The government’s new budget “threatens to break” many NHS sectors – “but none more so than NHS GP services”, BMA general practitioners committee England (GPC England) chair Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer warned this weekend (November 2).
Last week, the new government’s first budget saw Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirm the rumoured rise of the national living wage and increase in employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) as part of the Treasury’s bid to “protect working people”.
Despite the budget’s “£22.6 billion increase in the day-to-day health budget”, pharmacy leaders voiced their concerns about its lack of specific relief for pharmacy from the minimum wage and NIC boosts.
Read more: Minimum wage to rise 6.7% as National Insurance hike confirmed
On Saturday, Bramall-Stainer took to X to warn that “the NHS budget…threatens to break the NHS”.
It “will have a devastating impact” on “hospices, social care, pharmacies, dentists [and] optometry”, she said.
“But none more so than NHS GP services,” she added.
“Privately-owned”
On Friday (November 1), the BMA official wrote to the Treasury chief secretary Darren Jones voicing her “dismay” at his comments calling GP surgeries “privately-owned partnerships” that will “have to pay” the increased employer costs, which he made on BBC Question Time last week.
She called for the Treasury and Department of Health and Social Care (DH) to “provide absolute certainty…that GPs, as designated public authorities, will be exempt from the NI employer contribution rises and reimbursed in full for this additional financial burden”, which she said “could be astronomical”.
Also on Friday, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) chief executive Janet Morrison said that the negotiator was “strongly arguing that any dispensations for health bodies should include community pharmacy”.
Read more: National Insurance rise would be ‘kick in the teeth’ for pharmacy, NPA warns
CPE will do “everything [it] can to push for funding to cover those additional costs for pharmacy owners,” she added.
National Pharmacy Association (NPA) chief executive Paul Rees said that “it would be an insult if the government was able to offer support to GPs with the National Insurance rise but not hard-working pharmacies, who have faced nearly a decade of cuts in funding and are shutting at record rates”.
“Around 95% of the work of an average pharmacy is spent delivering vital NHS services and they should be included in support offered to other NHS services,” he added.
Read more: Kinnock: ‘Pharmacies are private businesses’ and closures ‘reflect many factors’
And he said that it is “imperative” that this year’s long-awaited pharmacy funding deal “halts the real-terms cuts that have dogged pharmacies for years and covers increased National Insurance and National Living Wage bills, or we will face more pharmacies shutting in the months to come”.
The Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA) also called for the sector to be exempt from the employer NIC rise, saying that the budget is a “wrecking ball” to community pharmacies and will cost the sector more than £125 million.
Meanwhile, pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock last month told MPs that “pharmacies are private businesses and decisions to close reflect many factors”.
