Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the value of unused prescription drugs returned to pharmacies and NHS outlets for disposal in the last 12 months for which figures are available.

Information is not held centrally on the value of unused prescription drugs returned to pharmacies and National Health Service outlets for disposal.

The Department commissioned the York Health Economics Consortium and the School of Pharmacy at the University of London to carry out research to determine the scale, causes and costs of waste medicines in England. The report, Evaluation of the Scale, Causes and Costs of Waste Medicines, was published on 23 November 2010. This found that the gross cost of unused prescription medicines in primary and community care in the NHS in England in 2009 was £300 million a year and that up to £150 million of this was avoidable. The report is available at:

http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1350234/

A number of initiatives have been rolled out which NHS England expects will directly impact on medicines wastage, including the deployment of clinical pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in general practice and also in care homes to undertake medicines reviews; and rolling out dose-banded chemotherapy drugs for cancer. In addition, work to address problematic polypharmacy and ensure appropriate de-prescribing, the establishment of a patient and public medicines adherence campaign and addressing variation through the use of RightCare principles will also contribute to a reduction in medicines waste.

While recognising the importance of reducing medicines wastage from a value for money perspective, the key to securing a reduction in medicines wastage is implementation of the principles of medicines optimisation, ensuring that each patient receives the right medicine, at the right dosage, at the right time.