Community Pharmacies

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I thank the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for securing this important debate and highlighting the challenges faced by the pharmacy sector. He spoke with great knowledge about many of the challenges around funding, and the opportunities for the pharmacy sector to address some of the primary care challenges faced by the NHS. I highlight the points made by the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), who has been very supportive of the pharmacy sector and has played a key role in pushing for the Committee to publish a report on the role of the sector and the challenges it faces.

I declare an interest as a registered pharmacist, the chair of the all-party parliamentary pharmacy group, and a member of the Health and Social Care Committee. I apologise to Members present, as I might end up repeating some of the points that have already been made, but I will try my best not to focus on them.

The first challenge I will highlight is the massive issue of the medicine supply chain. Every time I speak to pharmacy owners and pharmacists they raise the impact that uncertainty has on their profit margins. I recently started engaging with the pharmaceutical sector to understand the issues. There are issues around medicine distribution in this country, and there are middlemen supply chain distributors who keep hold of medicines and who are sometimes involved in driving up the prices, but we also have challenges around the manufacturing of generics, which account for about 80% of medicines used by the NHS.

About 2.2 million generic drugs are prescribed every single day in this country and used by the NHS. Despite that, it seems there were some oversights in this area when we negotiated our exit from the EU. Currently, legislation allows EU generics to be recognised in the UK but does not allow the EU to recognise UK generics. That means that British manufacturers are unable to submit their marketing authorisation applications easily within the EU. Therefore, they have no incentive to produce these medicines, or increase their manufacturing of these medicines, in the UK. It also means that they are unable to compete with their European competitors.

A great example of what is happening is that the EU has started investing about £20 billion in the manufacturing of generics since we left. So far, the UK, according to figures that I have seen recently, has invested nothing. Essentially, our UK manufacturers are being left at a competitive disadvantage. Aside from that, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is facing significant challenges. It has lost a large amount of its workforce and is currently unable to process the regulatory applications coming through its doors—again, making it difficult for generic drugs to enter the UK. Essentially, there are regulatory difficulties and there seem to be limited financial incentives.

Secondly, I want to address the challenges of finance, which have been a massive issue facing the pharmacy sector. The sector has not been adequately funded in line with inflation for a very long time. That has led to many high street pharmacies closing down. In my constituency, Boots in Jardine Crescent had to close down because it was not financially viable for the business to continue. That has had a significant impact in an area of great deprivation and high health inequality.

Despite the challenges that community pharmacies face, there are also wonderful opportunities, which I have to admit the Government have started to recognise. I welcome their more than £600 million investment in the Pharmacy First programme, but there is a long way to go to fully take advantage of the potential that community pharmacies can offer.

Community pharmacies play an important role because they are the first point of call for patients, but they can play a bigger role in healthcare. Not only can they deliver the Pharmacy First scheme—I hope that will be rolled out and that the Government will add more clinical conditions to the list—but they can play an important role in other primary care services, such as vaccination, sexual health and the management of conditions such as cardiovascular disease.

I have always found it weird how a patient will come up to me in the pharmacy and say, “I have high blood pressure. I’m a bit concerned.” I say, “Sit down. Let’s check your blood pressure” and then I have to message the doctor to let them know. Then I will tell the patient to go to their GP to get a medication. In reality, that could have started and ended in a community pharmacy. That is something that hospital pharmacists easily do, and we regularly do it, so I encourage the Minister to look into the wider roles that community pharmacists can play in supporting GPs and primary care and in reducing some of the challenges it currently faces.

Many Members have spoken about the workforce crisis. To be able to fully take advantage of the potential of community pharmacy, we have to acknowledge the fact that, like many other healthcare professions in this country, pharmacies face a significant workforce crisis. We do not have enough pharmacists, and we are struggling to recruit and train more and to retain the community pharmacists we have.

Again, I welcome the Government’s workforce plan, but unfortunately it lacks the finer details of how community pharmacy will be supported in the long term. An integrated and funded workforce plan for pharmacy is needed if we are to enable pharmacies to support the community as well as the rest of the NHS. A larger number of designated prescribing practitioners is needed if community pharmacies are to assist with the provision of primary care. A clear pathway to ensure that that happens is important.

I know that the Government aim to ensure that we get as many prescribers as possible by 2026, and that is something I welcome. I am really happy that pharmacists are able to graduate with the ability to prescribe. However, there are many pharmacists in the workforce for whom there is no clear plan as to how they can become prescribers by 2026. I have spoken to many different pharmacy schools and they do not know how that is going to happen.

As the hon. Member for Waveney has explained, the process for getting sign-off is not easy. People have to ensure that they have found the right healthcare professional to shadow, as well as take time off work to do all the documentation and paperwork that is needed. Changes therefore need to happen, and further funding needs to be made available to incentivise healthcare professionals to take on more pharmacists and to mentor them and train them to become prescribers.

I also want to address areas that have not been mentioned in the debate so far. The first is technology, which has played a significant and positive role in the provision of the healthcare system. Since covid, technology has played an important role in allowing patients to have easy access to healthcare and allowing them to feel empowered. That is the reason we have seen an increase in the number of online pharmacies that are available, which has been quite positive.

However, I have some concerns. Figures recently published by the General Pharmaceutical Council, which is responsible for inspecting community pharmacies and online pharmacies, show that at least one in five of the online retailers it inspected in the past year did not meet at least one standard. If that was a community pharmacy, the store would be put on a clear supervision pathway to ensure that patients’ health was not put at risk. I would like to see the same happen to online pharmacies to ensure that they are better regulated as they continue to provide better access to medicines for patients.

I welcome the fact that the Government are looking at the supervision rules, which are outdated and were created at a time when we were making medicines in pharmacies and playing around with different active pharmaceutical ingredients. Pharmacy has changed since then, and the information available and the regulation around drug manufacturing has significantly improved. I welcome the consultation that is being carried out, and I encourage as many pharmacists as possible to give their feedback and engage with the consultation.

Lastly, I want to turn to the regulation of non-clinical managers. Community pharmacies either have a pharmacist as a manager or have non-clinical managers leading them. In the light of the Lucy Letby case, which highlighted the important role that non-clinical managers play, it is important that community pharmacists are also considered. Any new regulatory framework for unregulated management and leaders in healthcare should apply to not only those working in the NHS but those who have direct involvement in the provision of healthcare in our communities, such as community pharmacy.

Before I end, I would like to ask the Minister a few questions, which I hope he can answer today or respond to in a letter. Has any consideration been given to the generic industry, which, as I said earlier, accounts for a large amount of medicine supplies within the NHS? Can he direct me to the Minister who is responsible for drug manufacturing in this country, the changes in EU legislation and how we can bring about positive changes for our generic manufacturing industry? Do the Government have any plans to prevent future medicine shortages? I am already hearing pharmacies expressing concerns about the fact that winter is coming and they are expecting to have further shortages.

Are there any updates on the mutual recognition of medicines within the EU, and are any negotiations happening? Can the Minister provide an update on the prescribing scheme for healthcare professionals and whether any steps have been taken to address the issues I have raised? On funding, it would be helpful for many pharmacists to know whether there are any plans to help address some of the financial challenges they face. Lastly, as the chair of the all-party parliamentary pharmacy group, I wonder whether the Minister could spare some time to come and speak to key stakeholders in the sector, who would love to meet him and share some of their experiences.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

I thank Members for keeping to time. I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing this important debate. I start by echoing his thanks to our hard-working pharmacists, who do such a brilliant job. He raised six main points in his speech, and I can confirm that we are working on all of them.

Community pharmacies play a crucial role in our health system and a greater role in looking after people’s health than ever before. Pharmacies are easily accessible, and about nine in 10 people who visit one are positive about the advice they receive. The Government are investing in pharmacy to do much more. The delivery plan for recovering access to primary care announced an investment of up to £645 million in a new Pharmacy First service—a whole new NHS service will be created—as well as an expansion of the existing blood pressure check and contraception services. Pharmacy First will enable patients to see a community pharmacist for seven common conditions and be supplied with prescription-only medicines without the need for a GP. We are consulting Community Pharmacy England on the proposals in that delivery plan, with the aim of starting Pharmacy First this winter.

Pharmacy First builds on the community pharmacy contractual framework 2019 to 2024 five-year deal. That deal commits £2.592 billion a year to the sector and sets out how community pharmacy will be more integrated into the NHS, delivering more clinical services and effectively becoming the first port of call for minor illness. Under that deal, we have introduced minor illness referrals from GPs to community pharmacies, which have been a great success. A&E and NHS 111 can also now refer patients for an urgent medicine supply without a prescription from their GP. More than 2.8 million consultations have been provided at community pharmacies for a minor illness or urgent medicine supply since the start of those services.

We also introduced blood pressure checks, and community pharmacies have delivered 1.4 million checks since October 2021 and more than 150,000 in May 2023 alone. Huge numbers of potentially life-saving checks are being done. NHS England estimates that in 2023, more than 1,300 heart attacks and strokes will be prevented thanks to those checks, so I repeat my thanks to this fantastic sector.

In April this year, we introduced an oral contraception service, making it easier for women to access contraception.

In addition, community pharmacies now support and advise more than a quarter of a million people a month when they start new medicines, through the new medicine service, and 10,000 patients every month who have had their medicines changed following a visit to hospital, through the discharge medicines service. That supports medicines adherence, prevents GP visits and hospitalisations, and gives people a much better sense that they are taking the right medicines.

Community pharmacies are also playing a growing role in our vaccination programmes. Last winter, they administered 29% of adult flu vaccinations and more than a third—36%—of covid-19 vaccinations.

We have talked about the funding issue. In addition to the £2.592 billion a year, we added an extra £50 million last and this financial year, and we have made the additional sum of money that I mentioned available for Pharmacy First and the expansion of existing services. On top of that, we pay separately for flu and covid vaccinations, which, as I suggested, provide an increasingly important income stream for pharmacies.

The current five-year deal is of course coming to an end, and we will need to consider what comes next for pharmacy. As part of that, NHS England has committed to commissioning an economic study to better understand the cost of delivering pharmaceutical services. That study will feed into any future funding decisions on community pharmacy.

Several hon. Members raised the issue of the number of pharmacies, and we monitor that very closely. Our data shows that despite a number of pharmacies closing since 2017, there are about 10,800 pharmacies today, which is still more than in 2010. Despite the things that have happened to other high street businesses, we still see that there are more pharmacies and there are an awful lot more pharmacists—I will come on to that when we talk about the workforce.

However, rather than focusing merely on numbers, we should look at access. We know that 80% of the population live within 20 minutes’ walk of a pharmacy, and that there are twice as many pharmacies in more deprived areas. The right hon. Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth) is right that they play a crucial role in providing access in deprived areas. We ensure that that continues to be the case. Proportionally, the closures that we have seen reflect the spread of pharmacies across England.

We are seeing changes in the market, with some of the large pharmacy businesses divesting. That has an impact on the make-up of the sector: we are seeing the number of small independent pharmacies increase, while the number of pharmacies that are part of bigger businesses decrease. We are monitoring the market very closely as it evolves.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney mentions, through the pharmacy access scheme, we are financially supporting pharmacies in areas where there are fewer pharmacies and where there might be a challenge in getting access. To address the disproportionately high rate of closures of pharmacies that must be open for a minimum of 100 hours—the so-called 100-hour pharmacies—legislation was amended in April to allow those pharmacies to reduce their hours to a minimum of 72, which is still a huge number of hours to be open. That will support those pharmacies to remain open, providing extended hours, particularly for weekend access.

The same legislation gave integrated care boards the possibility of introducing local hours plans. That enables the local co-ordination that will ensure that there is something available locally at all times when people need it. It allows temporary closures in an area if there are significant difficulties with access and ensures that a pharmacy is always open somewhere in an area.

Some pharmacies struggle to find staff, and in some instances they have had to close temporarily, because a pharmacy cannot open without a pharmacist. There is more demand than ever for pharmacy professionals—an issue raised by various hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). Since 2010, the number of registered pharmacists in England has increased by 82%, from 28,984 to 52,780. That means nearly 24,000 more pharmacists registered in England this year than in 2010. It is a huge increase, even compared with the huge increases elsewhere in the NHS.

On top of that, we have published the “NHS Long Term Workforce Plan”, backed by more than £2.4 billion to fund further additional increases and more training places over the next five years. The plan sets out the steps that the NHS and education providers will take to deliver an NHS workforce who meet the changing and growing needs of the population over the next 15 years. Our ambition is to increase training places for pharmacists by nearly 50%—building even further on what we have already done—to around 5,000 by 2031-32, and to grow the number of pharmacy technicians.

Employers clearly have a key role in retaining staff and making jobs in community pharmacy attractive. To support employers, we are investing in training to help private contractors to deliver high-quality NHS services. NHS England has provided a number of fully funded training opportunities for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians—the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) raised an interesting and important point on this matter. That is why we are providing 3,000 independent prescribing training places—applications for this year are now available to pharmacists—and, on top of that, another 1,000 fully funded training places for designated prescribing practitioners, or DPPs. As well as growing the number of people entering the workforce, we are making provisions to upskill those who are already in the workforce. We are as just excited as other hon. Members present about the huge potential of independent prescribing in pharmacy to build even more on what we are doing to grow the range of services in community pharmacies.

I have talked about what we are doing on funding and the workforce, but I also want to talk about structural reform and efficiencies, and enabling pharmacists to do more with the skills they have—an important point raised by a number of hon. Members. The plan for primary care sets out some of the things we are doing, including modernising legislation to make it clear that pharmacists no longer have to directly supervise all the activities of pharmacy technicians, who are, in fact, registered health professionals in their own right.

Hon. Members are right to point out that the nature of work in pharmacy has changed, and we must change the legislation to match that. We also plan to enable any member of the pharmacy team to hand out appropriately checked and bagged medicines in the absence of a pharmacist, remedying frustrating instances where patients are delayed, having to wait perhaps because the pharmacist has popped out for lunch. We are also consulting on changes to the legislation to enable pharmacy technicians to use patient group directions, which would enable pharmacy technicians to do more.

Last week, the House debated legislation to give pharmacists the flexibility to dispense medicines in their original packs, so that pharmacists use their high-end clinical skills rather than spending time snipping out blister packs, which is not a good use of their time. We are progressing legislation to enable hub-and-spoke dispensing—the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), rightly mentioned that—following public consultation on the changes.

Finally, we are also working with medicine suppliers to identify medicines that could be reclassified from being available only on prescription, known as “POM”, to being available in a pharmacy, known as “P”.

This is a huge package of structural reforms and a huge liberalisation of the structure of pharmacy, enabling pharmacists with ever-growing clinical skills to do more and not be caught up in bureaucracy.

The Government are thinking beyond that about what pharmacy can do in the longer term. Hon. Members are right that Pharmacy First, the fantastic new NHS service, could be added to over time. NHS England is also starting independent prescribing pilots, with a view to implementing pharmacy prescribing services in the future, based on what we learn from them. That has huge potential to take further pressure off GPs and make the best possible use of all the new skills in the pharmacy workforce.

The Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester, raised an important point about access to PrEP, as an example of an advanced service that pharmacies could provide. As he will know, partly because of his work in initiating this, the PrEP access and equity task and finish group was established in 2022 as a sub-group of the HIV action plan implementation steering group, to improve access to PrEP. That steering group is working to develop a PrEP road map based on the task and finish group’s recommendations. I can say today that the road map will be out before the end of the year, and it will deal with how we will work through all the knotty issues in enabling community pharmacy to provide PrEP.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney for raising these hugely important issues, which are crucial to community pharmacy. The sector is doing more than ever before, seeing more people, providing a wider range of services and becoming more clinically advanced than ever. There are pressures in the sector, but we are injecting further funding. We have grown the workforce hugely. We will continue to build on what community pharmacists do to further improve community pharmacy across the country.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

Will the Minister give way?

[Neil O’Brien]

I will pause at the point of my peroration, because there is a question.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

There is a question: will the Minister return to my earlier question about whether he can come to the APPG to meet key pharmacy stakeholders?

[Neil O’Brien]

That is a brilliantly timed question, to which the answer is yes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

3. Whether he is taking steps to ensure that notices of decision for care homes do not lapse upon a change of ownership unless standards improve.

[The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)]

When a care home is taken over, the Care Quality Commission assesses and re-rates it under its new ownership. Previous notices of decision cannot legally be passed to a new provider, but they do inform the CQC’s approach to an assessment and how soon it takes place. During the time between the takeover and the CQC’s carrying out a new assessment, the legacy rating is shown on the CQC website.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

My constituents Brenda, Gary and Trina lost their parents after they were placed in Melbourne House care home, which the CQC later deemed to be “inadequate”. However, because the notice of decision lapsed on its transfer to the original owner’s family, the home, now known as Earlsdon Lodge, is able to operate as if nothing had happened. Will the Minister meet my constituents and me to explain exactly why that was allowed to happen, and what is being done to prevent it from happening to other families?

[Helen Whately]

I shall be happy to meet the hon. Member to look into that case, because I feel strongly about the importance of ensuring that everyone has access to good, if not outstanding, care in care homes.

Recovering Access to Primary Care

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

First, I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the work that GPs do in his constituency, as they do elsewhere. On pharmacies, part of the reason for the investment is to support pharmacy, including in rural settings. The more funding going in, the more they can prescribe. The more things they are able to do, the better the business model. There are more pharmacists and more pharmacy shops than there were in 2010, but it is important we make the business model more viable and that is what the announcement does. On estates planning, that is an issue for each integrated care board to consider. He mentions a specific issue locally with a former PFI and how it is being used. That is not a new issue. I sat on the Public Accounts Committee when it was chaired by the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and I remember looking at many a Labour PFI. The regional fire control centres were a case in point; the estate could no longer be afforded and the space was empty. If there is an issue like that, I will be happy to look at it in due course.

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

As chair of the all-party parliamentary pharmacy group and as a pharmacist myself, this is a step in the right direction. However, I have spoken to many pharmacists and many in the sector, and we believe that, for the policy to unleash the full potential of pharmacy, there needs to be proper investment in the workforce plan. What we are seeing is pharmacists who can prescribe leaving community pharmacies and going into other sectors. It is great that they have the ability to prescribe, but if the pharmacies are not there the full potential cannot be unleashed. Secondly, we have a funding crisis, with many pharmacies closing, so the plan needs to be accompanied by further funding and steps to address the medicines supply chain.

Will the Minister clarify a few points? Will pharmacists be paid competitively for their prescribing skills? In previous Government announcements, that has not been the case. Pharmacists would like to feel valued from this announcement. Will the announcement be followed by actual support for premises as well? I am sure the Minister is aware of pharmacists who have challenges, for example, in accessing a patient’s record, and who do not have the workforce needed to take time out to go out to speak to patients. Will he meet me and the APPG to discuss those issues further?

[Steve Barclay]

First, I thank the hon. Member for recognising, constructively, that this is a step in the right direction. As the quotes from the sector show, many working within pharmacy welcome it. As I said a moment ago, there are 20,000 more pharmacists than in 2010. The additional funding, including—directly to her question—for prescribing, will make the business model more viable and therefore support the workforce within the pharmacy sector.

We are working on IT as part of the recovery plan. There is a big read-across into the NHS app and how we better empower patients both to access their own medical records and to find the right services, including by being directed from the NHS app to pharmacies.

Prescription Charges: People Aged 60 or Over

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for securing such an important debate.

As a cancer pharmacist, chair of the all-party parliamentary pharmacy group and somebody who still volunteers at a local hospital—I was there this morning—I have seen at first hand the difference that free access to medication makes to those over the age of 60. For years, I have treated patients whom the prescription proposals will make worse off. I know just how anxious they are at the prospect of having to fork out another monthly expense that they simply cannot afford. When the choice is between heating and eating, which is a day-to-day reality for thousands of people in my city, we cannot sit idly while health is incorporated into the mix. It should not have to be spelt out that, as people age, they will develop long-term healthcare needs, and those needs will need to be treated by prescription drugs.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Prescription charges have been described by pharmacies as attacks on the sick. As we have heard, pharmacies have reported a significant increase in the number of patients not collecting their prescriptions because they simply cannot afford them. Does the hon. Member agree that that is worrying for all age groups, but especially for over-60s, who are more prone to sickness and to requiring that medical aid?

[Taiwo Owatemi]

I agree. Sadly, we look at the pharmacy shelves and see that many patients are not picking up their prescriptions, or patients come to the pharmacy counter, realise how much a prescription costs and that they cannot afford it because they have not financially planned for it. I will speak about that later in my speech.

The Government’s impact assessment concluded that 52% of people between the ages of 60 and 64 will have at least one long-term health condition, so by aligning medical exemptions with the state pension age, the Government are hitting the people in my community who have the greatest need for medication but simply cannot afford it. What do the Government expect to happen when people in their 60s decide that they can no longer afford their prescriptions? If saving money is the Government’s aim, I question whether they have considered the reality—that the proposals will simply shift the costs from primary to urgent care. Health conditions will inevitably worsen, and patients will be forced into overcrowded A&E units—adding to the already overwhelmed health service.

I support some of the points highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Gower regarding long-term health conditions, especially unchanging health conditions such as asthma, motor neurone disease and sickle cell anaemia. As she highlighted, the York Health Economics Consortium estimated that £20 million would be saved each year if the NHS scrapped prescription charges for people with Parkinson’s and inflammatory bowel disease. That is because fewer people would be forced into A&E, which would mean fewer hospital admissions and fewer GP visits. If we want to save the NHS money and reduce the burden on the NHS, prevention is key, and medicines play an essential part in preventing patients’ healthcare conditions from worsening and preventing patients from developing other health conditions. It is concerning that the Government can consider the proposals as a way of reducing the burden on the healthcare system. That is a hugely irresponsible decision for the Government even to consider making. It is essential that the Government engage in some form of cumulative impact assessment. People over the age of 60 with long-term conditions will be disproportionately affected.

My older constituents in Coventry North West are anxious and stressed. They tell me that they simply do not know how they will make ends meet at the end of each month, especially when they have to deal with soaring energy bills and food costs. They ask why the Government continue to attack elderly residents during the most severe cost of living crisis for a generation. I hope that the Government will answer that. I especially worry that making our ageing population pay for medication will leave huge numbers of people unable to afford essentials and force them into further hardship. I add my support for the Prescription Charges Coalition, which is calling for a freeze in prescription charges for 2023 and has said that the Government must scrap the alignment plans. I recognise that the Government are planning to support the proposals.

Every year, especially on 1 April, I find myself helping patients to fill out prepayment card applications or to navigate the increase in NHS charges, because many do not even realise that those changes are coming. I therefore first ask the Government to notify patients of the increase way before 1 April so that they are able to financially plan; otherwise, the increase may mean that many do not have access to their medication when they need it. Secondly, will the Government review the long-term exemption list for patients with medical conditions that, due to their nature, we know will not change?

I want to make a final important point. Older people have contributed to our society their whole lives, and they have trusted that if they work hard and pay their taxes, they will be looked after. That is the deal we make with them, and it is what they expect from us when they get older. The Government’s proposal will break that trust. We cannot afford to abandon older people now simply because the Government have decided that this is the best way forward. Doing so will impact trust in the long term.

Lastly, will the Minister, who is responsible for primary care, come to the all-party parliamentary pharmacy group meeting from 1 pm until 3 pm on 29 March in Room S, Portcullis House, and speak to pharmacists? We would like to continue the debate and to talk about the current pressures facing pharmacy as a whole.

It has been a pleasure to contribute to the debate. I look forward to hearing from other colleagues.

NHS: Long-term Strategy

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Today I would like to cover two matters that are deeply important to my constituents and where the Government have consistently failed to show vision or leadership and have left the country in a state of emergency.

The first is the issue of pharmacies and GP waiting times. As a pharmacist and the newly elected chair of the all-party parliamentary pharmacy group, I urge the Government to look again at utilising the key resource of community pharmacy. The sector is crying out for more responsibility to reduce pressures on the rest of the health service. Community pharmacists must become the first port of call for patients who need advice and treatment, as they are in almost every other European country. That will help to rebalance workload across primary care, bring healthcare back into the community, reduce pressures on GPs and waiting times and deliver healthcare that is much more prevention-focused.

Yesterday, I launched a survey for my constituents on the situation in our NHS, and I quickly received more than 200 responses by this morning. I was appalled that 70% of my constituents told me that they were putting off dealing with health worries because of the terrible situation in the NHS. That is incredibly dangerous, and it is exactly why we have to empower community pharmacies and reduce GP waiting times. Until the Government fully mobilise pharmacies, we will struggle to reduce waiting times, clear the NHS backlog or improve patient access to GPs.

Secondly, I will speak about the ongoing ambulance crisis that is having a disastrous impact on many of my constituents. Ambulance drivers in Coventry tell me that they are unable to support their families, that they are overworked, underpaid and that extra support is simply not available. My constituents are frequently having to wait hours on end for an ambulance to arrive during an emergency. This is all because the Government have failed in their duty to demonstrate leadership.

In my survey of constituents conducted just this week, one in five told me that either they or a family member had suffered delays when waiting for an ambulance in the past six months. One older constituent had to wait 10 and a half hours for an ambulance to take him to A&E after having a bad fall over the Christmas period. That is simply unacceptable, and it is putting people’s lives needlessly at risk. Lastly, I thank all the NHS staff at my local hospital, University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire, for all their dedication and hard work and everything they do to provide excellent patient care.

Cancer Services

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup), a former Health Minister, who spoke with so much authority about the current workforce challenges, but also the need to improve and invest in better diagnostic equipment. I also commend the Select Committee Chair, the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), for perfectly outlining the Committee’s report.

As somebody who worked in our NHS as a cancer pharmacist before entering this House and has worked as a regular volunteer pharmacist at my local hospital in Coventry, I know just how overwhelmed and over- stretched NHS cancer services are. The recently published report from the Health and Social Care Committee on cancer services uncovered that, in September, only 60.5% of patients started treatment within 62 days of urgent referral. In Coventry this year, only 57.2% of patients at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust began their treatment within two months of being referred to the hospital by their GP. That is against a national target of 85%, so in Coventry and across the country cancer patients are being failed, making the Government’s declaration earlier this year of a war on cancer look more like a retreat than a tactical advance.

The reality is that waiting lists are up, referrals are slower than ever, screening is in crisis, patient satisfaction has plummeted, medical professionals are leaving the sector in droves and the sector faces major structural challenges. If the Government are serious about making inroads into improving cancer care over the long term, it is crucial that they build a cancer workforce that is fit for the future. I welcome the Government’s commitment to publish a workforce plan next year, but they must commit to publishing the plan in full and deliver the much-needed funding for any workforce growth to succeed.

Just to take clinical directors as an example, 99% have said that they are concerned about morale and burnout across the clinical radiology workforce. If we continue to treat our medical professionals with contempt, no one should be surprised if they decide to look for pastures new. If allowed to worsen, I fear that this workforce crisis will lead to expensive outsourcing and it will inevitably place greater strains on the public finances. Equally, I am deeply concerned that the Government have so far failed to recommit to a long-term cancer strategy.

Under the last Labour Government, there was a long-term strategy and by and large we delivered it. That was reflected in record high patient satisfaction, record low waiting times, speedy referrals and improving survival rates across the board, so that is exactly what cancer services deserve.

We know that one in two of us will get cancer in our lifetime, yet cancer outcomes in the UK continue to lag behind those of comparable European countries, as many Members have mentioned. This is disappointing to hear and highlights why we need a 10-year cancer plan. I am concerned that there are rumours that the plan may have been scrapped; given how many resources and how much energy have been put into developing the plan, I hope the Minister will confirm whether that is the case.

Many Members have spoken about prevention, which is at the heart of the Committee’s latest cancer report. Four in 10 cancers in the UK are preventable, yet only through taking action to prevent cancer developing in the first place will we save lives and reduce pressure on our NHS. I welcome the successful public health campaigns on smoking and obesity in recent years, but much more needs to be done to ensure patients are made aware of the risk factors in developing cancer and can recognise its early signs and symptoms.

Shockingly, smoking is still the biggest cause of cancer and death in the UK, causing around 150 cancer cases every day and 125,000 deaths each year. Recent Cancer Research UK modelling suggests that England will miss its smoke-free 2030 target by seven years for the population as a whole and by almost double that for the most deprived communities, who will not meet this target until the mid-2040s. So I urge the Government to invest in the resources and services that encourage and support people to quit smoking for good. Only through this long-term investment are we going to see the preventive results we urgently need.

As the recently elected chair of the all-party pharmacy group and a former oncology pharmacist, I will briefly focus on drugs. As Health and Social Care Committee Chair the hon. Member for Winchester said earlier, drug research and development is not within the remit of the NHS. However, much investment is needed on research and development for new drug treatments, particularly for rare cancers such as liver cancer.

I also want to speak briefly about aseptic services. I still work in aseptic pharmacy and understand the challenges and difficulties facing pharmacy aseptic services. The failure of the firms who make the cancer drugs to meet demand and the subsequent delays in patient treatment mean many treatments are repeatedly rescheduled. Frustratingly, this also means more work for NHS staff, who are already under enormous pressure. Also, increasing vacancy rates in aseptic services mean that services are working at, or above, capacity. These posts are hard to fill due to the fact that only a small group of healthcare professionals have the specific skills required, and given the small number of new staff entering aseptic services the filling of a vacancy at one hospital often results in a vacancy at a neighbouring hospital. I urge the Minister to take this challenge seriously, and to recognise that delays to treatment and referrals and cancellations must be addressed as they impact the ability of hospital pharmacy teams to supply these vital treatments.

The Government must also take note and understand that the relationship with the firms supplying these drugs and NHS units is of fundamental importance. Hospitals must work in partnership with these companies to ensure that all parties do all they can to make sure the treatment is available on time and when patients need it; at the moment this is not happening. Pharmacy teams must be part of all capacity planning discussions; they are the ones on the frontline and they know what patients need. Aseptic units with capacity must also have the power to support other hospitals within their integrated care system areas. There will always be a small number of products that have to be prepared locally on a patient-specific basis; however, currently no mechanism exists for these products to be made without relying upon the manufacturers. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues with the Minister further, and I hope she recognises the serious challenges aseptic pharmacies currently face.

I have covered a lot of ground in my remarks today, but that is because of the scale of the challenge facing cancer care across the NHS. Whether driving down waiting times and eliminating needless delays, growing the workforce to treat cancer patients, boosting cancer prevention services, or facing down the challenges facing aseptic services, the Government certainly have a lot to do to improve cancer services and patient outcomes. I know the Minister is committed to improving those services and outcomes, and as a member of the Health and Social Care Committee I look forward to seeing, I hope, the much-awaited cancer plan and scrutinising it. I sincerely hope that this time next year the situation has improved for my constituents and all cancer patients nationally.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Draft Dentists, Dental Care Professionals, Nurses, Nursing Associates and Midwives (International Registrations) Order 2022

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 General Committees

[The Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Will Quince)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Dentists, Dental Care Professionals, Nurses, Nursing Associates and Midwives (International Registrations) Order 2022.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone.

I turn first to international professionals. International dental care and nursing professionals form a vital part of the NHS workforce and make an important contribution to the delivery of healthcare in the UK—indeed, over a third of dentists joining the General Dental Council register in 2021 qualified outside the UK. There was a near-even split between domestic and international professionals joining the Nursing and Midwifery Council register over the same period, with 23,000 international professionals joining. The GDC and the NMC are the independent statutory regulators for dental, nursing and midwifery professionals in the UK and nursing associate professionals in England. They set registration standards for healthcare professionals who wish to practise in the UK, which ensures that registered and regulated professionals have the skills, competence, health and attitudes that command public trust and, importantly, patient confidence.

I turn to the international registration process. International professionals who wish to practise in the UK must meet the same rigorous standards that we expect of UK-trained professionals, so we believe it is also in everybody’s interest that such professionals can use registration processes that are a fair test of their professional competence and that provide them with a clear route to registration.

We are reforming the legislative framework for the regulation of healthcare professionals to make it faster, fairer and more flexible. The current UK model needs to change to better protect patients, to support our health services and to help the workforce meet future challenges. Ahead of that, action is required to provide the GDC and the NMC with greater flexibility to amend their international registration processes, and we have worked closely with these regulators, along with colleagues in the devolved Governments, to develop proposals that remove from the legislation prescriptive detail about how such processes should operate. That will help the regulators to ensure that future international registration pathways are proportionate and streamlined, while continuing to robustly protect patient safety.

I turn to the greater flexibility for the GDC, the overseas registration examination, the processes and the fee. The draft order provides the GDC with greater flexibility to apply a range of assessment options for international dentists beyond its overseas registration exam, or ORE. The regulator is provided with the same level of flexibility in relation to processes for international dental care professionals. The GDC will have much greater freedom to update the content and structure of its overseas registration examination now and in the future, as they will no longer be set in legislation that requires Privy Council approval to be changed.

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I welcome the changes proposed today, but can the Minister elaborate on whether the GDC will be given more support with reviewing the performers list validation by experience, which international dentists will have to go through to be NHS dentists but not for private practice?

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question, and I will certainly come to that—probably in summing up—because the performers list is a wholly separate issue. The draft order is about the registration of dentists and dental professionals, whereas the performers list is about those providing NHS services.

As I said, the overseas registration exam will no longer be set in legislation that requires Privy Council approval for it to be changed. The requirement that dental authorities provide the ORE is removed, allowing the GDC to explore alternative providers, so candidates who were affected by the suspension of the exam during covid will also be provided with extra time to sit it.

We know that the GDC plans to increase OR fees to cover its costs for providing the assessment. A more cost-effective model is likely to be achieved over time as additional providers are identified. I understand that the GDC will first consult on new rules for its international registration process before they come into force.

I want to touch on consultation responses, because Committee members will have had a barrage of emails overnight on the subject. We plan to take forward all the proposals that we consulted on, and we made an amendment to the draft order in the interests of patient safety; that particular point was made in the email Committee members will have received from multiple people overnight. It relates to the requirement that a qualification relied on by an international applicant to the dental care professional register can no longer be a diploma in dentistry. If hon. Members want me to, I can go into further detail on that subject in my summing up.

I also draw the Committee’s attention to an issue raised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which noted that the House may wish to seek reassurance as to how appropriate safety standards will be maintained. The primary purpose of the professional regulation is to protect patients and the public from harm by ensuring that those providing healthcare are doing so safely. Any new or amended registration pathways will be based on applicants meeting that same standard of training and knowledge as UK-trained professionals. Those standards are set by the independent regulators in consultation with the profession’s public and education providers.

The draft order also makes changes that help to lay the foundation for the regulator to improve processes further in the future. That includes a charging power, so that fees may be charged to international institutions for the cost of recognising their qualifications. That will support the GDC in registering individuals based on an assessment of their qualification, skill and training, or by recognising the qualification that they hold.

I turn to the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the changes to the Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001. The NMC will have flexibility to use two pathways in addition to its test of competence, which will remain the primary registration assessment. The first additional pathway is recognition of an international programme of education, so applicants holding a Nursing and Midwifery Council-approved qualification could meet the council’s requirements without needing to sit the test. The second is qualification comparison, whereby the Nursing and Midwifery Council may ascertain whether an international qualification is of a comparable standard to a UK one. The draft order provides the NMC with greater flexibility to amend such processes by, in effect, stripping out unnecessary detail from the legislation on how it should operate.

The draft order also clarifies the NMC good health and good character declaration requirements, misinterpretation of which can lead to confusion and unnecessary delays to the application process. With that, I commend the order to the Committee.

NHS Workforce

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

That was a reprehensible thing to say and it shows how desperately the Government are scraping the barrel to make excuses for their negligence and mismanagement of the NHS.

As I said, I found it astonishing that this summer, in the middle of the biggest crisis in the history of the NHS, the Government took the infuriating decision to cut a third of medical school places. Thousands more straight-A students in Britain who want to help have been turned away from training to become doctors. It is like the clip of the former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg saying in 2010 that there was no point in building new nuclear power stations because they would not come online until 2022. This country needs Governments who think beyond short-term electoral cycles and put the long-term interests of the country first. That is the approach that Labour would take, but it has been sadly missing for the past 12 years.

Just as the Government failed to build our energy security, leaving us exposed to Putin’s war in Ukraine, they failed to train the staff the NHS need, leaving us exposed as the pandemic struck. Their failure to prepare has left us in the ludicrous situation in which UK universities are now offering medical degrees only to overseas students. That’s right: the Government are refusing to allow bright British students to achieve their dreams of becoming doctors, so Brunel University is forced to take exclusively students from overseas. The Chair of the Select Committee on Education, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), has warned that there is a real risk that medical schools will

“only train overseas students who go off and get jobs elsewhere”.

What a criminal mismanagement of our higher education system. What a failure to plan to meet our staffing needs with our own home-grown talent.

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. Given that there were nearly 30,000 medical school applications last year from British students who really want to study medicine, does he agree that it is absolutely disgraceful that the Government have a cap of 7,500? That shows that we are not investing in our workforce or in home-grown British doctors. It is appalling that the Government cannot see the importance of that.

[Wes Streeting]

I wholeheartedly agree. To deal with that problem—and, indeed, to satisfy the demands of the Conservative party, which looks to Labour for answers—we are putting forward a plan today to solve the crisis, to bring down waiting times, to get patients the treatment they need and to build a healthy society.

Where the Conservatives are holding the best and brightest students back from playing their part in the health of our nation, Labour will unleash their talent in the NHS: we will double medical school places, training 15,000 doctors a year so that patients can see a doctor when they need to. Where the Conservatives have left nurses working unsafe hours, unable to spend the time they need with patients to provide good care—where the Conservatives have left the NHS so short of midwives that expectant mothers are turned away from maternity units that do not have the capacity to deliver their child—Labour will act: we will train 10,000 more nurses and midwives every year.

We will go further. The way we deliver healthcare has to change. For many patients, a hospital is not the best place to be, yet in the past 12 years all the other parts of our health and care service have been eroded by underinvestment. When our society is ageing and people increasingly want to be cared for in the comfort of their own home, surrounded by their loved ones, why have four in 10 district nursing posts been cut? Labour is proud to have district nursing at the heart of our plans to modernise the NHS, and we will double the number of district nurses qualifying every year.

Many colleagues across the House have campaigned for years on the importance of the early years of a child’s development. All the evidence says that the first 1,000 days of a child’s life are vital to their development and life chances, yet the number of health visitors has been cut in half since 2015. Labour will ensure that every child has a healthy start to life, training 5,000 more health visitors. That is what our motion would deliver.

--- Later in debate ---

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Many Members will remember that the Health and Social Care Committee recently published a report on the NHS workforce—a report that the Government frustratingly chose to ignore. As workforce shortages stand at unprecedented levels right across the NHS, with the latest figures revealing that there are more than 133,000 vacancies in England alone, I thought it might be useful to remind the Government of some of the report’s key recommendations.

First, the Government are failing to provide our NHS nurses with the essentials that anyone would need to do their job properly. In short, they are serving up poor working conditions, year in, year out. At the bare minimum, all nurses across the NHS should have easy access to hot food and drink, free parking or easy access to work and spaces to rest, shower and change, but the Government cannot even get that right.

I have repeatedly raised with the Department of Health and Social Care and the Prime Minister the fact that NHS staff at Coventry’s University Hospital are paying an astronomical £600 per year simply to park at work. In the middle of a cost of living crisis, it is outrageous that Coventry’s NHS heroes are out of pocket because the Government choose to do vanishingly little to improve their situation. I again call upon the Department of Health and Social Care to look closely at this situation and scrap these unfair parking charges for good.

Is it really any surprise that the Government’s current target of recruiting 50,000 nurses has been woefully missed when they are treated so poorly? It is unacceptable that many NHS nurses are struggling to feed their families, pay their rent and heat their homes. Some nurses are even resorting to using food banks this winter. I urge the Government to look closely at how they can better pay and treat NHS staff this year and next, so that we can finally reverse this worrying trend.

Our beloved NHS, which I had the honour of working for as a senior cancer pharmacist before being elected, is on its knees as a result of 12 years of Conservative neglect and mismanagement. Many services are crumbling. Pay has failed to keep up for years, and morale among nurses is in a truly terrible place. That is exactly why the Royal College of Nursing has been pushed into taking industrial action this month and why the Government must stop the mud-slinging and instead work with nurses to resolve this crisis.

Secondly, the Government must take urgent action to improve maternity care. For over a decade, the Conservatives have failed midwives across my community, and now we are all paying the price. We need a robust, fully funded maternity workforce plan, and the Government must commit to recruiting and retaining the workforce at the level set out in the forthcoming report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Labour has made it crystal clear that we would train at least 10,000 additional nurses and midwives each year to tackle the crisis that currently exists in maternity care. Labour has also committed to a historic expansion of the NHS workforce, to plug the gaps created by this Government.

The Government must also improve diversity in the recruitment of midwives, to improve the standard of care that black, Asian, mixed-race and minority ethnic women receive throughout pregnancy, birth and the post-natal period. By increasing diversity across the NHS, we can guarantee better standards of care for everyone, regardless of their background or ethnicity. Labour’s women and equalities team has routinely pushed for reforms that would improve how everyone experiences healthcare in this country, so when will the Government catch up?

Lastly, as the newly elected chair of the all-party parliamentary pharmacy group, I want to highlight an opportunity that the Government have failed to grasp: better use of community pharmacists. As a trained pharmacist, I know that the sector is crying out for more responsibilities to become the first port of call for patients who need advice and treatment. That would help to rebalance the workload across primary care, bring healthcare back into the community, reduce the pressures on GPs and hospitals and deliver healthcare that is much more prevention focused.

Any plan for the future of pharmacy must ensure that all pharmacists have adequate access to supervision and training, along with clear structures for professional career development into advanced and consultant-level practice to help to deliver this. That way, community pharmacists can play a much larger and more effective role in delivering healthcare. Until this Government properly mobilise pharmacies, we will struggle to reduce waiting times, clear NHS backlogs or improve patient access to GPs, so I desperately want to see action here. Every Member here today understands that our NHS workforce faces a range of big challenges. Whether it is nurses, midwives or pharmacists, our NHS workforce are at breaking point.

[Paul Bristow]

I completely share the hon. Lady’s sentiments about making better use of community pharmacists. She talked about better support and resources being available for pharmacists to do just that, but what specific things does she think need to happen to get the ball rolling?

[Taiwo Owatemi]

That is an excellent question. I could be here for hours explaining what I would like to see, but essentially, what I and many in the profession would like to see is an understanding and full use of the various skills that pharmacists have. We talked about this in the Health and Social Care Committee today: I would like pharmacists to be involved in providing clinical care—for example, a diabetes workshop or a cardio blood pressure workshop. We have seen other countries do that. In Alberta, Canada, community pharmacists are involved in the whole of the hypertension management; it is taken away from GPs and brought into the community, because it is more accessible in a community pharmacy.

Whether it is nurses, midwives or pharmacists, our NHS workforce are at breaking point, but the Government are seemingly ignoring that. I hope that the Government urgently sit up, take note and look at how they plan to address our workforce needs, to ensure that our beloved NHS staff are no longer ignored.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sam Tarry]

I do not think a single person sitting on the Opposition Benches has a second job.

The truth is that NHS staff pay demands are reasonable and fair. Nurses’ pay is down by £4,300 and paramedics’ pay is down by £5,600. One in three nurses cannot afford to heat their homes or feed their families. NHS staff are at breaking point. When I met NHS Unite members from Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospitals—I welcome any hon. Member to come with me and speak to them, because they are just across the river from this House—they were justifiably furious about the way that for too long, they and their colleagues have been exploited and abused by the Government, as they see it.

Staff are the backbone of the NHS, and if they break, so does the NHS. As the RCN general secretary said:

“Nursing staff have had enough of being taken for granted, enough of low pay and unsafe staffing levels, enough of not being able to give our patients the care they deserve.”

Allowing the NHS to collapse will cost the country considerably more, financially and in national wellbeing—as we are already seeing on the Government’s watch—than the rightful pay demands of NHS staff. If our NHS is not providing the care that we need, the costs are far greater, as is economically demonstrable.

Many hon. Members on both sides of the House believe that the NHS is our greatest institution. We cannot take it for granted and it is well worth fighting for. Conservative Members have the power to stop this dispute; to sit down with the trade unions; to face the nurses and NHS staff; and to negotiate a fair deal to prevent misery, ensure patient safety and save the NHS. If the Government will not do it, they should resign now, because a Labour Government will save the NHS and support NHS staff.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I want to put on the record that my mum is a practising nurse.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I think we would all be proud to make that declaration, which stands on the record. We must now look to a speaking time of six minutes or thereabouts, or less if you can, to give everybody fair time. Please focus and, if you take interventions, do not add time on mentally.

NHS Staffing Levels

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) for securing this important debate.

As the newly elected chair of the all-party parliamentary pharmacy group, I want to take this opportunity to outline some of the main concerns facing staff in that sector. Before being elected to this House, I worked in the NHS as a senior cancer pharmacist, and I still regularly volunteer at my local hospital, Coventry and Warwickshire hospital, in cancer care. The opportunity to serve on the frontline of our health service was and continues to be a privilege that I feel every time I set foot in the hospital. There are very few more rewarding things in life than being able to help those in need and provide care for patients at what are often very difficult moments of their lives.

Because of that, I know first hand how important pharmacists are to the provision of healthcare across the country, yet the Government continue to fail those key workers. A recent study published by the Pharmacists’ Defence Association revealed that almost a quarter of pharmacists want to leave their current sector and move to another part of pharmacy and, of those, almost a third are considering leaving pharmacy altogether. As with most healthcare professionals, low and stagnating pay and working conditions are the main reason for seeking a change. With just one in 10 pharmacists feeling that they get adequate breaks, it is no wonder that so many are looking to leave. The longer the Government ignore the exodus of pharmacists to other industries, the more money it will cost to recruit and train new staff.

As a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, I was part of a team who put together earlier this year a workforce report that recommended that the Government better utilise the pharmacy workforce and, in doing so, optimise workload across primary care, reduce pressures on general practice and hospitals, and support integrated care systems. Community pharmacists are willing and eager to take on more responsibilities in order to become the first port of call for patients and take the pressure off overburdened GP surgeries. The Government talk the talk about investing in our NHS, but if they are unwilling to take the necessary steps, waiting times and patient dissatisfaction will continue to grow.

As part of our report, the Select Committee recommended that pharmacists must have clear structures for professional career development into advanced practice. The Government have completely ignored that call; and I know, from my own experience, that far too many in the industry feel that those opportunities are sparse at the best of times. Like everyone else, pharmacists need to know that there are chances for growth and the acquisition of new skills in different areas. If the Government are serious about supporting pharmacists, as they have said repeatedly, that must be a priority.

Retaining pharmacists is also vital to the long-term health of the NHS as a whole. Until the Government tackle the issues of low pay, poor working conditions and a lack of opportunities for career progression, I fear that we will see a weaker and weaker pharmacy sector, which none of us can afford. Sadly, the issue that I have outlined is not specific to pharmacists but applies to all healthcare professionals.

I turn to cancer waiting times in my constituency of Coventry North West. In August, only 57% of patients at University Hospital Coventry, where I volunteer, began their treatment within two months of being referred by their GP, but the NHS target is that the trust should aim to see 85% of patients within 62 days. That simply is not good enough. Cancer patients in Coventry were put on the backburner during the pandemic, and as a result we see more and more cases of late-stage cancer. Those patients need to be seen urgently, and simply cannot wait. Many pancreatic cancer patients in Coventry have been in touch to let me know of their anger at being forced to wait so long. They are being let down.

I know how hard NHS staff work. Despite their efforts, cancer waiting time targets continue to be missed. Unless the Government invest in our beloved institution, we will continue to see more of the same. We need to strengthen our NHS workforce. We need to be able to invest in retaining the staff that we currently have. We also need to pay our nurses, and all healthcare professionals, adequately and appropriately for their hard work and dedication.

I thank all the NHS staff in Coventry, and across the country, for their dedication and hard work, and for all that they do to look after our loved ones. Lastly, I ask the Minister to meet me to discuss the future of pharmacies and the workforce.

Ambulance Services and National Heatwave Emergency

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

I am pleased that my hon. and learned Friend is already seeing the benefits of the A&E in Cheltenham staying open. He is very modest—I am sure he played a significant part in ensuring that it stayed open. This is absolutely about capacity and there is no magic bullet that will make the pressures on the ambulance and emergency services any easier. This is multi-faceted and capacity at A&E is crucial. I am meeting the ambulance trusts to find out where good practice is making a difference, so we can help to share that across the country.

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

In June, a 59-year-old man collapsed in the west midlands, going into cardiac arrest. Neighbours called an ambulance, but it took 90 minutes for one to arrive—six times longer than it should have taken. Sadly, the man soon passed away. We see this time and again across my region, where ambulance waiting times are among the worst in the country. When will the Government provide the much needed extra support to stop horrific incidents such as that reoccurring?

[Maria Caulfield]

I am sorry to hear about the sad death of the hon. Member’s constituent. Her region is one of the six areas that have the worst handover times and at which we are targeting support. I would be happy to meet her and update her on the specific support that we are offering her region.