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“We think it is disgraceful that Mr Sharpe is facing this sort of action only because he tried to help sick people,” she saidBut Gordon Geddes, assistant secretary of the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee, which represents community pharmacists, said private dispensing would benefit large chemists who could buy in bulk, forcing out smaller pharmacies.”Lower prices might benefit customers in the short term, but in the long term they might find that their local chemist, who can’t compete, has to close down,” he said.”Then, if more pharmacists prescribe on a private basis, the NHS prescription charge would have to rise again, resulting in more medicines falling below the flate rate, which would result in more private prescribing and so on. The loss to the NHS could be enormous.”The dispute has highlighted the confusion over drug-pricing. More than 50 per cent of all prescribed items cost the NHS less than the prescription price. Diazepam tablets, for instance, which are available only on prescription, cost less than 20p for 50, while Warfarin tablets retail at 44p for100.The Department of Health has suggested that GPs should dispense cheaper drugs using private prescriptions, but the British Medical Association’s advice to GPs is that this could be against their contracts.”Our problem is a contractual one,” a BMA spokeswoman said. “Our legal advice is that doctors cannot issue a private prescription to an NHS patient.”.

THEY’RE small enough to fit in your pocket, cheaper than the train fare home, and the latest marketing gimmick to rescue publishing from the doldrums. From next month, you can pick up a Penguin small-format paperback for just 60p. It’s been 60 years since publisher Allen Lane revolutionised the book trade by publishing 10 paperbacks at sixpence each.
Now, to mark its anniversary, Penguin is launching a collection of miniature books by authors ranging from Martin Amis to Oscar Wilde for only 60p.The company – confident that the price and small format will prove popular – has printed more than 7 million copies of its first 60 small-format titles. Excerpts from the classics together with contemporary writers will be on sale.This latest publishing gimmick to attract elusive readers seduced by television, videos and computer games was inspired by a trip to Spain earlier this year by Penguin’s chief executive, Peter Mayer, and editor-in-chief, Peter Carson.Millions of small-format books are on sale in bookshops and newsagents across that country.The new line-up is “a mixture of short stories, novellas, short essays and original works that are not reproduced in this form anywhere else”, said Trevor Glover, managing director of Penguin UK. “They are extraordinarily portable – they fit into the top pocket of a shirt.”Penguin’s launch of small- format books comes at a time when publishers are being severely squeezed after a drop in sales during the recession. Attempts to woo back readers have included intense promotion of high- profile authors and reduced prices of hardback fiction.But perhaps the most innovative publishing venture of the decade was Wordsworth Editions’ mass-produced classics costing pounds 1 each.

Hard-up students and impulse buyers have snapped them up since their launch three years ago.”We have sold 30 million since then,” said Clive Reynard, chief editor and company secretary of Wordsworth. “Penguin and Oxford University Press did not take us seriously and thought we were a flash in the pan. When Penguin saw they were going to work, they produced their own version at pounds 1 in January 1994 – which meant we got away without any competition for a year and seven months.”Oxford University Press has since produced the World Classics range, with prices from pounds 1.99, while Everyman’s bid to attract readers is the sale of hand-sewn, high-quality hardback classics. “We’re offering permanency, elegance and beauty,” said Everyman’s David Campbell.