Charges for prescriptions for medicines and some medical appliances are payable by adults in England under the age of 60. However, people may be exempt from charges in various exemption categories. Charges were abolished by NHS Wales in 2007, Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland in 2010 and by NHS Scotland in 2011. In 2010/11, in England, £450million was raised through these charges, some 0.5% of the total NHS budget. In April 2021 the charge was raised to £9.35 for up to a three-month supply of each item. In 2022, for the first time since 2010, the charge was not increased. History When the National Health Service was established in 1948 all prescriptions were free. The power to make a charge was introduced in the NHS Amendment Act 1949 under pressure from Chancellor of the Exchequer Stafford Cripps, but Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan managed to block their implementation by threatening to resign. In 1951 Cripps's successor Hugh Gaitskell and Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison did introduce NHS charges for dentures and spectacles in order to help fund the Korean War, leading Bevan to resign in protest. Charges on medications were introduced in 1952, by the Conservative government of Winston Churchill, at a rate of one shilling per prescription. There were exemptions for people in receipt of National Assistance or War Disablement Pension, children under 16 or at school, and venereal disease patients. In 1956 the rules were changed so that a charge applied to each item prescribed. In 1961 it was doubled to 2s. Charges were abolished by the Wilson Government on 1 February 1965, but reintroduced on 10 June 1968 at the higher rate of 2s 6d, but with a wider range of exemptions. As of April 2021 the prescription charge in England is £9.35. Prescription charges and exemptions are administered by the NHS Business Services Authority. The existing list of medical exemptions is essentially a list of conditions for which long-term life-saving medication was available in 1968, and it has never been revised since. The policy on prescription charges was dismissed as a "dog's dinner" by the Social Market Foundation, who said in 2003 that the current rules on who pays for medicines and who does not are unfair and illogical. In 2007, a survey conducted by Ipsos Mori found that 800,000 people failed to collect a prescription during 2007 due to cost. In 2008, 88% of