Christopher Chope – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Christopher Chope on 2016-10-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many proceedings for debt recovery the NHS has issued in the county court for NHS prescription charges and penalties in the last year for which information is available; how many such proceedings resulted in recovery of the outstanding money.

David Mowat

The number of National Health Service prescription charge penalty charge notices issued between September 2015 and August 2016, which is the most recent 12-month period for which we have complete data, was 780,953. Where no response was received to the initial penalty charge notice a follow up surcharge letter was issued to the patient. For the same period a total of 333,508 surcharge letters were issued.

The value of the recovered prescription income in this period was £2,556,941, and the value of the income from penalty charges and surcharges was £8,678,911 and £745,830, respectively.

Since taking over the administration of the Prescription Exemption Checking Service in September 2014, the NHS Business Services Authority has not issued any court proceedings for debt recovery in relation to NHS prescription charges and penalties.