Medicines and Medical Devices Bill

Debate between Baroness Henig and Lord Clement-Jones

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th October 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Henig) (Lab)]

There are no requests to speak after the Minister, so I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler. Oh, apologies, I call the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

I was very struck by the support for pharmacists and pharmacy services throughout this debate. It is not often we get a really good opportunity to talk about pharmacists’ potential. I chaired the London School of Pharmacy, which then merged into UCL. I used to see bright, bushy-tailed MPharms depart the School of Pharmacy, all expecting the bright future for pharmacy promised by plan after plan from Government after Government. To use their clinical skills in particular was the great goal.

Sadly, we are still not in the right place with community pharmacy. I was very struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said: we have never achieved as much as we should. That is absolutely apposite in the case of pharmacy. We have all these highly skilled people, many of them very young, who are capable of taking on all kinds of clinical work in the community, with consultation and so on. We seem to ebb and flow in the services we think we can make available in pharmacy.

I am very grateful for what the Minister said about the need for proper consultation being a given and that there will be consultation to develop the policy and so on. She of course talked about the five-year plan, but many people are worried that the plan will run out and there will not be resources for hub and spoke to develop further. She talked about the fact the amendment would limit the time available but, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, pointed out, pharmacists have been talking about this since 2016. It is not as if we are imposing too harsh a timetable.

Underlying all this is the question: where is the plan to use that additional capacity? That is really what pharmacists are after. On the basis that automation is augmentative and will help community pharmacists free up capacity, they want to deliver more clinical services in particular. Where is the plan? That is what we all want: to use their expertise in and knowledge of the community, and the trust they have. We have talked about the access people have to the local pharmacy. I wish there was a better relationship between many general practitioners and the pharmacy profession. There is still that rather standoffish attitude to pharmacists. Be that as it may, this is a really important aspect that could deliver much greater capacity, but I do not feel that the Government have yet really picked up the ball and started running with it.