To ask the Secretary of State for Health on which occasions (a) each local service provider and (b) BT have breached the terms of their contract with Connecting for Health. (233773)

All the national programme for information technology local service provider (LSP), and national application service provider (NASP), contracts include provisions appropriate to contracts of their size and complexity to address foreseeable development, delivery and service issues, including terms that permit the issue of a breach of contract notification under defined conditions.

In the case of the Fujitsu LSP contract, 41 breach of contract notices were issued, which ultimately resulted in the termination of the contract on 28 May 2008.

None of the remaining LSP and NASP providers, including BT, have been issued with formal breach of contract notices. However, as part of the normal contractual processes, a number of so-called ‘contractor event of default’ notices have been issued, reflecting operational matters identified during the normal course of contract delivery that need to be addressed. All the matters identified have been addressed using the existing contractual remedies.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health which hospital trusts are using the NHS IT system Cerner; which version of the system each trust is using; when each trust installed the system initially; what the effect of adverse variance to budget has been for each trust in each quarter since installation; and what costs have been incurred by each trust as part of the implementation to date, with particular reference to the costs of (a) activity shortfalls attributable to the system not supporting the trust in managing the patient pathway leading to clinic and admission slots not being used, (b) data entry difficulties attributable to the system supplied being different from the training system or to the lack of operating or procedure manuals, (c) additional staff required for rectification or to maintain normal activity levels and (d) issues causing reductions in clinical efficiency. (234405)

Information requested on deployments, through the national programme for information technology, of the Cerner Millennium system in acute national health service trusts is in the following table.