Community Pharmacies

Victoria Borwick Excerpts
Wednesday 2nd November 2016

(8 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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David Mowat Portrait David Mowat
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These are private businesses, each with a different business model and a different amount of income from the NHS, from other retail activities and from services. Each is financed in a different way. Indeed, 30% of them are owned by two public companies, and 70% of them are multiples.

Victoria Borwick Portrait Victoria Borwick (Kensington) (Con)
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Can reassurance be given that local pharmacies are the frontline of primary care? Will the Minister extend the work and responsibility of those local pharmacies, particularly in deprived areas, and reassure us that that is the focus of this debate?

David Mowat Portrait David Mowat
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I spoke to 500 pharmacists this morning and gave them that precise reassurance. The changes that we are making to transform the sector into a service-based, not dispensing-based, economy will do just that. That is where pharmacies need to go and it is where they want to go. Frankly, it has taken too long.