Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she plans to take to help pharmacies manage workforce shortages.

We have committed £645 million in additional funding to expand the role of community pharmacy, on top of the £2.6 billion we provide every year to the sector and the £100 million one-off investment we made in September 2022.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, backed by over £2.4 billion to fund additional education and training places over the next five years, sets out the ambition to increase training places for pharmacists by nearly 50% to around 5,000 by 2031/32, and to grow the number of pharmacy technicians.

Employers have a key role in staff recruitment and making roles in pharmacy attractive. To support employers, we are undertaking a series of reforms to enable the workforce to do more and act at the top of their profession and NHS England to provide fully funded training opportunities.