Community Pharmacies

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat]

It will not surprise the House to learn that I agree. Last Thursday night, I announced to over 1,000 pharmacists at their annual dinner that we are moving ahead with an urgent access scheme. From the beginning of December, all 111 calls for repeat prescriptions will go directly to pharmacists, not to the out-of-hours GP service. That is a tangible difference. We will do just the same with a minor ailments scheme, which will be commissioned right across the country so that, by April 2018, pharmacists will be paid—over and above any money that comes out of this settlement—for minor ailments work on things such as earache and so on. Those are exactly the sort of sensible steps that need to be taken to integrate pharmacy more closely into GP practice, and that is what we are doing.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

In Scotland, we already have a national minor ailments scheme within our community pharmacies, and it has had a huge impact. The Scottish Pharmacy Board estimated at the beginning of the project that 10% of those making GP visits and 5% of those making A&E visits could be seen in community pharmacies, so our investment has been in completely the opposite direction—in that of developing and strengthening such pharmacies. On top of minor ailments, one of the big areas that has made a difference is in chronic disease management. For people on repeat prescriptions, the pharmacist requests their next prescription and has it ready, while for housebound people, they deliver it, as they do with blister packs.

The concern about these changes is that pharmacists are afraid it will be a case of cutting and then seeing who survives. If it is felt that there are too many pharmacies in one place, reducing their number needs to be done in a planned way, otherwise rural and deprived areas will end up without one. The Government should be making sure that community pharmacy is a real part of the NHS, not slashing it.

[David Mowat]

The hon. Lady made several points. On her last point, the access scheme on which we are currently consulting will protect pharmacies in rural and deprived areas. That is precisely the point of the scheme.

The hon. Lady’s first point was that Scotland has moved ahead on minor ailments, and we agree. I am on the record as saying that the pharmacy first scheme in Scotland is a good model. We want the profession to move away from just dispensing towards more value-added activities, such as services. That is precisely why we are putting into effect the minor ailments scheme that has been piloted. It will be implemented right across the UK—right across England, I should say—from April 2018.