National Pharmacy Association (NPA) chief executive Henry Gregg has claimed that health secretary Wes Streeting turned down an initial pharmacy contract proposal during negotiations as the sector needed “more money”.
Speaking at the Pharmacy Show in Birmingham on Sunday (October 12), Gregg said that the NPA “knows” that “when Streeting was given the first offer” by civil servants, he “sent it back and said ‘no, it’s not good enough, we need more money’”.
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Gregg claimed that this was “partly because of the campaign that [the NPA] ran”, as well as “all of the work” across the sector “to highlight the fact that community pharmacy needed a pay rise”.
But when C+D put this claim to the Department of Health and Social Care (DH), it denied this and said it was not true.
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A DH representative said that the department is allocated funding through the spending review process and it is for the secretary of state to decide with ministers how that is allocated.
Community Pharmacy England (CPE) also told C+D that it did not know what the NPA’s comments were referring to.
“Campaign directly to government”
Meanwhile, Gregg also told delegates that it is “really important” campaigning doesn’t “just focus inwards”.
“Obviously the CPE committee is really important in terms of influencing the distribution of funds,” he said.
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But he stressed that the sector “also needs to capture that public sentiment and campaign directly to government to make sure that it’s not just about the distribution of the cake, but how big the overall cake is”.
The long-awaited pharmacy funding deal was announced at the end of March – 12 months later than expected – and CPE said that it had “reluctantly accepted the final offer”.
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“Committee members were in an almost impossible position” during contract negotiations with the DH, chief executive Janet Morrison said at the time, stressing that the uplift was “not enough to fully stabilise the sector”.
And pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock also acknowledged at the time that the deal was “not perfect by any means”, noting that “there’s a lot done, but a lot still to do”.
