Lord Sharkey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Sharkey on 2016-04-11.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government which commercial organisations are permitted to promote or distribute their products or the products of other organisations in NHS maternity wards; what revenues accrue to the Government or the NHS from that activity; and what evidence there is that patients welcome such activity.
Lord Prior of Brampton
National Health Service trusts may negotiate locally with commercial organisations to distribute advice, information and ‘try before you buy’ samples that they think would be useful for pregnant women.
Neither the Department nor NHS England centrally have any contracts with Bounty or influence over the contents of the packs nor does the Department benefit financially from such arrangements. We do not have any information about what contracts might exist between Bounty and individual NHS trusts.
Although we are aware of Bounty distributing their packs on maternity wards, we have no evidence of whether or not this is welcomed by parents.
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) use the services of Bounty to help distribute Child Benefit claim packs to new mothers in NHS hospitals. The contract for this service is held by HMRC’s Print Vendor Provider, Williams Lea. Using the Bounty pack as one channel for distributing Child Benefit forms has proved efficient and cost effective. The Child Benefit form can also be obtained through other channels, notably the HMRC website.
In 2012-13, HMRC paid £85,990.27 (excluding VAT) for Bounty to distribute a total of 857,939 English and Welsh language claim forms.
