Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has had discussions with the Royal College of General Practice on reducing overprescribing.

My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has not had any discussions with these organisations related to reducing overprescribing.

The National Health Service and partner organisations are responding to the challenge of overprescribing, as set out in the Government’s review of overprescribing, Good for you, good for us, good for everybody, in September 2021.

Progress has been made to implement the recommendations of that review, for example:

- implementing the National Medicines Optimisation Opportunities for integrated care boards;

- addressing problematic polypharmacy, when there is potential harm associated with taking multiple medicines;

- delivering Structured Medication Reviews; and

- publication of a repeat prescribing toolkit and oversupply dashboard to support general practices to identify oversupply and improve repeat prescribing processes.

Offering treatments that are not medicines is also key to addressing overprescribing. Many other initiatives delivered across the NHS contribute towards this. These include delivery of personalised care and shared decision-making, NHS Talking Therapies for anxiety and depression, and social prescribing.

We are continuing to address issues with the prescribing of medicines in line with the NHS’ 2025/26 priorities and operational planning guidance.