Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of (a) the effectiveness of the NHS Business Services Authority’s approach to issuing penalty charges, (b) trends in the number of appeals against those charges which are upheld; and how lessons are learned from such upheld appeals.

The Department has made no such assessment. The attached table shows a breakdown of successful and unsuccessful appeals against the Benefit Exemption Checking Service (BECS) only.

A table showing the total number of Penalty Charge Notices (PCN) issued for the BECS, the Prescription Exemption Checking Service and the Dental Exemption Checking Service (DECS) is attached.

The NHS Business Services Authority continuously review contact from patients who feel they have incorrectly received a PCN. This allows valuable insight and understanding into customer behaviour including exceptional circumstances provided by patients.