patients goes to the ailing NHS.

Too many boards are run by executives on fat-cat salaries, who would have had ultimate oversight of the extortionate contracts with a UK-wide private provider.

But the Labour-led coalition government at the time, responsible for devolved state healthcare, should also bear some of the blame for this unedifying mess.

Former SNP health secretary Shona Robison, then an opposition MSP, said in 2004 that pay-for-TV was an example of ‘profiteering’. Back then, the daily charge for bedside television was £3.50 – a fee that has now rocketed to nearly £10.

Under the terms of the contract, the company is only allowed to make a ‘reasonable’ profit, defined as 2 per cent above inflation.

The hospital TV deals are now coming to an end, putting a stop to a practice that was recognised as unacceptable long ago. This means NHS bosses have an unmissable opportunity to scrap the charges – rightly branded ‘daylight robbery’ by the Scottish Tories – and get a better deal for patients.