If the NHS wishes to be a world-class service, it has to provide the treatments and modern medicines that are so much more widely used abroad

Bill Fullagher President ABPI

And as a result patients often end up being treated with older and cheaper drugs which are often less effective.

Drug companies are now calling on the NHS to increase their use of more expensive drugs for the increased benefit of the patient.

Dr Trevor Jones, director general of the ABPI, said: "I think it's a great pity that all the advances that we make in medical science which could truly benefit patients' lives both in quality and quantity are simply not getting to the patients that need them because we have a system of healthcare provision which simply can't afford them."

Asked whether a simple way of ensuring patients got the best treatment would be to lower the price, he said: "At the end of the day to develop and research a new medicine is very expensive and a very long process.

"It costs about �350m and 13 years to do that.

"There is a limit below which you can't go. You have got to earn the profits to plough back into research."

European counterparts

Despite recent extra investment in the health service, the UK still does not invest as much as its European counterparts.

The drug companies argue that increased use of modern medicines would not only benefit patients but would drive down other NHS costs - particularly in the area of hospital treatment.

They claim greater competition between firms has ensured that new products are often cheaper than their replacements and that more than half of the medicines sold to the NHS by the industry now actually cost the NHS less than the government's prescription charge to patients of �6.10.

Bill Fullager, president of the ABPI, said: "All too often, medicines are represented as a problem for the NHS, which is accused of paying far too much for them.

"But if the NHS wishes to be a world-class service, it has to provide the treatments and modern medicines that are so much more widely used abroad."

Lobbying

It could be that much of what is happening in the UK is working favour of the patient's well-being, rather than the well-being of the industry

Professor Joe Collier

Professor Joe Collier, an expert in health policy at St George's Hospital Medical School in south London, said the ABPI was bound to lobby for better drug prices - particularly at a time of economic stringency.

He said: "The ABPI may have legitimate criticisms, but the position they are taking is not new, and may be rather biased.

"It could be that much of what is happening in the UK is working favour of the patient's well-being, rather than the well-being of the industry and that would seem defensible."

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said the key requirement for any drug was that it was clinically effective for the patient.

She said that ABPI figures actually showed that the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme, which regulates the profits that companies can make on drug sales, ensured that the NHS got a good deal on drugs.