Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many overseas prescriptions are dispensed in a) the UK and b) England i) in total, ii) by medicines dispensed and iii) by origin country.

The United Kingdom only recognises overseas prescriptions from European Economic Area (EEA) countries and Switzerland. Most medicines, with the exception of schedule 1 to 3 controlled drugs and specials, prescribed in these countries can be dispensed by United Kingdom pharmacies, so long as the prescriber is from a profession recognised by the statutory guidance that is legally entitled to issue a prescription of that kind in the country in which the prescription is issued.

As they are dispensed as private, or non-National Health Service, prescriptions, we do not have any data for the number of EEA/Swiss prescriptions that have been dispensed in the UK.