Hormone Replacement Therapy: Expenditure

(asked on 10th April 2026) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what sums his Department spent on providing (a) hormone replacement therapy for female patients and (b) testosterone replacement therapy for male patients in each of the last three years.


Answered by
Zubir Ahmed Portrait
Zubir Ahmed
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 21st April 2026

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) collects data relating to National Health Service dispensing in the community. Prescriptions do not state the purpose for which they are written. There may be instances where medicines are used for other conditions.

The tables below set out Net Ingredient Costs (NIC). This is the basic price of a product excluding VAT. It does not take account of discounts, rebates, dispensing costs, fees and allowances paid to pharmacists and appliance contractors for the service they provide to the National Health Service, or prescription charge income received, where the single charge or prescription prepayment certificate fee is paid, or foregone where prescriptions are dispensed free of charge.

The following table shows the NIC for prescriptions for medicines eligible for the hormone replacement therapy prescription pre-payment certificate where gender is recorded in NHSBSA data as female, that were prescribed by NHS organisations in England and subsequently dispensed in the community, by year, from 2023 to 2025:

Calendar year

NIC (£, million)

2023

207

2024

257

2025

289

In addition, the following table shows the NIC for prescriptions for testosterone where gender is recorded in NHSBSA data as male, that were prescribed by NHS organisations in England and subsequently dispensed in the community, by year, from 2023 to 2025:

Calendar year

NIC (£, million)

2023

24.5

2024

27.3

2025

30.1

Source: the British National Formulary (BNF)

Note: Testosterone Replacement Therapy is not a named section within the BNF. Data the table is based on the products included in the BNF chemical substances of methyltestosterone, testosterone, testosterone enantate, testosterone propionate, testosterone undecanoate, and testosterone esters.

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