The government needs to “sustain and strengthen” community pharmacy to tackle medicine supply issues, an MP has told industry stakeholders.
Speaking at a reception hosted by the Medicines Supply Resilience Group and the Company Chemist’ Association (CCA) at the House of Commons yesterday, Labour MP and pharmacist Sadik Al-Hassan stressed that “continued support” for community pharmacies is essential to a resilient medicines supply chain.
He said shortages have “moved from being isolated incidents to a chronic structural challenge for the NHS and for pharmacy”, and that “we need to sustain and strengthen our community pharmacy effort” to address the issue.
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Al-Hassan told MPs he was “pleased to see the government agree to a substantial funding uplift for community pharmacy last year” but said the sector “needs more in continued support”.
And he added that he hopes the 2026/27 funding negotiations “deliver the additional funding necessary to keep pharmacies open, stocked and able to serve patients”.
Medicine pricing
Al-Hassan also recommended that the government invests in medicine pricing to make the UK drugs market “more attractive”.
“For decades, medicine prices have been driven down, and now they are too low. This is coming at the expense of resilience,” he said.
“When the UK pays less than other countries, global manufacturing will prioritise supply elsewhere,” he added. “We need the UK to be a more attractive market so that our patients can reliably access the medicines they need.”
Read more: Medicine shortages are ‘national security issue’, says House of Lords
And he stressed that drug prices must “drive shorter and stronger supply chains, building more local capacity and recognising true value for our health system”.
Al-Hassan, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Pharmacy, also cited findings from an inquiry into medicines shortages in England published by the APPG last July.
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He said the report found “evidence of treatment delays, of patients being rationed” and of “conditions going unmanaged” - and he highlighted the “mental and physical toll on patients” who could not access medications, as well as “tragic cases” of “patients who died because the medicine in shortage could not reach them”.
Al-Hassan praised the pharmacy teams “working under extraordinary pressure” during shortages and “spending hours sourcing alternative medicine and managing frustrated patients and prescribers”.
“Medicine is not an optional commodity,” he added. “It is not something that patients can simply go without.”
“Shared effort is vital”
CCA chief executive Malcom Harrison said in a statement that the reception “showed the real value of bringing stakeholders from across the UK’s medicines supply chain - from industry, patient groups and government - together”.
“By working collaboratively across the supply chain, we can focus on identifying and delivering practical and tangible steps to strengthen resilience and respond to the pressures facing the supply chain,” he added.
“Shared effort is vital to enhancing supply chain resilience and ensuring patients continue to have reliable access to the medicines they depend on.”
Read more: Drug shortages ‘unsustainable burden’ on pharmacy, MPs warn
It comes after a report by the House of Lords found that the government is “not proactive” enough in preventing drug shortages.
The report, published in February, said medicine supply issues “are not prioritised as the potential national security issue that they represent given the significant risk to people’s health”.
