Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment has been made of the potential effect of proposed changes to pharmacy funding on the ability of local authorities to deliver local public health improvement.

Local commissioning and the funding of public health services by local authorities from community pharmacies will be unaffected by these proposals.

We want to see a high quality community pharmacy service that is properly integrated into primary care and public health in line with the Five Year Forward View.

Our proposals are about improving services for patients and the public and securing efficiencies and savings. We believe these efficiencies can be made within community pharmacy without compromising the quality of services or public access to them.

Our aim is to ensure that those community pharmacies upon which people depend continue to thrive. We are consulting on the introduction of a Pharmacy Access Scheme, which will provide more National Health Service funds to certain pharmacies compared with others, considering factors such as location and the health needs of the local population.

In addition we are providing funding to recruit a further 1,500 pharmacists to general practices by 2020.