High street chemists will no longer be able to accept discounts or bonuses from drugs manufacturers after 2010, health minister Ab Klink told MPs on Wednesday.

Klink said he was taking this ‘fairly revolutionary step’ to stop chemists from receiving hundreds of millions of euros from pharmaceutical firms which they put into their own pockets.
Agreements on using part of this money to keep the retail cost of medicines down have been made in recent years and are expected to generate savings of €1.3bn this year.