Labour MPs and family planning campaigners were last night accused of renewing bullying campaign against the Boots chain over the morning after pill
Labour MPs and family planning campaigners were last night accused of renewing bullying campaign against the Boots chain over the morning after pill.
Just months after Boots was forced to plead for campaigners to stop harassing its senior executives, there was a new volley of bitter criticism over the company’s pricing.
Senior Labour figures yesterday accused the high street store of failing to uphold women’s ‘reproductive rights’ by supplying cheap contraceptive pills in all its stores.
Boots insist they have been beset by a manufacturing issue which means only 69 of their 2,500 shops has stocked the cheaper version of the drugs.
But more than 130 MPs yesterday wrote to Boots’ UK managing director Elizabeth Fagan to demand the £15.99 version is rolled out immediately.
Abortion provider the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which has orchestrated a fierce campaign for cheaper contraceptives, said Boots had acted in an ‘absolutely scandalous’ way by missing its own deadline for providing the pills.
The letter reignites a year-long row over the price of the morning-after pill, which usually retails for £26.
Pro-life charities said the letter was part of ‘an established pattern of bullying by the abortion industry’.
At the peak of the row in August Boots even issued legal warnings to BPAS accusing it of encouraging harassment of it senior executives.
BPAS had published the names of senior Boots staff on the internet and encouraged people to write to their personal email addresses via an online portal, and staff received 24,000 emails as a result.
Boots said the campaign caused ‘immense personal distress’ to its senior executives.
Senior Labour figures yesterday accused the high street store of failing to uphold women’s ‘reproductive rights’ by supplying cheap contraceptive pills in all its stores
Clara Campbell of the Life charity said last night: ‘This has now become part of an established pattern of bullying by the abortion industry and it political allies.
‘Not satisfied with bullying Boots into agreeing to reduce the price of emergency contraception, they now seek to dictate to this private pharmaceutical retailer when they should be reducing their prices.
‘The abortion industry should not be allowed to set a precedent of bullying the private sector.
‘Boots should as a matter of principle stand up to their tactics of intimidation and bullyism.’
Labour’s public health spokesman Sharon Hodgson, who organised the letter, said yesterday: ‘It is dismaying that Boots have not fulfilled their promise from earlier this year to provide cheaper, more affordable emergency contraception to women by October.
‘Whilst Boots say they have started the process of rolling out this product in the stores, the progress they have made so far can only be described as a drop in the ocean with a long way to go before it is accessible in each of their 2,500 stores across the country.’
Clare Murphy of BPAS added: ‘It is absolutely scandalous that Boots have failed to deliver on the clear pledge they made to roll out cheaper emergency contraception in all their stores.
‘There can be absolutely no excuse for their pathetically slow pace of progress, other than the fact that they simply do not want to provide women with an affordable product.’
A spokesman for Boots UK said the firm ‘remains committed’ to increasing accessibility of emergency contraception, but added: ‘Unfortunately the manufacturer has experienced a batch failure due to quality issues which means that the stock we were expecting is not now available, and we are now waiting for a new batch to be produced.
‘We’re pleased to confirm that we have now been able to roll this out to a further 31 stores taking the total number of Boots stores offering the service to 69.’
Just months after Boots was forced to plead for campaigners to stop harassing its senior executives, there was a new volley of bitter criticism over the company’s pricing
Dr Anthony McCarthy of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said: ‘Instead of haranguing Boots for its failure to make the morning-after pill as cheap as it would like, BPAS should admit the scarcity of evidence that the morning after pill brings down the rate of known pregnancies or abortions.
‘What we do know is that rates of sexually transmitted infections rise with use of the morning-after pill, perhaps because couples feel safer so are taking more risks.’
BPAS for the last year has co-ordinated a campaign against leading retailers in a bid to force them to lower the price of the morning-after pill.
Tesco and Superdrug this summer agreed to halve the cost from around £30 to £13.49, but Boots initially said it would not do so to avoid ‘incentivising inappropriate use’.
After a Labour-backed campaign against the store – including threats to boycott the company – Boots in July bowed to pressure and said it would reduce the price.
But the abuse has persisted because campaigners say stocks of the cheaper drug have not been supplied quickly enough.