To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the percentage of NHS correspondence and typing of health service records of consultations that were sent to the Indian sub-continent for processing in the most recent period for which figures are available. (186657)

[holding answer 18 February 2008]: The effective management of patient records is the responsibility of the individual NHS organisation that creates them. Information is not held centrally on the number of national health service organisations that currently outsource aspects of patient record management, including the typing of patient records, to the Indian sub-continent. It is therefore not possible to make such an estimate.