Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the level of reported underpayments to pharmacists by the NHS Business Services Authority.

The Department has regular accountability review meetings with the NHS Business Service Authority (BSA) to discuss their performance including for prescription pricing and payments to pharmacies. The NHS BSA is obliged to report on a monthly basis against key performance indicators which cover timeliness of service delivery; and quality (accuracy) of service delivery for the National Health Service prescription services. The latest published data for accuracy of prescription processing affecting payment to pharmacies, shows a high and continuing improving level of accuracy. This is available at the following link:

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/pharmacies-gp-practices-and-appliance-contractors/payments-and-pricing/how-we-process-prescriptions