Dr Sarah Jarvis, women's health spokeswoman for the Royal College of GPs said that giving women easy access to the contraceptive pill without prescription will not stop unwanted pregnancies.  

Dr Jarvis said that failure to take the Pill regularly contributed to the UK's high rate of unintended pregnancies. Making it easier to get the Pill will also not reduce the UK's teen pregnancy rate, which is the highest in Western Europe.

Dr Jarvis argued in favour of long-acting contraception, such as implants or intrauterine contraceptive devices like the coil, which she said were effective for at least three months and had similar satisfaction rates.

Dr Jarvis said that the study did by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) in 2005 revealed that low use of long-acting contraception compared with the Pill or condoms was one of the reasons for high rates of unwanted pregnancy.

She said: "This claim certainly fits with the evidence. About 8% of women of childbearing age in the UK (with a 15% teenage motherhood rate) use long-acting contraceptives, compared with about 20% in Sweden, where the rate of teenage motherhood is 4%. "Although making the combined oral contraceptive pill available without prescription may be safe, it would not help."