The current Health Minister Lord Howe has announced an intention to establish a new supervisory body in an attempt to minimize around £300m lost within the NHS each year due to medical wastage through unused medication.

Though that would suggest yet another expensive quango, the role will be important and the savings are likely to extend far beyond the immediate cash savings on prescriptions.

It is to be hoped that the supervisory body will move toward improved collection of unwanted and waste pharmaceuticals, including OTC products as well as POMs, as well as other more direct initiatives that will focus on prescripring and dispensing policy. All of these operate successfully in other jurisdictions, and have be discussed on many previous occasions of the Clinical Waste Discussion Forum.

That will reduce the amount of medicinal waste going into the solid waste stream and into wastewater. And with luck, existing regulatory and trade bodies will not obstruct these good intentions.