Department of Health and Social Care written question – answered at on 10 March 2026.
Dr Caroline Johnson
Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many overseas prescriptions are dispensed in a) the UK and b) England i) in total, ii) by medicines dispensed and iii) by origin country.
Zubir Ahmed
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care
The United Kingdom only recognises overseas prescriptions from European Economic Area (EEA) countries and Switzerland. Most medicines, with the exception of schedule 1 to 3 controlled drugs and specials, prescribed in these countries can be dispensed by United Kingdom pharmacies, so long as the prescriber is from a profession recognised by the statutory guidance that is legally entitled to issue a prescription of that kind in the country in which the prescription is issued.
As they are dispensed as private, or non-National Health Service, prescriptions, we do not have any data for the number of EEA/Swiss prescriptions that have been dispensed in the UK.
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No0 people think not
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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.
