Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to assess the safety of the Government’s policy of charging patients for a further prescription for recalled or faulty medicines.

The National Health Service (Charges for Drugs and Appliances) Regulations 2015, as amended, set out the legislative position on the supply of medicinal products by pharmacies to patients and the relevant charges to be applied in England. They specify that a charge should be applied ‘per quantity’ of medicinal products. Furthermore, Part XVI of the NHS Drug Tariff, concerning notes on prescription charges, clarifies that unless a completed declaration of entitlement to exemption or remission is made on the prescription form, a charge is payable for each medicinal product supplied. Therefore, when a prescription only medicine is recalled and replaced with an alternative prescription item a patient must pay the applicable prescription charges unless they are exempt from NHS charges. There are no plans to change this.

The exemptions in place result in around 89 per cent of all prescription items in England being dispensed free of charge, and prescription pre-payment certificates can be used to cap the cost of prescriptions.