Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Manzoor on 22 January (HL12835), what is the reason for the delay in updating the FP10 prescription form; how many low income patients on Universal Credit claiming free prescriptions have received a penalty notice; and how many of those penalty notices have been withdrawn because they were issued in error.

A revised version of the FP10 prescription form, featuring a dedicated tick-box for use by Universal Credit (UC) claimants who meet the criteria for free National Health Service prescriptions, recently received Ministerial clearance. Any change to the form involves major system and software updates across the NHS to allow the re-designed form to be used and processed. The revised paper form is currently being prepared for testing, to ensure it is compatible with the scanners used by the NHS Business Services Authority. The revised form will be introduced at the earliest opportunity.

At present, both UC and income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants who are eligible for free NHS prescriptions, are ticking exemption box K on the FP10 prescription form to ensure they get the free prescriptions to which they are entitled. As a result, the NHS Business Services Authority is not able to confirm how many penalty charges notices have been issued to UC Claimants, and therefore how many were issued to UC claimants who had a valid prescription charge exemption.