MORE women would use the morning after pill if it was available to buy off the shelf without an ‘unnecessary and embarrassing consultation’, according to women’s health campaigners.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service said buying emergency contraception drugs such Levonelle should be as easy as purchasing paracetamol, and said being questioned by a pharmacist was off-putting for many women.

BPAS also said the government needed to review why the pill was so much more expensive in the UK than Europe. Women in the UK can pay as much as £30 for the birth-control tablet compared to just €7 (£6) in France.

Ann Furedi, BPAS chief executive, said: “It is utterly stupid that we have made a medication which gives women a second chance of avoiding an unwanted pregnancy so hard to obtain. There is no financial justification for the high price of this pill, nor clinical reason for a consultation before it can be sold.”

BPAS believe that eliminating the mandatory consultation would cut the cost of the drug as this was the main difference between the UK and other countries, where it is cheaper. However, Aileen Bryson, policy lead for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland, said this was a “red herring”.

She said: “Having the pharmacist consultation doesn’t put the price up - it’s purely the manufacturer’s price on it in the same way as any other medicine.”

She added: “I would also take issue with the word ‘unnecessary’, particularly if someone is buying it repeatedly where they would benefit from sexual health advice. It’s is a potent medicine, it has to be used properly and there are side effects.”

A spokeswoman for BPAS said she had “hit a brick wall” trying to unpick why the morning-after pill cost so much in the UK because the Hungarian drug company which manufactures it blamed the UK distributor, Bayer, and Bayer in turn blamed pharmacists. She added that research by BPAS had also also uncovered suggestions that the price had been set high deliberately in the UK as a “moral statement” to “deter women from using it”.

She added: “You wouldn’t put a massive surcharge on paracetamol to stop people using it too often. The price aspect is very complicated, but that’s why we think it needs some kind of external intervention by government to work out what’s going on because it’s so out of step with everywhere else in Europe.”

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said: "The consultation aspect is important in providing support and advice, and importantly to minimise the risk of repeat use of EHC as a routine form of contraception for some individuals." She added that emergency contraception could be obtained for free from most sexual health clinics, but BPAS said this was less convenient.

A spokeswoman for Bayer, which distributes Levonelle in the UK, did not respond to a request for comment.