Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what (a) guidance his Department issues and (b) processes are in place to help prevent patient addiction to prescription medicines.

In March 2023, NHS England published ‘Optimising personalised care for adults prescribed medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms: framework for action’. It aims to further reduce inappropriate prescribing of high-strength painkillers and other addiction-causing medicines, like opioids and benzodiazepines, where they may no longer be the most clinically appropriate treatment for patients, and in some cases can become harmful without intervention.

NHS England provides support to integrated care boards and primary care as the Framework is implemented, through: national medicines optimisation opportunities for the National Health Service in 2023/24, which include opportunities for reducing opioid use in chronic non-cancer pain, and addressing inappropriate antidepressant prescribing; the Medicines Safety Improvement Programme, in partnership with the Patient Safety Collaboratives across England, is supporting other NHS teams to work with patients to reduce long term opioid use; annual investment of £2.3 billion until 2024 in mental health services and NHS Talking Therapies; a national programme to ensure social prescribing is an option for patients, as well as funding for social prescribers through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme; support for delivering Structured Medication Reviews (SMR), including those on medicines associated with dependence and withdrawal symptoms; academic Health Science Network (AHSN) training on delivering SMRs; AHSN patient facing materials; and guidance published by NHS England on Structured Medication Review and Medicines Optimisation.