Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Colvile and David Mowat

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

T8. As the Secretary of State knows, I am the vice-chairman of the all-party group on pharmacy. Will he update the House on the progress of the decriminalisation of dispensing errors by pharmacists? What is the hitch?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (David Mowat)]

There is no hitch. The Government remain committed to putting this into place, and the legislation will be brought forward shortly.

Pharmacies and Integrated Healthcare: England

Debate between Oliver Colvile and David Mowat

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[David Mowat]

What we are not reducing is the amount of money available for services, as opposed to dispensing. Some pharmacies use part of their dispensing money to provide services on a discretionary and ad hoc basis, but I make this point again: overpaying for dispensing is not a good vehicle for getting more and better services.

I want to talk about some of what is already happening. We have heard about flu jabs this morning—I, too, had a flu jab at a pharmacy—and at the end of last year, we had had more flu jabs in pharmacies by October than we had in all of the previous year. The money available for that and similar service-based allocations has not been affected by the changes we announced. The community pharmacy sector has received £10 million for flu jabs up to the end of October. We want to see more of that happening, and that direction of travel is important.

A number of hon. Members made the point, which I agree with, that the public need to understand that pharmacies represent an important first port of call—it should not always be GPs. The Government can do more to make that clear. When I was preparing for this debate last night, I saw a television advert from NHS England for its “Stay well this winter” campaign. The campaign is running TV and newspaper adverts, and its theme is for people to visit their pharmacy as soon as they feel unwell. The people running the campaign have told us they think the advertising campaign has generated about 1.2 million additional pharmacy visits that would not have happened otherwise. That was a good challenge and we need to do more of that.

We also need to go further with services. There are two approaches. I recommend that anyone interested in this subject—as everyone present clearly is—reads the Murray review, which was produced by the King’s Fund. NHS England commissioned the review to inform it and us on how to spend the integration fund, the budget available to drive services more deeply into the system. I will talk about some aspects of that and about some announcements that I made in October as part of the package we are discussing.

One of the announcements was about urgent or repeat prescriptions. At the moment, NHS 111 gets about 200,000 phone calls a year asking for a further prescription, and those callers are told to see an out-of-hours GP to issue a prescription, which in due course goes to the pharmacy. We are changing that so that people will be directed to a pharmacy immediately. That is a stream of revenue for the pharmacy, which will provide both a consultation, for which it will be paid, and then the drug or prescription, as necessary.

My hon. Friend the Member for St Albans asked whether that scheme would somehow affect a good local scheme in her area. There is no reason why that should be the case. The new scheme is supplementary to anything that might have been commissioned already. It sounds as if her scheme was commissioned by the CCG, and that is good, although it takes us to the fact that things are patchy—different CCGs do different things in different areas, which I will come to. However, that is an example of where we need to be.

Another example is the minor ailments scheme. As I have said, 30% to 40% of GP appointments could be dealt with in pharmacies. Parts of England already have minor ailments schemes, but the service is very patchy and it need not be. It is true that different CCGs and indeed different GPs have different attitudes to such schemes, but NHS England has made a commitment that by March 2018 it will have encouraged all CCGs to be commissioning minor ailment schemes in pharmacies across their patch.

[Oliver Colvile]

Is the Minister aware that in Devon about £5 million a year is apparently being wasted on unused medicines? Something needs to happen with that to ensure that the NHS has enough money with which to do things.

[David Mowat]

Yes. Throughout the country, the number is far more than £5 million—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Colvile and David Mowat

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

T7. As my hon. Friend is aware, last week the Murray report was published. When is he likely to consider it, and when will he make a statement?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (David Mowat)]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question and commend him for his work as a pharmacy champion. The Murray review was indeed published last week, and NHS England will respond to it in detail early in the new year. It is a very important document because it sets out in some detail how we intend to transform the community pharmacy network into a service-based profession along the lines that my hon. Friend likes.

Community Pharmacies

Debate between Oliver Colvile and David Mowat

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I was just trying to find something that was going to inform my intervention. Is my hon. Friend the Minister aware that in Devon, about £5.5 million is wasted on unused medicines? We need to do something about that.

[David Mowat]

I do realise that, and I mentioned the fact that the King’s Fund is looking into medicine reviews.

As I have said before in the Chamber, the model that is adopted for pharmacies in Scotland has a lot to commend it, even though we might not adopt it in its entirety. I hope that we will get a chance to discuss that later.