Currently the Health Committee is studying charges for NHS patients. To understand the exorbitant cost of 49p a minute for phoning your relatives on their bedside phone in hospital, 
I visited the hospital in Worcester with the Chairman of Patientline. 
I was amazed by the complexity and potential of the equipment installed at every bedside. This gives not only television and telephone access but access to the internet and enormous capability for hospital staff to display the electronic patient record, to order meals, to order drugs and to order investigations. 

This is the specification that the Government ordered. 
The only problem is that the NHS system for information technology is so many years behind schedule that none of this extra potential at the bedside can be used. 

Because Patientline cannot charge the hospital for all the extras that the system provides, because the hospital is unable to use them, the only way the providers can recoup their investment is to charge a large fee for incoming calls. 
It is made worse by the fact that approximately the first 50 seconds of any incoming call is taken up by a warning message and a check that the call is going to the correct patient. Thus we, the public, are paying for the extras that the Government specified and ordered long before the NHS could use them! 
I hope the Health Committee report will make this absolutely clear.

There are several issues that are filling my postbag at the moment. 

The first relates to the increasing applications for further telephone masts.

The planning process is subject to very strict regulations and it appears that locally one of the effective arguments against particular sites is the visual impact on local scenery. Health risks are regarded as a weak argument as they are low, but unfortunately it is never possible to prove that there is no risk in any new development. I have a meeting soon with mobile phone service providers and I hope to discover why sharing of masts is so limited when it would seem to be one way of limiting the proliferation of masts.

Another important local issue is the proposal for the use of Drakelow Tunnels by a community project which understandably is being resisted by many residents in the unspoilt Green Belt area around Wolverley.

I plan to visit the Tunnels soon so I can make up my own mind if there is any compromise that could make a binding, limited development acceptable to the local community and compatible with the need of preserving these historically unique tunnels.

I have also received many letters about the Local Government Pension Scheme whose members are losing out unfairly while other public sector workers' pensions have been protected. 

I am passing these letters to the Minister for Pensions who must feel besieged by the objections he is receiving.