Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to promote the Pharmacy First service.

In February 2025, approximately 75% of general practices (GPs) in England made at least one referral into the NHS Pharmacy First Service.

There are regional differences in terms of GP engagement, NHS 111, and urgent and emergency care settings with the Pharmacy First service, with some integrated care boards (ICBs) performing better than others. To help increase the uptake, NHS England is working closely with ICBs, GP stakeholders, and the community pharmacy sector.

We continue to promote the Pharmacy First service. This includes two targeted public communication campaigns with associated media materials, coordinated communications across the healthcare system, and sharing best practices where the service is already working well. Action is also being taken to drive further engagement and referrals from GPs, with targeted engagement through regional and ICB channels and regular data to support performance management. In addition to this, funding has been provided to ICBs to recruit primary care network engagement leads who will be well placed to support practice teams to refer into the service.

NHS England is also improving digital systems to make the referral process better integrated, including further development of electronic referral systems. Most pharmacies can now also receive Pharmacy First referrals from GPs straight into their NHS England assured pharmacy IT systems.