Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answers of the 15 November and 4 December 2017 Questions 112444, 116407 and 116409, on which date free prescription forms will be amended to include universal credit; and if he will urgently issue instructions to staff so that they do not require that universal credit claimants to declare that they are in receipt of a benefit which has not been awarded to them but instead to advise those claimants that any box on the prescription form can be ticked with the words next to it crossed out and universal credit written in their place until that benefit is named on revised prescription forms.

The Department cannot yet confirm an exact date for the revised FP10 (National Health Service prescription form) coming into circulation. The new form will be printed in 2018 and will be circulated as soon as it becomes available.

Universal Credit claimants who meet prescribed thresholds for free prescriptions must tick the box entitled, “gets income-based Job Seeker’s Allowance”. The post exemption checking service at the NHS Business Services Authority cannot recognise Universal Credit claimants as being entitled to free prescriptions if they tick an alternative exemption category on the FP10 prescription form. If they did so, a Penalty Charge Notice could be issued.

The current prescription exemption checking service that is in place at the NHS Business Services Authority allows the NHS to effectively tackle prescription fraud and error made by patients, and recover associated monies for the NHS.

The Department will not make any changes to these arrangements at this time.