§ Mr. Pavittasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will now answer Questions relating to the total annual cost of individual drugs to the NHS.
§ Mr. EnnalsFigures about the volume of sales to the National Health Service of individual pharmaceutical products have been treated as confidential so as to avoid publishing information that might be valuable to manufacturers' competitors, compromise government neutrality as between commercial interests and promote the sale of particular products as appear-60W ing to be those used frequently by most doctors and therefore, perhaps, the best in the relevant therapeutic field. The validity of this policy may have been eroded in recent years by the steady increase in the volume of the confidential information about the use of individual drugs that it has proved necessary to provide to medical research projects and, in connection with adverse drug reactions, to doctors and hospitals. Moreover commercial market research has developed so that reliable estimates of the sales of any pharmaceutical product can be purchased quite easily.
I am considering, therefore, the feasibility of producing an economically priced publication containing sales figures culled from the statistical sampling of dispensed prescriptions that could be obtainable from Her Majesty's Stationery Office and would be available in the Library. Detailed consideration is being given to such matters as format, cost of production, price and so on. This will take some time and I hope to make an announcement in due course.