Draft Pharmacy (Premises Standards, Information Obligations, etc.) Order 2016

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 General Committees

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Ms Dorries. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish, who sits on the Front Bench, has anticipated the thrust of the argument that I want to present to the Minister.

The draft order looks broadly deregulatory. The Minister has consulted on it and there is support for it, but it should be considered in the context of the 6% cuts to the community pharmacy budget about which I have received significant representations from pharmacists in my constituency. Pharmacists in Bishop Auckland, Kirk Merrington and Cockfield, and the County Durham and Darlington local pharmaceutical committee have written to me and are extremely concerned about the impact of those cuts on their pharmacies.

I wrote to the Minister and he wrote in response that he had a marvellous strategy for pharmacies, which I could not quite square, and that they were going to do all these new, wonderful things. If they are going to do lots of new, wonderful things, it seems odd to be cutting the money, but he can no doubt explain to us what he means. He also wrote that it was not sensible to subsidise pharmacies if they were close to each other and that around two thirds or three quarters of them—I cannot remember the number—were close to another pharmacy. I have to tell him that Kirk Merrington and Cockfield are villages and it takes half an hour on the bus to get from those villages to anywhere else with a pharmacy. It is important that he addresses the rural dimension of not continuing to provide proper support for pharmacists who—as everyone on the Committee is no doubt fully aware—can provide significant benefits to public health.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alistair Burt]

I am grateful to the Committee for its response and appreciate the support for the draft order in that narrow part of our discussion. I did anticipate that one or two other issues might be raised. With your permission, Ms Dorries, if you feel that those contributions were in order, I am happy to respond briefly.

The draft order is set in the context of the changes being proposed to community pharmacy. Let me lay out, as best I can, what the Government have in mind. In essence, we want to see community pharmacy better integrated into primary care, by increasing the number of pharmacists who bring their skills to GP practices, care homes, and urgent care and public health settings. We need a clinically focused pharmacy service, better integrated with primary care and public health, in line with the five year forward view.

We are consulting with the pharmacy sector and patient groups on how to introduce, for example, the pharmacy integration fund. That will transform how pharmacists operate in the NHS, reducing pressure on A&E and GPs by making better use of pharmacists’ terrific clinical skills to help deliver seven-day health and care services. Proposals for discussion include more pharmacists in GP practices, working closely with GPs to optimise the use of medicines and promote healthy living; patients often seeing a pharmacist instead of a GP, particularly for minor ailments, adding capacity to the system and freeing up appointments; establishing a named pharmacist in care homes who can discuss and review medicines and work with the patients to get the best possible outcomes; and integrating pharmacists as part of all care processes as standard, as a key means of maintaining public health and preventing ill health.

We want to see that development in pharmacy, and to an extent we are going with the grain of what the pharmacy sector has been looking for for some time. Studies by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Nuffield Trust say that pharmacy needs to change, and needs to recognise that it can contribute further to the NHS, in addition to the excellent services that are based in more and more high street pharmacies. Not all high street pharmacies provide the same services; one issue is that some 40% of pharmacies are in a cluster of three or more pharmacies within ten minutes’ walk.

To address the point made by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland, we are proposing an access fund whereby more NHS resources will be devoted to pharmacies in areas where the cluster argument does not apply. Quite sensibly, no one wants to lose a pharmacy; if a pharmacy finds itself having difficulties with the new financial regime, we want to make sure that it is able to continue. Discussions are already proceeding with pharmacy representatives about how the access fund will be set out, because there must be national standards—a set of rules to let people see how things are done.

We feel that the combination of the access fund, which will make sure that pharmacies in key areas can continue their work, with the integration fund, which will assist more pharmacists to work in different settings, is what pharmacy needs. Let me be honest among all colleagues: it would be great if that could be done against a background of no reductions in finance, or ever more finance going in, but we are not in that situation. We need to fulfil the commitment, made by my party at the general election, to put more funding into the NHS. That £8 billion commitment is now a £10 billion commitment by 2020. All colleagues know that it is not just about the extra money; it also depends on the £22 billion of efficiencies set out by Simon Stevens, chief executive of the NHS. All parts of the NHS need to contribute to those efficiencies, and that includes pharmacy. It is the Government’s genuine belief that, even within the new envelope that will provide £2.63 billion to pharmacy this year, it will be possible for pharmacies not only to continue their excellent work, but to develop it in the ways that I have set out and that we believe pharmacy wants as well. That is what we intend.

There will be an opportunity for further discussion and debate about this; I know colleagues are receiving letters about it, so the debate has some way to go. We are in discussion and negotiation with those who represent pharmacies; there is an interesting conversation taking place and we want to see it continue.

[Helen Goodman]

Is the £2.6 billion subsidy partly for medicine, or is it a subsidy for the infrastructure of the pharmacy network?

[Alistair Burt]

I would not say that this is a subsidy. It is payment made by the NHS and the taxpayer for the provision of premises and the work that pharmacists do. It is essentially more about infrastructure. The drugs bill is beyond that; that is the agreement. It is still a significant amount of money that will go into the provision of services. Where we find pharmacy services looking to work in different ways, which is already happening—there are pharmacists in GP surgeries and on some hospital wards—we want to encourage that process, without damaging the exceptionally good high street service that is provided by the majority of pharmacists, which we want to see continue.

The draft order fits in with that approach by changing the rules on the regulation of premises. It will make sure that the regulators can do their job in the way we all want to see—with procedures for guidance, as opposed to strict legislative rules. This is in line with the autonomy of professional regulatory bodies that the profession and the Government are looking for. I am grateful for the Committee’s support.

Question put and agreed to.