National Health Service (Pharmaceutical and Local Pharmaceutical Services) (Amendment) Regulations 2017 — House of Lords, 2017-10-19
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister, and I echo the welcome given to the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, in her position as Lib Dem spokesman on health. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for her sterling work over the last couple of years—we very much enjoyed working with her, particularly when we combined to defeat the Government on a number of occasions. Long may that continue I very much welcome the response from the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy. The review is very important, and I hope we will have an opportunity to debate these important matters. I am not sure that he is really in a position to talk about the deficit any more. I would refer him, perhaps, to the comments of the former Chancellor, Mr Osborne, about who exactly was responsible for the financial situation that we as a Government found ourselves in. I shall not carry on in that mode, but I think the Government’s mantra needs perhaps to move on Efficiency savings are one thing, but cuts to community pharmacies are another. That is where we really disagree. On the issue of closures, Mr Alistair Burt went to the All-Party Pharmacy Group in 2015 when these proposals first came out and said that he thought that thousands of community pharmacies would close. There is no question that cash flow is a real worry. I am very interested in what the noble Lord said, and it would be good to know the outcome of those discussions, but I can tell him only that in the sector there was very real concern about this I come to SMEs. The risk is that it will be the very small multiple, individual community pharmacies that will be the most affected. I do not know whether the Minister knows, but in 2015 Matthew Hancock for the Government announced an ambitious target to get more small businesses working on central government contracts. The target was set that, by 2020, £1 in every £3 by government would be spent with SMEs. I guess that there is a question of definition here, of the extent to which that is regarded as a central government target or not. The point is that last week Mr Damian Green in the Cabinet Office announced that the target is being missed by a considerable margin and that it has gone from being a hard target for 2020 to an ambition for 2022 What is happening here today is symptomatic of the Government’s approach to SMEs. They say that they are important, but the actions of individual government departments are to make it more difficult for them to do business. This is where I am concerned that the cumulative impact of these cuts will have a damaging effect on the small independents, which would be a great pity The noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, said that she was fortunate to live in Warwickshire, and I endorse that—it is second only to God’s own city, of course. I was delighted to hear about the opening of a new community pharmacy in the premises of a bank. That is good, and I welcome the four schemes to which the noble Lord referred. I have no objection whatever to that, but the problem is that overall the package of proposals reducing the funding will put many community pharmacies at risk; they will often be in vulnerable areas and will reduce patient choice. The point that I put to him is that I do not think we are making as much use of community pharmacies as we could The 2012 changes took many community pharmacies away from the table. With PCTs, they were more around the table. CCGs at first did not have the responsibility for community pharmacy contracts, although I think they have more influence now. But we have to be realistic: GPs are not always as supportive of community pharmacies taking on more work as one would wish them to be. Some of that is about finance, and where it goes. Alongside the issue of funding, which I hope will be reviewed, I hope the Government will see how we can ensure at a local level that community pharmacies are heard more, have more influence and contribute much more, because I believe they have the professional skills to do so Finally, it was a great pleasure to hear the noble Lord, Lord Deben, talk about the impact of this measure on the environment and climate change. We sometimes forget that the desire of the NHS to centralise many of its services can lead to more car miles. I hope we will take that factor into account in the future This has been a very good debate. One thing on which we are all united is the role of community pharmacies, which is a very good thing indeed. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.