The price of a three-month prescription pre-payment certificate (PPC) will increase by 60p to £30.25 and a 12-month PPC will increase £2.20 to £108.10, the negotiator also announced today (February 24).

“Unwelcome and inappropriate”

PSNC chief executive Simon Dukes said: “The prescription charge increase is our yearly reminder that the government mandates community pharmacy teams to be not only clinicians, but also tax collectors.

“After the year that pharmacy teams have all experienced, the continued use of frontline healthcare staff for this purpose is unwelcome and inappropriate.”

Pharmacy bodies have long called for England to be brought in line with other UK countries, and scrap the prescription charge. C+D launched a campaign with last year’s increase, to pause the prescription charge during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last April, PSNC, the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Dispensing Doctors’ Association (DDA) signed a joint letter to Matt Hancock, calling for “a temporary removal of the prescription charge” during the pandemic – to create a “smoother and safer prescription procedure”. 

Announcing this year’s prescription charge increase today, Mr Dukes said: “It is ironic that the Exchequer is keen to use the high street pharmacy network to collect its prescription tax, yet unwilling to reimburse them their COVID-related costs in keeping pharmacy doors open in order to dispense the medicines in the first place.

“The government urgently needs to find an alternative solution to the use of community pharmacy for this purpose,” he stressed.