Royston Smith – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-07-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 30 June 2016 to Question 41004, what the cost to the NHS was of financing free prescriptions in 2015-16.

David Mowat

Assuming that for each prescription item a prescription charge would have been paid, the revenue foregone from providing free prescriptions during 2015-16 was £8 billion. However, as many people could limit their total prescription costs by purchasing a Prescription Prepayment Certificate in the event that they were no longer exempt, we estimate that the actual revenue foregone was in the region of £2 billion.