Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the cost to the NHS of removing unpatched, unsupported or out of date software and hardware.

Whilst it is not possible to give a price per unit for the removal of unpatched, unsupported or out of date software and hardware, work is underway to determine the fastest and most cost effective way to move the National Health Service off unsupported operating systems.

The Department has invested £21 million to address key infrastructure vulnerabilities in major trauma centres and ambulance trusts which are being identified through on site assessments.

The focus of the investment is on reducing the use of unsupported platforms and browsers, targeting capital funding to increase the cyber resilience of major trauma centres as an immediate priority. Through the £21 million allocated, local organisations should be aiming to have isolated, moved away from or be actively managing any unsupported systems by April 2018. Typical areas of spending approved include updating firewalls, network infrastructure and transitioning from outdated hardware and operating systems to enable improved resilience.