 I would like it to be. The next item of business is members' business debate on motion 14486, in the name of Edward Mountain, on fares hospital tv charges. That debate will be concluded without any questions being put. Will those members who wish to speak in the debate please press the request to speak buttons, and I call on Edward Mountain to open the debate for around seven minutes, please? I'm very pleased we're having this debate at this time and I'd like to thank all members from other parties who supported my motion, particularly David Stewart, Monica Lennon, Neil Findlay, Mike Rumbles and Liam McArthur. I am however disappointed that no SNP politician has signed my motion. I'm not deterred though. I believe that despite their reticence to stand up and be counted, the majority of them will support me in my wish to end unfair hospital TV charges. I really believe that this is a cross-party issue that should unite us all. Since I've raised the issue of TV charges, I've received a huge amount of interest in this issue, not only from across the Highlands but also across Scotland. Let me welcome at this stage those who are following this debate live on the BBC. For those of you that are in hospital and are having to pay to watch this debate, hopefully your Parliament can make a real change on this issue. I've decided to raise this issue having visited a friend in Rhaig Maw. He has spent all his life in the countryside, which makes his time in hospital really difficult. After two months being confined to bed, he is longing to go home. As I chatted to him, I saw the bedside TV unit and tried to console him. At least I said that he had something that he could watch. His response was a laugh and he said that you have to be joking. The costs for using that thing are ridiculous. Those of you in this chamber who have avoided being in hospital for a long period of time are hard to explain the boredom and the routine of eating, sleeping and being treated to create. I remember sitting with my father during the last weeks of his life. He would have welcomed the distraction of the TV. Some five years ago, when I was in Dr Gray's in Elgin, I used to have to wander off the ward that I was in to find a TV to break the monotony of lying in bed. I gave up the amount of times that I received a rebuke from nurses for wandering off the ward to watch a TV that was not there for patients. In the Highlands, where many patients get moved from their communities to Rhaig Mawr, visits from their families become difficult. That creates a feeling of social isolation. Being able to watch local news and general TV helps to remove that, which makes me believe that TV is an important part of hospital life and recovery. Some people might think that it is odd for me to stand here and criticise the provision of a service by a private company. However, let me be clear. I do not believe and I will never believe that we should ever support a private contract where it compromises the service that an individual receives. That is why I am standing here today. I do so because, to put this simply, the cost of bedside televisions in NHS Highlands is extortionate and prohibitive. No one can justify a charge of £9.90 a day, especially when you compare the prices with online provision of films and entertainment. Firms supplying those services charge less per month than is charged in a hospital per day. I do not want to be accused at the end of this debate of mincing my words here. I believe that the hospitals have a captive audience and I believe that charges for bedside TV for short-stay patients is a rip-off and for long-term stay patients is just daylight robbery. That has gone on for way too long. Health boards like NHS Highlands signed an exclusive contract for 15 years. We should not forget that all the revenue that is raised from bedside TV goes to the suppliers and the NHS receives nothing, not a penny. The Scottish Government should make sure that this never ever happens again. With the contract for bedside TV coming up for renewal in NHS Highlands in June 2019, now is the time to secure a better deal for patients. That is why today I am launching a petition for the campaign for fairer hospital TV charges. It reads simply, that we believe that bedside television in hospitals is vital to prevent social exclusion and feelings of isolation of patients. We call on local health boards to secure a fair deal with companies providing bedside television and to provide free wi-fi for patients in hospitals to allow them to access television via streaming services. I urge all MPs to go out and get people to sign up to this today if we really want to extend the extortionate fees that are being charged at the moment. I would also like to take a few moments to welcome the promises of the Cabinet Secretary for Health that she made only last week. She promised to work with NHS Highland to ensure that patient TV is more affordable. She also promised to identify the feasibility of free bedside entertainment to be supplied via wi-fi across NHS Scotland. Those promises are a huge step forward, but they need to be delivered. However, that is not the whole solution. Offering free wi-fi assumes that every patient has access to tablets and laptops to use those services, and to me that is a big assumption. We also need to question how to make more of these devices available to patients who do not own them. The Scottish Government and our local health boards need to think outside the box on how to address this issue. Hospital charges would make dip-turpin blush. They are not only highway robbery but daylight robbery on a captive audience who are often vulnerable due to their illness. The time is now right for change. It is right for patients, it is right for our health board and I believe that it is right for Scotland. We move to the open debate. There are speeches of four minutes, please. I call Gordon MacDonald to be followed by Monica Lennon. I thank Edward Mountain for bringing this debate and giving me the opportunity to speak on the subject of hospital television charges. As someone who spent two 10-day spells in hospital back in 2017, I found that being able to watch television in between the spells of reading helped to offset the boredom that Edward Mountain spoke about and helped me in recovering in the hospital ward. It made me stay more bearable by taking my mind off my medical issues. During my time in hospital, I was admitted to St John's in Livingston and then the Western General in Edinburgh, neither of whom charged for watching television. A freedom of information request to the Lothian health board in 2015 stated that only patients in the PFI-funded royal infirmary in Edinburgh had to pay to watch television, a contract that was signed back in 2001 with patient line now hospedia prior to the hospital opening. They confirmed that no other patients in acute hospitals in the Lothian area were subject to television charges. I agree that the amount charged by this company of up to £9.90 per day to access bedside television is prohibitively expensive. Comparing the cost of the 25 channels provided by them with what is available from a major satellite television provider who charges £22 per month for accessing hundreds of channels highlights just how much patients are being ripped off. The Consumer Association, which carried out a survey back in 2011 where it found that hospital bedside entertainment systems are expensive and confusing for patients, with 61 per cent stating that they were very poor value for money and a third found them confusing to use. Some patients were also unhappy about the quality of the service and the inflexibility of buying credits in order to watch television. Of course, the issue of expensive bedside television provision does not just relate to a number of hospitals in Scotland. Hospedia provides the same service to 160 NHS locations or 75 per cent of acute NHS hospitals across the UK, where over 65,000 patient bedside entertainment units are installed. The UK Government has made no steps to cancel those contracts. Hospedia claims that they are the market-leading provider of bedside communication and multimedia services to hospitals in the UK, with up to 10 million patients a year making use of their services. The company was taken over in 2010 by Los Angeles-based Marlin equity partners. In this instance, the level of involvement by this foreign-owned company and our national health service cannot be blamed in the introduction of PFI contracts in 1992 by John Major's Conservative Government, or they are continued use by the subsequent Labour Government, resulting in PFI contracts costing the UK public purse £110 billion to date and with future payments being made up to the 2040s costing another £199 billion. This situation developed under the last Labour Government, which stipulated that across the UK all hospitals should offer a bedside television and telephone service. The difficulty was that they provided no funding in order to do so, and individual health boards or hospitals had no option but to enter into 15 to 20-year contracts with companies to provide the service funded by patients and their families. Thankfully, a number of those hospedia contracts in Scotland are ending during the course of this year. I welcome the NHS Scotland's investigating the feasibility of free Wi-Fi-enabled bedside entertainment units. It is great news that patients in NHS Lothian will be trialling the new free patient service, including access to video streaming. If successful, I look forward to many more health boards across the UK following Scotland's example. I thank Edward Mountain for bringing forward a debate. Unfortunately, my colleague David Stewart is unwell this week, but he was very keen to speak in the debate today. I hope that Edward Mountain's friend has also made a good recovery. When we think about the pressures on the NHS and the day-to-day needs of the service, hospital televisions is not the thing that brings to most people's minds. However, when I saw that Edward Mountain has secured this debate, I was quite keen to speak because my mum has spent a huge amount of time in hospital recently, in and out. Even this week, she has been in a side room on her own, so having access to a television or your mobile phone or outside the world is really important. What I have learned about hospital televisions this week is that it varies right across the country and indeed within health board areas. Although my own mum, who was a patient in Hermeyer's hospital in NHS Lanarkshire, does not have to pay to use the television, it is absolutely tiny. You have to be about eight foot tall to reach it and there is no remote control. I had to say several times, do not you dare stand on a chair to try and change that. Of course, the nurses are rushed off their feet, so patients do not want to disturb the nursing staff to ask them to turn over the telly. However, I thought that it was really getting a bit much when I phoned her and she said, I am trying to watch Coronation Street and it was taking her two hours to watch it on her phone because the wi-fi was so poor. I think that there is lots of pressures on the NHS, but when we know that people who tend to be in hospital and people who are very sick, our older citizens tend to be there for longer, I was visiting Edinburgh Royal Infirmary recently and I was chatting to senior nurse and staff about delayed discharge and they talked about people who have been in hospital for as long as 12 months, a year longer. For someone in that situation, access to a TV, preferably a free service, is absolutely vital. Gordon MacDonald has set out some of the historical context, which I think is important, but the Government has been in administration for 12 years. This is 2019. We know how important it is for people to be well connected and to welcome the Government's work on the strategy on tackling loneliness and social isolation when people are in hospital until it is an extremely vulnerable time. Having access to TV is not just about watching Coronation Street as important as that is, but people need access to wi-fi to be able to use their phone because, quite often, people are coordinating what is happening in their life and putting arrangements in place for family members perhaps to have caring responsibilities. I hope that we continue to look at those things. I am interested to hear about the pilot scheme and more about it, the pilot in NHS Lothian. Even in Lanarkshire, where I am an MSP, there is that variation. In here in Myers, there is no charge to watch the very small and high-up televisions. Patients in Monklands do get that service from hospedia. It is not as expensive as the charges that Edward Mountain mentioned, but there are people in my region who simply cannot afford even £2-3 a day. I know from her own clinical and professional background that the minister will probably have lots of knowledge on the subject and will, from her expertise in mental health, know the importance of ensuring that people do not feel lonely, isolated and do not feel that they are a burden when they have to ask staff to come and change the channel so that they do not miss Coronation Street. I am interested to hear what the minister has to say. I will look at Edward Mountain's position. I think that there is something here that we can all work together on. I thank Edward Mountain for bringing forward this issue. The last of the open debate contributions is from Miles Briggs. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would like to start by congratulating my friend and colleague Edward Mountain for securing this debate this afternoon. For all his campaigning across the Highlands and Islands, Edward Mountain is rapidly becoming the voice of the Highlands and Islands NHS in Parliament. I think that that is a positive thing. In addition, I know that patients and clinicians in the Highlands are grateful for his work and his on-going support. Having access, as has already been outlined, to bedside television and telephone services, is something that many of us will have received letters and emails from constituents and their families who have spent any period of time in hospital. Two family friends of mine recently spent time in both Ninewells, Dundee and Forresterhill in Aberdeen. I visited them both, and it was clear to see the difference in the patient experience in those two hospitals. It is clear from today's debate that there is a provision of television in hospital. There is a real postcode lottery across Scotland from Forresterhill in Aberdeen, where patients have access to bedside television to Ninewells where they do not. It is clear, as has already been outlined, how loneliness, boredom and isolation in hospital are impacted by people not having access to those services, especially as more of our hospitals look to move towards single-patient rooms. Long stays in hospitals can be dull for patients, so access to bedside television—probably at bedtime—and wi-fi is important for letting patients keep in touch with loved ones and know what is happening in the outside world. I welcome, as Edward Mountain has already outlined, the constructive comments that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport has made to date with regard to the situation in NHS Highland and the need to secure a better deal for patients splashing out extortionate fees to watch television at Ragemore hospital in Inverness. I want to use my time to date to highlight the situation in my health board of NHS Lothian. At present, hospital bedside television is provided by Hospedia with a basic bundle costing £17.50 for two days and, amazingly, costing £5 for just two hours. I hope that NHS Lothian will look as well as how, in the future, it can get a better price achieved for patients in Lothian when the contract is next up for negotiation. However, it is also important during this debate that we look to the future and, increasingly, as has been outlined, patients are bringing their iPads into hospital and there is potential for those who do not have this technology to be given it while they are in hospital. Following research by the Scottish Conservatives, we discovered that NHS Lothian was the only health board in Scotland not to provide free Wi-Fi to patients. That is an issue that I have campaigned on since I was elected and have called for Wi-Fi to be made available to patients in NHS Lothian hospitals. The pilot of Wi-Fi at St John's hospital in May 2018 was a real success and was used by 4,635 different devices during that month. NHS Lothian told me that the western general hospital will have Wi-Fi rolled out in August and the royal infirmary of Edinburgh plans to have Wi-Fi by the end of what was last year. I have asked NHS Lothian today for an update on how that has been delivered, but it is an important aspect of how we make sure that Wi-Fi and patients have access to that. I welcome the fact that the health board has acted on that. I am pleased that NHS Lothian has also committed to having this operational Wi-Fi in place when the new royal hospital for children moves to the new site and hopefully opens later this year. I hope that today's debate can look at the opportunities for NHS boards to renegotiate those bedside television contracts when they are next up for renewal to ensure the best possible value for money for patients and families across Scotland. Scottish Conservatives support a review of the provision of television across NHS Scotland's hospital estate, and I hope that this is something that the Scottish Government Minister, when she is responding, will look to undertake with health boards. As has been outlined today, no one wants to be in hospital, but when they are, we have a real opportunity to make sure that that is not full of loneliness and boredom, and having access to television is part of that. I now call Claire Hawke to respond to the debate for around seven minutes, please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I would also like to add my thanks to Edward Mountain for bringing this issue to the chamber and for the opportunity to take part in this debate. This enables us to update the chamber on our plans to enhance patient experience across NHS Scotland. As we have heard from the several speakers, NHS Scotland's patient entertainment services currently vary, depending on location and the specialities of the hospital sites. Each NHS board provides free access to televisions and communal telephones across their hospitals, either at ward level or in dayrooms. In addition to that, some NHS boards, including NHS Highland, as we have heard, opted to contract out the provision of entertainment to Hospedia, who provides bedside entertainment to patients on a pay-as-you-go basis in addition to those communal telephones and televisions. The Hospedia contract term is 15 years, during which time Hospedia provides and maintains bedside entertainment systems. Patients are charged to use those facilities and, as Mr Mountain correctly stated, the NHS boards receive no income for providing that service. There is no provision within the contracts for early termination. As such, early termination would have to be via negotiated settlement, which would likely be prohibitively expensive and divert funds from front-line healthcare. Thank you very much for clarifying that, and that is exactly as I understood it. Can you confirm whether the previous Governments, run by the SNP, have tried to look at buying their way out of their contracts, and if so, the results of that? As I have stated already, those contracts are negotiated by the individual NHS boards. While daily equivalent charges can be reduced by purchasing longer-term packages, I agree that those services need to be reviewed. The Scottish Government therefore expects all NHS boards to assess and adopt a patient-centred approach on the expiration of those contracts, consideration of both value for money and, importantly, the patient experience. We recognise that televisions provide respite to many patients whilst in hospital, and we also recognise that technology has moved on since those contracts were introduced, as well as to acknowledge that the importance of technology in enabling patients to remain connected to the outside world. That is particularly important for patients who are admitted into hospitals for lengthy periods of time to help to prevent feelings of isolation and loneliness, and to allow patients who are able to continue their work or studies if they wish to do so. With that in mind, and the prevalence of mobile phones and tablets, a more effective policy may be for NHS boards to allow access to free wi-fi for patients to connect to online services through their devices. NHS Lothian is currently in the process of piloting patient and visitor wi-fi throughout their major acute sites, and that was stimulated by receiving patient feedback that would often highlight the lack of wi-fi and suggested that that would improve their experience whilst in hospital. NHS Lothian's Endowment Fund's Edinburgh and Lothian's Foundation Trust has supported this project and is providing additional funding to enable the board to purchase a large wi-fi package. At St John's Hospital and the Western General Hospital, patients have been able to stream live television, watching on-demand box sets such as BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All4 and Mi5, and to sign into any accounts that patients purchased for at home use such as Netflix, BT Sports and SkyGo, and they can be watched on personal devices. In addition to media streaming, the provision of wi-fi has supported connectivity with the outside world and reduced isolation, which, as we have heard in various contributions around the chamber this afternoon, is a concern for patients while they are in hospital. For example, patients and visitors are now able to communicate using messenger services, emails and social media without worrying about limits and charges associated with personal data packages. They are able to access news websites to keep up to date with current affairs and to continue the running of their daily lives such as paying bills, working remotely, online shopping and so on. I acknowledge that other NHS boards may not have the same level of endowment funding but I stress again that all NHS boards should balance patient-centred options with value for money. I am very grateful. I have a practical point because when I made the comment about my mum not grabbing a chair to turn over the TV, it was a genuine concern that some people might overstretch themselves or stand on a chair and I have been told that over the years all the remote controls in here might have disappeared. I know that you have a local interest too. Is there something that we could do to ask NHS Lancashire to look at that in particular? I know that you get universal remote controls, but it is a very simple thing that could make a difference and prevent people from injuring themselves. Clare Haughey. I thank Monica Lennon for that intervention. I agree that NHS Lancashire should look at that, particularly if that is a health and safety issue. We certainly do not want staff or patients or relatives to be falling well in hospital. Unfortunately, over Christmas and new year, I myself spent a considerable amount of time visiting my father-in-hospital, so I appreciate how important it is to have access to TVs and to have entertainment that is there. At that point in time, he was free, and he was able to access his television through touching it rather than through remote control. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport announced last week that she expects NHS Helen to be actively considering free WiFi services or other suitable alternatives to the current hospedia contract. We recognise that Highlands and Islands are subject to inconsistencies in terms of internet provision, and it is therefore important to ensure that any option selected in terms of future patient entertainment has the appropriate infrastructure in place to support it. That does not mean that the Scottish Government would be supportive of NHS Highland taking out a further 15-year contract with hospedia under the current terms, and it is expected that the continuation of any such contract should be an interim solution on the basis of maintaining services. We are in agreement with Mr Mountain's request for all NHS boards to review bedside television contracts when they are up for renewal, and we would go further than that and stress that it is our expectation that boards do not simply renegotiate existing contracts but consider all available options, putting the patients at the centre of any decision made. In conclusion, the Scottish Government is in agreement with Mr Mountain that any charges for bedside televisions in hospitals must be proportionate and affordable, and in addition to striving to reduce or eliminate patient charges, we urge boards to explore options for putting in place services that will provide more than just television and that will keep patients connected to their friends and families and to their lives. That concludes the debate, and this meeting is suspended until half past 2.