Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 4 July 2016 to Question 41350, when the monitoring measures will come into effect; and what assessment he has made of the effect of such measures on the (a) availability and (b) cost of medicines.

The Department is in the process of setting up the systems to be able to routinely and systematically monitor significant price increases of generic medicines from September.

The monitoring will not impact directly on the availability or cost of medicines. Significant price increases will be considered by the Department and will be referred to the Competition and Markets Authority where appropriate which has proven an effective policy where unwarranted price rises are taking place.