Prescription Charges

HC Deb 10 June 1975 vol 893 cc221-3

6. Mr. Newton

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is her policy towards the level of prescription charges.

Mrs. Castle

Our policy is to phase out these charges as economic circumstances and the resources available for the health services permit, and we have already abolished prescription charges for women over 60 and for chilldren up to 16 years of age.

Mr. Newton

In view of the widespread concern shown in the previous questioning about the steady deterioration in hospital services, not least in the Chelmsford and Colchester districts, which concern the area that I represent, does the right hon. Lady agree that it is time she set her face firmly and finally against anything which will add to the starvation of resources from which the hospital service is now suffering? In the light of that starvation of resources, will she reconsider what she has just said and say that she has no intention of abolishing prescriptions charges and that she will review her policy about pay beds?

Mrs. Castle

The answer to both those questions is "No. Sir." It is an integral part of our approach to the health service that it should be free at the point of use. People should be taxed in order to provide the services when they are healthy and not taxed or subjected to protion charges or anything else prescript when they are sick. That remains our policy. Only about 3 per cent. of the finances of the National Health Service comes from charges, so that even if we doubled them they would represent only a minute part of the budget that the National Health Service commands.

Mr. Dempsey

Will my right hon. Friend consider doing something for those who regularly receive prescriptions and have to pay the charges? Has she considered, for example, a diabetic person who might receive as many as seven individual prescriptions a week, which represents an immense burden on the average working man's budget? Cannot she do something to relieve the economic pressures in such circumstances?

Mrs. Castle

It is because prescription charges weigh so heavily on the chronic sick that we are pledged progressively to phase them out. In the meantime I remind my hon. Friend of the prepayment certificate scheme which exists precisely to help people who have to incur a steady and continuing high expenditure on drugs. A certificate costs an average of about 1p a day. I suggest to my hon. Friend that he should draw this to the attention of the person he has in mind.

Mr. Boscawen

Does the right hon. Lady accept that the amount of money derived from prescription charges is not the main point? The real point is that the imposition of prescription charges helps to save an enormous amount of waste in the prescribing of drugs which are not always needed.

Mrs. Castle

I do not accept that the levying of a charge at a level which any hon. Member would consider acceptable would have that kind of disincentive effect. Responsibility for prescribing wisely but economically rests with the general practitioner.