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Written Question
Prescriptions
Monday 9th June 2025

Asked by: Baroness Buscombe (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is the percentage of free prescriptions in England that remain uncollected by patients and are subsequently destroyed by the NHS; and what is the average cost of uncollected and destroyed prescriptions to the Exchequer.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department does not hold information on the number of prescriptions that are uncollected. The majority of uncollected prescriptions can be disassembled, and the medicines returned to the pharmacy’s stock, ready to be used to fill other prescriptions.