Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 13 November 2017 to Question 111406 on prescriptions: fees and charges, what assessment his Department has made of the reasons for that increase in the number of penalty charge notices.

The increase in the number of penalty charge notices issued is due to increased volumes of prescriptions going through the checking regime. This allows the National Health Service to effectively tackle prescription fraud and error made by patients, and recover associated monies for the NHS.