The NHS drugs bill has more than doubled in the last decade to £8.2 billion.

There has been a call to reduce England’s rising drugs bill through the prescription of more generic medicines rather than their branded, and expensive, counterparts.

According to a report published today by the Commons Public Accounts Committee, around a quarter of all expenditure in primary care is on drugs, and both the volume of drugs prescribed and their total cost are increasing.

In 1996, 485 million prescriptions were dispensed in England; by 2006 this had increased by 55% to 752m. Over the same period the primary care drugs bill increased from £4 billion to £8.2 billion: a 60% increase in real terms.

Although there has been an substantial increase in prescribing lower cost generic forms of drugs in recent years, and many GP practices have made good progress with this, there still remains a great deal of scope to make further savings through the prescription of cheaper drugs wherever possible.

The National Audit Office has estimated that £200m a year could be saved without affecting clinical outcomes, money which could be used to treat patients.

For example, in October 2006, a generic version of the cholesterol-lowering statin simvastatin could be bought for £2.34 for a pack of 28 20mg pills. A branded version of the same drug cost £29.69.

The cross-party group of MPs also suggested printing the cost of drugs on packets to discourage patient waste – the value of drugs returned to pharmacists alone is estimated to be at least £100m a year.

Finally, the report suggested restricting drug firm influence by forcing GPs to declare significant gifts and hospitality. The pharmaceutical industry spends £850m each year on marketing drugs to GPs, and a recent survey found a fifth of GPs admitted to being more influenced by pharmaceutical firms than NHS advisers over which drugs to prescribe.

For more information, and to read the full report, click here.