Prescription Drugs

(asked on 23rd June 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress he has made on replacing branded drug prescriptions with generic drug prescriptions; how much from the NHS drugs budget has been saved as a result; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Norman Lamb Portrait
Norman Lamb
This question was answered on 30th June 2014

The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) publication Prescriptions Dispensed in the Community, Statistics for England - 2002-2012, contains a series of statistical tables, one of which, table A5: Generic prescribing and dispensing, percentage by class, 2002–2012, provided an 11 year time series of data on generic prescribing. Information from this is provided in the attached table. The next edition of this publication, which will contain 2013 data, is due to be published by the HSCIC on 9 July 2014. The Department has not made an estimate of the savings that have resulted from greater use of generics.

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