PARLIAMENTARY EARLY DAY MOTION
ESSENTIAL SMALL PHARMACIES SCHEME (22 June 2015)

That this House recognises the effects of the withdrawal of the Essential Small Pharmacies (ESP) scheme on areas where patients, especially the elderly and those with small children, struggle to access pharmacies more than a kilometre away from their homes; understands that this is impacting most on areas with high levels of deprivation and low car ownership; acknowledges its ramifications on substance misuse programmes; believes that this is causing unreasonable pressure on small pharmacies to increase the number of prescriptions; further believes that there are irrational expectations of how much pharmacies can do in their areas to increase their own business; and further recognises the special circumstances of pharmacies that were designated as ESP, which means that the application of a one mile distance criteria to other pharmacies, as currently applied under standard market entry assessment criteria, is inadequate and fails to recognise the reasoning behind the grant of ESP status to those pharmacies in the first instance.

Sponsored by:
Ian Mearns (Labour)