Community Pharmacy in 2016-17 and Beyond Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateBaroness Seccombe
Main Page: Baroness Seccombe (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Seccombe's debates with the Cabinet Office
(8 years ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, as a great supporter of pharmacies, especially in rural areas, may I draw my noble friend’s attention to one rural area where a pharmacist wished to open a pharmacy, but it was objected to by doctors, because they had their own pharmacies in their practice? That is a great disservice to the community, which had to go six miles to find a chemist’s shop.
That is why the pharmacy access scheme is very much there to make sure that pharmacies in these rural areas will be fully protected from any funding reductions. But the competition is there. Pharmacies on the whole are privately owned. It is important and only fair that, in these strapped times for the NHS, private companies should in some way also help the publicly funded NHS.