Lord Scriven (LD)

My Lords, I wish to speak to the amendments in this group; I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, for introducing it. I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that I am the vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Pharmacy, so this issue is close to my heart. The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, aptly outlined the pressure that community pharmacists are under at the moment and the issues that they face. He also mentioned a lot of facts and figures from Community Pharmacy England and the National Pharmacy Association, which have outlined the impact that these national insurance contributions will have on community pharmacy. The reason an impact assessment will not work is that the data is already out there, in terms of data from the industry itself. On average, every week, 10 community pharmacists are closing. There is a crisis in community pharmacy, which means that pharmacy after pharmacy in communities up and down this country can no longer survive and is falling by the wayside. An impact assessment would be useful only to reiterate the information that is already out there from the industry; it will not stop organisations falling by the wayside every single week.