Community Pharmacies

Community pharmacies are vital to our health service and high streets. Millions of people rely on their local pharmacies for over-the-counter everyday medicines, regular prescriptions and reassuring advice on a walk-in basis.

Securing prescription medicines, medical advice or urgent treatment at a local pharmacy, without having to drive miles or face the uncertainty of prolonged waits to be seen, is an important asset of healthcare for communities across the country, provided by community pharmacies. Their potential to enhance patient health and reduce the pressure on NHS hospitals and GPs is widely recognised. But they have been undervalued and underutilised by the previous government, and left in a parlous state. During the pandemic, community pharmacies were important to the national vaccination effort, but it took far too long for the Government to realise they should even be part of it.

More recently, the Government granted community pharmacies more prescription powers, for example, to help supply treatment for Step A – but only after parents were driving miles to find their child Strep A treatment, rather than when local pharmacists had urgently requested them.

Time and again, the last government treated community pharmacies as an afterthought. And now, community pharmacies are under critical pressure – causing detriment especially to the poorest communities and exacerbating health inequalities.

With growing pressure on GP surgeries and other health services, it is more important that the Government fully supports community pharmacies.

I’m a member of the Commons Health Select Committee, and we are taking further evidence on the pressure faced in this sector, especially on the viability of pharmacies and the vital services provided to patients. I have also spoken with and listened to local people and pharmacists. My Liberal Democrat Parliamentary colleagues and I have called on the government to:

• Create more training places and incentives to attract medical graduates and professionals to work in pharmacies and help reduce the pressure on GPs.
• Provide urgent stop-gap funding to keep local pharmacies open and reverse closures.
• Free up millions of hours of GPs’ time every year by empowering local, fully qualified pharmacists with greater prescribing rights and public health advisory responsibilities, to prevent costly and avoidable hospital admissions.
• Implement a long-term plan for pharmacy services to put them on a sustainable financial footing, building on the Pharmacy First approach as practised in Scotland.
• A Government review of the pressures facing pharmacies in England to assess the impact of pharmacy closures under the last Government.