Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department plans to take to ensure that work undertaken by community pharmacists is not unnecessarily duplicated in neighbourhood health centres.

As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, community pharmacies will have a vital role in the Neighbourhood Health Service, working closely with other primary care providers at a neighbourhood level and delivering more clinical services.

What a Neighbourhood Health Service or Neighbourhood Health Centre looks like is best decided locally, depending on local needs. We expect that the skills of community pharmacists and their teams will be fully used by local commissioners and that community pharmacies will be provided with access to local phlebotomy pathways in those neighbourhoods where they are commissioned services that require blood tests.