The power to make a charge was introduced in the NHS Amendment Act 1949 under pressure from Chancellor of the Exchequer Stafford Cripps, but Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan managed to block their implementation by threatening to resign.
In 1951 Cripps's successor Hugh Gaitskell and Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison did introduce NHS charges for dentures and spectacles in order to help fund the Korean War, leading Bevan to resign in protest.
[3][4] Charges on medications were introduced in 1952, by the Conservative government of Winston Churchill, at a rate of one shilling per prescription.
[5] There were exemptions for people in receipt of National Assistance or War Disablement Pension, children under 16 or at school, and venereal disease patients.
Charges were abolished by the Wilson Government on 1 February 1965, but reintroduced on 10 June 1968 at the higher rate of 2s 6d, but with a wider range of exemptions.
The policy on prescription charges was dismissed as a "dog's dinner" by the Social Market Foundation, who said in 2003 that the current rules on who pays for medicines and who does not are unfair and illogical.
[8] In 2007, a survey conducted by Ipsos Mori found that 800,000 people failed to collect a prescription during 2007 due to cost.
[10] Prime Minister Gordon Brown introduced an exemption for cancer patients in 2009, and promised free prescriptions for people with long-term conditions.
[11] The Prescription Charges Coalition, a campaigning organisation of which the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and numerous organisations of disabled people are members, launched a survey investigating the impact of prescription charges on people in England with long-term conditions in March 2017.
[13] The Royal College of General Practitioners launched a campaign in May 2017 to scrap mental health prescription charges for students.
If they do not prove entitlement to help with health costs, and do not pay the amount stated in the penalty charge notice, the NHS may take court action to recover the debt.
[32] The Long Term Illness Scheme provides free drugs, medicines and medical and surgical appliances for the treatment of specified conditions: