Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding he will make available for community pharmacies in each financial year from 2019-20 to 2023-24.

In July 2019, we set out our landmark five-year Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) deal to deliver an expanded role for community pharmacy. This outlined our ambition for community pharmacies to be fully integrated in to the National Health Service, support patients get the best from their medicines and provide advice to the public to help them stay healthy for longer. The deal commits £2.592 billion per year to community pharmacy from 2019-20 to 2023-24. This amounts to almost £13 billion across the 5 years.

We are reprioritising funding, moving to a more service based contractual framework. Through increased capacity and efficiency from modern dispensing methods, better utilising the skills of pharmacists, decommissioning Medicines Use Reviews, and phasing out the establishment payment, we have the opportunity to redistribute funding to support more services which are fairly remunerated. These changes will not only provide value for money but also support pharmacies in making this transformation.

A more detailed breakdown of the funding can be found in the CPCF at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/819601/cpcf-2019-to-2024.pdf