“The government is working towards introducing legislation to enable hub-and-spoke dispensing between different legal entities in 2025,” pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock last week (December 23) revealed.
The minister made the comment after he was asked by shadow minister for business and trade Harriett Baldwin “whether he plans to bring forward hub-and-spoke dispensing legislation for pharmacies in 2025”.
Read more: Promised hub-and-spoke legislation delayed indefinitely
Kinnock said that “this change will be enabled via amendments to both primary and secondary legislation”.
It “is subject to the usual parliamentary processes”, he stressed.
“Inexplicably shelved”
The news comes as pharmacist MP Sadik Al-Hassan last month said that hub-and-spoke legislation is the “only” way to expand pharmacy capacity in Parliament.
He stressed that ministers should focus on “finally implementing the hub-and-spoke legislation, which was inexplicably shelved in September without warning or explanation”.
In the autumn, the government indefinitely delayed changes to the legal status of hub-and-spoke arrangements that were set to come into force this month.
At the time, it said that it was “not in a position to implement these proposals” by the beginning of 2025.
Read more: Pharmacy ‘may not survive winter’ as pharmacist MP urges govt to avoid ‘past 14 years’ of mistakes
The previous government dithered on publishing its hub-and-spoke response for more than two years after launching a consultation in March 2022, after a previous consultation on the model in 2016.
Currently, hub-and-spoke dispensing is only permitted between pharmacies within the same legal entity – meaning smaller independent pharmacies have been excluded from the model.
But if and when legalisation is passed, medicines that have been assembled and dispensed at a registered pharmacy may be “sold or supplied at or from a retail pharmacy business” that belongs to a different legal entity.
