The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) has vowed to continue to fight for the abolition of prescription charges for patients with long-term conditions in England, despite public health minister Anna Soubry arguing there was "no money" in the health budget to extend prescription exemptions.
The RPS, a member of the Prescription Charges Coalition – an alliance of 20 health groups and charities campaigning for the abolition of prescriptions charges for patients with long-term conditions in England – believed there should be "no barrier" between patients and their medicines, Mr Patel added.
"I think we have to be completely realistic and honest about the situation in which we find ourselves," she said. "The simple truth is that if we extended exemptions to all long-term conditions it would cost a considerable amount of money and… there is no money," she added.
Liberal Democrat MP Sir Bob Russell prompted the parliamentary debate and praised the work of the Prescription Charges Coalition, which sent a report to health ministers and the Department of Work and Pensions in March highlighting the "fundamental unfairness" of the prescription system and called for urgent reform.
He called on clinical commissioning groups to consider more flexible prescribing patterns for patients with long-term conditions, rather than "rigid" 28-day prescribing rules, and asked for guidance from the Department of Health on the issue.
"Having to make monthly trips to the doctor and pharmacist for repeat prescriptions is a further and unnecessary inconvenience that means extra cost and additional distress, particularly when errors occur with prescriptions," he said.
However, Ms Soubry said that prescribing responsibilities should be left to GPs and other doctors, who "rightly take clinical responsibility for that particular aspect of a patient's care".
In its report in March, the Prescription Charges Coalition revealed survey results suggesting that 25 per cent of patients with a long-term condition who pay for their prescription have gone without at least one item of medication because of the cost.