The cost of watching TV? Just £1 a week for prisoners, but £2.90 a DAY for hospital patients

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Locked up: But 98.5 per cent of prisoners get a TV set in their cell, the Tories say

Prisoners are paying just £1 a week to watch television in their cells - while hospital patients are being charged almost £16 to watch TV from their sickbeds.

An estimated 3,315 inmates at five adult prisons in one English county are eligible for TV sets - with just a small group barred because of bad behaviour.

They pay only £1 per cell for a week of viewing - and two prisoners sharing a cell would only need to find 50p each.

However, in stark contrast, patients in Lancashire's hospitals have to pay up to £2.90 every day for access to a TV set.

Figures uncovered by the Conservatives show 98.5 per cent of prisoners nationally are on "standard" or "enhanced" level privileges.

Only the 1.5 per cent on "basic" privileges are denied access to a TV set.

Meanwhile, patients at the Royal Preston Hospital, the Royal Lancaster Infirmary and the Chorley and South Ribble District General Hospital have to pay more than fifteen times that for access to a bedside TV.

The entertainment system - which sometimes also includes internet access and games - costs £2.90 per day, or £10 for five days. A week of TV viewing would cost a patient £15.80. The sets are provided under a contract between Patientline Ltd and the hospital's NHS trusts.

Tory Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Herbert has called for prisoners to be stripped of their automatic right to hire a TV, insisting it should be a reward for good behaviour.

He said: "In-cell television is a privilege, not a right. It can't be right that almost all prisoners get television sets in their cells for only £1 a week, while sick patients in hospital have to pay many times that amount.

"Prisoners must show they deserve a television through good behaviour and engaging in purposeful activity."

The Tory figures suggest that only 11 of the 742 inmates at HMP Preston and only 39 across Lancashire's other jails - Garth, Kirkham, Lancaster Castle and Wymott - are denied access to in-cell sets for persistent bad behaviour.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice said: "Access to TVs is a condition of acceptable behaviour. "Television sets purchased for in-cell prisoner use are paid for by the weekly rental fee of £1 paid by prisoners.

"The average wage for a prisoner is under £10 a week. TVs can and will be removed from prisoners whose behaviour is deemed unacceptable."

A spokesman for Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust said: "Patientline provides patients with their own bedside TV and phone facilities which were not available in the past.

"Patients do not have to use the facilities and we still have a number of day rooms where people can watch TV at no cost and use payphones.

"There are also designated areas around our hospitals where patients can use their own mobile phones."

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