WHY on earth are Scottish taxpayers paying £4.78 a pop for pharmacies to hand out paracetamol to well-off people? It’s a question I raise in the spirit of a long-overdue debate about Scotland’s love for universal benefits . 3 Scots receive prescriptions for free as part of a universal benefit Credit: Getty 3 Pharmacy paracetamol costs the tax payer £4.
79 a time - compared to 37p on the street 3 Chris Musson, the Scottish Sun's Associate Editor for Politics, has called for more common sense Credit: Andrew Barr Government is struggling to afford the basics, and last week the new Chancellor, Rachel Reeves , decided enough was enough with one example of this — the Winter Fuel Payment. The benefit of up to £300 per person is being stopped for people other than society’s worst-off, in a bid to help plug a £22billion hole in public finances. This move prompted shrieking from the likes of the SNP, who have shown over time they love nothing more than a good universal freebie to butter-up middle-class voters.
The Scottish Government was due to get £180million this winter to start their version of the Winter Fuel Payment. Read More Scottish Politics RUTTY HELL Scotland's eye-watering pothole repair bill REVEALED in new SNP Gov stats CHOPPY WATERS SNP accused of overseeing ‘national embarrassment’ as ferries delayed AGAIN Remarkably, they managed to come up with a worse name for the same benefit, having announced their intention to bring in the — wait for it — the ‘Pension Age Winter Heating Payment’. Now, it looks like the Scottish Government will only get about £80million to fund it.
So, they must decide whether — like Labour — to means-test the PAWHP. Or they could dip into their own pockets — by that, I mean yours — to keep universal entitlement. Most read in The Scottish Sun FIRE DRAMA Fire crews rush to 'major incident' in Scots town & locals warned to stay inside QUICK EXIT First managerial casualty of new SPFL season revealed after just ONE league game ‘CELEBRATION OF LIFE’ Jay Slater cause of death confirmed in UK as family make funeral plea 'BLADE' ARREST Man arrested after woman 'stabbed' outside Scots pub I suspect that they will choose to means-test it too — especially given their own poverty advisers already wanted them to do that — and blame Labour.
When the sky doesn’t fall in, and better-off pensioners don’t end up homeless , the SNP — or whoever is in charge at Holyrood after May 2026 — will hopefully have learned a lesson. NHS Chaos: Prescriptions Delayed After IT Outage Because I know that everybody loves “free” stuff, but come on. If something is paid for by taxpayers, when you could otherwise afford it, should the government really be picking up the tab? I’m in the camp that says No, especially at a time when the country is beyond broke.
The pandemic cost the UK upwards of £310billion on the initial response alone. This massive outlay fuelled runaway inflation , turbocharged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the economic insanity of the Liz Truss government. These are not boom times.
So, the Chancellor’s move is perfectly understandable — even if it is a risky tactic for a new government bidding to earn the trust of the people. And hopefully it will lead to serious discussion about Scottish Government waste on some universal benefits. The SNP, and Labour before them at Holyrood, have made a virtue of government giveaways for all — think free prescriptions and free tuition, for starters.
But the dire state of public finances now means the only realistic way of paying for them — at the same time as generous public sector pay increases — is through cuts elsewhere. The excuse for keeping universal benefits is sometimes that it would be too complicated to create a means-testing system. This should not be beyond the land of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Or with things like free prescriptions, how about just letting people pay if they want. I would. Find out what's really going on Register now for our free weekly politics newsletter for an insightful and irreverent look at the (sometimes excruciating) world of Scottish Politics.
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SIGN UP FOR FREE NOW Because this is a luxury we can’t afford. And it’s actually wasting money that could be helping the poorest. Something has to give, against the backdrop of the huge pressures on finances - everything from public sector pay, to the Scottish Child Payment.
But there hasn’t ever been a grown-up debate on universal benefits in Scotland . Ex-Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont tried in 2012. She was monstered for it.
By 2017, even Ruth Davidson as Scottish Tory leader had U-turned to back free scripts, despite saying previously it meant less money for cancer drugs and Scots were “paying with their lives for this policy”. Free prescriptions cost around £1.5billion a year, and latest stats show how the pharmacy charging regime means taxpayers are being stung for way above high-street rates for basics like paracetamol.
That £4.78 is the average price for an paracetamol “item” — such as a packet, or a bottle of Calpol-type liquid for kids — and includes an extra fee for pharmacists for their help in putting it in a paper bag with a nice label, and making you sit and wait for it. Digging into Public Health Scotland’s data, it emerges the price for different paracetamol products varies widely.
So, a 500mg packet paracetamol caplets can cost less than 50p on the high street, yet Scottish taxpayers paid pharmacists £3.62 per packet, on 1.8million occasions in 2022-23.
Panadol Actifast 500mg tablets cost the Scottish Government £9.97 a time. They are sold for £3.
80 in Boots . The cost of free university tuition, meanwhile, is around £1billion a year. Even a modest graduate charge of a few thousand pounds would ease the burden on taxpayers.
The policy has been backfiring for years anyway — the amount universities get is insufficient to fund courses, meaning quotas on Scottish students as institutions try to grab more higher-paying foreign students. However, it’s almost as if we’ve been scared to debate whether even a tweak to universal benefits is legitimate. Read more on the Scottish Sun LONDON CALLING Premier League giants join transfer hunt for Celtic hero Matt O'Riley MADE A MARK ‘It’s Center Parcs but better’ gushes mum over ‘secret’ Scottish adventure park But look where it’s got us.
The reality is that none of this is free. Someone has to pay. We’re in a hole, yet the leaders of the Land of the Freebie just keep on digging.
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