PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Prescriptions: Universal Credit (8 April 2019)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many recipients of universal credit have had penalty notices issued for falsely claiming free prescriptions that were subsequently cancelled in each of the last two years; and how many of those cancellations were because the claimant had proven they were correctly claiming such prescriptions.

Asked by:
Sir Desmond Swayne (Conservative)

Work is ongoing to update the FP10 prescription form to include a new exemption tick box for use by Universal Credit (UC) claimants, and the revised form will be introduced at the earliest opportunity. In advance of this update both UC and income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants who meet the criteria for free National Health Service prescriptions are ticking exemption box K on the FP10 prescription form.

As a result, the NHS Business Services Authority does not have a data split that enables it to confirm how many recipients of UC have been issued with penalty charge notices for incorrectly claiming free prescriptions that were subsequently cancelled, or how many of these were cancelled due to claimants having a valid prescription charge exemption.

Answered by:
Seema Kennedy (Conservative)
11 April 2019