By Neil Trainis

The health and social care select committee chair Steve Brine told Sigma Pharmaceuticals' UK conference yesterday that his inquiry into pharmacy which was due to start tomorrow has been put back “a couple of weeks” because of the king’s speech.

Brine (pictured) did not provide a specific date for when the inquiry will start but used the conference at the Heathrow Hilton hotel to emphasise that the inquiry will “drill down into some of the challenges, some of the potential that lies ahead” for the sector and insisted it has “an interest in incorporating the views of the independent sector.”

He said some of the areas the inquiry will focus on include funding , clinical services, dispensing, workforce, including questions over the additional roles reimbursement scheme, supervision, hub and spoke and medicines supply.

Brine insisted the inquiry will “scrutinise the role” of the Department of Health and Social Care and “all of the public bodies that sit around it” and put questions to NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard.

He said the inquiry will begin with an evidence session on community pharmacy then hospital pharmacy and pharmacists in general practice and tried to reassure the conference that his committee will not be starting from “day one” but “on the shoulders of the work that’s been done in the past” on pharmacy. His intention, he added, was to “keep this issue at the forefront of political debate.”

“We want to build on the groundwork that many of the pharmacy sector have put in place. We want to cover as many of the different pharmacy services within the pharmacy sector as we can, so pharmacy in our communities, in hospitals and general practice,” he said.

“The key question that we’re seeking to answer is ‘what does the future of pharmacy look like? What must the government do in the present to ensure the best chance for that future to be realised?’

“You would be forgiven for thinking ‘another inquiry, another report,’ but we are not starting from day one. We stand on the shoulders of the work that’s been done in the past, the work I did in government, and the work Community Pharmacy England and King’s Fund recently did, the brilliant thesis from the University of Bath that Bharat (Shah, Sigma's founder) and Sigma (promoted) which was brought to the House of Commons this summer, we stand on the shoulders of all of that.”

Brine told the conference the inquiry was “a live piece of work” which provided delegates with an opportunity “to shape it” and “make suggestions as to who we might talk to.”

“It is for you to make suggestions for yourselves to be guests on the TV show, that’s how I consider the select committee. It’s not just a committee with a webcam in the corner, it is a TV show and it is well watched by lots and lots of you outside the sector as well as in it,” he said.

He warned there were “no guarantees…about what we can get the government to do as a result of our work” but insisted his committee will “come up with solutions and recommendations” that will “inform the next government whatever colour that is as much as it will the current government.”

Brine’s committee is also in the middle of a major inquiry on prevention which he revealed heavily features pharmacy which he said must be “at the heart of any future vision for the NHS.”

Insisting “health and care don’t work without pharmacy,” he said: “The role of pharmacy has featured in evidence that we’ve gathered across inquiries on prevention, on integrated care systems, on cancer and our big workforce inquiry.”

He said the evidence session on hospital pharmacy and pharmacists in general practice will cover Lord Carter’s review into productivity in NHS hospitals and automation.