The government has delivered a stinging rebuke to drug companies for failing to take all steps to protect the health of children who take medicines.

Very few medicines given to children have a licence for their use. Doctors find themselves having to prescribe smaller doses of adult medicines because clinical trials have not been done with children.

The health minister Lord Warner told the annual dinner of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry that this was no longer good enough.

"Prescribers guess at the correct dose and make presumptions about safety and efficacy that we know may not be correct," he said. "Tablets are crushed and mixed in apple sauce because there are no proper formulations for younger children.

"Errors are made dosing babies and infants because we don't have the proper strengths of intravenous formulations. I believe - as you believe - that medicines are a crucial part of providing high quality, patient-centred healthcare. But for children, the situation we have is simply unacceptable."

Doctors who specialise in treating children have long warned that their bodies will not necessarily respond in the same way as those of adults. Companies have not chosen to carry out clinical trials on children, partly because they think it could cause public anxiety but also because the expense would not be justified by the small size of the children's market.

Lord Warner said that the time had come to do something about it. In the US, similar concern had led to inducements to the industry to conduct trials. If they carried out the research and got a licence for use in children, they were granted an extension of the patent.

The European Commission will be bringing forward proposals to insist that children's trials are carried out as part of the licensing requirements for all new drugs. Lord Warner said he welcomed that move.