The contraceptive pill can be taken every day of the month, new guidance says as scientists have successfully dismissed the original seven-day break brought in so "the Pope would accept it" as natural.

New guidelines from the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH), who set key national guidelines for the safe prescription of contraceptives, highlight that there is no health benefit to the traditional seven-day break in taking the combined contraceptive pill and scientists say the change will prevent more unwanted pregnancies.

“The gynaecologist John Rock devised [the break] because he hoped that the Pope would accept the pill and make it acceptable for Catholics to use,” Professor John Guillebaud told The Telegraph.

“Rock thought if it did imitate the natural cycle then the Pope would accept it.

“When his campaign to get the pill accepted by the Pope failed, he just simply stopped being a Catholic, having been a committed one for his entire life.”

Professor Guillebaud has spent his career researching male and female contraceptive methods and, with women’s health specialist Professor Anne MacGregor, dismissed the standard way the combined hormone contraceptive pill has been taken over the past 60 years in a paper published last year.