Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to minimise the wastage of prescribed tablets and other medication.

NHS England and NHS Improvement’s programme on medicines optimisation includes improving the use of medicines and reducing wastage and aims to help patients to improve their outcomes; take their medicines as intended; avoid taking unnecessary medicines; reduce wastage of medicines; and improve medicines safety. Reducing waste medicines is also a focus for the National Health Service environmental programme 'Delivering a net zero NHS'.

In addition, the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for England has completed a review on overprescribing, which was published on 22 September 2021. The review sets out a series of further practical and cultural changes necessary to ensure patients get the most appropriate treatment for their needs while ensuring clinicians’ time is well-used and taxpayer money is spent wisely.