Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the administrative cost to the NHS Business Services Authority Loss Recovery Service of checking claims for free prescriptions.

For the financial period 2017-18, the cost to the NHS Business Services Authority for the running of the full Prescription Exemption Checking Service which includes checking prescription form exemption declarations, issuing Penalty Charge Notices and managing associated customer contact, was £6.8 million.