Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many (a) patients were issued with fines by the NHS Business Authority as a result of failure to renew an exemption certificate and (b) of those fines were issued to patients with long-term medical conditions.

This information is not collected by the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA). The checks that the NHSBSA undertake confirm whether a patient holds a valid exemption as declared on the reverse of the prescription form. It does not record the reason for a patient not having an exemption in place and neither is a check made as to whether an exemption certificate has previously been held by the patient.

The NHSBSA does not know whether the patient being issued a fine has a long term condition. Only information relating to the exemption category declared at the time of collecting the prescription is captured.