Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, on average, how much, per patient his Department paid for the treatment of a patient abroad under the European Health Insurance Card in (a) 2013, (b) 2014, (c) 2015 and (d) 2016.

The Department does not hold information about how much, per patient, it has paid for the treatment of people who have used their United Kingdom European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) to obtain state provided healthcare in another European Economic Area country. This is because data on UK EHIC usage is recorded by individual treatment episode.

As of the end of December 2016 there are 2,096,303 active EHICs in circulation which are issued to an address in Scotland and 24,547,214 active EHICs in circulation issued to an address in the rest of the UK.