PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Pharmacy Provision: Hampton - 26 July 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

May I start by congratulating you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your election? It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. I also congratulate the Minister on his appointment. We have worked closely together in recent years in the all-party parliamentary group on kinship care, so I have no doubt that he will do an excellent job. I suspect that young Lyle is very proud of his granddad right now.

I am delighted to have secured this Adjournment debate. You might be surprised to learn, Madam Deputy Speaker, that this is the first I have managed to secure since my election in 2019, so I want to use this exciting opportunity to bring to the Minister’s attention the impact of pharmacy closures on the local community in the Hampton area of my constituency, as well as the immense financial challenges facing community pharmacy right across England. I will also raise concerns about the impenetrable bureaucratic processes, which need overhauling, in new pharmacy licence applications and pharmacy closures.

Let me set the scene. Last autumn, two Boots pharmacies in the Hampton area were closed. One of those pharmacies was in the Hampton North ward, one of three wards of relative deprivation in the London borough of Richmond upon Thames. The west of the ward is within the 20% most deprived areas of the country; it is densely populated with a significant amount of social housing. As a result of that closure in Tangley Park, the entire ward is now without a community pharmacy.

Hampton North is poorly served by public transport: there is no station, and the two bus routes serving the area are notoriously unreliable. The nearest pharmacy is now a mile away on foot, a distance that is difficult to cover for the elderly and those with mobility issues. It is certainly more than a 20-minute walk away, which is the measure that previous Ministers liked to use to highlight pharmacy accessibility. Predictably, those closures have put a lot of pressure on the nearest remaining pharmacies, which face queues and stock issues. Again, that is not exactly convenient or practical for elderly and vulnerable patients.

At this point, I pay tribute to Mike Derry and Healthwatch Richmond for their brilliant work championing local patients and giving them a voice. Healthwatch undertook a survey of some 700 residents in the Hampton area at the start of the year to demonstrate the impact of the closures. One person said:

“I have gone without medication as I can’t stand very long. There are queues—I have waited over half an hour.”

Healthwatch England highlighted the plight of 87-year-old Gill. She used to just about be able to get across the road from her house to the Tangley Park pharmacy. Now the nearest pharmacy is over a mile away, and Gill, who does not drive, cannot access that service because of the distance that she would have to walk to get there. She even paid the nearest pharmacy to deliver her medicines to her home each month, but in the eight months since she purchased the delivery service, it has shown up only twice. Her carer has to travel to collect the medication in person for her.

Hampton is not unusual in losing pharmacy provision. I am sure that the Minister is aware of the crisis facing the community pharmacy sector. Data from the Community Chemists’ Association shows that there has been a net loss of over 1,200 pharmacies—1402 closures and only 179 openings—since 2015. More than a third of those losses have been in the most deprived areas of the country. The National Pharmacy Association reports that the number of pharmacies that have closed so far this calendar year—the equivalent of 10 pharmacies a week—is nearly 50% higher compared with the same point in 2023. As well as independent pharmacies, big chains such as Lloyds Pharmacy and Boots have significantly accelerated closure numbers over the past 18 months. A big driver of these closures is a significant real-terms reduction in funding for pharmacy; that funding has dropped by around 30% since 2015.

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I congratulate him on his excellent maiden speech. I completely agree with him. We want doctors to use community pharmacy more to alleviate the pressure on other parts of the health service, but frankly, if the pharmacies are not there, the remaining ones will be overwhelmed. I talked to local GPs in the Hampton area following these closures, and they were desperate to see more provision. They thought about trying to set up their own community pharmacy provision, but they just could not make the numbers add up because of the funding shortfall.

The Company Chemists’ Association estimates an average funding shortfall of £67,000 per pharmacy. That is based on an analysis of data published by the Department of Health and Social Care in a written parliamentary answer at the beginning of last year. Many pharmacists are left out of pocket, as they are reimbursed less for a number of medications than the price they pay, and there are stories of some using credit cards and overdrafts to purchase medication.

These funding pressures are coupled with major workforce challenges. When I met Boots following the news that it is closing two branches in Hampton, it cited a lack of pharmacists as a major reason for closing some 300 pharmacies across the UK, although commercial pressures were clearly the main driver. Layered on top of these issues are regular medicine supply shortages, which add more work and create more stress for already overstretched pharmacists. Community Pharmacy England reported last year that 92% of pharmacies were having to manage supply issues daily.

It is a perfect storm for community pharmacy at a time when we need preventive healthcare and self-care more than ever. The potential of community pharmacies to improve patient health and reduce the pressure on NHS hospitals and GPs is immense, yet they are closing in their hundreds every year. We should be relying on pharmacies even more to keep the nation healthy. The previous Conservative Government’s announcement of the Pharmacy First initiative was very welcome in its ambition, but if pharmacies are not even funded for the basics right now, with big gaps in provision opening up all over the country, it is hard to see how Pharmacy First’s ambitions will be achieved.

The Liberal Democrats would like to see the Government building on the Pharmacy First principle and giving pharmacists more prescribing rights and public health responsibilities. As in so many areas of public health, the “invest to save” argument is compelling, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on what the new Labour Government will do on funding to enable community pharmacy to not just survive, but thrive and grow as an essential part of our primary care infrastructure.

Having addressed the causes of these closures, I will spend some time exploring the processes involved in local communities being informed of pharmacy closures, and their input, or lack thereof, in them, as well as discussing the complete lack of transparency or accountability in relation to applications for new pharmacy licences. For starters, only those organisations designated as “interested parties” in the regulations are informed of new applications, and only their feedback has to be taken into account. Anyone else who is interested, such as me as a local MP, needs to make a freedom of information request, unless someone in the local health community passes on the information. My views, and the views of other people in the community, can be ignored.

To describe the bureaucratic process that sits around new applications as byzantine would be generous. I hope the Minister, Madam Deputy Speaker and other hon. Members will bear with me while I try to explain what happened in Hampton. We are part of the South West London Integrated Care Board, but NHS England has delegated the pharmacy market entry function for the whole of London to the North East London ICB, which is on completely the opposite side of the city. Officials have no local knowledge of our area, no understanding of local transport links and no relationships with the local health system.

Let me start with the closures. The Minister will be aware of the statutory three-month notice period for pharmacy closures; last August, Boots would have had to give NHS England three months’ notice of its intentions in Hampton. That information was not passed by NHSE to the Richmond health and wellbeing board. I find that utterly staggering. The first that local councillors, the local health community in the area and I as the MP knew about the planned closures was when Boots placed signs in its windows to inform customers, and concerned constituents started to contact me about the likely impact of the closures.

At the end of August 2023, while this was going on and we were all in the dark, the local health and wellbeing board published a pharmaceutical needs assessment, but it was inaccurate and failed to identify an imminent future gap in need in the Hampton North area because it had not been notified of the closures. The Tangley Park Boots subsequently closed in late October. The Priory Road Boots, which was directly opposite a busy GP surgery, closed in early November.

In November, an application was received for a new independent pharmacy licence on the Tangley Park Boots site. Once again, the local health and wellbeing board was not notified of the application—this time, for two whole months. During this period of complete silence, the health and wellbeing board issued a supplementary statement to the local pharmaceutical needs assessment, which identified the gap in Hampton. However, because the application for a new pharmacy was made in November, and it referred to the original needs assessment that was made before the supplementary statement was published, it was rejected, even though the application itself identified the gap, which was officially made clear in the supplementary statement subsequently published in December. Not only that, but it took the North East London ICB a full eight months to issue the rejection; tht happened earlier this month, even though the decision used evidence received in December to justify the rejection.

Madam Deputy Speaker, if you and other hon. Members are still managing to follow this sorry story, I hope you will agree that this decision is utterly perverse. It is also utterly unreasonable that timely applications to open pharmacies in response to multiple closures should be inherently prevented in this way. The delays in sharing information with the local health and wellbeing board and the delays in decision making are unforgivable. During the lengthy delay, the local authority received a planning application to change the Tangley Park pharmacy site into a fast food outlet. Thankfully, that was rejected earlier this month after representations from the public health team and councillors, but I am sure the public health Minister will agree that it would be unfortunate, to put it mildly, if a pharmacy were replaced with a fast food outlet.

One local official told me yesterday that the systems architecture is too complicated, and that there is a need for clearer responsibilities and accountability. Amen to that, I say. Healthwatch Richmond has demanded answers from the North East London ICB, but it has received a frankly woeful response that does not address the substantive question of why the application was so badly handled. The response passes the buck and blames regulations. To be clear, Healthwatch and I are not qualified to comment on the merits of an application; what we are doing is challenging the unfathomable process.

I say to the Minister that the huge funding challenges facing community pharmacy are pressing. I appreciate that they may be extremely difficult for him to address, given that the Chancellor has an iron fist as far as any additional public spending is concerned, but the Minister must wage a campaign to improve the funding situation. It makes financial sense. We will not grow the economy without improving the nation’s health. In that campaign, he will have cross-party support from Members on the Opposition Benches.

Revisiting the regulations and how NHS England is implementing them will cost next to nothing. There should be proper consultation with and involvement from the local community on closure notices, and changes in the process for new licences could ensure that we can quickly plug pharmacy gaps when they open up in areas such as Hampton. Crucially, those powers need to be delegated to the local ICB, with full involvement from the local health and wellbeing board. They know their communities and their geography best—trust them.

Finally, if the Minister could step in on the specific issues in my constituency—the application that has been rejected and is going NHS Resolution on appeal—simply to ensure a common-sense approach, the residents of Hampton North and I would be very grateful. We desperately need a new pharmacy for our community. I look forward to his response.

I call the Minister.

May I start by welcoming you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker? I congratulate you on your election earlier this week. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on securing a debate that is absolutely crucial, not just given the specifics of the case in her constituency, but for the precedent that it sets as we plan community pharmacy provision across England. I assure her that although Lyle missed out on his week in London for Whitsun half-term, because somebody called a general election, he is on his way to London as I speak, with Allison, so that we can do London as tourists this weekend.

I am responding on behalf of the Minister for Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberafan Maesteg (Stephen Kinnock), who leads in this area. I start by paying tribute to pharmacists. It is a credit to them that surveys show that nine in 10 people who visit pharmacies feel positive about their experience. Colleagues appreciate how accessible pharmacies in towns and villages across our country are, but for too long, Governments have failed to recognise their essential role in safeguarding the nation’s health, not least in my constituency of Gorton and Denton. This Government know that people who work in pharmacies are highly trained specialists, and we are committed to helping pharmacists and pharmacy technicians reach their full potential.

Pharmacies already provide vital advice on prescriptions, over-the-counter medicines and minor ailments, but they do not just dispense medicines and proffer advice, important though that is; they must do much more than that. Many already offer blood-pressure checks, flu and covid-19 vaccinations, contraception consultations and treatment for the seven conditions covered by the Pharmacy First service. I supported Pharmacy First when I was in opposition, as I think the hon. Lady did, and my party pledged to build on the programme by making prescribing an integral part of the services delivered by community pharmacies. For that reason, in the next two years, we will ensure that every newly qualified pharmacist has a prescribing qualification, while we train up the existing workforce.

This year, NHS England is working closely with all integrated care boards on pilots to test how prescribing can work in community pharmacy, because like the hon. Lady, we want pharmacies delivering services that help patients to access advice, prevention and treatment more easily; services that ease the pressure on general practice and in other areas in the NHS; and services that unlock the knowledge and expertise that our pharmacists have to offer. This Government take the view that pharmacies can and should play an even greater role in providing healthcare on the high street. That is why we stood on a manifesto that promised to shift resources to primary care and to community services over time. Community pharmacies will play an important part in moving our health service from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention. But we have only been in office for three weeks; this cannot happen overnight, and colleagues have been absolutely right to raise concerns with Ministers about the closure of pharmacies.

As we speak, well over 10,000 pharmacies in England are dispensing medicines, offering advice and delivering care, and despite closures, access to pharmacies remains good across most of the country. Four out of five people live within a 20-minute walk of their local pharmacy, but as we have heard in this really important debate, that is not the case everywhere in the country. I know, having listened to the hon. Lady, that in Twickenham it is higher than four in five, but in other parts of the country it is below one in two. In the most deprived parts of England there are almost twice as many pharmacies—a good thing—than in the least deprived, but we need better access across the country. To take the example of my own constituency, where access to pharmacies is fairly good, almost the entire population is within a 20-minute walk from a pharmacy. However, in certain rural areas, and in a growing number of urban areas because of the closure programme, that is not the case. In those rural areas, there are dispensing doctors who can supply medicines to patients, and patients across the country can access around 400 distance-selling pharmacies that deliver medicines to patients’ homes free of charge. It is true that experiences vary depending on where people live, but I am aware of the specific problem in Hampton following the closure of the two Boots pharmacies that she described.

On the point about the 20-minute walk and the four in five statistic, does the Minister recognise that a 20-minute walk for me or him is actually much longer for an elderly person or somebody with multiple health conditions or mobility issues? We have to work out what measure we are using. Yes, the Twickenham constituency may have many pharmacies, but we must look at that highly localised level. That is why we need the local authority and local health boards to be involved, because actually in Hampton, as a community, the transport links are terrible.

I completely understand the case the hon. Lady is making. I ask her please to understand that she is pushing on a bit of an open door. It is a completely different subject, but I have had exactly the same arguments about bank closures in my constituency. I am told that as long as the nearest bank branch is half an hour away by public transport, that is acceptable. Unfortunately, computer says no when it is two buses that do not meet up in between. I agree with her that there are complexities around drawing up arbitrary limits, but generally access to pharmacies is good. We need to maximise the use of the pharmacy network so that we get more pharmacists coming in.

I welcome the Government’s support for strengthening the pharmacy sector. The Minister talks about the workforce. Residents in my constituency have raised concerns about the pressure on pharmacists to take on more and more services that might traditionally have been provided by primary care. What assurances can he give me that he will make sure that the workforce plan for pharmacists is robust enough to cope with the extra demand?

We are very committed, as I hope the hon. Lady knows, to the workforce plan being as robust as it can be, so we do not just get the pharmacists of the future but the doctors, nurses, healthcare workers and so on too. On the journey to a national health service that is much more community focused and much more aligned to prevention rather than to curing sickness—we want to prevent people from becoming ill in the first place—we must ensure that at its heart is how we can deliver medicines and treatments closer to where people live. Having well-trained capabilities in the pharmacy sector to do that is very much a priority for this Government.

Returning to the issue of the two Boots closures in Hampton, the Minister for Care is aware of the closures. He asked me to communicate to the hon. Lady the fact that he will keep a very close eye on what is happening on the ground in her area.

On the hon. Lady’s specific point about bureaucracy, I assure her that the regulatory framework is always under review, and as a new Government we are keen to make improvements wherever we can. I am sure that my officials will have heard the case that she has made.

After the hon. Lady kindly reached out to me prior to the debate, I instructed officials to ask her ICB to consider her concerns again. I hear that she has had a reply that was not particularly helpful. Again, I hope that her ICB is watching this debate, and listening to her case and to me as the Minister saying from the Dispatch Box that we take these issues seriously. Good access to pharmacy services is important to her constituents and to the constituents of Members right across the House. We need to make sure that the network is protected and enhanced.

On funding, NHS England has commissioned an economic analysis of the cost of providing pharmaceutical services. That work is happening right now with the pharmacy sector and we look forward to seeing the outcome. Previous Governments dithered and delayed on finding a sustainable and long-term solution. The consultation around this year’s funding and contractual arrangements with Community Pharmacy England did not make it over the line before the election was called, so we as Ministers are looking at that as a matter of urgency.

All that we are speaking of today is against the backdrop of the most challenging circumstances since the second world war. That is why the Chancellor is carrying out an urgent assessment of our spending inheritance and will be presenting the results to Parliament before the summer recess, so that the findings can inform every spending decision we make.

In the meantime, I am afraid that I cannot update the House on this year’s arrangements. I understand that that will be frustrating to the hon. Lady, but the Prime Minister has asked me and every Minister of this Government to be honest and open about the state of the nation’s finances. I intend to keep that promise, but I look forward to working with pharmacy stakeholders to discuss not just how we solve these problems, but how we seize the opportunities for transformation in the sector, and how we deliver health and social care in the community, closer to where people need it, providing the new, innovative treatments from pharmacies where that is appropriate. This Government will always put patients before politics.

In the spirit of the friendship that we have developed over the years, particularly over the kinship issue, I look forward to working with the hon. Lady on this and other health-related issues, and on making our country a better, fairer and more equal place for her constituents and mine, with better access to health services, including community pharmacy. I hope to work with her in the years to come, and let us hope that we can improve the pharmacy services for Hampton and other parts of England.

Question put and agreed to.