Prescription Charges: Long-term Health Conditions

Debate between Christina Rees and Lilian Greenwood

Monday 11th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 608237 relating to prescription charges for people with chronic or long-term health conditions.

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Dame Maria. I am honoured to deputise for my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) by reciting her excellent speech to open the debate. She was scheduled to move the motion on behalf of the Petitions Committee, but has duties elsewhere. To use a rugby analogy, as my hon. Friend is a rugby player, I have come off the substitutes bench to replace her. But that is all I will say about rugby, having spent the train journey to Paddington this morning with lots of very happy French rugby fans who got on the train at Cardiff still celebrating their victory over my beloved Wales yesterday.

On 6 March last year, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower opened a debate on e-petition 594390, relating to prescription charges for people aged 60 or over. Many of the issues covered then are also applicable in this debate. I pay tribute to Mia, the petition’s creator, who spoke to the Committee recently about her motivations behind starting it. Only in her 20s, Mia is already feeling the impact of prescription charges for the medication that she needs to alleviate the symptoms of her multiple sclerosis. Having been diagnosed so young, and with the situation as it currently is, she faces paying for her medication for decades.

Following her diagnosis, Mia has become part of an extensive online community of people with long-term and chronic health conditions. The common feeling of exasperation at paying for medication inspired her to create the petition. Based on the conversations she has had, Mia listed in her petition a number of conditions that are not exempt from prescription charges, including MS, endometriosis, inflammatory bowel disease, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, depression, anxiety and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Other conditions that are not exempt and have been the subject of their own e-petitions include cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anaemia, Crohn’s and colitis, along with—this is not a specific condition but a group of people—those who have undergone organ transplantation.

For many of the conditions included in Mia’s non-exhaustive list, there is no gold-standard medication that alleviates symptoms completely. Mia spoke to me about having to try new medications, often knowing full well that they may not work but still having to pay for the pleasure. Perhaps to rub salt in the wound, Mia was told that a potential side effect of her chemotherapy treatment for MS could be that she developed hyperthyroidism. Should that happen, the hyperthyroidism would make her exempt from prescription charges.

I also thank Dan, who the Committee spoke to about his petition on behalf of organ transplant patients. Dan had a liver transplant after having relied on medication since the age of 13 and spent years paying for the medication that kept him alive. Now, he has to take medication to prevent his body from rejecting the new liver and allow him to go back to work, and he still faces paying for prescriptions.

The crux of the issue lies in the criteria for the medical exemption certificate. I find it astonishing that the list of exempt conditions has not been reviewed since 1968, apart from the inclusion of cancer patients in 2009. Treatments have come on in leaps and bounds since the 1960s, as has our knowledge of medical conditions that were once unknown or not spoken about. That the exemption list has not moved with the times is frankly baffling.

The question that came up time and again in conversations about the petition was, “Why were the conditions on the exemption list chosen over others?” That is not to say that the conditions on the list do not belong there, and nobody the Committee spoke to suggested that x condition deserved to be there over y condition; rather, it is to ask on what basis conditions were chosen for the list. What was the evidence for inclusion and for exclusion? I would really appreciate any light that the Minister can shed on that.

Perhaps the list was based on survivability, which has, thanks to decades of improved research, improved by leaps and bounds. To give an example, in 1968 children with cystic fibrosis were not expected to live into adulthood. With medication and physiotherapy, the prognosis now is much different from what it was nearly 60 years ago. However, cystic fibrosis remains life-threatening, and those living with it still face having to pay for the medication that keeps them alive. Over the decades, research has improved our understanding of chronic and long-term health conditions and in turn improved the length and quality of life for so many people. Surely it is only right that the exemption list grows with this knowledge.

The UK Government need to rethink their approach to prescription charges, because their consequences can be dire. Recently, Donna Smitheman has been campaigning for free asthma inhalers, following the tragic death of her 25-year-old son Jordan. Jordan was not able to afford his inhalers, and questioned why he had to, given that he had not asked to have asthma. Donna has taken action because she believes that access to life-saving medication such as inhalers should be a right and not a privilege.

Research published in 2023 by the Prescription Charges Coalition found that almost one in 10 respondents had skipped their medication as a result of the cost. As a result, 30% of those people said that they now suffer with other physical health problems. The Committee spoke to Lindsey Fairbrother, a pharmacist who had conversations with people who were not taking the medication they needed because of its cost. A similar observation was made by Ellen Schafheutle, who has done qualitative research into the subject. She said that her one wish for this debate was that we stress the negative impact of people forgoing medicine because of the cost.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is doing a great job of setting out some of the challenges that people with long-term conditions face. Does she share my concern that this situation has a damaging impact not only on people’s health—she rightly says that people have a right to receive prescriptions and improve their health—but potentially on the national health service, because if people skip their medication because they cannot afford it, they will end up making more trips to a GP or to accident and emergency, and potentially have more hospital stays, which would be extremely expensive for the health service and would, of course, have a damaging impact on them and their families?

[Christina Rees]

I thank my hon. Friend for her important intervention. I completely agree with her and will come to that issue later in my speech. I will pass on her support to my hon. Friend the Member for Gower, who I am sure will appreciate it. The UK Government have stated that the revenue raised from prescription charges goes back into the NHS. However, given the cost of enforcing the list of exemptions, as well as the longer-term financial impact on the NHS of people forgoing medication, that argument seems to be a false economy.

Parkinson’s UK has long campaigned for a change to prescription charges for the people it represents, and research published in 2018 found that scrapping the charge for people living with Parkinson’s would save the NHS money. The UK Government’s written response to the petition stated that those with long-term conditions could save money by utilising the prescription prepayment certificate. Although that is a good option for many, it is still too much for some in a cost of living crisis when people are living pay cheque to pay cheque.

We should not forget that it is somewhat of a postcode lottery, as England is the only UK nation where prescriptions are not free. When the Welsh Government abolished prescription charges in 2007, they cited evidence that some people with serious chronic conditions could not afford their prescriptions and were choosing to have only part of them dispensed to reduce the cost. It was seen as a long-term investment in people’s health, with the added bonus of being cost-effective because it prevented further complications arising from people not taking vital medications, which would increase costs to the NHS.

According to the Government, 95% of items dispensed in 2023 were exempt from prescription charges, but that proportion is entirely useless given that exemptions do not apply to medicines. It tells us absolutely nothing about who is exempt. Perhaps the Minister could enlighten us with some statistics on that. Mia stated that although the UK Government’s response did not surprise her, she was still gutted by it. She did not feel that it answered any of her concerns, and I must agree with her.

Of course, if we lived in an ideal world, England would catch up with Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Exemption lists are inherently unfair. Expanding the medical exemption list is not a perfect solution to the cost of prescriptions, but we need to start somewhere. I urge the Minister and the UK Government to listen to the thousands who have signed petitions relating to prescription charges. The NHS is under immense pressure, but people’s lives are truly on the line. I give you my sincere thanks, Dame Maria, on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Gower.