asked Her Majesty's Government:

How many members of the Armed Forces were in-patients in National Health Service hospitals on 10 October.[HL7567]

The major proportion of Armed Forces in-patients in NHS hospitals are admitted to one of the five NHS hospital trusts where we have Ministry of Defence hospital units (MDHUs) or to the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine hosted by University Hospital Birmingham Foundation Trust, which is the primary reception point for casualties from operations overseas.

On 10 October 2006, there were 33 service in-patients in the MDHU hospitals, and 16 in-patients in the RCDM. In addition, individual service men and women will have been referred by their unit's primary care provider to other NHS hospitals, or an individual might have been admitted as a result of accident or illness without reference to their parent unit. The numbers of individuals falling into these categories is not recorded centrally and could be established only at wholly disproportionate cost by examining the personal medical file of every service man and woman, which would additionally require the permission of all individuals. From previous work, it is estimated that there might be around a further 15 to 25 service personnel as in-patients in NHS hospitals on a typical day, in addition to those in the MDHU and RCDM hospitals.