EXCLUSIVE

Labour's shadow pharmacy minister has called for a "long-lasting" pharmacy funding settlement to ensure stability across the health service, in an exclusive interview with C+D.

Following PSNC's announcement on Monday that the new settlement would only last until April 2015, Jamie Reed MP said "nobody was interested" in pharmacy's funding model changing from "parliament to parliament".

Stability was "critical" in the NHS and it was important for the major political parties to find "common ground" so they could establish long-term contractual arrangements for the sector, Mr Reed told C+D at the Labour party conference in Manchester yesterday (September 23).

Despite the "very wide and deep differences" between the Labour and Conservative party's health policies, there was no reason why either party would not want to utilise community pharmacy better, Mr Reed said.

Labour hoped to work with the sector to "put proposals forward" for more national services to be commissioned through community pharmacy, he told C+D. "It's something we are thinking about. There needs to be a push to increase capacity [in the NHS] with the resources we already have," he said.

Mr Reed stressed that pharmacists were well placed to capture "good, clean data" on how patients used their medicines and this would become "more and more important" in the future.

"Pharmacy has a huge role to play in health policy under a Labour government. I see a very powerful, exciting future for pharmacy under a changing national health service," he said.

However, there "clearly" still needed to be more engagement between politicians and the sector, said Mr Reed, who told pharmacists to "watch this space".

Announcing the settlement on Monday (September 22), PSNC chief executive Sue Sharpe insisted the negotiator was "very keen" to reach a settlement for 2015-16 before April. Pharmacy leaders told C+D yesterday  that the short-term settlement could restrict investment in the sector.

	Will a one-year settlement hurt the sector?