Evening News
LOTHIANS MSP Colin Fox today condemned the 10p rise in prescription charges as "a sick joke" on April Fools’ Day.
The Scottish Socialist MSP, who is proposing a Bill to abolish the charges, said the increase to £6.40 per item from today meant prescription charges had gone up 3200 per cent since 1979.
"If the rise had only been kept to the rate of inflation, they would today cost just 64p instead."
He condemned prescription charges as a tax on illness.
"Many will feel the Scottish Executive are making April fools out of patients. There are already 70,000 people in Scotland who cannot afford to get the medicines they need. Today’s increase adds insult to injury," he said.
Mr Fox said Health Minister Malcolm Chisholm had told him that patients need not be deterred from obtaining medicines on financial grounds because there was an extensive system of exemptions and remission of charges.
However, Mr Fox said that this system was decades out of date, full of anomalies and prevented many patients from accessing NHS treatment.