Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department's policies on overprescribing.

The National Health Service and its partner organisations are responding to the challenge of overprescribing, as set out in the Government’s review of overprescribing, Good for you, good for us, good for everybody, in September 2021. Due to the multifaceted nature of overprescribing and the interventions used to address it, it is challenging to evaluate the effectiveness of individual policies and interventions. However, where an evaluation has been possible, there is evidence of reduced potential harms and more optimised use of medicines, for example prescribing volumes of unsafe and ineffective items, such as coproxamol and homeopathy, have reduced by 90% since policy interventions were implemented.

Structured medication reviews remain a service requirement, as part of the 2025/2026 DES contract for primary care networks (PCNs). In addition to the primary care contract, medication reviews are outlined in NHS England’s Neighbourhood health guidelines 2025/26, as an essential part of the core components associated with the neighbourhood multidisciplinary team and an effective neighbourhood service. Further information on the DES contract for primary care networks and NHS England’s Neighbourhood health guidelines 2025/26 is available, respectively, at the following two links:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/PRN01903-network-contract-des-contract-specification-2025-26-v1.1.pdf

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/neighbourhood-health-guidelines-2025-26/

NHS England is progressing a range of interventions to ensure that records can be safely shared and accessed across care settings by patients and health and care professionals, to support effective medicine optimisation. This includes progress in rolling out digital social care records (DSCRs). For example, this April, NHS England published a data standard for DSCRs that will ensure that core information is captured consistently across people, places, and providers.

In the past 12 months, the following has been undertaken, which has raised awareness of overprescribing:

• the National Medicines Optimisation Opportunities for integrated care boards (ICBs) was updated in September 2024, and includes nine opportunities associated with overprescribing for ICBs to consider;
• NHS England commissioned the Health Innovation Network to deliver training, education, and masterclasses on a range of overprescribing related topics to support clinicians to better understand the data, and build skills and experience in deprescribing; and
• Health Innovation Network guidance was published in early 2025 for ICBs and PCNs on overprescribing and problematic polypharmacy.