Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, was on Friday sharply rebuked by British regulators for offering £10 ($14) gift vouchers to children to persuade them to take one of its medicines. The Prescriptions Medicines Code of Practice Authority, the self-regulatory body, ruled Roche had “brought discredit” on the industry for a serious breach of its ethical rules of conduct.

Between 2004 and 2007, the company gave gift vouchers for use in Toys R Us, Tesco and Boots to children and teenagers prescribed Pulmozyme, its inhaled medicine to prevent lung infections for patients with cystic fibrosis. For a year after Roche decided to stop the voucher scheme in September 2007, it failed to recognise that the agency contracted to run the voucher scheme was still operating it, and to end it.