Sadik Al-Hassan

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.