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Chamber and committees

Question reference: S6W-00453

  • Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
  • Date lodged: 3 June 2021
  • Current status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 22 June 2021

Question

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has spent on prescriptions in each of the last five years, and how many people received a prescription.


Answer

The cost of medicines and appliances in the past five financial years, 2016-17 to 2020-21, is shown in Table 1. These data relate to community dispensing only.

Table 1 – Gross Ingredient Cost (£), 2016/17 – 2020/21 Year

Gross Ingredient Cost (GIC) (£)

2016-17

1,137,588,236

2017-18

1,170,761,719

2018-19

1,142,104,457

2019-20

1,175,878,909

2020-21

1,118,110,484

Source: Public Health Scotland, PIS (Prescribing Data)

Reference: IR2021-00410

The number of people who have received a prescription in the last five years has recently been provided in an answer to S5W-36221 on 30 April 2021. This presented the number of patients with a paid prescription by financial year from financial year 2009-2010 to financial year 2020-2021 (partial year to December 2020 data).

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers