Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of requiring large pharmacies to hold several months of reserve stock of medication.

Pharmacies are independent businesses and are expected to maintain a reasonable stock holding to meet their legal obligations to dispense all prescriptions with reasonable promptness, recognising that it is not feasible for a pharmacy to maintain stock of every medicine.

Most pharmacies do not have space to hold several months of stock and such stock holding would come with a financial risk to the pharmacy as stock may expire. There are therefore no plans to require pharmacies to hold reserve stock of medication.