Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the article in the British Medical Journal, Estimated costs of production and potential prices for the WHO Essential Medicines List, published on 29 January 2018, if he will make an assessment of potential changes to the costs of medicines in the UK.

No such assessment has been made. The costs of branded medicines are controlled by the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme and the statutory scheme for branded medicines. For unbranded generic medicines, the Department encourages competition between suppliers to keep prices down. In primary care, community pharmacies are incentivised to source products at the lowest possible cost and in secondary care competitive tenders ensure value-for-money to the National Health Service. Recent research published in the Milbank Quarterly demonstrated that the United Kingdom pays considerably less for unbranded generic medicines than other countries with a comparable income level.