Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether prescriptions obtained from a pharmacy are charged as a private patients.

In England the National Health Service has not commissioned a national prescribing service from community pharmacy, and therefore community pharmacists cannot prescribe NHS medicines. Some pharmacies do offer a private prescribing service, for which they charge patients.

Where community pharmacies supply medicines as part of an NHS service, for example the new Pharmacy First service, the medicines are supplied on the NHS and the normal prescription charges rules apply.

NHS England is working with integrated care boards, who are currently recruiting over 200 community pharmacy pathfinder sites to establish how independent prescribing can be incorporated into clinical services available to the public through community pharmacy in the longer-term.