On the 1st of April, the British Department of English Health is putting prescriptions charges up to £7.40 per item.
On the 1st of April, the Scottish government is abolishing prescription charges.
The Welsh and Northern Irish already get free prescriptions so from April Fool’s Day, the English will be the only people in the UK who have to pay for prescriptions. Not only will we pay for our own prescriptions, but we’re also paying for the free prescriptions the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish get by way of the £20bn a year Barnett bribe.
According to the British Department of English Health, it would cost £450m to give free prescriptions to English people and after giving all our money away to the Scots, Welsh, Northern Irish and the EU we apparently can’t afford it. Two and a half days of EU membership fees would cover the cost of free prescriptions in England. I know what I’d rather the money was spent on and it isn’t Greek sewers, Albanian roads, French farmers and Spanish fishermen.
What is UKIP’s policy on the English Question, the West Lothian Question and the Barnett formula – does it have one? With it’s views on Europe which are probably widely shared by the majority of people in England, if it also stood up for the people of England and offered them an English parliament surely UKIP would be onto a winner as the two main parties refuse to ask the people of England if they want to pull out of Europe or if they want their own parliament because they know what the answer will be so they won’t ask.
You’re pushing at an open door Jools. UKIP’s policy is to do away with the devolved executives and form grand committees of British MPs based on the country they were elected to for devolved matters. Superficially it’s something that could work but in reality it’s unworkable, not to mention not being what people want. The referendum has got to force a change of policy, it’s just indefensible when the Welsh people have made it very clear that they want devolution.
I think this just shows that english pharmacies are more powerful than scottish pharmacies. Our politicos think it is cheaper to make prescriptions free and directly fund the pharmacies, instead of making us punters pay a flat fee for a prescription service