Grassroots pharmacists are adding their voices to the call for dispensing errors to be decriminalised by signing an online petition.

The petition, which has been launched by locum pharmacist Graeme Stafford, urges the Department of Health to "ensure that the law relating to the dispensing of medication errors is changed as soon as possible such that one-off, non-deliberate errors are no longer considered to be criminal offences".

It follows the case of locum Elizabeth Lee, who was handed a suspended sentence in April 2009 after dispensing propranolol instead of prednisolone to 72-year-old Carmel Sheller, who later died

Mr Stafford stated on the petition: “If every pharmacist who has ever made a mistake were to be criminalised in this way then there would soon be very few left to practice. This law needs to be changed and soon.”