By Neil Trainis

Ministers will discuss the future of community pharmacy during a Westminster debate next week.

The debate, which takes place on September 14, was secured by the Conservative MP Peter Aldous following his application to the Backbench Business Committee.

He expressed his concerns to the Committee about the number of pharmacies closing in England and warned there was a “danger” that “we might be moving towards a situation of pharmacy wastelands.” The pharmacy minister Neil O’Brien told parliament in July that there were 222 fewer pharmacies since the turn of the year.

Community Pharmacy England said next week’s debate was “very timely” given it will occur just as its vision for community pharmacy, which the negotiator commissioned Nuffield Trust and The King’s Fund to produce, launches. CPE said the vision will set out the sector’s growing role in primary care and ambitions as well as push the case for a “sustainably funded sector.”

CPE, who said it had been “briefing a number of MPs ahead of the debate,” urged LPCs and pharmacy owners to try and persuade their local MPs to speak at the event.

“This will be a very good opportunity for MPs to raise the unprecedented challenges that pharmacies face including workforce, medicines supply, and funding pressures, as illustrated by Community Pharmacy England’s Pressures Survey earlier this year,” CPE said.

The debate will not be the only pharmacy-related event to take place in parliament. The health and social care committee pledged to hold an inquiry into the issues impacting community pharmacy later this year.

Image: www.parliament.uk