In News

Follow this topic

Bookmark

Record learning outcomes

Representatives from three pharmacy trade associations met the health minister Stephen Kinnock yesterday to remind him that pharmacies continue to face huge cost pressures, with talks on community pharmacy funding for 2026-27 expected to start soon.

Henry Gregg and Malcolm Harrison, the chief executives of the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) and Company Chemists’ Association respectively, joined NPA chair Olivier Picard and Ian Strachan from the Independent Pharmacies’ Association for the roundtable discussion with Kinnock at the Department of Health and Social Care’s London headquarters.

The NPA said the four pharmacy representatives “pressed for the need to close the £2.6 billion funding gap” which was identified by an independent economic analysis commissioned by NHS England and published in March this year.

The four also made it clear to Kinnock that the funding shortfall was imperilling pharmacies “of all sizes” and told him that “with the right support”, they can help Labour realise its “ambitions in the 10-year plan to provide an expanded range of services and help shift care into the community”.

Gregg said it was “really important” for the three organisations to come together to “deliver the same message, loud and clear to government ministers”.

“Pharmacies have enormous potential to provide a wider range of services to their patients than ever before, delivering massive benefits to the whole health system and helping ministers to achieve the 10-year plan,” he said.

“However, this cannot happen whilst pharmacies have been closing in record numbers and those that have kept their doors open have done so by going to extraordinary and unsustainable lengths.”

NPA: Trade bodies up for working with Labour but only with sustainable funding package

Gregg said the NPA, CCA and IPA told Kinnock they were “up for working with the Government to deliver new services but only with a sustainable funding package that closes the funding gap identified by the NHS’s own analysis”.

Gregg also said they “raised with ministers the need to utilise independent prescribers or risk seeing these valuable skills leave community pharmacy”.

Harrison said the three bodies were “steadfast in our collective belief that community pharmacy has a crucial role to play in delivering the government’s 10-year plan for the NHS” and pointed to the CCA’s analysis showing pharmacies could free up 51 million primary care appointments a year.

“Delivering change of this kind, however, relies on investment to close the gap between the cost of providing NHS pharmaceutical care and what the NHS currently pays,” he warned.

“For pharmacies to be able to deliver more quality clinical care, and provide additional capacity in NHS primary care, the foundations must be fixed.”

Kinnock ‘fully understands the unjustness pharmacy finds itself’

In a post on Linkedin, Strachan said Kinnock made “it clear” during the meeting that “pharmacy would have to manage expectations” and “painted a landscape of stagnation and uncertainty”.

However, Strachan insisted Kinnock “gets the predicament we are in and fully understands the unjustness which pharmacy finds itself”.

Strachan also said he reminded Kinnock that “rather than investing in pharmacy to save money, we are asking the Government to profit share the benefits of incentivised procurement”.

Strachan added: “This represents a plea not for new money but to recycle existing profits from incentivised procurement, the money we save for the NHS through dampening down drug costs in England and Wales and replicate those profits into pharmacy.

“A model which has historically saved the Government billions every year through competitive tendering – this is the model which the IPA is proposing to counter the rebuttals of no new money.”

Strachan said the NPA and CCA “contributed to this initiative and joined in the discussion” and insisted “it was refreshing to see the sector rallying behind this initiative”.