Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy that the NHS Business Unit should contact GPs when a certificate of entitlement to free prescriptions is due to expire.

We do not believe it would be appropriate for the NHS Business Services Authority to contact general practitioners about renewal of medical exemption certificates. Information is already sent directly to patients about the validity of these certificates, which includes the date of expiry printed on the certificate and a reminder sent to the patient one month before the certificate expires. The wording of the declaration on the prescription form is also a prompt to a patient to check that their certificate is valid.