Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the evidential basis is for the limit of three months on the length of time GPs can prescribe medications to patients with existing conditions who are leaving the country.

When a doctor prescribes a drug, they are clinically and legally responsible for any results of that decision to prescribe. In view of this it would not be considered good clinical practice for a doctor to prescribe large amounts of drugs to a patient going abroad for an extended period of time, whose progress that general practitioner is not able to monitor.

Any patient who leaves the country for three months or more is no longer considered ordinarily resident and, as such, is not entitled to National Health Service treatment.

No representations have been received asking for this period to be extended.