Community Pharmacies

Gary Streeter Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas]

I am pleased that we are so supportive of the community pharmacists, and hopefully we will get a good result from this debate.

I have three straightforward questions and a personal plea to put to the Minister, if you will bear with me, Mr Speaker—[Interruption.] Sorry, Mr Gary Streeter. [Laughter.]

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

It is okay, I will let you off.

[Derek Thomas]

Have the Government made any impact assessment in relation to their position of reducing community pharmacy numbers and the impact that this change might have on the health, and economic and social wellbeing of people living in our area? What assessment have the Government made of the impact that such a reduction would have on the workload of GPs, those in A&E and those providing out-of-hours services, if patients cannot access their regular pharmacy and then visit these other services?

[Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this timely debate on an important issue that could have far-reaching consequences, should the decision go through. Equally, I join him in urging the Minister to ensure that during the consultation—we understand that there is still to be consultation with patient groups—we will take, to echo a comment by a former Member, a constituency-by-constituency approach. I am sure that everybody will bring to the fore the particular characteristics of their own constituency. My constituency has the record number of octogenarians in the country and the fastest growing town in the south-east, and it routinely hosts tourism-driven events such as Airbourne, when 600,000 people come into the town. Pharmacies are a sometimes uncelebrated and unseen force that we rely on.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions should be brief.

[Derek Thomas]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and she is absolutely right to say that in a tourist area, where the population increases dramatically at times, we need to be careful that the core services are available for everyone who needs them.

My second question is: what assurances can the Government give to independent community pharmacists? The third question is: what consultation has been conducted with pharmacy patients, and what would their concerns be if community pharmacies were to close?

My personal plea to the Minister is please not to write pharmacies off until they have been given the resources to realise their full potential in society. I feel excited about the potential opportunity that exists for the NHS through the proper use of community pharmacists. While reforms to NHS services are essential and the way that community pharmacists are utilised needs to be reviewed, a blanket removal of funds to pharmacies will only hinder progress and limit this opportunity.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. We have six colleagues trying to catch my eye and roughly 40 minutes. If they could show self-restraint and limit themselves to seven minutes each, that should see us through.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Williams]

The hon. Gentleman is right. That has been the message of many contributions. The work of our community pharmacies complements the work of the national health service. When the hon. Gentleman’s constituency is hit in the way that it has been, that represents the proverbial nail in the coffin of decent community-based services for his constituents.

On the urban point, to reiterate the point made by the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Kevin Barron), we are talking about well-established community businesses that impact on many people in the locality. Two or three businesses clustered in the same area doing a generally good job will have an impact on the local economy, but the rural point is fundamental. We have heard about the pressures on GPs and the difficulties in getting appointments. In my vast rural constituency of Ceredigion, we have a district general hospital in Aberystwyth: Bronglais hospital. We have a good many GPs throughout the county. We also have a network of very effective pharmacists, and it is a jigsaw that works in providing good services. There are 716 community pharmacies in Wales—in high streets, villages and towns—with 50,000 people visiting those facilities every single day, proving the efficiency of the much-maligned Welsh national health service and bridging the real difficulty that people have in visiting the closest hospital or a GP for something as routine as blood pressure or cholesterol checks. It is really important that the outcome of the debate is that we support community pharmacies. That is fundamental.

In Wales we have developed our services. I visited the pioneering pharmacy of Mr Richard Evans in the town of Llandysul 11 years ago. He was clearly of the view that we could develop services much more, to relieve pressure on the national health service, and he achieved that. In Wales pharmacies have offered NHS flu jabs for at-risk groups for the fourth winter running. Almost 20,000 people in Wales benefited from that last winter. After four years of that provision in Wales, the NHS in England introduced the same service for the first time. Community pharmacies in Wales can treat about 30% of the common ailments that people would normally go to a GP for. That is a huge saving for the national health service. Pharmacies also promote meaningful public health campaigns. I visited the pharmacy in Borth, where there is a campaign on Parkinson’s disease. The staff are doing a good job talking with victims of Parkinson’s disease about their medication, and promoting awareness in the community.

Finally, having praised what is being done in Wales, in a rural area, I want to seek an assurance from the Minister that if his consultation has an effect on the three levels of services in the framework, there will be meaningful consultation with Assembly Ministers in Cardiff, and that any negotiations on changes to the contract will involve Welsh Government officials at the negotiating table. This is one of the small areas where health is not devolved, and that is particularly relevant on the Welsh border; it requires the respect agenda, on anything that the Minister concludes.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

As a reward for his patience, Mr Graham Jones has eight minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alistair Burt]

That working with the sector is ongoing. That is what the negotiations with the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee are all about. I take the hon. Lady’s point, but those discussions are under way. We are consulting with a wide range of groups, not just the PSNC, including patients and patient bodies.

As part of what we are doing for the future of pharmacy, we want pharmacists and their teams to practise in a range of primary care settings to ensure better use of medicines and better patient outcomes and to contribute to delivering our goal of truly seven-day health and care services. As part of that, I want to work with NHS England to promote local commissioning of community pharmacy within the health community, so that we can ensure the best use of this valuable resource. That is why we are consulting on how best to introduce a pharmacy integration fund to help to transform the way pharmacists and community pharmacy will operate in the NHS of the future. By 2020-21, we will have invested £300 million in the fund.

While it is understandable that the focus of most colleagues’ comments today was access to existing services, little was said about where pharmacy might be going and what new opportunities there will be. That is part of the overall development that we are hoping to achieve, which will include the work not only of the access fund, but of the integration fund.

Colleagues asked several questions about access. I want to provide some reassurance. We recognise that some of the Government’s proposals have caused concern, and that will take some time to distil as the negotiations are worked through. We are committed to maintaining access to pharmacies and pharmacy services. We are consulting on the introduction of a pharmacy access scheme, which will provide more NHS funds to certain pharmacies compared with others, considering factors such as location and the health needs of the local population, both of which were raised today. Qualifying pharmacies will be required to make fewer efficiencies than the rest of the sector. We certainly recognise that rural pharmacies will need to be considered in that, and we want to ensure that location matters in areas of sparsity. That work is ongoing.

In conclusion, the process has some way to run. I simply put it to colleagues that, in relation to good community services on the high street, there is more for modern pharmacy to do. Looking at the proposals of the past, we hope that the profession shares the Government’s determination to move pharmacy into a new future, and I am convinced that the future will be good.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Derek Thomas has 40 seconds in which to respond coherently.