Prescription drugs price label call

MPs on the influential public accounts committee said the millions of people taking free or heavily-subsidised medicines had to be made aware of the high cost to the taxpayer.

They also demanded tough new regulations to force GPs to publicly register gifts and hospitality they receive from pharmaceutical companies.

A fifth admitted in a recent survey being more influenced by big firms than NHS advisers over which drugs to prescribe - leading to an overuse of more expensive branded medicines.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has found switching to lower-cost generic versions could save the taxpayer more than £200 million a year.

The calls for price labelling follow an NAO probe which found unused and wasted drugs were costing the NHS at least £100 million a year, although the figure could be much higher.

The committee report said: "88% of prescription items are dispensed free to patients and the remainder for a standard charge not directly linked to actual cost. There is a risk that the patients for whom these drugs are prescribed may not be aware of how expensive medicines can be, and consequently do not realise the importance of taking them correctly and returning them for safe disposal if they are not used."

Government consultation on pricing labelling medicines has proved inconclusive, with some patients saying they might not take medicines if they considered them too expensive or too cheap.

But the committee recommended such a move, concluding: "The Department should do more to make patients aware of the costs of drugs, and hence the importance of not wasting them, for example by displaying on dispensed drugs information such as the cost of the specific items dispensed or an indication of the typical cost of items to the NHS."

It also complained that the Department of Health had no "robust or up-to-date" data on exactly how many drugs were being wasted and why patients did not take them and called for research to be commissioned.