To ask the Secretary of State for Health what consultations her Department has carried out with individual GP practices on the likely impact of making prescribable over-the-counter medicines containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine on their work load and the services they provide to patients. (134667)

On 7 March 2007, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) started a public consultation exercise on proposals to restrict the availability of medicines containing pseudoephedrine and ephedrine by a change to legal status from pharmacy to prescription only, together with a restriction in pack size. This followed advice from the Commission on Human Medicines (CHM).

The MHRA welcomes views on the merits and impact of the consultation proposals from all stakeholders including individual general practitioners, and the responses received will be given full consideration by the CHM, the MHRA and health Ministers before a decision is made.

In the light of external interest and questions, the MHRA is making available more information in relation to the consultation exercise. In order to give interested parties time to consider this additional information the deadline for comments will be extended by a month until the end of June.