asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what advice he has received from the Medicines Commission in relation to self-service retailing of analgesics and what reasons it has given for reversing its previous advice against this practice.

I refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Wallasey (Mrs. Chalker) on 26th October—[Vol. 918, c. 251–2]—and add that the main reasons advanced by the Medicines Commission in support of its latest advice are that analgesics will normally be available only in child-resistant packaging; there are no grounds for believing that there is a correlation between the method of sale of a medicine and its rôle in accidental poisoning; and the educational effects of a ban on self-service would not outweigh the resulting social disadvantages.