[joeysteele]

Done some political research today on prescription charges.
IN 1952 under the Conservatives the first charge for presciptions were set up.

In 1965 Labour abolished prescription charges.
Then in 1971 the Conservatives had charges at 20p an item, that stayed until 1979.
In 1980 Thatcher raised charges to 70p then again to £1 and then through the whole of the 1980s the Conservatives increased charges by 20p every year.
In the 1990s,the Conservatives raised the rate of increase of items on prescriptions to 25p every year.Thereby taking the cost of a prescription from 20p an item to something like £5 from 1979 to 1997.

In 1997 when Labour cam to power they reduced the rate of increase each year to 10p an item.

However in 2006, Labour handed the pricing of prescriptions over to the NHS Business Services who then were responsible for increases.
Therein maybe is the problem but the vast charges for prescriptions are still a legacy from the Thatcher/Major Conservatives governments of the 1980s and 1990s.Who set up increases per item every year in that time.

Time this tax on the sick was removed for good in line with the rest of the UK though.