Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment Public Health England has made of the effect of remote prescribing of oral antibiotics through online pharmacies on resistance to antibiotics.

National Health Service community prescriptions, delivered online and in person, are collated by NHS Business Services Authority and shared with the Health and Social Care Information Centre and Public Health England (PHE), through an open government license. PHE, through the English Surveillance Programme on Antimicrobial Utilisation and Resistance, released the first national report collating antibiotic use and resistance across the healthcare economy in 2014. The report is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/english-surveillance-programme-antimicrobial-utilisation-and-resistance-espaur-report