Draft Human Medicines (Authorisation by Pharmacists and Supervision by Pharmacy Technicians) Order 2025
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
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The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Human Medicines (Authorisation by Pharmacists and Supervision by Pharmacy Technicians) Order 2025.
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. The draft order, which was laid before Parliament on 17 July, broadly applies across the United Kingdom but, as I will explain, some of it does not, in practice, apply to Northern Ireland. It forms part of wider reform to modernise pharmacy regulation, cut red tape and make better use of the skill mix in pharmacy teams. The order has been developed with the Health Departments of the devolved Governments, and it has the support of the four chief pharmaceutical officers of the United Kingdom. I thank the sector and the profession for their input and engagement during the development of the legislation. These changes have been in development for some time, and I am pleased that we are making them a reality.
Before I go into the details of the draft order, I wish to recognise the importance of pharmacy services and the dedicated workforce across all settings, including hospitals, community pharmacy and care homes. Across the UK, there is a joint vision to fully realise the potential of pharmacy services to support better health outcomes and provide quicker access to care in our communities. All nations are committed to supporting the sector and the profession, and they have increased funding for these vital services against a backdrop of severe financial pressures.
In England, we have hit the ground running in delivering our 10-year health plan. The order is another immediate and tangible change that will mean that patients get better care closer to their homes. We have increased community pharmacy funding to more than £3 billion and enacted legislation to increase the efficiency of dispensing medicines, including the extension of hub and spoke dispensing. Last month we launched a consultation on proposals that would give pharmacists flexibility to dispense an alternative product where the prescribed item is not available. We have also introduced the national patient prescription tracking service to enable patients to access and track their prescriptions online through the NHS app. That reduces the burden on busy GP and pharmacy teams, and it avoids having a patient queue at a pharmacy only to find that their prescription is not ready.
I will now set out why this legislation is needed. In English community pharmacies alone, around 1.2 billion medicines are dispensed every year. Of those, around 75% to 80% are repeat prescriptions for long-term conditions. That number grows year on year, and we must continue to look at ways to make further efficiencies and remove legal barriers to modernising pharmacy practice.
The dispensing of a medicine covers a number of processes, including the receipt of a prescription, the clinical and accuracy checks, the sourcing of the products, the preparation, assembly and supply of medicines, and advising the patient to ensure that they know how and when to take the medicine. Many of those activities can and should be delegated to registered pharmacy technicians, who are competent and trained to take more of a leading role in the dispensing of medicines.
The draft order contains three core proposals. First, at the moment, a pharmacist must carry out or supervise all stages of the preparation, assembly, dispensing, sale and supply of pharmacy and prescription-only medicines. Case law has led to restrictive practice and different interpretations of the law. Under our first proposal, we will allow pharmacists to authorise a registered pharmacy technician to undertake or supervise those activities. That will mean the pharmacist no longer has to supervise each transaction and can therefore spend more time with patients and delivering clinical services. The provision will not apply in Northern Ireland until pharmacy technician becomes a registered profession there. At that point, we will work with the Department of Health in Northern Ireland to bring in these measures as soon as possible.
Secondly, at present, medicines that have been checked by a pharmacist and are ready to be dispensed to a patient cannot be handed to them if the pharmacist is off site or uninterruptable. This understandably causes frustration for patients. I, like many Members of this House, have received complaints from constituents venting that frustration and demanding that the Government act. Under this legislation, we will allow a pharmacist to authorise any suitable member of the pharmacy team—for example, a pharmacy technician or pharmacy counter assistant—to hand out prescriptions in the absence of the pharmacist. That will be very helpful for prescriptions that have been clinically checked by the pharmacist, and where no further consultation is required between the patient and the pharmacist. This proposal will apply across the UK.
Thirdly, and finally, the law currently states that hospital aseptic facilities can be run only by a pharmacist. However, pharmacists are not the only staff capable of running these facilities. They are highly specialised services delivering sterile medicines for cancer patients, premature babies and other vulnerable patients. It is incredibly important that those services are fully staffed to deliver high-quality products in an increasingly complex area of modern medicine.
Many of those facilities are staffed by highly educated and capable pharmacy technicians, but the law prevents NHS trusts from allowing those individuals to run such facilities. That is simply not right. We will enable suitably qualified and experienced registered pharmacy technicians to run those facilities. That will give the NHS and pharmacy contractors more flexibility in how they deploy their staff to deliver quality NHS pharmaceutical services.
That proposal, like the first one, will not apply in Northern Ireland until pharmacy technicians become a registered profession there. The proposed changes to the Medicines Act 1968 and the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 will remove those legal restrictions and represent a seismic shift in how pharmacies can operate, updating the law for modern practice and improving services for patients. The changes are permissive, not prescriptive, recognising that every pharmacy is different, with different levels of staff, qualifications and experience. Pharmacies that are ready to embrace these changes can do so, and those that are not, or that do not want to change how they practise, can continue as they are—but they would, of course, forgo the benefits that these amendments present.
We propose a phased approach to implementation. The measures allowing checked and bagged items to be handed out in the absence of the pharmacist will enter into force 28 days after this legislation is made, which means that patients and pharmacies can benefit almost immediately. The remaining measures—enabling new delegation powers for pharmacists to allow pharmacy technicians to supervise dispensing processes, and allowing pharmacy technicians to take charge of hospital aseptic facilities—will come into force on a date that not has not yet been set in law, but we are working with the sector towards a date one year after the legislation is made. The transition period is to allow time for the pharmacy regulators and professional leadership bodies to implement professional regulations, standards and guidance to support the sector and the profession to implement the changes safely into practice.
I hope that I have given a clear explanation of the rationale behind amending the 2012 Regulations and the 1968 Act to enable pharmacists to authorise pharmacy technicians to supervise the dispensing and final supply of medicines, to enable greater flexibility in the final supply of medicines when a pharmacist is unavailable and to allow pharmacy technicians to run hospital aseptic facilities. I therefore commend the regulations to the Committee and hope that hon. Members will join me in supporting them.
Stephen Kinnock
I thank the shadow Minister for those questions. As he rightly pointed out, and as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the length of the transition has not been defined in the legislation, but our aim is for it to be no longer than 12 months. I will follow up with my officials to check precisely where we are with that timeframe and whether it has been nailed down, or whether something more specific may have been agreed in the intervening period. I would be happy to write to him to clarify that point, if he is okay with that.
The shadow Minister asked what happens in a pharmacy that does not have a technician. As I said, this legislation is not prescriptive; it is permissive. Frankly, this is something that those who have technicians can take advantage of, and those who do not will not be able to. Once the legislation is in place, however, they would be able to take advantage of it. Therefore, pharmacists who do not have technicians can perhaps aspire to do things in this way, whereas at present even those who have technicians cannot do so.
Pharmacy First is something we absolutely want to take forward. If we look at the 10-year plan and the three shifts, Pharmacy First supports the two key shifts from hospital to community and from sickness to prevention, in particular. Pharmacists are, in many ways, the front door of the NHS. They play a crucial role in people’s neighbourhoods and in the whole prevention agenda.
We are still working with the teams to finalise the financial envelope for pharmacy, coming out of the spending review announced in June, and of course we have to get the balance right. There are tremendous cost pressures, which we are looking to equal out, across what pharmacy does, going from the core business of dispensing through to the fee structure for Pharmacy First. There are some issues around Pharmacy First. The take-up has not been as good as we would have liked it to be, and I think that is because of some errors that the previous Government made in setting the fee structure to incentivise Pharmacy First and really push take-up forward. One thing we are looking at with Pharmacy First is how to incentivise it to make it more effective.
I understand from my officials that the discussions with Northern Ireland have gone well and are very positive. The Government there are very clear that they want to move in this direction, but certain hurdles still need to be crossed. I could perhaps add to the letter that I have already promised to write to the shadow Minister, to give him an update on where exactly the discussions with Northern Ireland are now.
Question put and agreed to.