The Office of Fair Trading is bringing a case before the Restrictive Practices Court to have the Retail Maintenance Price removed from over the counter medicines

In effect this should result in a reduction in price of common branded medicines such as cold remedies and painkillers.

The OFT supported by the major supermarkets say the customer will get a better deal - while smaller chemists argue the price cuts will put them out of business

Putting the two sides of the argument are David Sharp from the Community Pharmacy Action Group and Justin King, director of Hypermarkets at ASDA.

Are over the counter medicines the only product that the Retail Maintenance Price applies to?

Justin King: There have been exemptions since 1964 on books and over the counter drugs. Books you might remember came off two or three years ago and OTCs are the last remaining area - we've been campaigning now for more than five years to have the retail maintenance price removed.

What difference would customers notice if it went?

Justin King: The easiest way to demonstrate it is if you look at the price of branded OTCs and our own label products - ASDA's own lemon cold powders remedy costs �1.05 versus �2.75 for Lemsip. The difference in price is over half so there is a very, very significant price difference.

But you've got big buying power which chemists don't.

Justin King: It's not really about the chemists, it's about the drug companies. because the prices are dictated by the drug companies - it's they that set the very high prices on branded products.

So small chemists wouldn't be able to compete if the retail maintenance price was removed?

David Sharp: We couldn't compete - ASDA continues to say the drug companies set high prices, but the OFT in an investigation leading up to this have been unable to find that they set unrealistically high prices or that they are making unrealistically high profits. In 1970 when the case was last reviewed the judge made what I would say was an incredibly good forecast. He believed then that the supermarkets would encroach on small business and 30 years later that's the fact - the high street is being denuded of chemists, grocers and butchers and we don't want to see that happen to the small independent chemist.

So you could not survive if there was a cut in price of branded cold cures, painkillers and so on?

David Sharp: Though the OTCS are a smaller proportion of our turnover they are a very much significantly higher area of our profit and it is that, to a very large extent, that sustains the small independent chemist.

You must have sympathy with that argument from a business point of view?

Justin King: If you look at the OFT report it says that 5% of community pharmacy profits came from OTC goods and the director general himself said that the claim that pharmacies would go out of business is scaremongering by a business-motivated pressure group.

Do customers prefer to go for branded products simply because they are more familiar?

Justin King: They certainly might and that is why we stock both brands and our own label - we wish to sell both in fair competition. We make a fair profit from our own branded products and we want to make a fair profit on branded products as well, but at significantly reduced prices

Are we worrying too much ? Will customers still want to go for the brands, the ones they know?

David Sharp: I'm worried very greatly indeed for my colleagues, for the perception the public has of the supermarkets is that their price is lower. That's why butchers and bakers have gone from the high street and it's because they are able to advertise in a very large way and they have buying power that we do not possess.