Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 13 November 2017 to Question 111406, what assessment he has made of the effect of the introduction of universal credit on the number of penalty charge notices issued in respect of wrongly claimed NHS prescriptions.

No such assessment has been made. Claimants of Universal Credit will be entitled to free National Health Service prescriptions if their earnings for the most recent assessment period are below prescribed thresholds. These individuals are not yet identifiable within the NHS Business Services Authority data because a separate exemption category on the reverse of the prescription form is not yet in place.