Munira Wilson

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.