Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to Drug shortages derail CCGs’ budgets, published by The BMJ on 24 January 2018, what assessment his Department has made of the reasons for the ten-fold year on year increase in Clinical Commissioning Group's costs relating to drugs on no cheaper stock obtainable lists.

The generics market is a competitive one where prices fluctuate. Concessionary prices are set when pharmacies cannot purchase generic medicines at the Drug Tariff reimbursement price. We have seen an increase in the number of concessionary prices since the summer. This is because generic medicine selling prices have risen. The reasons for these increased selling prices include reduced stock due to regulatory action against several large manufacturers and a decrease in the value of sterling. Reimbursement prices of the most commonly prescribed generic medicines were also reduced from August 2017 to recoup medicine margin over delivery, and adjust community pharmacy funding to the set level. This downward adjustment to generic medicine reimbursement prices happened at a similar time to when generic medicine selling prices started to increase.