Two pharmaceutical giants have been accused of striking an illegal deal to double the price of a lifesaving NHS drug.

The competition watchdog said that Actavis and Concordia had agreed to fix a price for hydrocortisone tablets, used to treat hormone deficiencies.

This led to a pack of tablets almost doubling in price – from £49 to £88 – between 2013 and 2016 when the deal was struck.

Around a million prescriptions of hydrocortisone were distributed last year

The accusations were made by the Competitions and Markets Authority and at this stage they are provisional, as it will need to consider representations made by the firms.

But both companies will face hefty fines if the CMA concludes they broke competition law.

The watchdog alleges that the firms struck a deal in 2013, in which Concordia agreed not to launch its own version of the tablets.

Actavis UK – the only manufacturer – then supplied Concordia with its own tablets at a very low price.

Concordia then resold these on to the NHS at a profit, the CMA alleges.

The CMA also accused Actavis in December of raising the price of packs of 10mg hydrocortisone tablets by 12,000 per cent in eight years, from 70p to £88.

Around a million prescriptions of hydrocortisone were distributed last year. The drug is prescribed to patients whose adrenal glands do not produce enough steroid hormones, such as those suffering from Addison’s disease, which affects around 8,400 UK patients.

The investigation is part of a wider probe by the watchdog into the deals of the pharmaceutical industry. In December, it fined Pfizer a record £84.2million after finding it had raised charges to the NHS for an epilepsy drug by 2,600 per cent overnight.

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The competition watchdog said that Actavis and Concordia had agreed to fix a price for the drugs

Andrew Groves, the CMA’s senior responsible officer for the investigation, said: ‘Anti-competitive agreements can cost the NHS, and ultimately the taxpayer, by stopping competition bringing down the cost of lifesaving drugs like hydrocortisone tablets.

‘We allege these agreements were intended to keep Actavis UK as the sole supplier of a drug relied on by thousands of patients – and in a position which could allow it to dictate and prolong high prices.’

Yesterday it was revealed that pharmaceutical firms have lowered the prices of 14 cancer medicines after the NHS threatened to stop paying for them.

The treatments faced being withdrawn from use after a review of the Cancer Drugs Fund found that they cost too much.

But because of the discount they can now be employed in routine NHS use.

Both Actavis and Concordia declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.