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 support access to NHS prescriptions for people unable to operate online health services.

People who are unable to use online health services are still able to access the NHS via traditional routes. To get a prescription without online services, patients can visit their GP surgery and request a paper repeat prescription slip or fill out a form, or call their GP to request a telephone appointment to discuss their needs.

NHS England has successfully run several programmes to support patients, carers, and health service staff with their digital skills. These include:

- The Digital Health Champions programme, a proof of concept to support citizens who have no or low digital skills with understanding how to access health services online.

- The Widening Digital Participation programme, aimed to ensure more people have the digital skills, motivation and means to access health information and services online.

- The NHS App ‘Spoken Word’ Pilot project, designed to test the efficacy of promoting NHS digital health products and services in languages other than English.

We have also recruited over 2,000 NHS App ambassadors and 1,400 libraries to help people to learn how to use it.

NHS England has published a framework for NHS action on digital inclusion and is developing further resources to support practical actions. All programmes are actively considering how they can contribute to improvements in healthcare inequalities and digital inclusion.