By Steve Bargeton, political editor

MINISTERS YESTERDAY vowed to defeat a Bill to scrap prescription charges—despite it getting the backing of a powerful Holyrood committee.

By five votes to four the health committee yesterday endorsed the general principles of a Bill brought forward by Scottish Socialist Party leader Colin Fox to abolish the £6.50 charge.

But the Scottish cabinet yesterday stuck by the existing policy that those who could afford to pay, should pay.

“The Executive policy remains that it is right that patients who can afford to should continue to contribute towards NHS dispensing costs,” Health Minister Andy Kerr said.

“We therefore don’t see the abolition of prescription charges as the way forward.”

Ministers accept there are “anomalies and inconsistencies” in the system and will shortly be publishing a consultation paper.

The Welsh Assembly voted in 2003 to phase out charges and they will finally disappear in Wales next year.

But when Holyrood debates the Bill, the Executive will urge MSPs to oppose it.

The Bill divided the all-party health committee. Three Labour members— Dunfermline East MSP Helen Eadie, Janis Hughes and Duncan McNeil—and one Tory, Nanette Milne, dissented. But Dundee West Labour MSP Kate Maclean and the Liberal Democrats’ Mike Rumbles, MSP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, voted for Mr Fox’s Bill.

Around half the Scottish population is liable to pay prescription charges but in 2004 only 8% of all prescriptions issued had to be paid for. In his Bill Mr Fox estimates that scrapping them could cost £45 million a year but the Holyrood finance committee believes the cost could be higher.

Health committee convener, Perth MSP Roseanna Cunningham, said, “We believe that the current prescription charging regime is inequitable. It exempts individuals suffering from some chronic illnesses but not others and it exempts some people on low incomes but not others.

“There are too many inconsistencies and anomalies in the current system.”

Mr Fox described as “nonsense” Mr Kerr’s argument that no-one who could afford to pay received their medicines for nothing.

“Even more worryingly they claim that no-one incapable of paying the £6.50 charge for each medicine goes without,” he said. “To say this is simply to be unaware of the facts.

“The days of NHS prescription charges are now numbered in Scotland, abolition is now only a matter of time.”