Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 12 January 2021 to Question 133917 on Prescription Drugs, if he will provide an explanation of the meaning of the phrase to optimise prescribing of dependence forming medicines provided in that Answer.

Phase two of Dame Carol Black’s review covering treatment services will be published later this year and will be made available to the National Oversight Group overseeing the National Health Service’s implementation of recommendations from Public Health England’s prescribed medicines review alongside other relevant materials.

Medicines optimisation is defined in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guidelines as ‘a person-centred approach to safe and effective medicines use, to ensure people obtain the best possible outcomes from their medicines’. This includes prescription of medicines which may give rise to dependency when these are clinically justified.