The Department of Health (DH) has declined to comment on how or why its automated CIP prescription payment system was approved for use before being introduced in 2007.

In a response to C+D this week, a spokesperson also failed to address questions about how the department had engaged with the pharmacy sector over the design of the system, which has been blamed for errors in pricing and subsequent payments to contractors. And the department did not comment specifically on whether it would commit to introducing a new payment system, as pharmacy leaders have demanded.

But the department was "applying pressure" on pharmacy's paymaster to improve prescription pricing accuracy and was considering paying pharmacists further compensation for the errors, the spokesperson said.

The DH comments came in response to questions posed as part of C+D's Fight for Fairness campaign, which has been pushing for improved accuracy in prescription pricing after errors caused some contractors to be underpaid by thousands of pounds.

The DH said this week that it did require pharmacy's paymaster NHS Prescription Services (NHS PS) to "pay accurately, in accordance with the Drug Tariff". "We work with and apply pressure on the Business Services Authority (BSA) [of which NHS PS is a part], but it requires a complex infrastructure to process 900 million items from over 10,000 pharmacies each year, and any changes need to be carefully implemented so as not to create issues elsewhere and further reduce performance," a spokesperson said.

Asked whether it had given NHS PS a budget to improve pricing accuracy, the department said that the BSA was allocated an "overall budget to meet its responsibilities", which included prescription pricing. And the department offered no specific response to C+D's questions on how much improvement in accuracy it would like to see and on how the payment system had originally been approved for use.

Negotiations regarding payments for contractors to recognise errors and inconvenience caused by the payment system were ongoing, the DH confirmed.

And the department was working with PSNC and NHS PS to improve transparency in the system, the spokesperson said. But they warned that any significant change in pricing processes would need to be considered in light of a wider commercial review of the BSA.