Community Pharmacies

Steve Double Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

As we have already heard in the debate, many of us have seen the considerable value that local community pharmacies provide in our constituencies. I have seen that myself with the Manor pharmacy in Elstree, which is run by Graham Philips, to whom my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) paid tribute. I would urge the Minister to meet him; he really is a pool of expertise on this issue. The same is true of those at the Crown pharmacy at Borehamwood and Shenley.

What we see time and time again in these places is that the commitment to the customers goes way beyond what we would see from a normal retailer. There is a genuine understanding of the needs, health and wellbeing of the people who use such pharmacies. The services range from dementia-friendly services, picking up the early stages of the disease; healthy living advice, including assistance with drugs and weight management; and smoking cessation services.

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

Would my hon. Friend add to his list Nick Kaye in my constituency? He is carrying out some excellent work to collaborate with local GPs and to find innovative ways to deal with patients. Does my hon. Friend agree that pharmacies are particularly important in tourist areas, as the frontline that can deal with tourists who have health problems, and take pressure off the other health services?

[Oliver Dowden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that pharmacies play a crucial role in relieving the frontline of NHS services. However, that does not mean that reforms are not necessary. Of course we need to incentivise the kind of advantageous behaviour we have talked about; but we also need to recognise some of the problems with the provision of pharmaceutical services.

We know the basic problem; it has been referred to by other Members. The pharmacy budget has increased by 40% over the last decade. Even taking into account all the changes that the Government are proposing, funding for community pharmacies will still be 30% higher than when this Government first came to office in 2010. Equally, we have the problem of excessive clustering—a situation where there are many pharmacies within a short distance of one another.

Those who argue that there is no need for reform really need to explain where the money will come from. If we are not recycling these services to the frontline, we need to look for other savings, or we need to look at lower levels of service in the frontline of the NHS, whether that is services for diabetes or for cancer. There is no magic money tree. We have to take these difficult decisions in order to provide for the frontline, so I completely agree with the overall thrust of Government policy.

We can take an intelligent approach towards this issue. As we have heard, there is a big difference between various types of pharmacies. At one end of the scale, there are the very large pharmacies that are often in large retail outlets such as supermarkets and sit at the very back of the store. They are there, in essence, to encourage customers to go through the rest of the store to purchase other goods. They could easily take a larger cut than is being proposed, because they are just operating as loss leaders for those stores to get customers in the door in the first place.