Generic Medicines are medicines which don't have a brand name. They are made to the same standards but are cheaper, often very much cheaper than the branded counterpart.

New drugs are protected by patent, and can only be produced by the patent owner. This allows the patent owner to recover the costs of research and development in discovering the new medicine and bringing it to market. Once this patent expires, generic medicine manufacturers can produce the same drug, to the same specification. The price competition that this creates brings the price of the medicine down below the price of the brand.

The NHS uses generic medicines whenever possible, as the ingredients are the same as many branded drugs, and the savings benefit the NHS with lower costs, meaning that less tax needs to be collected to fund the NHS.