The Prescription Fine Thing.

The Queen of England's official Diamond Jubilee celebrations are now (15:20 5/6/12) officially over so I've decided to get back to work by sorting out this £125 fine for fraudulently claiming a NHS prescription charge exemption. It took me all of two minutes because all I needed to do was email of a copy of the relevant form saying "I'm not paying this" along with paperwork demonstrating why there is no legal grounds to ask me to pay it. I did though decide not to demand compensation for defamation and loss of time. This is because realistically I'm looking at a maximum of a £100 payment to cover both and they're not just going to pay that forcing me into a lengthy legal process for very little reward.

However in doing all this I did notice something that disability rights groups and charities working with the disabled might be interested in. In England but not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland you need to pay a fee of £7.65 to get a prescription filled regardless of whether it's for a £2 tube of anti-septic cream or a £50,000 course of anti-cancer drugs. Certain groups though such those under 16 years of age, those with specified long term conditions like diabetes or asthma and those claiming certain benefits such as Income Support or Incapacity Benefit below a certain threshold are exempt from those fees. The 2011 Welfare Reform Act did away with benefits like Income Support and Incapacity Benefit and replaced them with Employment and Support Allowance. The fee exemption form was replaced immediately to accommodate these changes. However the process by which claimants are transferred from the old benefits to the new benefits is not expected to be completed until late-2013. Therefore it is likely that a high number of people could have been caught out by this inconsistency between government forms. In itself this not enough to justify a £125 fine because for that you need to prove that both an offence has occurred and that it has occurred through deliberate and wilful deception rather then by simply ticking the wrong box on a form by mistake.

It will be interesting though to see if the government is issuing a large number of fines in these instances in the hope that people with learning difficulties or who simply lack my level of experience in civilian law enforcement will be intimidated into paying up and this will claw back a relatively tiny amount money to help the government with it's significant economic problems.