Budget for Community Pharmacies — House of Commons, 2016-05-24
Topic: Health
Michael Dugher (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has given a compelling example of the contribution made by community pharmacies—not just those in her constituency, for there are similar stories in many other parts of the country Another argument for arguing against the proposed cuts is the crisis relating to GP access. Millions of people are waiting longer for appointments: 14.2 million patients had to wait for a week, or were not given an appointment at all, when they last tried to see their doctors in 2015. The truth is that the GP access crisis can only be made worse by the Government’s plan to cut the community pharmacy budget The findings of new research carried out by YouGov, commissioned by Pharmacy Voice and published in the report yesterday, show that one in four people who would normally visit a pharmacy for advice on common ailments would instead make an appointment with their GP if their local pharmacy faced closure. The report also states that the impact of the cut would be much more severe in areas of higher deprivation, such as my constituency, and that as many as four in five people would visit their GP if their local pharmacy closed. According to the National Pharmacy Association, that would mean approximately 1 million extra people per month using GP and alternative local NHS services In a recent letter to the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee, the Government said that they wanted "a clinically focussed community pharmacy service that is better integrated with primary care. That will help relieve the pressure on GPs and Accident and Emergency Departments" I could not agree more, but how can an arbitrary cut—because that is what it is—in community pharmacies on such a scale possibly do anything other than make a bad situation in our NHS even worse, and how do the Government plan to introduce a "hub and spoke" dispensing model against a backdrop of thousands of closures in the sector Particularly in recent days and weeks, the Government have tried to argue that this is not the arbitrary cut that we all know it to be, and that it is not a raid on the community pharmacy budget in the Department. They now say that it is all about making the pharmacy sector stronger by eliminating what Ministers call "clusters" of chemists. However, in response to a written question on 4 May in which I asked the Government to "make an assessment of the effect of the budget reduction for community pharmacy in 2016-17 on high street vacancy rates", the Government conceded that they could not accurately assess the impact of the cut. They could not say how many community pharmacies would close, or, indeed, where they would close. The Minister said that the Government were "not able to assess which pharmacies may close or what the effect on high street vacancy rates might be because we do not know the financial viability of individual businesses or the extent to which they derive income from services commissioned locally by the NHS or local authorities or have non-NHS related income." As I have already highlighted, the Minister previously said that he estimated that up to 3,000 community pharmacies—a quarter of all those in the country—could close as a result of this cut. However, with no planning, no strategy and no impact assessment, it is painfully obvious that the Government have not the faintest idea which community pharmacies are at risk of closure. It could be a chemist that is located in a so-called cluster, but it might well not be.