Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people in England and Wales are on long-term prescriptions of more than four weeks for benzodiazepines.

The National Health Service Business Services Authority (NHS BSA) has advised that, in December 2015, it initiated a project to improve the storage of transaction level prescription data, including the age of patients and to enhance reporting capability against this data. The NHS BSA anticipates having the capability to provide patient level prescription information towards the end of the 2016-17 financial year. This should contain primary care prescribing information for the full range of medicines, including anti-depressants.

This should also allow the reporting on long-term prescriptions for medicines, including benzodiazepines, which is not currently possible.