The new pharmacy contract for 2026/27 shows the government is “in it for the long haul”, pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock told MPs yesterday.
At a Westminster debate on the future of community pharmacy, Kinnock said the £3.636bn funding deal announced last week shows a “clear commitment to long-term reforms” - and added that he plans to “spend a lot more time with our partners in the sector to seize every opportunity to go further”.
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“Pharmacies are a massive, untapped resource,” he said. “The NHS we’re building is putting them front and centre of care in every community.”
Kinnock also told the more than a dozen MPs attending the debate that he is “proud” to have given the sector “another significant uplift in funding”.
He added that the 10.3% uplift represents “almost three times the growth of the overall NHS budget” and demonstrates that the government is “putting our money where our mouth is”.
“Immense promise”
During the debate, Kinnock praised the independent prescribing pathfinder programme and said its success will inform the roll out of an NHS independent prescribing service from autumn, also announced in the new contract.
“Two hundred sites have delivered 34,000 consultations, with around 60% resulting in a prescribing decision, and 90% of those prescriptions were completed without the need to refer to a GP,” he said.
“It shows immense promise and as announced last week, the contract will focus on implementing what we have learned from the pathfinder programme.”
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He also commended Community Pharmacy England (CPE) and its chief executive Janet Morrison for “the incredibly constructive way in which they engage with myself and my team around the contract negotiations”.
“Some of the issues holding the sector back require fundamental thinking, and I’m looking forward to a meeting very soon with CPE [to discuss them].”
Pharmacy First
Labour MP for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard Alex Mayer challenged the government’s branding and promotion of Pharmacy First during the debate.
“It’s got completely and utterly the wrong name,” she said. “It’s a name that’s been dreamed up by health insiders, not by people who are thinking about how patients actually see the services that we’ve got.”
“I don’t think enough people will be thinking of highly trained clinical professionals who are on their doorstep, and crucially not thinking NHS.”
Read more: Exclusive: CPE’s Janet Morrison - ‘Not all of you will agree with this’
Mayer suggested the service be named “NHS Plus” and called for “compulsory rebranding” so that pharmacies “scream NHS, because NHS means free, trusted and quality”.
The MP also admitted that she only recently learned the seven conditions Pharmacy First can treat, and when she questioned fellow MPs on them, it “turned into a sort of terrible round of Family Fortunes”.
Read more: ‘To put it bluntly...’ The industry reacts to the contract news
“No one had the faintest idea what they were. So, we absolutely need a nationwide campaign because if people don’t know that these NHS services exist, they just won’t use them. We’ve got to stop hiding them in plain sight.”
Kinnock said he would take on board the “very interesting suggestions” on Pharmacy First’s branding but would not “make any rash decisions today”.
Disparity
The MPs attending the debate posed questions to Kinnock on issues as wide-ranging as funding, Jhoots, medicines access, abuse in pharmacies and CPE’s reaction to the contract.
Liberal Democrat MP for Tiverton and Minehead Rachel Gilmour raised whether business rates will be changed for community pharmacies considering other NHS providers like GP surgeries and dental practices “do not face the same burden”.
“I ask the minister how this disparity can possibly be justified, and whether the government intends to move to address this?” Gilmour said.
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Gilmour also said issues about workforce levels and integrating pharmacy into the wider healthcare system were “systemic failures underlying all others”, and that the “funding must match the words”.
“The 10.3% uplift is very important, but direction without sufficient resource is just aspiration,” she added.
And Independent MP for Leicester South Shockat Adam joked that his colleagues had “dispensed some great ideas today” – before stressing that community pharmacies have become “trapped” as a result of insufficient funding.
Read more: Pharmacy contract: What will independent prescribing look like?
“Community pharmacy represents one of the greatest untapped opportunities in modern healthcare,” he said. “Publish a roadmap to close the pharmacy funding gap with above inflation increases as a multi-year commitment.”
It comes after CPE’s chief executive confirmed that the negotiator “does not have a precise timeline” for the reform agenda promised by the government in the new pharmacy contract.
