Oral Answers

Michael Fabricant Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I am always happy to praise the brilliant work of clinicians up and down the NHS, who do a formidable job. Given the huge scale of the backlogs we face as a consequence of the pandemic, it is important that we not only use the full capacity available within the NHS, empowering patients through patient choice and technologies such as the NHS app to better enable that, but maximise the capacity in the independent sector.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

T7. Following the excellent television campaign on bowel cancer, which by the way got me to take a test, can I now ask that we have a similar campaign to talk about the importance of pharmacists? If people consult pharmacists rather than their GPs on occasion, it will take the pressure off general practices.

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend makes a brilliant point, and that is something that we are committed to doing. There is a huge amount of expertise within the pharmacy network, which is why we are looking, through technology such as the NHS app, at how we can better enable people to get the right care from the right place at the right time. Quite often, that is not by seeing the GP, but it might be by seeing those in additional roles in primary care or going to a pharmacist who can offer the right services.