Department of Health written question – answered at on 19 March 2015.
Nick de Bois
Conservative, Enfield North
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the level of waste of unused drugs in the NHS; and if he will make a statement.
George Freeman
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health
Information is not held centrally on the annual cost or amount of unused or unnecessary medicines in the National Health Service.
The Department commissioned the York Health Economics Consortium and the School of Pharmacy at the University of London to carry out research to determine the scale, causes and costs of waste medicines in England. The report, Evaluation of the Scale, Causes and Costs of Waste Medicines, was published in November 2010 and is available at:
http://eprints.pharmacy.ac.uk/2605/1/Evaluation_of_NHS_Medicines_Waste__web_publication_version.pdf
This found that the gross cost of unused prescription medicines in primary and community care in the NHS in England in 2009 was estimated to be £300 million a year and that up to £150 million of this was avoidable.
A number of initiatives, led by NHS England, are currently underway to optimise the use of medicines in the NHS and better empower patients.
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Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
