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Health and Social Care Bill

I support the amendment, which has been very well introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. The amendment would ensure that the centrally negotiated and secured funding for NHS community pharmacy services continued. It does not impede local discretion and the development of local services to address those needs. It is important to retain centrally secured funding, negotiated between the Department of Health and the PSNC, as the certainty of central funding enables pharmacy contractors—whether multiples or independents—to invest in services with confidence. Most important is that it provides them with a predictable financial context. The All-Party Pharmacy Group, of which I am a vice-chairman, held a very long inquiry into pharmacy. We produced our report last year. One of our findings was that in order to expand NHS community pharmacy, as the Government and many of us wish to do, it was really important that pharmacies have the confidence brought about by a stable financial environment. The Government’s White Paper on pharmacy, published very recently, sets out a wide range of good, new services that pharmacies will provide in future. The objective of expanding services requires a stable and predictable financial context, and the amendment will help to ensure that that will be the case. I know just how much a pharmacy can contribute to the well-being and fabric of a local community. In my own village of Newick we have a pharmacy that does just that. Now it is under threat because the local GP practice has, unbeknown to the village, decided that it will dispense as well as prescribe. The village has risen up and is furious. We have leafleted every house, not only in the village but in the surrounding villages; we have banners; and we have the press and the media. In another debate, the Minister said that she sensed a campaign was coming on when the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, was speaking. Our campaign is something that she would not believe. We are thinking of going to judicial review. We have had Acts of Parliament in 2006 and 2007 on patient and public involvement, yet in this case local people have not been consulted and have learnt about it through roundabout means—a leak. I hope that in future this sort of thing will not happen and that councils, such as my parish council, will not have to go to all the effort that it is going to because it has not been consulted. This has been a rant because we feel very strongly. One of the interesting things is that the 2006 and 2007 public participation Acts, which were designed to involve the public, have not yet been enacted. We pass all this legislation, yet here we have a case where we could really use what this Parliament has done to involve patients and the public in important decisions. Acts have been passed but not enacted. I hope that the Government will get their skates on and improve that. I have quite disgracefully used this debate as a vehicle to put on record some things that are happening and how we are losing our local pharmacies because GPs, who are now very well paid, can see a way of increasing their income at the expense of local pharmacies. That reduces our choice of who we can go to for professional advice and the over-the-counter medicines that we so badly need, and I support the amendment.