Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Chris Green

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O'Brien]

We talk all the time. I am conscious that there are 60% more full-time patient-facing staff in the hon. Lady’s constituency than there were in 2019, which of course puts pressure on premises. The capital allocation for her local ICB between 2022-23 and 2024-25 was £200 million, so the money is there, but I am happy to continue the conversation about how we get the premises in the places where we need them.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

7. What recent progress he has made on increasing the range of services in pharmacies.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O'Brien)]

We have already been growing the range of NHS services available in pharmacies: we have set up the community pharmacist consultation service, the discharge medicines service, the new medicine service, the blood pressure check service, smoking-cessation services and the contraception service. We are now investing £645 million to go further through the new Pharmacy First scheme for common conditions.

[Chris Green]

I thank my hon. Friend for his answer, but does he agree that the services offered by pharmacies can be made more efficient? For example, 62 million prescription items are subject to “split and snip” per year. That is where, to get the right number of pills, a pack has to be manually opened up for a couple of pills to be snipped out, then repackaged and relabelled before being reissued. The spare pills are often thrown away. Can that system not be better?

[Neil O'Brien]

My hon. Friend is completely correct. That is why at the end of last month we laid a statutory instrument before the House to fix the system, so that pharmacists can spend more time using their skills to provide high-end clinical services and less time snipping blister packs.