Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the cost to the public purse of providing free prescriptions to people aged between 60 and 66 in each of the last five years.

There are no plans to make an assessment. The Department published an impact assessment in 2021 on increasing the upper age exemption for prescription charges. The impact assessment estimated that charging people aged 60 to 65 years old for prescriptions would return an additional £226 million a year. More information on this is available at the following link: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/996781/impact-assessment-upper-age-prescription-exemption.pdf