Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much money was spent from the public purse on the drug information service FRANK in (a) the most recent year for which information is available and (b) total since FRANK was established.

During the financial year April 2016 to March 2017 Talk to FRANK received 94,760 calls. It should be noted that the Talk to FRANK service offers a range of contact methods and its customer support team also answered 39,163 emails, texts and webchat messages. The FRANK website also received five million web visits in 2016/17.

During the current financial year (April 2017 to March 2018) we are planning to spend £978,000 on the Talk to FRANK service.

Since the Talk to FRANK service was established in 2003 (but excluding the period April 2010 to March 2013) £9,117,242 has been spent on the service (including the current year’s £978,000 budget).