Community Pharmacy in 2016-17 and Beyond

Alistair Burt Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 20th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat]

The quality system that I have mentioned is about potentially investing more in prevention and linking the best pharmacies—the high quality pharmacies—more closely to local authorities, public health schemes and all that goes with that. I make the point again that there is a requirement for efficiency savings, but we do not believe that they will affect access overall. We do not believe that this will affect the public’s ability to use pharmacies as they do now. This will be part of modernising and digitising the service and providing resources for other parts of the NHS that need them very much.

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Bearing in mind my responsibility for the difficult equation that my hon. Friend has had to solve by coming to the House this morning, I should like to thank him and welcome his statement, which finally brings clarity to these long discussions. Will he repeat very clearly the Government’s absolute commitment to a strong community pharmacy network and to doing all they can to ensure that the NHS delivers on the essential commissioning of quality services? Looking ahead to the future, now that we have got past this, will he ensure that a good review of community pharmacy services is carried out, so that we can see what value they bring to the NHS? I am sure that, like me, he will find that sector extremely valuable to work with.

[David Mowat]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his fantastic work with the pharmacy sector. He makes the important point that we are trying to move the sector more into services and added value. The two announcements that I made two weeks ago are part of that, as is the work currently being done by Richard Murray from the King’s Fund. That will inform how we spend the integration money and enable the sector to move more quickly into the sorts of services that my right hon. Friend is talking about.