Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman not only for his question but for the way he put it. The message is that community pharmacy does, and is doing, an extraordinary and important job, but it will change. In 2013, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society said in its publication, “Now or Never: Shaping pharmacy for the future”:

“The traditional model of community pharmacy will be challenged”

due to

“economic austerity in the NHS , a crowded market of local pharmacies, increasing use of technicians and automated technology to undertake dispensing, and the use of online and e-prescribing”.

It pointed to the massive potential of community pharmacists to do more and sees pharmacy as ideally placed

“to play a crucial role in new models of…care.”

All that is to come. We are negotiating with the pharmaceutical profession. A consultation is going on. There is a great future for pharmacy, but, like so much else, it will be different.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

13. What progress his Department has made on making the UK a world leader in tackling antimicrobial resistance.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

The UK continues to play a global leadership role on antimicrobial resistance. We co-sponsored the World Health Organisation’s 2015 global action plan on AMR, created the Fleming fund to help poorer countries tackle drug resistance, and are promoting action through the G7. The O’Neill AMR review is galvanising global awareness.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest global challenges for public health, making routine operations impossible within 10 or 15 years unless action is taken. I welcome the Government’s action on this. Antibiotic Research UK is the world’s first charitable organisation, set up in my constituency, to tackle this issue. Will the Minister look at how we might fund such organisations in the charitable sector?

[Jane Ellison]

I very much welcome the fact that my hon. Friend is becoming a real champion of this important international and national agenda. I am aware of the important work of the charity he mentions, and I believe it has already had some contact with the Department. I do not make the decisions on these sorts of funding issues, but I am happy to look at the issue he mentions and to meet him to discuss it.