Pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock has told MPs that the government is “aware of the pressure on pharmacy”, calling it a “major challenge” for the Department of Health and Social Care (DH).
He acknowledged the “significant financial pressures that pharmacies are under” and said the government is “looking to secure better progress with the use of technology [and] looking at the medicines margin and the dispensing fee”.
“Through reform and investment, we believe that we can turn the corner and rebuild pharmacy in our country,” he said during oral questions in the House of Commons yesterday (January 13).
Read more: ‘Appalling’: NPA slams ‘bombshell’ £158m NHS clawback
Kinnock’s comments came in response to a question from Conservative MP for Hinckley and Bosworth Dr Luke Evans.
Evans had asked Kinnock to share how many community pharmacy contracts had “ceased in England” in 2025.
And he stressed to the pharmacy minister that community pharmacies are a “vital part of the primary care infrastructure”.
“Driving up costs”
Evans also noted that Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA) chief executive and chair Dr Leyla Hannbeck had “warned that higher business rates and increases in national insurance contributions...are to blame” for the pressure on pharmacies.
They are “driving up costs” while pharmacy income “remains fixed”, he said, asking Kinnock to “accept” that these tax decisions “directly increase” costs and “contribute to the loss of pharmacy contracts”.
He called on Kinnock to raise these matters “immediately” with Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Read more: Pharmacies are ‘hanging on by a thread’, warns CPE
It comes after National Pharmacy Association (NPA) chair Olivier Picard earlier this month slammed the NHS’s “bombshell” move to claw back millions of pounds from community pharmacy owners over the next 12 months.
It is “appalling” that the NHS plans to “claw back millions” from pharmacy budgets each month “under an opaque formula” that was “quietly slipped out just before Christmas”, he said.
Meanwhile, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) warned in December that pharmacies are “hanging on by a thread, losing money and struggling to cope with the ongoing demand from patients and the public”.
