I beg to move, That this House has considered the future of community pharmacies. It is always a pleasure to see the Minister in his place. I know how committed he is to his brief, and I am grateful for the conversations we have had on a number of important issues. The timing of this debate could hardly be better, coming as it does in the wake of the Government’s announcement just before the weekend. That announcement provides the perfect context within which to couch my remarks. I would like to believe that I have developed a reputation for constructive criticism, and I hope to offer a fair-minded but frank scrutiny of the Government’s plans for community pharmacies. There are positive moves, which I welcome, but there is also considerably further to go. It is clear that the national picture for community pharmacies is one of an incredibly fragile system, and I am sure that much reference will be made this morning to the damning headline statistic that since 2016, over 1,000 pharmacies have been lost across England. Funding was cut that same year and remained flat in cash terms until 2024, even as the volume of NHS pharmaceutical care and the cost of providing it surged.

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing the debate. When I met the Minister in April, we were going through the consultation on the pharmacy contract, but we are yet to hear any announcement. Does the hon. Member agree that the pharmacies we all rely on need certainty about when their contract negotiations and the associated funding will be completed?

The hon. Member makes a good point, which I shall return to in due course. The community pharmacy network has had to absorb real-terms cuts of 30% in Government funding. For most community pharmacies, NHS funding accounts for 90% to 95% of their annual income. That is simply not a sustainable business model; it is a slow strangulation. The Government’s own independent economic analysis, published as recently as March this year, found the gap to be £2 billion a year. More recently still, the Government have admitted that pharmacies in England were funded £800 million less in real terms in 2025-26 than they were a decade ago. It is important to be clear that those are the Government’s own figures. Against that backdrop, I welcome the funding settlement for 2026-27.

As a fellow south-west MP, will the hon. Lady welcome the fact that the Minister came to the Concord pharmacy in Little Stoke in my constituency just last week to make the welcome announcement about £340 million more to boost our vital community pharmacies? Does she agree that when the Minister winds up, it would be helpful for him to share how he finds these visits valuable in forming his work in the Department and showing him more about the support that pharmacies need?

As I said at the beginning, the Minister is a very hands-on Minister, and I am sure he finds every visit absolutely fascinating. The community pharmacy budget will increase by 10.3% to £3.636 billion. The introduction of independent prescribing into some pharmacy services later this year is a positive step, as are the measures aimed at stabilising the volatile medicines supply system. In the spirit of constructive opposition, I will certainly give credit where credit is due, but we must be honest: the settlement is still far short of what pharmacies need to keep their doors open. Over 600 branches closed last year alone.

Pharmacists such as Max, who runs South Petherton pharmacy, are taking care of constituents from the other side of my constituency. Our pharmacies in rural areas are expected to do more and more with little extra help. Does my hon. Friend agree that alongside greater funding, we need to see the Government use the NHS workforce plan to properly expand the pharmacy workforce?

As a rural MP myself, I certainly have a grasp of what my hon. Friend addresses, and I shall come to that in a minute. Analysis conducted by the Independent Pharmacies Association shows that an average pharmacy dispensing around 10,000 items a month will face a shortfall of approximately £56,000, even after the settlement. Without a commitment to continued above-inflation funding increases year on year, patients will face an acceleration of service reductions and closures. Those closures will fall hardest on communities such as mine and that of my hon. Friend, as I will explain. My constituents have lived with these difficulties. At a cursory glance, there are 16 pharmacies across Tiverton and Minehead, serving a population of approximately 91,200. On average, they dispense 113,000 prescriptions every month because they are busy, essential, community institutions. Yet a survey of 3,000 people in Tiverton, conducted by a local GP surgery, found that 30% of respondents were unable to find a pharmacy. That should simply not be the case in 21st-century Britain. It cuts to the heart of a fundamental truth about rural healthcare and much more that successive Governments have neglected to confront.

I recently visited Weldricks pharmacy in Rossington and saw the amazing work done by the team there. My constituency is in quite a rural area and provision is patchy. Does the hon. Member agree that it would be good to map all community pharmacies, understand where there are gaps, and make targeted interventions? That would ensure provision for the number of people living in that area.

I agree that a strategic approach is always best. The distances, the limited public transport and the dispersed nature of rural populations mean that the closure of a single pharmacy can represent a genuine healthcare crisis for thousands of people. I see that directly in my constituency; the loss of a fully fledged pharmacy with all its associated services in Bishops Lydeard in March 2024 was a blow to the community. In its place there is now a dispensary, but solely for patients of the surgery. The same thing happened in Norton Fitzwarren. Transport woes, which so often hold back my constituents, sever a vital link to the health service. Jhoots, the previous provider of pharmacy services in parts of Tiverton and Minehead, had operated poorly for some time. Constituents lamented the missing medicines, unexpected closures and queues stretching down the street. Under the new stewardship of Allied Pharmacies, things have improved markedly. That is a testament to what good management and proper investment can achieve.

My hon. Friend raises the spectre of Jhoots, which resulted in the closure of the Bridport and Lyme Regis pharmacies in my constituency. Jhoots exposed serious concerns around contractual failures, unsafe practices, staff treatment and service continuity, leaving staff in my constituency relying on food banks. When I met the Minister, he told me that officials were reviewing whether additional regulatory powers were required to prevent another Jhoots scandal. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important for the Government to bring forward legislation to deal with such a scenario?

I have had that discussion with the Minister, who reassured me that the Jhoots scenario has been at the front of his mind and he will seek to resolve it. There is also the question of business rates. It seems manifestly unfair that community pharmacies, which are frontline NHS providers in every meaningful sense, are required to pay full business rates, while GP surgeries and dental practices do not face the same burden. I ask the Minister how that disparity can be justified and whether the Government intend to address that. Pharmacies are the engine of community care and offer an opportunity that the Government have not fully grasped. The thrust of the Government’s health strategy has been care in the community, devolving healthcare back to local settings, with neighbourhood health structures and a shift away from hospitals to primary and preventive care. All of that is absolutely right but cannot be delivered without the community pharmacy network. Pharmacies are already doing the work the Government say they want the NHS to do: local, preventive, accessible care, delivered by trusted professionals in the heart of communities. The funding must match the words.

The hon. Member is making a powerful speech about the importance of community pharmacy. There are pharmacies on the edge of my constituency, serving Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. The inconsistency of integrated care board delivery can create problems for local communities trying to get medicines. Does the hon. Member agree that we need consistency of approach?

I assure the hon. Lady that some of the most frustrating conversations I have are with my local ICBs. Properly resourced pharmacies could release a staggering 51 million primary care appointments through an expanded Pharmacy First service, prevention services and a greater role in managing long-term conditions. That is 51 million appointments freed up in general practice, allowing more people to escape the infamous 8 am scramble. Pharmacies often meet people where they are, offering more accessible services to those who might not otherwise engage with the health service at all. They are arguably the most accessible arm of the NHS.

I have been fortunate to have a pathfinder within the independent prescribing programme in my constituency. Its data shows that only 5% of patients who use the independent prescribing pathway need to be referred to their GP, so it is exactly as she says: there are huge savings to be made. I must push the Minister, because Community Pharmacy England has said that it is “not persuaded that sufficient investment is being made to enable the full and effective introduction of independent prescribing.” Does the hon. Lady agree that the Minister should look at that carefully to make sure that we are getting as much as we can out of community pharmacy?

I shall come to just that point in a minute. This sounds strange now, but I am going to say it: take obesity, for example. One in three people in the UK are currently classified as obese. Obesity is estimated to cost the NHS over £11.4 billion a year, with wider societal costs to the tune of £74 billion a year. Community pharmacies are ideally placed to provide wraparound support for those prescribed weight-loss medicines as part of an NHS-commissioned service, but they need the resources and the commissioning framework to do so. There is one aspect of this debate that receives insufficient attention, and I want to raise it briefly. The ongoing situation in the middle east has hit the pharmaceutical supply chain as much as any other sector. There were a record 219 price concessions announced for community pharmacies in May alone, with further negotiations still ongoing. The cost of medicines has risen sharply. I understand that some cancer drugs have reportedly seen elevenfold increases. Crucially, medicine shortages and record-high price concessions reflect an instability in the supply chain that is being intensified by geopolitical pressures. I put it to the Government that the growing medicine supply crisis poses serious risks to Britain’s preparedness and resilience.

I met with a pharmacy manager in Denton who told me that NHS reimbursement for medicines is not keeping pace with rising costs. They are dispensing medicines at a loss, paying more to suppliers than the NHS then reimburses them and absorbing the shortfall. Does the hon. Lady agree that independent pharmacies need to be fairly funded if they are to continue acting as the front door to the NHS?

I agree wholeheartedly. I want to turn to two issues that I consider to be the systemic failures underlying all others: workforce and integration. On workforce, the community pharmacy network lost 3,000 full-time equivalent pharmacists between 2021 and 2025. That is not a sustainable trajectory. There is a specific incoherence in current policy that I must name. If one arm of the national health service is funded to recruit pharmacists away from community pharmacy while community pharmacies are simultaneously expected to take pressure off the same system, that is not joined-up workforce planning; it is quite simply the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. The introduction of independent prescribing is laudable and long overdue, and I note that it is expected to come later this year, but I ask for more specificity from the Minister. What is the Government’s current timetable for making independent prescribing a routine, commissioned part of NHS community pharmacy services? If we train pharmacists to prescribe and then fail to commission services that let them do so in community settings, we will have wasted a major opportunity, and we will have trained a cohort of professionals whose skills are systematically underused. On integration, Pharmacy First will not reach its full potential if GPs, hospitals, NHS 111 and patients all have a different understanding of how it functions. The incongruence within the system is hobbling pharmacy practice. What is required is proper system-wide integration, with pharmacies recognised as a fundamental pillar of our NHS. As the NHS modernisation Bill progresses through Parliament, that must be recognised. Pharmacies are already doing the work that the Government say they want the NHS to do. They are the first port of call, the most accessible point of contact and the trusted face of healthcare on high streets and in rural communities across this country. The Government have taken some positive steps, and I reiterate that the 10.3% uplift is very important. The direction of travel towards community care, independent prescribing and neighbourhood health is right, but direction without sufficient resource is just aspiration.

Of course, I fully agree with my hon. Friend’s comments, and I laud her good work in her constituency. I urge the Government to commit to above-inflation funding increases year on year in order to close the £2 billion gap identified by their own independent analysis, deliver proper integration across the NHS and address the workforce crisis before it becomes irreversible. Pharmacies are ready, they are willing and they are already delivering. The question is whether the Government will match that commitment with the funding and the strategy that the sector and our constituents deserve. I look forward to hearing hon. Members’ contributions.

Order. I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called. In order to get everybody in, we will have an informal time limit of three and a half to four minutes. I will call the Front-Bench speakers at 10.28 am.

Of course, I fully agree with my hon. Friend’s comments, and I laud her good work in her constituency. I urge the Government to commit to above-inflation funding increases year on year in order to close the £2 billion gap identified by their own independent analysis, deliver proper integration across the NHS and address the workforce crisis before it becomes irreversible. Pharmacies are ready, they are willing and they are already delivering. The question is whether the Government will match that commitment with the funding and the strategy that the sector and our constituents deserve. I look forward to hearing hon. Members’ contributions.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this important debate on the future of community pharmacies. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the importance of community pharmacies across the country, especially in Wolverhampton and Willenhall. They are true anchors of support for my communities, providing not only specialist healthcare services but a friendly, familiar face for so many residents.

Will the hon. Lady join me in paying tribute to the many people who work in community pharmacies, including my constituent Sadie Jefferson, who is 90 years old and retired last week from the community pharmacy where she had worked for 75 years? Hers is an example of the commitment and effort in community pharmacies right across the United Kingdom.

Order. I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called. In order to get everybody in, we will have an informal time limit of three and a half to four minutes. I will call the Front-Bench speakers at 10.28 am.

I extend my sincere gratitude and congratulations; 75 years working in a pharmacy is incredible. At the other end of the scale from Sadie, my very first Saturday job was in pharmacies in Wednesfield and Willenhall in my constituency. I also extend my thanks to the pharmacies, dispensers, frontline shop staff and delivery drivers whose dedication underpins that support. Community pharmacies are among the most accessible and trusted parts of our NHS.

Boots closed its pharmacy in Thames Ditton in 2024. An application was put in for another one, but it was decided following a pharmaceutical needs assessment that the need was met by the chemist. However, elderly residents have a 20-minute-plus walk to get to the chemist, and the high street around it has pretty much collapsed. Does the hon. Member agree that, beyond macro PNA figures, local circumstances are relevant?

I agree. The absence of a community pharmacy leaves a vacuum on the high street that is felt by residents. I am sure that Members across this Chamber will appreciate that factor as well. Some 1.6 million people walk through a pharmacy door in England every day; they are embedded in our communities. That is why I welcome the Government’s recent £340 million funding agreement for the sector and the expansion of Pharmacy First. It builds on a service that has already delivered more than 3.3 million consultations in the past year alone. Crucially, from autumn 2026, pharmacists with independent prescribing qualifications will be able to assess patients and prescribe medicines directly on the NHS. It is a significant step forward to deliver faster care right on our high street. However, if we are serious about shifting care into the community, improving prevention and delivering on the ambitions of the NHS 10-year health plan, we must be honest about the challenges that the sector has faced. From 2010 to 2015, community pharmacy funding broadly kept pace with demand, but from 2016 onwards it was cut and then largely held flat in cash terms through 2023 as costs and workload increased. That resulted in a sustained real-terms decline of around 20% to 25%. Since 2024, funding has begun to rise again, but primarily to stabilise the sector after years of underinvestment, with a significant gap still existing between funding and actual costs. Across England we have lost nearly 1,500 pharmacies since 2017—that is 15% of the entire network. Those national pressures are felt acutely in my constituency of Wolverhampton North East, where, since 2020, we have seen a net loss of six pharmacies. Yet, despite those challenges, my local pharmacies continue to step up. Through Pharmacy First alone, they have delivered more than 23,500 consultations. That points to the scale of the opportunities ahead. Community pharmacies are central to the future of primary care. It is thought that they could release up to 51 million primary care appointments by doing more on prevention and helping patients to manage long-term conditions. Independent prescribing is a vital part of that vision. At present, many pharmacies derive over 90% of their income from NHS funding while facing rising staff costs and increasing business pressures. The sector has also lost more than 3,000 full-time equivalent pharmacists in recent years. I therefore ask the Minister: what steps will the Government take to provide long-term sustainable funding and a road map for community pharmacies, and how will they address the workforce shortages and challenges? In Wolverhampton North East, pharmacies have stepped up time and again for local people. Now I stand with my pharmacies to ensure that they can continue to serve my constituents for many years to come.

Will the hon. Lady join me in paying tribute to the many people who work in community pharmacies, including my constituent Sadie Jefferson, who is 90 years old and retired last week from the community pharmacy where she had worked for 75 years? Hers is an example of the commitment and effort in community pharmacies right across the United Kingdom.

I extend my sincere gratitude and congratulations; 75 years working in a pharmacy is incredible. At the other end of the scale from Sadie, my very first Saturday job was in pharmacies in Wednesfield and Willenhall in my constituency. I also extend my thanks to the pharmacies, dispensers, frontline shop staff and delivery drivers whose dedication underpins that support. Community pharmacies are among the most accessible and trusted parts of our NHS.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for placing this matter before us. I also welcome the Minister to his place. I very much look forward to his commitment to the pharmacies, and I welcome the Government’s commitment so far—it would be rather churlish of anybody to say that we do not appreciate that. In January 2024, I called for a UK-wide roll-out of the Pharmacy First service, recognising increasing demand on pharmacies and the need for consistent access to healthcare across the United Kingdom. As the Democratic Unionist party’s health spokesperson, I continue to advocate for increased investments and support for the scheme as a means of decreasing pressures on our already strained healthcare system. Across the United Kingdom, a significant proportion of GP workload is addressing minor ailments—conditions that can be appropriately treated in community pharmacies. I have always advocated for that; we should be doing more of it. Investing and increasing community pharmacies’ capacity to treat those conditions, and, in turn, highlighting to the public their ability to avail themselves of pharmaceutical services for such ailments, will improve ease of access to standard care, reducing unnecessary GP and out-of-hours contact. Broadening the capability of the scheme also allows pharmacists to build their clinical skills and creates a more experienced workforce that can more readily diagnose and treat conditions, so I believe that we should look at this as an opportunity. I want to give a Northern Ireland perspective, as I always do in debates. There are 508 community pharmacies in Northern Ireland, and their use is steadily increasing. In 2024-25, Northern Irish pharmacies dispensed more than 45.7 million items—a 0.7% increase on the previous year. That is the highest figure on record, which indicates that we need to increase support for pharmacies to meet demand. In Northern Ireland, community pharmacies would benefit from a more formalised version of the Pharmacy First scheme, as it currently diverges from England’s formalised Pharmacy First structure and depends primarily on a minor ailments service. What discussions can the Minister—who is always responsive, for which I thank him—have with the Northern Ireland Assembly Minister, to ascertain how we can work better with the system that has been proposed for England. There is clear support for the scheme in Northern Ireland: 96% of respondents to a 2024 Northern Ireland Department of Health survey said that the informal Pharmacy First service should be recommended to others. The service improves patients’ confidence in the self-management of conditions, which is vital to a long-term reduction of unnecessary burdens on our strained GP services. As a result of the benefits of the service, in May 2024 the Department of Health’s community pharmacy strategic plan unveiled plans for Northern Irish pharmacies to treat six new conditions, offer two new services and run various pilots. Those improvements are to be introduced in the period up to 2030, but they are subject to the securing of the necessary funding. Rural patients often travel significant distances to access GPs, but they are likely to have easy access to a pharmacy. It is estimated that, as of 2025, 99% of Northern Ireland citizens live within five miles of their local pharmacy. Pharmacies clearly play a big role for us in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom. Many rural residents are older adults who live with long-term health conditions, so improving access to Pharmacy First services will support early intervention. The DUP recognises the pressure on GPs and hospitals, and recently welcomed the £42 million investment in pharmacy and digital reform, which has the potential to modernise prescription services to reduce the pressure. I very much look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. In particular, I ask him to share the information from England with the Minister in Northern Ireland, and to ensure that the UK-wide support for this vital cog in the health machine is endorsed and even increased.

Boots closed its pharmacy in Thames Ditton in 2024. An application was put in for another one, but it was decided following a pharmaceutical needs assessment that the need was met by the chemist. However, elderly residents have a 20-minute-plus walk to get to the chemist, and the high street around it has pretty much collapsed. Does the hon. Member agree that, beyond macro PNA figures, local circumstances are relevant?

I agree. The absence of a community pharmacy leaves a vacuum on the high street that is felt by residents. I am sure that Members across this Chamber will appreciate that factor as well. Some 1.6 million people walk through a pharmacy door in England every day; they are embedded in our communities. That is why I welcome the Government’s recent £340 million funding agreement for the sector and the expansion of Pharmacy First. It builds on a service that has already delivered more than 3.3 million consultations in the past year alone. Crucially, from autumn 2026, pharmacists with independent prescribing qualifications will be able to assess patients and prescribe medicines directly on the NHS. It is a significant step forward to deliver faster care right on our high street. However, if we are serious about shifting care into the community, improving prevention and delivering on the ambitions of the NHS 10-year health plan, we must be honest about the challenges that the sector has faced. From 2010 to 2015, community pharmacy funding broadly kept pace with demand, but from 2016 onwards it was cut and then largely held flat in cash terms through 2023 as costs and workload increased. That resulted in a sustained real-terms decline of around 20% to 25%. Since 2024, funding has begun to rise again, but primarily to stabilise the sector after years of underinvestment, with a significant gap still existing between funding and actual costs. Across England we have lost nearly 1,500 pharmacies since 2017—that is 15% of the entire network. Those national pressures are felt acutely in my constituency of Wolverhampton North East, where, since 2020, we have seen a net loss of six pharmacies. Yet, despite those challenges, my local pharmacies continue to step up. Through Pharmacy First alone, they have delivered more than 23,500 consultations. That points to the scale of the opportunities ahead. Community pharmacies are central to the future of primary care. It is thought that they could release up to 51 million primary care appointments by doing more on prevention and helping patients to manage long-term conditions. Independent prescribing is a vital part of that vision. At present, many pharmacies derive over 90% of their income from NHS funding while facing rising staff costs and increasing business pressures. The sector has also lost more than 3,000 full-time equivalent pharmacists in recent years. I therefore ask the Minister: what steps will the Government take to provide long-term sustainable funding and a road map for community pharmacies, and how will they address the workforce shortages and challenges? In Wolverhampton North East, pharmacies have stepped up time and again for local people. Now I stand with my pharmacies to ensure that they can continue to serve my constituents for many years to come.

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I want to speak about rural community pharmacies. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this important and timely debate. In my constituency, from Haltwhistle and Haydon Bridge to Bellingham, Ponteland and the villages across Tynedale, the local pharmacy is not simply a convenient service on the high street; it is the frontline of the NHS and a core and trusted custodian of community health and wellbeing. As has been said, rural healthcare works differently. People face geographical access challenges. Longer travel distances and limited public transport are both huge determinants of health outcomes. They face digital access challenges, with more frequent broadband and mobile connection issues. More than 30% of the population of my constituency is over the age of 65, and about 20% of the people in the communities I represent live with a disability. There are considerable accessibility challenges, which require assurance and support from a friendly and locally minded in-person service that community pharmacies are uniquely positioned to deliver. I want to touch more broadly on the challenges of delivering healthcare rurally. When we speak about modernising the NHS—from the conversations that I have had with the Minister privately, I know he is aware of this—we need to ensure that making the NHS more digital does not leave behind rural areas, where the access challenge continues. I hope the broader challenges posed by the Health Bill are taken up by other Departments in addressing connectivity issues. Whether they are managing the specific symptoms of a condition, collecting a prescription or accessing emergency contraception, or are a parent needing reassurance about their child’s symptoms, those in rural communities rely on proximity to their local pharmacy, given that the journey to a GP surgery or hospital is often unworkable, inaccessible or costly. In providing a wide range of health services, pharmacies play a crucial role in the broader mechanics of care, easing pressure on GP practices and helping patients to get the care they need more quickly. That is exactly the direction of travel proposed in the Health Bill. We want care closer to home, a shift towards prevention and better use of the wider healthcare workforce. If we are serious about delivering on those ambitions in rural areas, we have to be equally serious about supporting the infrastructure that makes that possible. The reality on the ground is that community pharmacies, particularly those in rural areas, are under real strain. In England, around 90% of the population live within walking distance of a community pharmacy, but that falls to just 20% in rural areas. We have seen closures and reductions in opening hours, and in places like my constituency, the loss of a single pharmacy is not easily absorbed—it is not simply numbers on a spreadsheet. There is not always another one down the road; the next nearest pharmacy could be several miles away, beyond the reach of those without a car or effective public transport links. I welcome the recently announced funding package for community pharmacies in England, but we need to address the further challenges to close the gap between the rising costs facing the sector and their increased delivery of services, which leaves community pharmacies vulnerable and, often, in a turbulent operating environment. Nearly 64,000 community pharmacy weekly opening hours were lost between September 2022 and June 2024. We cannot afford to lose any more, especially in rural constituencies. We need rural funding models that reflect reality and a continued commitment to innovation in community pharmacy. I urge the Minister to take forward those points.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. I thank and congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour), on her resolute advocacy for pharmacy provision in her constituency. She is right to mention Norton Fitzwarren, which is in my constituency but serves many of her constituents. I pay tribute to Councillor Andy Sully for all his long-term campaigning, which eventually saw a pharmacy return to the village, and I thank Mo Idris, the pharmacist who took the plunge and opened the facility. Yesterday’s debate on Second Reading of the NHS modernisation Bill included much talk about an NHS that works for people, but in Wellington, in my constituency, communities have had to scale the heights of bureaucracy in a system where patients have to work to the tune of the NHS, not the other way around. Wellington went from having four pharmacies to having just two. The Boots pharmacy in the medical centre closed, followed by Jhoots in September, leaving its staff in the parlous state that my hon. Friend referred to earlier. That left only two pharmacies—Superdrug and Boots—for a town of 17,000 residents. Queues that were 15 people deep formed, Boots completely failed to scale up to meet the challenge, medicines were not ordered in time and patients became anxious. I challenged the decision of the NHS to refuse to support the opening of another pharmacy. I pay tribute to the Wellington Pharmacy Action Group. Its dossier, which was sent to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, was a 17-page challenge to NHS Somerset, which, alongside all the pressure brought to bear by myself and others, eventually changed the position. The pharmaceutical needs assessment seems to be fundamentally flawed. How could it be prepared at a time when the town had four pharmacies, but also apparently demonstrate that two pharmacies were enough and no more needed to be opened? As I say, due to huge pressure, the situation was eventually turned around, but it should not be a matter of communities having to rise up against the challenges and rules of the NHS to get or restore pharmacy provision in a town of this size. Allied Pharmacies was granted a licence to open in Luson House, the former premises of Jhoots, which was a fantastic win for the community and came as a result of sustained community pressure. A fourth pharmacy at Westpark has also been approved, subject to appeal. However, the job is not done. The action group says that a further pharmacy is likely to be needed as the town grows, with tens of thousands of new homes under the Government’s new planning rules and national planning policy framework. Wellington is a textbook case of a town where housing growth is outrunning the provision of infrastructure. Essential services should be built in from the start, not promised after the fact, and definitely not reduced by half—from four pharmacies to two. Since 2017, England has lost 1,200 pharmacies. We Liberal Democrats would require developers to fund GP surgeries as a priority from the outset: “No doctors? No development.” The same must go for ensuring adequate provision of pharmacies and dentists if the Government’s housing plans are really to work for local people.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for placing this matter before us. I also welcome the Minister to his place. I very much look forward to his commitment to the pharmacies, and I welcome the Government’s commitment so far—it would be rather churlish of anybody to say that we do not appreciate that. In January 2024, I called for a UK-wide roll-out of the Pharmacy First service, recognising increasing demand on pharmacies and the need for consistent access to healthcare across the United Kingdom. As the Democratic Unionist party’s health spokesperson, I continue to advocate for increased investments and support for the scheme as a means of decreasing pressures on our already strained healthcare system. Across the United Kingdom, a significant proportion of GP workload is addressing minor ailments—conditions that can be appropriately treated in community pharmacies. I have always advocated for that; we should be doing more of it. Investing and increasing community pharmacies’ capacity to treat those conditions, and, in turn, highlighting to the public their ability to avail themselves of pharmaceutical services for such ailments, will improve ease of access to standard care, reducing unnecessary GP and out-of-hours contact. Broadening the capability of the scheme also allows pharmacists to build their clinical skills and creates a more experienced workforce that can more readily diagnose and treat conditions, so I believe that we should look at this as an opportunity. I want to give a Northern Ireland perspective, as I always do in debates. There are 508 community pharmacies in Northern Ireland, and their use is steadily increasing. In 2024-25, Northern Irish pharmacies dispensed more than 45.7 million items—a 0.7% increase on the previous year. That is the highest figure on record, which indicates that we need to increase support for pharmacies to meet demand. In Northern Ireland, community pharmacies would benefit from a more formalised version of the Pharmacy First scheme, as it currently diverges from England’s formalised Pharmacy First structure and depends primarily on a minor ailments service. What discussions can the Minister—who is always responsive, for which I thank him—have with the Northern Ireland Assembly Minister, to ascertain how we can work better with the system that has been proposed for England. There is clear support for the scheme in Northern Ireland: 96% of respondents to a 2024 Northern Ireland Department of Health survey said that the informal Pharmacy First service should be recommended to others. The service improves patients’ confidence in the self-management of conditions, which is vital to a long-term reduction of unnecessary burdens on our strained GP services. As a result of the benefits of the service, in May 2024 the Department of Health’s community pharmacy strategic plan unveiled plans for Northern Irish pharmacies to treat six new conditions, offer two new services and run various pilots. Those improvements are to be introduced in the period up to 2030, but they are subject to the securing of the necessary funding. Rural patients often travel significant distances to access GPs, but they are likely to have easy access to a pharmacy. It is estimated that, as of 2025, 99% of Northern Ireland citizens live within five miles of their local pharmacy. Pharmacies clearly play a big role for us in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom. Many rural residents are older adults who live with long-term health conditions, so improving access to Pharmacy First services will support early intervention. The DUP recognises the pressure on GPs and hospitals, and recently welcomed the £42 million investment in pharmacy and digital reform, which has the potential to modernise prescription services to reduce the pressure. I very much look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. In particular, I ask him to share the information from England with the Minister in Northern Ireland, and to ensure that the UK-wide support for this vital cog in the health machine is endorsed and even increased.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I must declare an interest as a registered pharmacist. I speak today wearing two hats: as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on pharmacy and as someone who spent nearly two decades working as a community pharmacist. That experience is why earlier this year, as APPG chair, I wrote a vision for what pharmacy should look like in 2040 and put it directly to policymakers across Government and pharmacy. Community pharmacy remains one of the most accessible parts of the NHS, with around 80% of the population living within a 20-minute walk of a pharmacy. However, as has been mentioned, nationally 1,383 pharmacies have closed since 2016, including six in North Somerset, even after two pharmacies were reopened in Portishead thanks to the hard work of Magna Pharmacy and Ramesh. Every single day, 1.6 million people walk through a pharmacy door, saving an estimated 38 million GP appointments every year. That is why the funding settlement announced last week matters so much. The 10.3% uplift adds £340 million to the overall contract. More importantly, an increase in the margin allowance provides important support and stability for the sector. I thank the Minister, the Department and Community Pharmacy England. However, I have called this a down payment on a brighter future. It is just a start, not an end point. The 10.3% uplift is very welcome, but it comes against a backdrop of an around 9% yearly increase in costs. Pharmacy First and the inclusion of independent prescribing are good starting points, but the next step is to map out what we want Pharmacy First to look like through to 2030 and beyond. It cannot simply remain a pharmacist-led service for a small number of conditions. Community pharmacy has the potential to play a much broader role across acute care, minor ailments and prevention. That ambition must be backed with the professional boundary changes to match, because it will mean nothing if the foundations are not right. Pharmacies are receiving £800 million less in real terms than a decade ago. The Government’s independent analysis found a funding gap of £2 billion a year. Former colleagues are telling me that they are dispensing more and more medicines at a loss, spending hours sourcing drugs that should be available and managing patients’ anxiety when the supply chain fails. As a country, we have become addicted to cheap medicines in our NHS, which has created vulnerabilities right across our supply chain. Fixing the drugs bill in a way that supports wider investment and greater supply chain resilience will also strengthen community pharmacy services for the future. We must get this right. My vision for pharmacy in 2040 calls for genuine integration into neighbourhood healthcare, as the 10-year health plan intends. However, integration works only if the infrastructure works. A true single patient record system with read-write access for pharmacists is the foundation on which everything else depends. Primary care, pharmacy and hospitals all need to work from the same picture of the same patient and sing from the same hymn sheet. There is no point writing a vision for pharmacy’s future that does not fit the wider NHS system it sits within. The 10-year health plan wants to move care closer to home. Community pharmacy is already there. It is an incredibly efficient, high-value asset to the NHS. I urge the Government to match that ambition with sustained, multi-year funding, a workforce plan that unlocks independent prescribing and the digital infrastructure to make seamless care a reality. This could be a really bright future for community pharmacy. I believe in the future of the profession, but only if we have the will to see it through.

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I want to speak about rural community pharmacies. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this important and timely debate. In my constituency, from Haltwhistle and Haydon Bridge to Bellingham, Ponteland and the villages across Tynedale, the local pharmacy is not simply a convenient service on the high street; it is the frontline of the NHS and a core and trusted custodian of community health and wellbeing. As has been said, rural healthcare works differently. People face geographical access challenges. Longer travel distances and limited public transport are both huge determinants of health outcomes. They face digital access challenges, with more frequent broadband and mobile connection issues. More than 30% of the population of my constituency is over the age of 65, and about 20% of the people in the communities I represent live with a disability. There are considerable accessibility challenges, which require assurance and support from a friendly and locally minded in-person service that community pharmacies are uniquely positioned to deliver. I want to touch more broadly on the challenges of delivering healthcare rurally. When we speak about modernising the NHS—from the conversations that I have had with the Minister privately, I know he is aware of this—we need to ensure that making the NHS more digital does not leave behind rural areas, where the access challenge continues. I hope the broader challenges posed by the Health Bill are taken up by other Departments in addressing connectivity issues. Whether they are managing the specific symptoms of a condition, collecting a prescription or accessing emergency contraception, or are a parent needing reassurance about their child’s symptoms, those in rural communities rely on proximity to their local pharmacy, given that the journey to a GP surgery or hospital is often unworkable, inaccessible or costly. In providing a wide range of health services, pharmacies play a crucial role in the broader mechanics of care, easing pressure on GP practices and helping patients to get the care they need more quickly. That is exactly the direction of travel proposed in the Health Bill. We want care closer to home, a shift towards prevention and better use of the wider healthcare workforce. If we are serious about delivering on those ambitions in rural areas, we have to be equally serious about supporting the infrastructure that makes that possible. The reality on the ground is that community pharmacies, particularly those in rural areas, are under real strain. In England, around 90% of the population live within walking distance of a community pharmacy, but that falls to just 20% in rural areas. We have seen closures and reductions in opening hours, and in places like my constituency, the loss of a single pharmacy is not easily absorbed—it is not simply numbers on a spreadsheet. There is not always another one down the road; the next nearest pharmacy could be several miles away, beyond the reach of those without a car or effective public transport links. I welcome the recently announced funding package for community pharmacies in England, but we need to address the further challenges to close the gap between the rising costs facing the sector and their increased delivery of services, which leaves community pharmacies vulnerable and, often, in a turbulent operating environment. Nearly 64,000 community pharmacy weekly opening hours were lost between September 2022 and June 2024. We cannot afford to lose any more, especially in rural constituencies. We need rural funding models that reflect reality and a continued commitment to innovation in community pharmacy. I urge the Minister to take forward those points.

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this debate. She, the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) and all colleagues have dispensed some great ideas today. [Laughter.] Sorry, but it does not end there. The Minister and Members may be aware—I might not have mentioned it enough—that I am one of the only practising optometrists to be a Member of Parliament, and optometrists share many of the concerns and challenges that our pharmacy colleagues face. I surpass the hon. Member for North Somerset in having been a community-based optometrist for nearly three decades. I want to address many of the points that have been made. First, our GPs are facing real burnout. There is a lag in the number of GPs who are qualifying and taking up positions. In lower socioeconomic areas, of which there are many in my Leicester South constituency, there are 1,985 patients per GP. There are 300 more patients per GP in those areas and, as has been mentioned, pharmacists really do plug the gap, saving 38 million GP appointments and doing incredible work. The Government’s 10-year health plan is built on the bold premise of shifting care out of hospitals and into our communities. We all support that ambition—of course we do—but we cannot deliver care in the community if we are not allowing community infrastructure to thrive, and that is precisely what is happening to pharmacies at the moment. Since 2017, England has lost more than 1,400 bricks-and-mortar pharmacies, which is a net loss of 15% of the entire network. In Leicester, five pharmacies have shut down in the last calendar year alone. There are now fewer than 10,000 pharmacies open in England, and nearly 64,000 opening hours a week have disappeared since 2022. Between 2021 and 2025, the sector lost 3,000 full-time equivalent pharmacists. Funding was cut in 2016 and held flat for eight years, and the sector has absorbed real-terms cuts of 30%. Pharmacies, unlike other businesses, cannot pass on their costs to their customers. They cannot manage demand by extending their waiting lists, and 90% to 95% of their income comes from the NHS. They are, in effect, trapped. We all welcome the £340 million uplift announced for 2026-27 and the decision to begin integrating independent prescribing into Pharmacy First and the Pharmacy Contraception Service. Those are welcome steps, and everything of that nature is going in the right direction. However, NPA analysis shows that 8.9% is needed simply to allow pharmacy budgets to stand still—to absorb the national living wage, employers’ national insurance contributions, inflation and business rates. The settlement is just 1.3 percentage points above that threshold; it does not close the £2 billion funding gap that the NHS’s independent review identified a year ago. Much of the uplift will be swallowed by costs before a single patient sees any benefit. I am not just here to outline the problems, as there are positives. Community pharmacies represent one of the greatest untapped opportunities in modern healthcare, and I say that as someone who has seen community-based clinical practice at work. Independent prescribing is, as the sector rightly calls it, a generational opportunity. Pharmacists already have the clinical skills. With the right framework and investment, they can manage long-term conditions, initiate and adjust medicines and take pressure directly off GPs—not as a stopgap, but as a genuine, permanent part of the primary care team. Beyond prescribing, pharmacies are ideally placed to deliver integrated healthcare and lifestyle services, such as smoking cessation, weight management, hypertension case-finding and alcohol interventions. In my experience in community eye care, the closer we embed clinical services in high street settings, the better the uptake by patients who would never otherwise engage with the NHS. Pharmacies are trusted, accessible and visited regularly—far more than any GP surgery. Medicine optimisation is another point. With an ageing population on complex polypharmacy regimes, pharmacists conducting structured medication reviews can reduce harm, cut millions of pounds in waste and improve outcomes. This is not aspirational; it is proven. We are simply failing to fund it at scale. I have a repeat prescription for the Minister. First, publish a road map to close the pharmacy funding gap with above-inflation increases—not in one year, but as a sustained multi-year commitment. Pharmacies cannot plan, invest or recruit without it. Secondly, match investment in retained margins with real action on medicine pricing. The UK is an unattractive market for global suppliers, and medicine shortages flow directly from that. That is a patient safety issue. Thirdly, be genuinely ambitious on independent prescribing. The autumn roll-out into Pharmacy First is a start, but we need a shared vision of what full deployment looks like in this Parliament, with the funding to match. Finally, address the workforce crisis by setting out concrete steps to grow the pharmacy workforce in parallel with any expansion of services. New services on the backs of a depleted workforce will fail.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. I thank and congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour), on her resolute advocacy for pharmacy provision in her constituency. She is right to mention Norton Fitzwarren, which is in my constituency but serves many of her constituents. I pay tribute to Councillor Andy Sully for all his long-term campaigning, which eventually saw a pharmacy return to the village, and I thank Mo Idris, the pharmacist who took the plunge and opened the facility. Yesterday’s debate on Second Reading of the NHS modernisation Bill included much talk about an NHS that works for people, but in Wellington, in my constituency, communities have had to scale the heights of bureaucracy in a system where patients have to work to the tune of the NHS, not the other way around. Wellington went from having four pharmacies to having just two. The Boots pharmacy in the medical centre closed, followed by Jhoots in September, leaving its staff in the parlous state that my hon. Friend referred to earlier. That left only two pharmacies—Superdrug and Boots—for a town of 17,000 residents. Queues that were 15 people deep formed, Boots completely failed to scale up to meet the challenge, medicines were not ordered in time and patients became anxious. I challenged the decision of the NHS to refuse to support the opening of another pharmacy. I pay tribute to the Wellington Pharmacy Action Group. Its dossier, which was sent to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, was a 17-page challenge to NHS Somerset, which, alongside all the pressure brought to bear by myself and others, eventually changed the position. The pharmaceutical needs assessment seems to be fundamentally flawed. How could it be prepared at a time when the town had four pharmacies, but also apparently demonstrate that two pharmacies were enough and no more needed to be opened? As I say, due to huge pressure, the situation was eventually turned around, but it should not be a matter of communities having to rise up against the challenges and rules of the NHS to get or restore pharmacy provision in a town of this size. Allied Pharmacies was granted a licence to open in Luson House, the former premises of Jhoots, which was a fantastic win for the community and came as a result of sustained community pressure. A fourth pharmacy at Westpark has also been approved, subject to appeal. However, the job is not done. The action group says that a further pharmacy is likely to be needed as the town grows, with tens of thousands of new homes under the Government’s new planning rules and national planning policy framework. Wellington is a textbook case of a town where housing growth is outrunning the provision of infrastructure. Essential services should be built in from the start, not promised after the fact, and definitely not reduced by half—from four pharmacies to two. Since 2017, England has lost 1,200 pharmacies. We Liberal Democrats would require developers to fund GP surgeries as a priority from the outset: “No doctors? No development.” The same must go for ensuring adequate provision of pharmacies and dentists if the Government’s housing plans are really to work for local people.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) on securing this timely debate. Community pharmacies and the people in them are the backbone of our NHS. They are a fixture on our high streets, dispensing our medicines, providing confidential, expert advice and helping people with everything from colds and tummy bugs to allergies and ear infections. Increasingly, through Pharmacy First, they are also prescribing prescription medicines without patients having to see a GP, which absolutely has to be the way to go. I am four-square behind Pharmacy First, with one small caveat: I have to say to the Minister that I think it has completely and utterly the wrong name. We could say that it does what it says on the tin: “Go to the pharmacy first.” However, to me it is a name that has been dreamed up by health insiders, not by people thinking about how patients actually see our services. When I think about going to the chemist, I think about a place where we probably pay for our prescription and maybe pick up some shampoo or, if it has suddenly started chucking it down, an umbrella. I do not think enough people will be thinking of highly trained clinical professionals who are on their doorstep. Crucially, they will not be thinking NHS. My suggestion for the Minister today is to change the name of Pharmacy First to something else, maybe “NHS+”, and to include compulsory rebranding in every contract, so that the shopfront would scream NHS. NHS means free, trusted and quality, and the plus sign would look a bit like a chemist’s anyway. A knock-on effect would be sprucing up our high streets, creating pride in place, which I know this Labour Government stand four-square behind. I would absolutely shout about it from the rooftops. Ahead of today’s debate, I went on the NHS pharmacies website to find out which of my local pharmacies provide Pharmacy First services. I am afraid that I came away none the wiser, but I did learn the seven common conditions that Pharmacy First chemists can help me with, from sore throats to shingles. Before that, I did not know that there were seven. I tried this out at a meeting of party members recently, and it turned into a terrible round of “Family Fortunes”. No one had the faintest idea what they were. We absolutely need a nationwide campaign so that people understand what services they can get from their pharmacies. If people do not know that these NHS services exist, they just will not use them. We have to stop hiding them in plain sight, and ensure that people understand what every community pharmacy already is: the NHS front door on every high street.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I must declare an interest as a registered pharmacist. I speak today wearing two hats: as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on pharmacy and as someone who spent nearly two decades working as a community pharmacist. That experience is why earlier this year, as APPG chair, I wrote a vision for what pharmacy should look like in 2040 and put it directly to policymakers across Government and pharmacy. Community pharmacy remains one of the most accessible parts of the NHS, with around 80% of the population living within a 20-minute walk of a pharmacy. However, as has been mentioned, nationally 1,383 pharmacies have closed since 2016, including six in North Somerset, even after two pharmacies were reopened in Portishead thanks to the hard work of Magna Pharmacy and Ramesh. Every single day, 1.6 million people walk through a pharmacy door, saving an estimated 38 million GP appointments every year. That is why the funding settlement announced last week matters so much. The 10.3% uplift adds £340 million to the overall contract. More importantly, an increase in the margin allowance provides important support and stability for the sector. I thank the Minister, the Department and Community Pharmacy England. However, I have called this a down payment on a brighter future. It is just a start, not an end point. The 10.3% uplift is very welcome, but it comes against a backdrop of an around 9% yearly increase in costs. Pharmacy First and the inclusion of independent prescribing are good starting points, but the next step is to map out what we want Pharmacy First to look like through to 2030 and beyond. It cannot simply remain a pharmacist-led service for a small number of conditions. Community pharmacy has the potential to play a much broader role across acute care, minor ailments and prevention. That ambition must be backed with the professional boundary changes to match, because it will mean nothing if the foundations are not right. Pharmacies are receiving £800 million less in real terms than a decade ago. The Government’s independent analysis found a funding gap of £2 billion a year. Former colleagues are telling me that they are dispensing more and more medicines at a loss, spending hours sourcing drugs that should be available and managing patients’ anxiety when the supply chain fails. As a country, we have become addicted to cheap medicines in our NHS, which has created vulnerabilities right across our supply chain. Fixing the drugs bill in a way that supports wider investment and greater supply chain resilience will also strengthen community pharmacy services for the future. We must get this right. My vision for pharmacy in 2040 calls for genuine integration into neighbourhood healthcare, as the 10-year health plan intends. However, integration works only if the infrastructure works. A true single patient record system with read-write access for pharmacists is the foundation on which everything else depends. Primary care, pharmacy and hospitals all need to work from the same picture of the same patient and sing from the same hymn sheet. There is no point writing a vision for pharmacy’s future that does not fit the wider NHS system it sits within. The 10-year health plan wants to move care closer to home. Community pharmacy is already there. It is an incredibly efficient, high-value asset to the NHS. I urge the Government to match that ambition with sustained, multi-year funding, a workforce plan that unlocks independent prescribing and the digital infrastructure to make seamless care a reality. This could be a really bright future for community pharmacy. I believe in the future of the profession, but only if we have the will to see it through.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) not only on securing this debate, but on the manner in which she introduced it. As a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, which keeps this and other issues under constant review, I have been listening very intently today, and I will certainly be taking messages back to the Committee. I particularly welcomed the contribution of the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) and his—pardon the pun—prescription for the better health of pharmacies. I welcomed the announcement in the Minister’s written statement to the House yesterday, but it is notable that Community Pharmacy England has said that even with that extra investment, many community pharmacies will remain in financial peril. Although it softens the blow, it will not remove the threat or the peril hanging over many pharmacies around the country. As for my constituency, there are 15 pharmacies in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, which seems to be about average compared with other constituencies that have been mentioned, and Pharmacy First saves approximately 2,500 GP appointments per annum. That initiative is certainly delivering but, as previous speakers have said, it could deliver a great deal more. It is telling of the times we live in that one of the tragically many pharmacies that have closed—I will not say where—has been replaced with an apothecary. I hope that that is not a sign of a continuing trend, but perhaps it says something symbolic about the way things are going. We are well aware that pharmacies should be at the frontline of one of the most important of the Government’s three shifts: the shift from hospital to community. Building up and strengthening the resilience of our community pharmacies is essential for the Government to deliver that shift. One of the many brilliant community pharmacies in my constituency is Hall’s in Helston, in the south of the constituency. The pharmacy dispenses between 9,000 and 12,000 prescriptions per month, representing about 70% of the dispensing activity in the hinterland of the Helston area. Despite that critical role in primary care delivery, it is under increasingly severe financial pressure. It does not believe that yesterday’s announcement will relieve that pressure, because of how medicines are reimbursed. As others have said, a key issue is the growing number of medicines that are being priced above the drug tariff. Essential medications, such as—I will get the pronunciation wrong—ramipril, bisoprolol and Creon are frequently being supplied at a loss. Price concessions are sometimes introduced, but they are often delayed, inconsistent and insufficient to reflect real-time market prices. That creates a situation in which pharmacies must either dispense at a financial loss or deny supply. They use a system called e-CASS, which tracks real-time drug pricing. On any given day, there are between 16 and 40 lines that cannot be ordered through standard systems because the purchase price exceeds the reimbursement tariff. That number has increased significantly over recent years, indicating a worsening trend. As a result, independent pharmacies such as Hall’s are increasingly being forced to subsidise NHS dispensing from their own funds just to maintain patient care. That is simply not sustainable. The situation is further complicated by ongoing medicine shortages. There are growing concerns that elements of the current reimbursement system are actively impacting timely patient access to medicines. Pharmacies are left simultaneously managing supply chain disruptions and financial risks, with limited systemic support. We are also witnessing troubling behaviour in the sector. Some large corporate pharmacy chains are redirecting patients to independent pharmacies for medicines that are above tariff, incorrectly stating that those medicines are unavailable when in reality they are unwilling to supply them because of the financial loss involved. That shifts both the clinical and the financial burden on to independent contractors. Regrettably, that has begun to force difficult decisions across the sector as more medicines fall off tariff. In addition, the continued closure of pharmacies is placing further strain on other parts of the NHS. It is putting further pressure on emergency departments and GP services, which is the exact opposite of the direction in which services should be going.

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this debate. She, the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) and all colleagues have dispensed some great ideas today. [Laughter.] Sorry, but it does not end there. The Minister and Members may be aware—I might not have mentioned it enough—that I am one of the only practising optometrists to be a Member of Parliament, and optometrists share many of the concerns and challenges that our pharmacy colleagues face. I surpass the hon. Member for North Somerset in having been a community-based optometrist for nearly three decades. I want to address many of the points that have been made. First, our GPs are facing real burnout. There is a lag in the number of GPs who are qualifying and taking up positions. In lower socioeconomic areas, of which there are many in my Leicester South constituency, there are 1,985 patients per GP. There are 300 more patients per GP in those areas and, as has been mentioned, pharmacists really do plug the gap, saving 38 million GP appointments and doing incredible work. The Government’s 10-year health plan is built on the bold premise of shifting care out of hospitals and into our communities. We all support that ambition—of course we do—but we cannot deliver care in the community if we are not allowing community infrastructure to thrive, and that is precisely what is happening to pharmacies at the moment. Since 2017, England has lost more than 1,400 bricks-and-mortar pharmacies, which is a net loss of 15% of the entire network. In Leicester, five pharmacies have shut down in the last calendar year alone. There are now fewer than 10,000 pharmacies open in England, and nearly 64,000 opening hours a week have disappeared since 2022. Between 2021 and 2025, the sector lost 3,000 full-time equivalent pharmacists. Funding was cut in 2016 and held flat for eight years, and the sector has absorbed real-terms cuts of 30%. Pharmacies, unlike other businesses, cannot pass on their costs to their customers. They cannot manage demand by extending their waiting lists, and 90% to 95% of their income comes from the NHS. They are, in effect, trapped. We all welcome the £340 million uplift announced for 2026-27 and the decision to begin integrating independent prescribing into Pharmacy First and the Pharmacy Contraception Service. Those are welcome steps, and everything of that nature is going in the right direction. However, NPA analysis shows that 8.9% is needed simply to allow pharmacy budgets to stand still—to absorb the national living wage, employers’ national insurance contributions, inflation and business rates. The settlement is just 1.3 percentage points above that threshold; it does not close the £2 billion funding gap that the NHS’s independent review identified a year ago. Much of the uplift will be swallowed by costs before a single patient sees any benefit. I am not just here to outline the problems, as there are positives. Community pharmacies represent one of the greatest untapped opportunities in modern healthcare, and I say that as someone who has seen community-based clinical practice at work. Independent prescribing is, as the sector rightly calls it, a generational opportunity. Pharmacists already have the clinical skills. With the right framework and investment, they can manage long-term conditions, initiate and adjust medicines and take pressure directly off GPs—not as a stopgap, but as a genuine, permanent part of the primary care team. Beyond prescribing, pharmacies are ideally placed to deliver integrated healthcare and lifestyle services, such as smoking cessation, weight management, hypertension case-finding and alcohol interventions. In my experience in community eye care, the closer we embed clinical services in high street settings, the better the uptake by patients who would never otherwise engage with the NHS. Pharmacies are trusted, accessible and visited regularly—far more than any GP surgery. Medicine optimisation is another point. With an ageing population on complex polypharmacy regimes, pharmacists conducting structured medication reviews can reduce harm, cut millions of pounds in waste and improve outcomes. This is not aspirational; it is proven. We are simply failing to fund it at scale. I have a repeat prescription for the Minister. First, publish a road map to close the pharmacy funding gap with above-inflation increases—not in one year, but as a sustained multi-year commitment. Pharmacies cannot plan, invest or recruit without it. Secondly, match investment in retained margins with real action on medicine pricing. The UK is an unattractive market for global suppliers, and medicine shortages flow directly from that. That is a patient safety issue. Thirdly, be genuinely ambitious on independent prescribing. The autumn roll-out into Pharmacy First is a start, but we need a shared vision of what full deployment looks like in this Parliament, with the funding to match. Finally, address the workforce crisis by setting out concrete steps to grow the pharmacy workforce in parallel with any expansion of services. New services on the backs of a depleted workforce will fail.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this important debate. I also thank the staff at community pharmacies across my constituency, particularly the staff at the Well pharmacy in Denton Holme who have given exceptional care and support to my family for many years. Pharmacies and their staff provide a vital accessible health hub in our communities. However, this year Community Pharmacy England has reported that 55% of pharmacy staff experience abuse, often triggered by medicine shortages, prescription delays, long queues and other issues entirely outside their control. I am sure all hon. Members will agree that, whatever the prompt, abuse of that nature is completely unacceptable. I will therefore be grateful if the Minister can briefly outline what action the Government are taking to protect pharmacy workers from abuse. Sadly, under the previous Government too many community pharmacies were lost. Between 2019 and 2024, 1,633 community pharmacies closed. In the same period, about 400 opened: just one for every four that was closed. In communities such as Carlisle, the closure of a pharmacy has a significant knock-on effect on the remaining pharmacies. Two pharmacies in the Harraby area of Carlisle have closed in recent years, placing additional pressure on the sole remaining pharmacy, on Central Avenue, and resulting in longer waits for prescription collections. It is therefore doubly frustrating that efforts to open a new pharmacy in the same community have so far come to nothing because the premises’ landlord, the Riverside housing association, has failed to respond to representations from both the prospective pharmacist and me since last October.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) on securing this timely debate. Community pharmacies and the people in them are the backbone of our NHS. They are a fixture on our high streets, dispensing our medicines, providing confidential, expert advice and helping people with everything from colds and tummy bugs to allergies and ear infections. Increasingly, through Pharmacy First, they are also prescribing prescription medicines without patients having to see a GP, which absolutely has to be the way to go. I am four-square behind Pharmacy First, with one small caveat: I have to say to the Minister that I think it has completely and utterly the wrong name. We could say that it does what it says on the tin: “Go to the pharmacy first.” However, to me it is a name that has been dreamed up by health insiders, not by people thinking about how patients actually see our services. When I think about going to the chemist, I think about a place where we probably pay for our prescription and maybe pick up some shampoo or, if it has suddenly started chucking it down, an umbrella. I do not think enough people will be thinking of highly trained clinical professionals who are on their doorstep. Crucially, they will not be thinking NHS. My suggestion for the Minister today is to change the name of Pharmacy First to something else, maybe “NHS+”, and to include compulsory rebranding in every contract, so that the shopfront would scream NHS. NHS means free, trusted and quality, and the plus sign would look a bit like a chemist’s anyway. A knock-on effect would be sprucing up our high streets, creating pride in place, which I know this Labour Government stand four-square behind. I would absolutely shout about it from the rooftops. Ahead of today’s debate, I went on the NHS pharmacies website to find out which of my local pharmacies provide Pharmacy First services. I am afraid that I came away none the wiser, but I did learn the seven common conditions that Pharmacy First chemists can help me with, from sore throats to shingles. Before that, I did not know that there were seven. I tried this out at a meeting of party members recently, and it turned into a terrible round of “Family Fortunes”. No one had the faintest idea what they were. We absolutely need a nationwide campaign so that people understand what services they can get from their pharmacies. If people do not know that these NHS services exist, they just will not use them. We have to stop hiding them in plain sight, and ensure that people understand what every community pharmacy already is: the NHS front door on every high street.

Shame!

In the meantime, ironically, the shop next door, a former pharmacy, has been refurbed and opened as yet another barber’s and mini-mart. It is simply not good enough. That is why I very much welcome this Government’s prescription for our community pharmacies: not just £3.6 billion in funding for community pharmacies, but the Government’s high street strategy, the recently announced crackdown on dodgy vape shops and mini-marts and the plans to integrate community pharmacies as key local healthcare hubs. These actions are not just vital for the health of local people; they are vital for the health of our high streets, too.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) not only on securing this debate, but on the manner in which she introduced it. As a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, which keeps this and other issues under constant review, I have been listening very intently today, and I will certainly be taking messages back to the Committee. I particularly welcomed the contribution of the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) and his—pardon the pun—prescription for the better health of pharmacies. I welcomed the announcement in the Minister’s written statement to the House yesterday, but it is notable that Community Pharmacy England has said that even with that extra investment, many community pharmacies will remain in financial peril. Although it softens the blow, it will not remove the threat or the peril hanging over many pharmacies around the country. As for my constituency, there are 15 pharmacies in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, which seems to be about average compared with other constituencies that have been mentioned, and Pharmacy First saves approximately 2,500 GP appointments per annum. That initiative is certainly delivering but, as previous speakers have said, it could deliver a great deal more. It is telling of the times we live in that one of the tragically many pharmacies that have closed—I will not say where—has been replaced with an apothecary. I hope that that is not a sign of a continuing trend, but perhaps it says something symbolic about the way things are going. We are well aware that pharmacies should be at the frontline of one of the most important of the Government’s three shifts: the shift from hospital to community. Building up and strengthening the resilience of our community pharmacies is essential for the Government to deliver that shift. One of the many brilliant community pharmacies in my constituency is Hall’s in Helston, in the south of the constituency. The pharmacy dispenses between 9,000 and 12,000 prescriptions per month, representing about 70% of the dispensing activity in the hinterland of the Helston area. Despite that critical role in primary care delivery, it is under increasingly severe financial pressure. It does not believe that yesterday’s announcement will relieve that pressure, because of how medicines are reimbursed. As others have said, a key issue is the growing number of medicines that are being priced above the drug tariff. Essential medications, such as—I will get the pronunciation wrong—ramipril, bisoprolol and Creon are frequently being supplied at a loss. Price concessions are sometimes introduced, but they are often delayed, inconsistent and insufficient to reflect real-time market prices. That creates a situation in which pharmacies must either dispense at a financial loss or deny supply. They use a system called e-CASS, which tracks real-time drug pricing. On any given day, there are between 16 and 40 lines that cannot be ordered through standard systems because the purchase price exceeds the reimbursement tariff. That number has increased significantly over recent years, indicating a worsening trend. As a result, independent pharmacies such as Hall’s are increasingly being forced to subsidise NHS dispensing from their own funds just to maintain patient care. That is simply not sustainable. The situation is further complicated by ongoing medicine shortages. There are growing concerns that elements of the current reimbursement system are actively impacting timely patient access to medicines. Pharmacies are left simultaneously managing supply chain disruptions and financial risks, with limited systemic support. We are also witnessing troubling behaviour in the sector. Some large corporate pharmacy chains are redirecting patients to independent pharmacies for medicines that are above tariff, incorrectly stating that those medicines are unavailable when in reality they are unwilling to supply them because of the financial loss involved. That shifts both the clinical and the financial burden on to independent contractors. Regrettably, that has begun to force difficult decisions across the sector as more medicines fall off tariff. In addition, the continued closure of pharmacies is placing further strain on other parts of the NHS. It is putting further pressure on emergency departments and GP services, which is the exact opposite of the direction in which services should be going.

It is an absolute honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this fantastic and timely debate. I also note the expertise of my friend the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan). Not only did he provide some really good insights—I thought his point about the importance of a single patient record all the way from pharmacy to hospital was especially meaningful—but I love how enthusiastically he agrees with everyone else’s points.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this important debate. I also thank the staff at community pharmacies across my constituency, particularly the staff at the Well pharmacy in Denton Holme who have given exceptional care and support to my family for many years. Pharmacies and their staff provide a vital accessible health hub in our communities. However, this year Community Pharmacy England has reported that 55% of pharmacy staff experience abuse, often triggered by medicine shortages, prescription delays, long queues and other issues entirely outside their control. I am sure all hon. Members will agree that, whatever the prompt, abuse of that nature is completely unacceptable. I will therefore be grateful if the Minister can briefly outline what action the Government are taking to protect pharmacy workers from abuse. Sadly, under the previous Government too many community pharmacies were lost. Between 2019 and 2024, 1,633 community pharmacies closed. In the same period, about 400 opened: just one for every four that was closed. In communities such as Carlisle, the closure of a pharmacy has a significant knock-on effect on the remaining pharmacies. Two pharmacies in the Harraby area of Carlisle have closed in recent years, placing additional pressure on the sole remaining pharmacy, on Central Avenue, and resulting in longer waits for prescription collections. It is therefore doubly frustrating that efforts to open a new pharmacy in the same community have so far come to nothing because the premises’ landlord, the Riverside housing association, has failed to respond to representations from both the prospective pharmacist and me since last October.

Only the good ones.

In the meantime, ironically, the shop next door, a former pharmacy, has been refurbed and opened as yet another barber’s and mini-mart. It is simply not good enough. That is why I very much welcome this Government’s prescription for our community pharmacies: not just £3.6 billion in funding for community pharmacies, but the Government’s high street strategy, the recently announced crackdown on dodgy vape shops and mini-marts and the plans to integrate community pharmacies as key local healthcare hubs. These actions are not just vital for the health of local people; they are vital for the health of our high streets, too.

Yes, the good ones. There has been a general consensus that pharmacies are often overlooked as a source of care for those in the community. I have visited many pharmacies in my Winchester constituency: there is Eric, who runs Springvale pharmacy up in Kings Worthy; there is Colden Common pharmacy in Colden Common; and there is the Wellbeing pharmacy on Winchester High Street, which gives me my flu jab every year. The people there actually make having a flu jab a lot of fun; we always have a great laugh. I never thought having a vaccine would be something I would look forward to, but I love going in and seeing them. We know about the 8 am rush for GP appointments, so the fact that a high street service exists where one can drop in for advice and consultations is absolutely brilliant. Pharmacies allow us to siphon off some of the pressures on GP services, but—as pharmacists have been telling me repeatedly since well before I was elected—pharmacies are currently under immense pressure. Adding to that pressure is the increase in national insurance contributions, which has saddled pharmacies and GP surgeries with additional costs. As a consequence, many local pharmacies have had to limit opening times and staff numbers. In Alresford in my constituency, the hard-working staff at Wessex Pharmacies have had to close shop on Saturday afternoons. That service will be sorely missed, particularly by those who are in full-time education or work during the week and who relied on being able to pick up their prescriptions at the weekend. In addition, shorter opening times mean that if a patient sees their GP later in the day, the required prescription is delayed by a day if the paperwork is not registered in time. For a patient with an urgent need for medication, that extra day can be extremely frustrating and worrying. Although we really do welcome the recent 10% increase in Government funding to community pharmacies, it is worth pointing out that that is giving with one hand and taking with the other. In the wake of rising costs for energy, staff and medicines, this funding increase was the first in 10 years, so it was sorely needed, but unfortunately, it did little to alleviate the extreme pressures heaped on community pharmacies in the Budget. That point comes into focus when we consider the rise in drug costs: a 20% to 30% rise for things like paracetamol and hay fever medications, and an elevenfold rise in the cost of cancer drugs since February, while the funding provided to community pharmacies has dropped by more than 20% in real terms since 2015. That is why we are calling on the Government to invest in pharmacies in smaller towns, particularly in villages and rural areas such as mine in the Meon valley. In places such as Bishop’s Waltham and Colden Common, people need access to a community pharmacy, and not only for convenience: Conservative-run Hampshire county council has cut vital bus services to the nearest big towns, which means that people without a vehicle, especially older people, absolutely rely on local pharmacies for their medication. We are also calling for a new, long-term, sustainable model for pharmacies and an expansion of Pharmacy First to give patients more accessible routine services so that we can free up GPs’ time. We want an exemption for pharmacies from the national insurance contributions increase so that funds can be spent on patients and vital medications. I come to my final, key point. I have spoken to many pharmacists since I was elected and before that, and I have had very long, in-depth conversations with them. I have also attended events in Parliament organised by the Royal College of Pharmacy and the National Pharmacy Association and I have discussed their issues with the NHS pharmacy contract. Given my professional background, I am used to sourcing, dispensing and prescribing drugs. However, the contract is so complicated that, despite my extensive conversations with those organisations, I do not fully understand it. The key message that comes out is that it costs pharmacists to dispense NHS medication in many cases, and that NHS medication is sometimes being subsidised by other sales in shops. I even met two pharmacists who said that their personal finances are subsidising some NHS dispensation. That is clearly not tenable in the long run.

Standardisation and consistency in services are really important. A person in my constituency of Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme is living with poor mental health. His pharmacy has stopped doing nomads, and it is too far for them to travel to the next pharmacy, where those are not paid for. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that consistency in how we support pharmacies is massively important to help people such as my resident?

I completely agree. All businesses need predictability and stability. It appears that, week to week, pharmacists are trying to work out how to source drugs with changing prices, and there is an NHS contract that is not meeting their needs. When we talk about community healthcare and provision, it is important to remember that having good, well-run pharmacies means that people are being kept out of GP practices and that they are less likely to turn up at A&E. That is even better value for money for the NHS and, ultimately, for the taxpayer. There is no downside from a Government point of view to investing and heavily supporting community pharmacy, because the savings made upstream will be hugely significant. At the moment, we are treating people with conditions that should be treated in the community with the most expensive part of the NHS, in A&E and hospital, when they could quite possibly have avoided going there in the first place.

Accessibility is paramount. The costs that are pushed on to pharmacists mean that they cannot remain sustainable and that they resist opening pharmacies in smaller places, because it will take away business from them. Therefore, those pressures take away accessibility, which is needed.

That is another legitimate point, and it was made in my second to last words, so I thank my hon. Friend for contributing. I thank the Minister for listening to our concerns.

Only the good ones.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine, and I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this important debate. It is important that we discuss community pharmacies, given their place not only in the health landscape but in the hearts of many of my constituents and people across the nation. I, too, have visited multiple pharmacies, both in my shadow role and as an MP, and I, too, went to my local pharmacy for my flu jab, back in Newbold Verdon. I am very grateful to them because I found the system very easy to use and to get into. It is really important to see that system change that makes it more accessible and easier for people to make the choice to improve their own health and protect others. There are positives in this debate that we must celebrate. Community pharmacies are one of the most accessible parts of our health service. For millions of patients, particularly older ones, those with long-term conditions or those living in rural communities, the local pharmacy is often the front door to the NHS. They provide expert advice, dispense vital medicines, support prevention and increasingly deliver clinical services that help to reduce pressure on GPs and hospitals—as a former GP, I am very grateful for that—and that is why this debate is so important. Ministers want community pharmacies to do more, but I worry that, at the same time, they are actually making it harder for pharmacies to survive. This debate is timely, given that the Government agreed the community pharmacy contractual framework for 2026-27 last Friday. I expect that the Minister will reference that, but I will let Community Pharmacy England’s response speak for itself: “Accepting this deal does not mean we think it is enough—for this year or the future.” It went on to say: “It means the opposite…the sector is in a critical position, and that we now need urgent work on a sustainable long-term solution, including reform of the contract, funding and reimbursement model.” Given the Government’s enthusiasm for reviews and long-term plans, I would be grateful if the Minister updated us on what meetings he will have to work on the framework and the wider funding model, along with what changes we can expect and in what kind of time. The reality is that pharmacies continue to face mounting financial pressures, many related to the Government’s tax rises. Over the last two years, the Government have made a conscious choice not to exempt community pharmacies from their taxes and have even voted against that. In the first year of this Labour Government, pharmacies faced higher employer national insurance contributions alongside increases in the national living wage. In the second year, they have lost the temporary business rates support that they relied on, with the replacement not matching the rise in their costs. The sector is clear that much of the additional funding announced through the new framework will simply be absorbed by those rising costs. The headline findings from Community Pharmacy England’s latest “Pharmacy Pressures” survey, due to be published later this month, show that 100% of pharmacies report that costs are higher than at this time last year and that three quarters are losing money, while 86% say that it is taking longer to procure medicines and 76% say that patients are already being directly impacted by the pressures on their businesses. The National Pharmacy Association put it plainly last Friday when it said it was concerned that much of the funding increase will need to be spent on increased costs, including national living wage contributions, inflation and business rates rises, “rather than addressing chronic under-funding”. Those figures tell a simple story. The Government are asking pharmacies to do more while making it more expensive for them to keep their doors open. What discussions has the Minister had with the Chancellor regarding business rates for community pharmacies? Has he even raised the sector’s concerns with the Chancellor, and if so, what response did he receive? Will he press for a package of support similar to that made available to other sectors such as pubs, to help with those pressures? The rising costs also cast a shadow over the Government’s plan to expand independent prescribing through community pharmacy. We can all see that independent prescribing has enormous potential. It could improve patient access to care, make better use of pharmacists’ clinical expertise and help to deliver the Government’s ambition of shifting care from hospitals into the community. But the sector itself is not convinced that the necessary investment is in place. Community Pharmacy England has said: “we are not persuaded that sufficient investment is being made to enable the full and effective introduction of IP…given the workload, enhanced clinical responsibility, clinical governance and infrastructure requirements that it will entail.” It went on to warn that “the addition of IP to the CPCF risked being set up to fail.” That should concern us all in this Chamber. If pharmacies are expected to become a cornerstone of neighbourhood healthcare, as set out in the NHS 10-year plan, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that the necessary workforce, governance and infrastructure are in place to support that ambition? What response does the Minister have to those concerns, and what steps will he take to ensure that independent prescribing is the success we all want it to be? Alongside the financial pressures, pharmacies continue to face significant challenges in the medicine supply chain. Analysis by the National Pharmacy Association earlier this year highlighted rising prices for a number of cancer medicines and concerns about the impact on availability. At the same time, the number of medicine price concessions has reached record levels. There were 204 concessions agreed in April, surpassing the previous record set only a month earlier. Community Pharmacy England has now confirmed a new record of 219 concessions for May, with further requests still under negotiation. Behind those numbers are real patients facing delays, uncertainties and difficulties accessing the medicines that they need. Community Pharmacy England has warned that those figures reflect the continuing fragility of medicine supplies in the supply chain and that the wider instability from the middle east crisis is adding pressure. Of course, I cannot hold the Government responsible for that, but it is their duty to look at that volatility and to reassure patients and the sector that resilience is being put in place and measures are being looked at. I would be grateful for an update from the Minister on what that looks like. Before I conclude, I will raise an important point that is affecting dispensing practices. We have not talked about those today, but they are part of the real fabric of the community network. Dispensing GPs provide essential primary care medicine supplies to 10 million patients in remote, rural and coastal communities, where access to a community pharmacy is limited. For many patients, they are the primary point of access to medicines. Earlier this year, dispensing practices were informed that the central NHS England funding for the EMIS web dispensing module would cease and that the costs would instead be passed directly to the practices. The proposal generated significant concern among dispensing practices, the British Medical Association and the Dispensing Doctors’ Association. Concerns centred on the lack of consultation, the timing of the changes and the potential impact on the sustainability of dispensing services. Following representations from the sector, implementation has now been paused and central funding has continued. I welcome that decision. However, the uncertainty created caused understandable concerns for practices, their patients and the planning of future services, particularly for those in rural communities. When I wrote to the Minister to raise that issue, he responded that an assessment will take place this year of the long-term provision of dispensing modules and that NHS England will consult relevant bodies such as the Dispensing Doctors’ Association as part of that. Will the Minister provide further details on that assessment today? What criteria will be used? Who else is being consulted? If NHS England is going, who will take that work on? When can dispensing practices expect greater certainty about future arrangements? I would also be grateful if the Minister addressed concerns about the discount abatement—what is called the clawback system. Dispensing practices continue to argue that the current arrangement creates inequalities for them compared with community pharmacies. Equally, community pharmacies are upset about the clawback, so there is an obvious tension. Given that the Government are looking at the long-term structure, I would be grateful if the Minister took that away and considered how we can modernise that aspect to ensure that there is equity in the system as well as an understanding from both sides. Ministers have made it clear that they want pharmacies to play a greater role in prevention and neighbourhood healthcare and in reducing pressures elsewhere in the NHS. We in the Opposition agree, yet throughout this debate we have heard concerns from across the sector about rising costs, medicine supplies, independent prescribing and dispensing services. The question is whether Government policy is keeping pace with the expectations being placed on pharmacies, or whether Ministers are making it harder for the sector to deliver the growth and innovation they say they want to see. Community pharmacies have repeatedly demonstrated their value to patients in the wider health service. I therefore look forward to hearing from the Minister how he intends to address those concerns and provide greater confidence to a sector that remains vital to communities up and down this land.

Yes, the good ones. There has been a general consensus that pharmacies are often overlooked as a source of care for those in the community. I have visited many pharmacies in my Winchester constituency: there is Eric, who runs Springvale pharmacy up in Kings Worthy; there is Colden Common pharmacy in Colden Common; and there is the Wellbeing pharmacy on Winchester High Street, which gives me my flu jab every year. The people there actually make having a flu jab a lot of fun; we always have a great laugh. I never thought having a vaccine would be something I would look forward to, but I love going in and seeing them. We know about the 8 am rush for GP appointments, so the fact that a high street service exists where one can drop in for advice and consultations is absolutely brilliant. Pharmacies allow us to siphon off some of the pressures on GP services, but—as pharmacists have been telling me repeatedly since well before I was elected—pharmacies are currently under immense pressure. Adding to that pressure is the increase in national insurance contributions, which has saddled pharmacies and GP surgeries with additional costs. As a consequence, many local pharmacies have had to limit opening times and staff numbers. In Alresford in my constituency, the hard-working staff at Wessex Pharmacies have had to close shop on Saturday afternoons. That service will be sorely missed, particularly by those who are in full-time education or work during the week and who relied on being able to pick up their prescriptions at the weekend. In addition, shorter opening times mean that if a patient sees their GP later in the day, the required prescription is delayed by a day if the paperwork is not registered in time. For a patient with an urgent need for medication, that extra day can be extremely frustrating and worrying. Although we really do welcome the recent 10% increase in Government funding to community pharmacies, it is worth pointing out that that is giving with one hand and taking with the other. In the wake of rising costs for energy, staff and medicines, this funding increase was the first in 10 years, so it was sorely needed, but unfortunately, it did little to alleviate the extreme pressures heaped on community pharmacies in the Budget. That point comes into focus when we consider the rise in drug costs: a 20% to 30% rise for things like paracetamol and hay fever medications, and an elevenfold rise in the cost of cancer drugs since February, while the funding provided to community pharmacies has dropped by more than 20% in real terms since 2015. That is why we are calling on the Government to invest in pharmacies in smaller towns, particularly in villages and rural areas such as mine in the Meon valley. In places such as Bishop’s Waltham and Colden Common, people need access to a community pharmacy, and not only for convenience: Conservative-run Hampshire county council has cut vital bus services to the nearest big towns, which means that people without a vehicle, especially older people, absolutely rely on local pharmacies for their medication. We are also calling for a new, long-term, sustainable model for pharmacies and an expansion of Pharmacy First to give patients more accessible routine services so that we can free up GPs’ time. We want an exemption for pharmacies from the national insurance contributions increase so that funds can be spent on patients and vital medications. I come to my final, key point. I have spoken to many pharmacists since I was elected and before that, and I have had very long, in-depth conversations with them. I have also attended events in Parliament organised by the Royal College of Pharmacy and the National Pharmacy Association and I have discussed their issues with the NHS pharmacy contract. Given my professional background, I am used to sourcing, dispensing and prescribing drugs. However, the contract is so complicated that, despite my extensive conversations with those organisations, I do not fully understand it. The key message that comes out is that it costs pharmacists to dispense NHS medication in many cases, and that NHS medication is sometimes being subsidised by other sales in shops. I even met two pharmacists who said that their personal finances are subsidising some NHS dispensation. That is clearly not tenable in the long run.

Standardisation and consistency in services are really important. A person in my constituency of Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme is living with poor mental health. His pharmacy has stopped doing nomads, and it is too far for them to travel to the next pharmacy, where those are not paid for. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that consistency in how we support pharmacies is massively important to help people such as my resident?

I completely agree. All businesses need predictability and stability. It appears that, week to week, pharmacists are trying to work out how to source drugs with changing prices, and there is an NHS contract that is not meeting their needs. When we talk about community healthcare and provision, it is important to remember that having good, well-run pharmacies means that people are being kept out of GP practices and that they are less likely to turn up at A&E. That is even better value for money for the NHS and, ultimately, for the taxpayer. There is no downside from a Government point of view to investing and heavily supporting community pharmacy, because the savings made upstream will be hugely significant. At the moment, we are treating people with conditions that should be treated in the community with the most expensive part of the NHS, in A&E and hospital, when they could quite possibly have avoided going there in the first place.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) on raising this important issue. The number of hon. Members present shows how vital community pharmacy is right across our country. Since coming into office, this Government have continued to reverse the decades of cuts to community pharmacy, and have frozen prescription charges for the second year in a row to help our constituents with the cost of living. Wherever they live in the country, women can now get emergency contraception from their local pharmacy free of charge on the NHS. That work has only been possible thanks to the tireless efforts and dedication of pharmacy teams in supporting patients in their communities, delivering a wide range of NHS services, not least in the west country. In fact, just last week, I was in Bristol visiting the fantastic Concord pharmacy, which is at the forefront of our efforts to shift care from hospital to community. I thank Saeed and his team for the warm welcome they gave me. I saw how they are delivering blood pressure checks, vaccinations and Pharmacy First services to the people of north Bristol. For too long, community pharmacies such as Concord have been held back from realising their true potential. It is why the Government have given them a central role in our 10-year plan to shift the focus of the NHS from sickness to prevention, from hospital to community and from analogue to digital.

An excellent example of community pharmacies in England embracing innovation is their interaction with the NHS app. My constituents in Scotland do not have access to a similar app because the Scottish Government have not got on with fixing it. Will the Minister join me in calling on the Scottish Government to produce a proper equivalent NHS app, so that constituents in Scotland can benefit in the same way?

Accessibility is paramount. The costs that are pushed on to pharmacists mean that they cannot remain sustainable and that they resist opening pharmacies in smaller places, because it will take away business from them. Therefore, those pressures take away accessibility, which is needed.

That is another legitimate point, and it was made in my second to last words, so I thank my hon. Friend for contributing. I thank the Minister for listening to our concerns.

My hon. Friend makes a vital point. It appears that the Scottish Government are stuck in the analogue age, and we need digital solutions. I join him in encouraging the Scottish Government to get with the programme, get with the NHS app and get moving on some of these important initiatives. We all know that we simply cannot make the shift from hospital to community without our community pharmacies. I am not the only one to see that—I am sure that all of us have made use of community pharmacies in our constituencies, and that colleagues will know the importance of the accessibility of pharmacies in towns and villages across the country. There are over 10,000 pharmacies in England. They are busy dispensing medicines, offering advice, and delivering care and services to support our communities. Patients across the country can also choose to access over 400 distance-selling pharmacies, which deliver medicines to patients’ homes free of charge, playing a vital role in reaching the most isolated members of our society. However, I acknowledge that access is not the same in all areas of the country. Rural areas often have fewer community pharmacies, so people have to travel further to access a pharmacy as well as other services. Colleagues have also been right to raise concerns about pharmacy closures in the past. Local authority health and wellbeing boards are responsible for assessing whether local needs are adequately met by the existing providers, and what improvements are needed to ensure that people can access services. Those assessments inform integrated care boards’ commissioning decisions. In areas where there are fewer pharmacies, our pharmacy access scheme provides additional financial support to eligible pharmacies. The scheme helps pharmacies that are critical for patient access to stay open and provide local communities with continued access to medicines and excellent healthcare advice. In certain rural areas where there are no pharmacies, dispensing doctors can supply medicines to patients directly without the need for a pharmacy. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead will be aware that there are currently 14 pharmacies in her constituency. I am aware of the closure of two pharmacies in her constituency since 2017, and that the local population instead get their medicines from the neighbouring dispensing GP or from one of the over 400 distance-selling pharmacies available nationally. I also note that the latest data shows that there are 199 pharmacies in Devon, with 914 across the south-west. The Government are committed to supporting the critical role that they play in serving their communities.

The Minister points to the important partnership between community pharmacies and dispensing GPs. There are concerns about the change in the EMIS module and the future for dispensing practices. If the Minister does not have the answers here, will he write to me about what is happening with EMIS and where he is looking to take dispensing practices in the future?

I absolutely commit to writing to the hon. Gentleman with more detail. He raises some important points, and I will get back to him. The Government have always been clear that investment must come with modernisation, and our 10-year health plan and our three shifts set out a clear pathway to getting there. In her 2024 Budget, the Chancellor took important decisions that enabled us to give the sector a record 19% uplift across 2024-25 and 2025-26. It was the largest uplift of any sector across the NHS in that spending review period. I am proud that just a few days ago, we announced another significant uplift in funding for community pharmacies. That means a further £340 million uplift for the sector this financial year, to support the supply of medicines and delivery of vital services across our country. That will include supporting the introduction of pharmacist prescribing as part of NHS services in autumn 2026, to expand access to NHS care and strengthen support in communities across England, delivering upon the commitment made in our manifesto. That 10% uplift is almost three times the growth of the overall NHS budget, and it shows that when we talk about making the left shift, we are putting our money where our mouth is. I will start with the shift from sickness to prevention, because community pharmacies will be vital in making sure that vaccine coverage reaches every part of our country. The NHS vaccination strategy in our 10-year health plan commits us to increasing vaccine uptake through primary care. One way that we are getting that done is through the national vaccinations programme. Alongside a core offer of vaccination in GP practices, we are making sure that vaccines are offered through sexual health services, maternity services, schools, health visitors and community pharmacies. Selected community pharmacies across the country have already been commissioned to provide MMR and RSV vaccines. The expanded vaccination programmes make use of pharmacy teams’ expertise in delivering vaccines, releasing pressure on GPs and helping to protect the most vulnerable members of our society. We have also seen a significant increase in the provision of flu jabs within community pharmacies, with approximately 4.7 million people being vaccinated by pharmacists in the 2025-26 seasonal flu vaccination programme up to February 2026. That is up by around 600,000 vaccinations the previous year, showing the progress that has been made. When we talk about prevention, we are not just talking about vaccines, because community pharmacies are also delivering the hypertension case-finding service, which spots people at risk and helps to prevent cardiovascular disease. Nearly 3.6 million free consultations were delivered in the 12 months to February this year. That is a great example of the sickness to prevention shift in action. Turning to our shift from analogue to digital, so many pharmacists and pharmacy technicians are not working with technology that is equal to their skill, talent or ambition. I am afraid to say that it is a similar story across other parts of the NHS, where the outdated technology is holding staff back from realising their full potential. We are supporting pharmacies through digital transformation. Last year, a new Amazon-style prescription tracker went live on the NHS app across nearly 1,500 community pharmacies in England, enabling patients to check on their prescriptions through real-time updates. This year, we want to make digital access even easier, with stronger links between pharmacies and general practice as we build stronger neighbourhood health teams across every community. That will make them match-ready for the introduction of pharmacy prescribing as part of NHS services from this autumn. Digital also has a huge role to play in our supply chains and improving the public’s access to the medication they need. That has included our secondary legislation to enable the expansion of hub-and-spoke dispensing between different pharmacies, to make it possible for more pharmacies to use automated dispensing, realise economies of scale and increase efficiency and productivity. Additionally, GPs cannot currently see live national shortages when prescribing, but this year we will make it possible for GPs to be aware of these shortages in real time. That will mean that patients no longer have to go from pillar to post looking for medicines that are not available, because GPs will be able to prescribe an antibiotic unaffected by supply issues. In the NHS that is fit for the future, pharmacies will play a key role in the shift from hospital to community. We have already begun making huge progress in rebuilding primary care and fixing the front door to the NHS by ending the 8 am scramble, whether through extra funding for general practice, hiring more GPs or the introduction of online services. We will go even further to ease the pressure on GPs by making sure that pharmacists are making the most of their clinical abilities. That is why the Government have been promoting the Pharmacy First campaign, although I take on board some of the very interesting suggestions about the rebranding. I will have a think about that; I am not going to make any rash decisions today. The most recent data shows that the number of people polled who knew that their pharmacy would treat Pharmacy First conditions rose from 71% to 79%. Trust in the advice given by the pharmacy team increased from 61% to 70%, and intention to use the pharmacy if people had conditions covered by Pharmacy First went up from 32% to 37%.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine, and I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this important debate. It is important that we discuss community pharmacies, given their place not only in the health landscape but in the hearts of many of my constituents and people across the nation. I, too, have visited multiple pharmacies, both in my shadow role and as an MP, and I, too, went to my local pharmacy for my flu jab, back in Newbold Verdon. I am very grateful to them because I found the system very easy to use and to get into. It is really important to see that system change that makes it more accessible and easier for people to make the choice to improve their own health and protect others. There are positives in this debate that we must celebrate. Community pharmacies are one of the most accessible parts of our health service. For millions of patients, particularly older ones, those with long-term conditions or those living in rural communities, the local pharmacy is often the front door to the NHS. They provide expert advice, dispense vital medicines, support prevention and increasingly deliver clinical services that help to reduce pressure on GPs and hospitals—as a former GP, I am very grateful for that—and that is why this debate is so important. Ministers want community pharmacies to do more, but I worry that, at the same time, they are actually making it harder for pharmacies to survive. This debate is timely, given that the Government agreed the community pharmacy contractual framework for 2026-27 last Friday. I expect that the Minister will reference that, but I will let Community Pharmacy England’s response speak for itself: “Accepting this deal does not mean we think it is enough—for this year or the future.” It went on to say: “It means the opposite…the sector is in a critical position, and that we now need urgent work on a sustainable long-term solution, including reform of the contract, funding and reimbursement model.” Given the Government’s enthusiasm for reviews and long-term plans, I would be grateful if the Minister updated us on what meetings he will have to work on the framework and the wider funding model, along with what changes we can expect and in what kind of time. The reality is that pharmacies continue to face mounting financial pressures, many related to the Government’s tax rises. Over the last two years, the Government have made a conscious choice not to exempt community pharmacies from their taxes and have even voted against that. In the first year of this Labour Government, pharmacies faced higher employer national insurance contributions alongside increases in the national living wage. In the second year, they have lost the temporary business rates support that they relied on, with the replacement not matching the rise in their costs. The sector is clear that much of the additional funding announced through the new framework will simply be absorbed by those rising costs. The headline findings from Community Pharmacy England’s latest “Pharmacy Pressures” survey, due to be published later this month, show that 100% of pharmacies report that costs are higher than at this time last year and that three quarters are losing money, while 86% say that it is taking longer to procure medicines and 76% say that patients are already being directly impacted by the pressures on their businesses. The National Pharmacy Association put it plainly last Friday when it said it was concerned that much of the funding increase will need to be spent on increased costs, including national living wage contributions, inflation and business rates rises, “rather than addressing chronic under-funding”. Those figures tell a simple story. The Government are asking pharmacies to do more while making it more expensive for them to keep their doors open. What discussions has the Minister had with the Chancellor regarding business rates for community pharmacies? Has he even raised the sector’s concerns with the Chancellor, and if so, what response did he receive? Will he press for a package of support similar to that made available to other sectors such as pubs, to help with those pressures? The rising costs also cast a shadow over the Government’s plan to expand independent prescribing through community pharmacy. We can all see that independent prescribing has enormous potential. It could improve patient access to care, make better use of pharmacists’ clinical expertise and help to deliver the Government’s ambition of shifting care from hospitals into the community. But the sector itself is not convinced that the necessary investment is in place. Community Pharmacy England has said: “we are not persuaded that sufficient investment is being made to enable the full and effective introduction of IP…given the workload, enhanced clinical responsibility, clinical governance and infrastructure requirements that it will entail.” It went on to warn that “the addition of IP to the CPCF risked being set up to fail.” That should concern us all in this Chamber. If pharmacies are expected to become a cornerstone of neighbourhood healthcare, as set out in the NHS 10-year plan, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that the necessary workforce, governance and infrastructure are in place to support that ambition? What response does the Minister have to those concerns, and what steps will he take to ensure that independent prescribing is the success we all want it to be? Alongside the financial pressures, pharmacies continue to face significant challenges in the medicine supply chain. Analysis by the National Pharmacy Association earlier this year highlighted rising prices for a number of cancer medicines and concerns about the impact on availability. At the same time, the number of medicine price concessions has reached record levels. There were 204 concessions agreed in April, surpassing the previous record set only a month earlier. Community Pharmacy England has now confirmed a new record of 219 concessions for May, with further requests still under negotiation. Behind those numbers are real patients facing delays, uncertainties and difficulties accessing the medicines that they need. Community Pharmacy England has warned that those figures reflect the continuing fragility of medicine supplies in the supply chain and that the wider instability from the middle east crisis is adding pressure. Of course, I cannot hold the Government responsible for that, but it is their duty to look at that volatility and to reassure patients and the sector that resilience is being put in place and measures are being looked at. I would be grateful for an update from the Minister on what that looks like. Before I conclude, I will raise an important point that is affecting dispensing practices. We have not talked about those today, but they are part of the real fabric of the community network. Dispensing GPs provide essential primary care medicine supplies to 10 million patients in remote, rural and coastal communities, where access to a community pharmacy is limited. For many patients, they are the primary point of access to medicines. Earlier this year, dispensing practices were informed that the central NHS England funding for the EMIS web dispensing module would cease and that the costs would instead be passed directly to the practices. The proposal generated significant concern among dispensing practices, the British Medical Association and the Dispensing Doctors’ Association. Concerns centred on the lack of consultation, the timing of the changes and the potential impact on the sustainability of dispensing services. Following representations from the sector, implementation has now been paused and central funding has continued. I welcome that decision. However, the uncertainty created caused understandable concerns for practices, their patients and the planning of future services, particularly for those in rural communities. When I wrote to the Minister to raise that issue, he responded that an assessment will take place this year of the long-term provision of dispensing modules and that NHS England will consult relevant bodies such as the Dispensing Doctors’ Association as part of that. Will the Minister provide further details on that assessment today? What criteria will be used? Who else is being consulted? If NHS England is going, who will take that work on? When can dispensing practices expect greater certainty about future arrangements? I would also be grateful if the Minister addressed concerns about the discount abatement—what is called the clawback system. Dispensing practices continue to argue that the current arrangement creates inequalities for them compared with community pharmacies. Equally, community pharmacies are upset about the clawback, so there is an obvious tension. Given that the Government are looking at the long-term structure, I would be grateful if the Minister took that away and considered how we can modernise that aspect to ensure that there is equity in the system as well as an understanding from both sides. Ministers have made it clear that they want pharmacies to play a greater role in prevention and neighbourhood healthcare and in reducing pressures elsewhere in the NHS. We in the Opposition agree, yet throughout this debate we have heard concerns from across the sector about rising costs, medicine supplies, independent prescribing and dispensing services. The question is whether Government policy is keeping pace with the expectations being placed on pharmacies, or whether Ministers are making it harder for the sector to deliver the growth and innovation they say they want to see. Community pharmacies have repeatedly demonstrated their value to patients in the wider health service. I therefore look forward to hearing from the Minister how he intends to address those concerns and provide greater confidence to a sector that remains vital to communities up and down this land.

I very much welcome what the Minister has said. There is lots of good stuff being rolled out across the United Kingdom, but I asked him to share some of the things that have been done with the Northern Ireland Assembly Minister, Mike Nesbitt. I know the Minister has regular contact with him, so perhaps he could say, “This is what we are doing here. Maybe you should do the same.”

We do indeed have an excellent relationship. If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will go back into some of the discussions that we have been having and write to him with an update on the latest thinking. A second public advertising campaign ran from October 2025 to this January, and I look forward to updating the House when data about its impact becomes available. Another thing to watch is the independent prescribing pathfinder programme, through which 200 sites have delivered 34,000 consultations. About 60% resulted in a prescribing decision, and 90% of those prescriptions were completed without the need to refer to a GP. When it comes to relieving pressure on other parts of the system, the pathfinder programme shows immense promise. As announced last week, the new community pharmacy contractual framework for 2026-27 will focus on implementing what we have learned from the pathfinder programme as we roll out NHS pharmacists prescribing nationally from autumn this year. That will deliver the 10-year plan’s ambition for pharmacies to go beyond dispensing and to offer more clinical services as part of an integrated neighbourhood health team. We have also introduced legislation to enable pharmacy technicians to manage dispensing processes that would otherwise be undertaken by pharmacists, and to allow checked and bagged medicines to be handed out in the absence of the pharmacist. That saves time for patients, who will not have to queue for as long to get their medicine. It is good for busy pharmacists, who will have more time for clinical services, and for pharmacy technicians, who will be able to use their skillset as qualified professionals. Pharmacies are a massive untapped resource. The NHS that we are building puts them front and centre of care in every community, whether on the local high street or as one of the more than 400 distance-selling pharmacies that can reach across the country, including rural areas. This year, I plan to spend a lot more time with our partners in the sector to seize every opportunity to go further, and I am always keen to work with colleagues across the House on this. As the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) said, there is a clear commitment to long-term reform. Some of the issues that are holding the sector back require fundamental thinking. We are in discussions, and I am looking forward to a meeting very soon with Community Pharmacy England. I want to put on the record my thanks to it and, in particular, to Janet Morrison, for the incredibly constructive way in which it has engaged with me and my team on the contract negotiations and the strategic thinking that needs to go into long-term reform. Our latest deal with the sector shows that this Government are in it for the long haul and are fully committed to putting pharmacies right at the heart of getting our NHS back on its feet and fit for the future.

An excellent example of community pharmacies in England embracing innovation is their interaction with the NHS app. My constituents in Scotland do not have access to a similar app because the Scottish Government have not got on with fixing it. Will the Minister join me in calling on the Scottish Government to produce a proper equivalent NHS app, so that constituents in Scotland can benefit in the same way?

I do not have time to go through the list of hon. Friends and hon. Members who have made fantastic contributions. Suffice it to say that there is only one negative aspect of this debate: the fact that not a single Conservative Member of Parliament is here is shocking. I just want to say happy birthday to the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer). I do not suppose she imagined that she would start her birthday by debating community pharmacies, but I hope she has a wonderful day. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the future of community pharmacies.

My hon. Friend makes a vital point. It appears that the Scottish Government are stuck in the analogue age, and we need digital solutions. I join him in encouraging the Scottish Government to get with the programme, get with the NHS app and get moving on some of these important initiatives. We all know that we simply cannot make the shift from hospital to community without our community pharmacies. I am not the only one to see that—I am sure that all of us have made use of community pharmacies in our constituencies, and that colleagues will know the importance of the accessibility of pharmacies in towns and villages across the country. There are over 10,000 pharmacies in England. They are busy dispensing medicines, offering advice, and delivering care and services to support our communities. Patients across the country can also choose to access over 400 distance-selling pharmacies, which deliver medicines to patients’ homes free of charge, playing a vital role in reaching the most isolated members of our society. However, I acknowledge that access is not the same in all areas of the country. Rural areas often have fewer community pharmacies, so people have to travel further to access a pharmacy as well as other services. Colleagues have also been right to raise concerns about pharmacy closures in the past. Local authority health and wellbeing boards are responsible for assessing whether local needs are adequately met by the existing providers, and what improvements are needed to ensure that people can access services. Those assessments inform integrated care boards’ commissioning decisions. In areas where there are fewer pharmacies, our pharmacy access scheme provides additional financial support to eligible pharmacies. The scheme helps pharmacies that are critical for patient access to stay open and provide local communities with continued access to medicines and excellent healthcare advice. In certain rural areas where there are no pharmacies, dispensing doctors can supply medicines to patients directly without the need for a pharmacy. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead will be aware that there are currently 14 pharmacies in her constituency. I am aware of the closure of two pharmacies in her constituency since 2017, and that the local population instead get their medicines from the neighbouring dispensing GP or from one of the over 400 distance-selling pharmacies available nationally. I also note that the latest data shows that there are 199 pharmacies in Devon, with 914 across the south-west. The Government are committed to supporting the critical role that they play in serving their communities.

The Minister points to the important partnership between community pharmacies and dispensing GPs. There are concerns about the change in the EMIS module and the future for dispensing practices. If the Minister does not have the answers here, will he write to me about what is happening with EMIS and where he is looking to take dispensing practices in the future?

I absolutely commit to writing to the hon. Gentleman with more detail. He raises some important points, and I will get back to him. The Government have always been clear that investment must come with modernisation, and our 10-year health plan and our three shifts set out a clear pathway to getting there. In her 2024 Budget, the Chancellor took important decisions that enabled us to give the sector a record 19% uplift across 2024-25 and 2025-26. It was the largest uplift of any sector across the NHS in that spending review period. I am proud that just a few days ago, we announced another significant uplift in funding for community pharmacies. That means a further £340 million uplift for the sector this financial year, to support the supply of medicines and delivery of vital services across our country. That will include supporting the introduction of pharmacist prescribing as part of NHS services in autumn 2026, to expand access to NHS care and strengthen support in communities across England, delivering upon the commitment made in our manifesto. That 10% uplift is almost three times the growth of the overall NHS budget, and it shows that when we talk about making the left shift, we are putting our money where our mouth is. I will start with the shift from sickness to prevention, because community pharmacies will be vital in making sure that vaccine coverage reaches every part of our country. The NHS vaccination strategy in our 10-year health plan commits us to increasing vaccine uptake through primary care. One way that we are getting that done is through the national vaccinations programme. Alongside a core offer of vaccination in GP practices, we are making sure that vaccines are offered through sexual health services, maternity services, schools, health visitors and community pharmacies. Selected community pharmacies across the country have already been commissioned to provide MMR and RSV vaccines. The expanded vaccination programmes make use of pharmacy teams’ expertise in delivering vaccines, releasing pressure on GPs and helping to protect the most vulnerable members of our society. We have also seen a significant increase in the provision of flu jabs within community pharmacies, with approximately 4.7 million people being vaccinated by pharmacists in the 2025-26 seasonal flu vaccination programme up to February 2026. That is up by around 600,000 vaccinations the previous year, showing the progress that has been made. When we talk about prevention, we are not just talking about vaccines, because community pharmacies are also delivering the hypertension case-finding service, which spots people at risk and helps to prevent cardiovascular disease. Nearly 3.6 million free consultations were delivered in the 12 months to February this year. That is a great example of the sickness to prevention shift in action. Turning to our shift from analogue to digital, so many pharmacists and pharmacy technicians are not working with technology that is equal to their skill, talent or ambition. I am afraid to say that it is a similar story across other parts of the NHS, where the outdated technology is holding staff back from realising their full potential. We are supporting pharmacies through digital transformation. Last year, a new Amazon-style prescription tracker went live on the NHS app across nearly 1,500 community pharmacies in England, enabling patients to check on their prescriptions through real-time updates. This year, we want to make digital access even easier, with stronger links between pharmacies and general practice as we build stronger neighbourhood health teams across every community. That will make them match-ready for the introduction of pharmacy prescribing as part of NHS services from this autumn. Digital also has a huge role to play in our supply chains and improving the public’s access to the medication they need. That has included our secondary legislation to enable the expansion of hub-and-spoke dispensing between different pharmacies, to make it possible for more pharmacies to use automated dispensing, realise economies of scale and increase efficiency and productivity. Additionally, GPs cannot currently see live national shortages when prescribing, but this year we will make it possible for GPs to be aware of these shortages in real time. That will mean that patients no longer have to go from pillar to post looking for medicines that are not available, because GPs will be able to prescribe an antibiotic unaffected by supply issues. In the NHS that is fit for the future, pharmacies will play a key role in the shift from hospital to community. We have already begun making huge progress in rebuilding primary care and fixing the front door to the NHS by ending the 8 am scramble, whether through extra funding for general practice, hiring more GPs or the introduction of online services. We will go even further to ease the pressure on GPs by making sure that pharmacists are making the most of their clinical abilities. That is why the Government have been promoting the Pharmacy First campaign, although I take on board some of the very interesting suggestions about the rebranding. I will have a think about that; I am not going to make any rash decisions today. The most recent data shows that the number of people polled who knew that their pharmacy would treat Pharmacy First conditions rose from 71% to 79%. Trust in the advice given by the pharmacy team increased from 61% to 70%, and intention to use the pharmacy if people had conditions covered by Pharmacy First went up from 32% to 37%.

I very much welcome what the Minister has said. There is lots of good stuff being rolled out across the United Kingdom, but I asked him to share some of the things that have been done with the Northern Ireland Assembly Minister, Mike Nesbitt. I know the Minister has regular contact with him, so perhaps he could say, “This is what we are doing here. Maybe you should do the same.”

We do indeed have an excellent relationship. If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will go back into some of the discussions that we have been having and write to him with an update on the latest thinking. A second public advertising campaign ran from October 2025 to this January, and I look forward to updating the House when data about its impact becomes available. Another thing to watch is the independent prescribing pathfinder programme, through which 200 sites have delivered 34,000 consultations. About 60% resulted in a prescribing decision, and 90% of those prescriptions were completed without the need to refer to a GP. When it comes to relieving pressure on other parts of the system, the pathfinder programme shows immense promise. As announced last week, the new community pharmacy contractual framework for 2026-27 will focus on implementing what we have learned from the pathfinder programme as we roll out NHS pharmacists prescribing nationally from autumn this year. That will deliver the 10-year plan’s ambition for pharmacies to go beyond dispensing and to offer more clinical services as part of an integrated neighbourhood health team. We have also introduced legislation to enable pharmacy technicians to manage dispensing processes that would otherwise be undertaken by pharmacists, and to allow checked and bagged medicines to be handed out in the absence of the pharmacist. That saves time for patients, who will not have to queue for as long to get their medicine. It is good for busy pharmacists, who will have more time for clinical services, and for pharmacy technicians, who will be able to use their skillset as qualified professionals. Pharmacies are a massive untapped resource. The NHS that we are building puts them front and centre of care in every community, whether on the local high street or as one of the more than 400 distance-selling pharmacies that can reach across the country, including rural areas. This year, I plan to spend a lot more time with our partners in the sector to seize every opportunity to go further, and I am always keen to work with colleagues across the House on this. As the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) said, there is a clear commitment to long-term reform. Some of the issues that are holding the sector back require fundamental thinking. We are in discussions, and I am looking forward to a meeting very soon with Community Pharmacy England. I want to put on the record my thanks to it and, in particular, to Janet Morrison, for the incredibly constructive way in which it has engaged with me and my team on the contract negotiations and the strategic thinking that needs to go into long-term reform. Our latest deal with the sector shows that this Government are in it for the long haul and are fully committed to putting pharmacies right at the heart of getting our NHS back on its feet and fit for the future.

I do not have time to go through the list of hon. Friends and hon. Members who have made fantastic contributions. Suffice it to say that there is only one negative aspect of this debate: the fact that not a single Conservative Member of Parliament is here is shocking. I just want to say happy birthday to the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer). I do not suppose she imagined that she would start her birthday by debating community pharmacies, but I hope she has a wonderful day. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the future of community pharmacies.