Fury after NHS spent more than £112m on POSTAGE last year – despite its goal to be paperless by 2020
THE NHS spent more than £112million on postage last year — despite its goal to be paperless by 2020.
Health service trusts across the UK increased spending on letters to patients by 17 per cent from 2021 to 2022.
One London trust has more than tripled its spend since 2019.
Elliot Keck, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, urged bosses to “trim the fat” on unnecessary postage.
He said: “Taxpayers will be shocked by the size of this spending.”
The NHS has regularly pushed back deadlines for going paperless since Jeremy Hunt made the promise in 2013 when he was Health Secretary.
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Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “Taxpayers are paying a pretty penny for the Conservatives’ failure to bring our analogue health service into the digital age.”
Trusts spent an average of £1.7million on postage in the three years from 2019/20 to 2021/22.
Four doubled their spend in that period but 50 cut costs.
The NHS said the TaxPayers’ Alliance research was “misleading”.
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It said the figures fail to account for the fact that postage prices have gone up since 2019.