Pharmacists should receive compensation for the time they spend sourcing medicines because of stock shortages, all-party pharmacy group chair (APPG) Kevin Barron has said.

Speaking exclusively to C+D at the Sigma Conference in Thailand, Mr Barron told C+D there was "no silver bullet" to resolving stock shortages and pharmacists should be paid for the time they spend sourcing stock.

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	"It isn't recognised in the financial arrangements pharmacies have with the NHS and it seems to me that it should be," the Labour MP said. Mr Barron added that the government had now acknowledged stock shortages were an issue and would look to draw a solution from the APPG medicines shortages inquiry.

However, Mr Barron was "not convinced" by proposals from manufacturer body the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) to the inquiry, which called for pharmacy wholesaling and dispensing activities to be split to prevent exporting.

"If the solution was simple, I'm sure the government would have done it in 2008," he explained, adding that there was "no way of telling" which part of the supply chain was primarily responsible for exporting medicines. "If manufacturers decided to export for profit that would be totally within the law."

The APPG will publish a report on its findings in the first quarter of this year.