Pharmacies: Government Funding

Gregory Stafford Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I welcome the Minister for Public Health and Patient Safety, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), to her new role and congratulate her on her appointment.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Shivani Raja) on securing this most important debate. She spoke very powerfully about the pressures facing community pharmacies and I want to build on her speech by discussing what is happening both in my constituency and nationally.

In Farnham and Bordon, we have access to 15 community pharmacies, which collectively dispense around 142,000 prescriptions every month and deliver around 6,500 flu vaccinations. The Government’s 10-year plan wants more healthcare to be delivered in the community, which is an aim that I think we all support. At the same time, however, the Government appear to be making it harder for those very pharmacies to deliver such care and to remain sustainable.

The reality is that community pharmacies are being asked to do more while facing rising costs. We have seen higher national insurance contributions, increases in the national minimum wage, rising business rates and persistent inflationary pressures. At the same time, pharmacies are dealing with medicine shortages, higher procurement costs and disruption to international supply chains. The financial picture is impossible to ignore. Funding for community pharmacies in 2025-26 was actually £800 million less in real terms than it was in 2015-16. In the last year alone, the number of NHS-prescribed items dispensed by pharmacies and the service volumes increased by 2.3% and 17% respectively.

As the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) has already highlighted—he was echoed by a number of Members around the Chamber today—the Government’s own independent economic analysis in March 2025 identified a funding gap for pharmacies of £2 billion a year, and trade bodies that have spoken to me identify a structural funding problem. Of course, we on this side of the House welcome additional funding, but pharmacy is not made sustainable by giving with one hand and taking with the other. We need to ensure the long-term viability of community pharmacy and I am very sceptical that the Government’s approach will achieve that.

I turn now to Pharmacy First, which is an excellent example of what can be achieved when we make better use of the skills and expertise available within our NHS. My right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) is absolutely right to be proud of his Government’s record on this matter. Created and implemented by the last Government, Pharmacy First shows what NHS reform should look like—the right professional, with the right responsibility, delivering the right care in the right place. It should be a game changer and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for its introduction.

Pharmacy First recognises that patients with seven common conditions can be safely assessed and treated by qualified pharmacists without there always being a requirement for a GP appointment. However, the scheme is currently limited and not as expansive as it is in Scotland, where it covers up to 30 common conditions. I would like the Government to move rapidly to expand Pharmacy First elsewhere. We should be ambitious about the skills and clinical expertise of our pharmacists.

[Shockat Adam]

Does the hon. Member agree that another opportunity for Pharmacy First—indeed, a generational opportunity—is independent prescribing? That would really unlock the potential of pharmacies and help patients, but it requires both a vision and adequate funding.

[Gregory Stafford]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I think that we can use pharmacists and pharmacies much more creatively and in a manner that would in no way put patient safety at risk. In fact, it would allow patients more choice, and free up GPs and other health professionals to do other parts of their job, so he is right.

Community Pharmacy England’s 2026 pharmacy pressures survey makes the scale of the challenge facing pharmacies clear. Drawing on responses from nearly 4,000 pharmacy owners and staff members, it found that 75% of pharmacies are currently losing money, while only 14% reported being profitable. There is little value in providing additional funding for services without recognising the wider cost and workforce pressures facing the sector: 30% of pharmacies have reduced their opening hours and 76% report an impact on patient care, including longer waits and delays in accessing medicine.

That brings me—briefly—to the issue of business rates and the wider cumulative costs facing pharmacies. A pharmacy might occupy a storefront on a high street, but it is not simply another retailer; it is part of the national health service and is an essential provision in our community. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) outlined, pharmacies are also part of our national resilience. The Government want pharmacies to take on more responsibility, but they face rising costs that have been caused by the Government.

Pharmacies need to be properly considered within the system and not treated simply as another high street retailer. The same issue applies when we consider national insurance increases, and indeed the national living wage. These cumulative increases are having a real impact. Unlike a high street retailer, a pharmacy has contractual obligations to the NHS and a moral responsibility to its patients, so it cannot just increase prices or stop providing a service like other businesses could. As my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) rightly put it, the Government have to recognise the cumulative impact of these terrible decisions when considering future policy.

[Jim Shannon]

I want to underline a point I made in my speech: some of my community pharmacists back home are using their own money to subsidise their pharmacy and keep the business going—because of their compassion, their understanding and their concern for their customers and patients.

[Gregory Stafford]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right, and his point goes to the heart of the debate. Pharmacies are businesses that must make a profit, and pharmacists must pay their staff and make sure that they can feed their own families, but they are also public servants. They are people who have decided to work in our national health service to provide for our patients, and the Government should recognise that.

The hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) mentioned independent prescribing. If properly supported, it will give patients quicker access to treatment, but it brings greater clinical responsibility, greater governance requirements and greater pressure on pharmacists’ time. Given the limited capacity that we have already talked about, I want to ask the Minister three questions on independent prescribing. Does she believe the sector is ready? Does it have the workforce and the capacity to do it? What additional funding and support will be provided? We also need clarity on the timetable. Pharmacists have trained to prescribe, and they should be able to use that skill.

That brings me to the pharmacy workforce, because none of these reforms—independent prescribing, Pharmacy First or any other idea—will work without a sufficiently large and properly supported workforce. We have heard from right hon. and hon. Members about recruitment and retention pressures, including concerns about the number of full-time equivalent pharmacists. At the same time, the demands placed on existing staff are increasing. We cannot continue to add responsibilities to community pharmacy without considering whether there are enough people to deliver them safely and effectively.

The previous Conservative Government’s NHS long-term workforce plan included an ambition to increase pharmacist training places by 29%, taking them to around 4,300 by ’28-29. That ambition will clearly not be met under this Government, and we are still waiting for the long-promised NHS workforce plan. Despite my asking the then Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray), in July when the plan was coming out, we still have no answer.

Finally, I will move on to medicines supply. Pharmacies are facing global supply chain disruption and rising medicine costs, with repeated price concessions adding further pressures. They cannot absorb these pressures indefinitely, so what are the Government doing to mitigate the impact of geopolitical disruption on medicine supply and prices, and what assessment has the Department made of the financial burden that these pressures are putting on community pharmacies? They are being felt by pharmacies across my constituency, including Vaughan James and Lalys in Farnham, Chase and Headley pharmacies and Day Lewis in Haslemere, and Grayshott pharmacy, all of which have contacted me about the issues that I have raised.

In conclusion, community pharmacy has a crucial role to play in the future of our NHS. We all want to see care delivered closer to people’s homes. Pharmacy First has shown what can happen when we give pharmacists greater responsibility and trust them to use their expertise, but ambition needs to be matched by capacity. The Government cannot say that community pharmacies are central to the future of neighbourhood healthcare while making it harder for those pharmacies to remain financially sustainable. I urge the Government to recognise the cumulative impacts of their policies on businesses, to look again at the treatment of business rates for community pharmacies, to ensure independent prescribing is properly supported, to protect the supply of medicines, and to provide clarity on when the NHS workforce plan will be published.

The fact is, we cannot ask pharmacies to take on more responsibility and deliver more NHS care while simultaneously making it harder for them to survive. The Conservative party believes that community pharmacy is absolutely central to the future of the NHS. If the Government agree, they must make sure that pharmacies have a future, too.

[The Minister for Public Health and Patient Safety (Dame Diana Johnson)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leicester East (Shivani Raja) on securing this important debate and on her opening statement, which set out thoroughly the current situation of pharmacies and the challenges that they face.

We all agree that community pharmacies are at the heart of the NHS and of their local communities. We absolutely recognise the important role that pharmacies play in delivering health services in neighbourhoods across the country, and the opportunity for that role to keep growing. We also recognise that many community pharmacies face financial pressures and that ensuring financial sustainability for community pharmacies is essential to improve patients’ access to medicines and services.

That is why, since coming into office, the Government have delivered successive uplifts to pharmacy funding, following years of cuts or flat funding, and have invested in pharmacies to roll out NHS prescribing and to improve patient access to care in their communities. Of course, none of that would be possible without the dedication and professionalism of pharmacy teams supporting patients across the country. Over the years, like other Members, I have visited many pharmacies in my constituency to listen to what the teams have to say, and I have met with my local organisation Community Pharmacy Humber and its chief executive Paul McGorry.

The contributions to the debate have been excellent and very well-informed. My hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) is the chair of the APPG on pharmacy and a community pharmacist. He talked about his vision of the integration of primary care by 2040, and how important pharmacy is in that. I very much look forward to discussing that with him outside of this debate.

We then heard from the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak). I think his mum would be very proud that he is banging the drum for pharmacy. He talked about pharmacies in his rural constituency and the important role that they play in rural areas, which was a common theme in the debate.

The hon. Member for Newbury (Mr Dillon), a vice-chair of the APPG on pharmacy, gave a very thoughtful speech outlining the challenges facing pharmacy. The hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) referenced the closure of the Jhoots stores and highlighted the potential weaknesses in the current regulatory frameworks around closures, which are the reason the Department has been reviewing whether changes are needed to strengthen the oversight of pharmacy businesses. We are actively considering a range of options, including whether legislative changes are required. My officials have been working closely with the General Pharmaceutical Council, NHS England and others to identify any gaps in the current framework. I am of course very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss that further.

We of course heard from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). He talked about pharmacies in Northern Ireland and the effect on pharmacists and their staff of the stress they are under. He also made the economic case for the use of pharmacies.

I was very impressed that the hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) did work experience in a pharmacy, but I was a little concerned that he seems to have forgotten all the cuts that occurred to pharmacy under previous Conservative Governments. I think it is fair to say that they made pharmacy payments practically a fixed contract. In essence, with inflation, that meant there were year-on-year cuts to pharmacy funding.

The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett), spoke about the role of pharmacies and the particular role that they played during covid. We must all remember how important pharmacy staff and pharmacists were during that period; I assure her that I have not forgotten that, and I do not think that the Government have either.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford), seems to be suffering from amnesia, which is a common problem among Opposition Members when it comes to the funding situation under the Conservative Government.

[Gregory Stafford]

You’re in charge now.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Absolutely, we are. I will set out what we are doing about pharmacy, but I thought it would be useful to reflect on the comments and contributions.

First, I want to address the issue of funding. As I said at the outset, the Government recognise the challenges facing community pharmacies following years of underfunding and the difficult fiscal environment. That is why, last year, we took the necessary decisions to give the sector a record 19% funding uplift across ’24-25 and ’25-26. I stress that, at the time, it was the NHS’s largest uplift. However, we know many pharmacies continue to face financial pressures, which is why we have followed last year’s settlement with a further significant uplift of 10% for ’26-27, worth an additional £340 million for the sector.

That funding will help to ensure that patients can continue to access medicines and important clinical support from community pharmacists. The uplift will also support the national roll-out of NHS pharmacist prescribing. From autumn ’26, those services will enable pharmacists to prescribe within the existing Pharmacy First and contraception service pathways, and for up to five new pathways. This will deliver increased access to NHS care, relieve pressures on other parts of the NHS and strengthen support in communities across England, delivering on the commitment made in our manifesto.

This year’s uplift is almost three times the rate of growth in the overall NHS budget and it demonstrates the priority the Government place on community pharmacy, but I do not pretend that the challenges will disappear overnight. Many pharmacies continue to face financial pressures, but the settlements represent a clear change in direction and provide the foundations for longer-term reform. Numerous Members raised pharmacy closures, and I can tell them that, according to recent data, there were 19 net closures in ’25-26 compared with 112 in ’24-25. There has been some progress, but I recognise that there is a lot more to do.

The long-term sustainability of community pharmacy depends on making better use of pharmacists’ clinical skills, reducing unnecessary administrative burdens and enabling pharmacists to deliver more care closer to people’s homes. We will deliver this through the three shifts set out in our 10-year health plan: sickness to prevention, analogue to digital, and hospital to community.

Let me give a clear example of how community pharmacy can support the shift from sickness to prevention. As a new Minister, I have already been struck by the vital role community pharmacists play in bringing vaccination services closer to the communities they serve. The NHS vaccination strategy and our 10-year health plan set out a clear ambition to increase vaccine uptake through primary care. That means complementing the core offer from general practice with accessible vaccination services in settings including maternity and sexual health services, schools, health visiting teams and, crucially, community pharmacy. During the ’25-26 flu programme, community pharmacists vaccinated approximately 4.7 million people, around 600,000 more than in the previous year. This demonstrates the growing contribution that pharmacists can make to prevention as a central part of the NHS-commissioned vaccine programme.

The shift from analogue to digital is very important. I am well aware that outdated technologies prevent skilled staff across the health and care sector, including pharmacy teams, from working to their full potential, stifling innovation and efficiency. Of course, digital transformation is not just about technology for its own sake; it is about giving pharmacists the tools they need to spend less time on admin and more time on caring for patients, and about giving patients more control over the care and support they receive.

Last year, a new prescription tracking service was introduced on the NHS app across nearly 1,500 community pharmacies in England. It allows patients to receive real-time updates and to check when their prescriptions are ready. This year, we will go further by strengthening the digital links between pharmacies and general practice as we build neighbourhood health teams in every community. Digital technology also has an important role to play in strengthening medicine supply chains, which is another issue raised today.

We also want prescribers to have better information about medicine shortages. At present, GPs cannot routinely see live national shortage information when prescribing. We intend to make that information available in real time to help GPs to prescribe suitable alternatives where necessary, saving time for patients and neighbourhood health teams. That will mean fewer patients going from pharmacy to pharmacy in search of medicines.

Thirdly, if we are serious about shifting care out of hospitals and into communities, community pharmacies must be part of the answer. They are trusted, accessible and highly valuable to the communities they serve. They have enormous potential.