Michael Dugher: Cuts are wrong remedy for chemists '“ and the NHS

Or that the number of prescription items has increased by nearly 50 per cent over the last 10 years?

Community pharmacies are a vital part of our healthcare system and play an important role protecting our public health.

Whether it is picking up a prescription, providing free advice on minor ailments or getting your flu jab, local pharmacies prevent as well as treat illness and crucially they reduce the burden on GPs and Accident and Emergency at a time when our NHS is stretched. But did you also know that the Government plans to slash the budget for community pharmacy by £170m this year – a cut in cash terms of six per cent?

Our local chemists need central Government to support their important work. In a letter that announced the proposed cut in funding, the Department of Health said the reduction would avoid “comprising the quality of services or public access to them”. Yet the Government’s own figures show that up to 3,000 pharmacies could be forced to close because of the cuts – that’s a quarter of all chemists in the country.

At the same time, the Government is actually asking pharmacies to do more to support patients with long-term conditions and to help their botched and delayed rollout of supposed seven-day-a- week GP surgeries.

But this is also a false economy. Strong and fully funded local chemists are a vital tool in relieving pressures on GP surgeries and keeping A&E waiting times down by providing treatment and preventative medicine and advice to patients before they head to hospital or see their doctor.

We know that A&E is in crisis. That’s why so many in Yorkshire are rightly worried about the threat to A&E in Huddersfield, meaning that people in Huddersfield could have to travel to Halifax, Wakefield or Barnsley for emergency treatment, and thereby putting a further strain on those areas.

Under this Government, we know A&E waiting times are already on the rise with the latest figures showing that just 87 per cent of patients in England were seen within four hours of arrival in November last year – missing the Government’s own target of 95 per cent.

This performance is the worst in any November since David Cameron became Prime Minister and brings home the reality that winter crises in our NHS have become the new norm.

And only last week, a poll of major 
A&E units by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine showed that just 80 to 85 per cent of patients were seen within four hours in the first three weeks of January.

By cutting the budget for community pharmacies, the Government risk making this crisis much worse by forcing more people to turn to A&E.

Cutting the budget for community pharmacies will also put more pressure on GP surgeries. NHS statistics show that more than 10 million patients are now waiting more than a week for an appointment with their doctor.

And for many, it is simply not possible to get an appointment when they call their GP, with more than one in 10 being unable to get an appointment or speak to someone at their practice the last time they tried.

The threat to community pharmacies has finally made the national news. But I was first alerted to the problem by Steve Lo, who grew up in Hoyland Common in my Barnsley East constituency.

Steve runs Lo’s Pharmacy, a chain of 20 community stores across Yorkshire. I recently visited one of them in the heart of Grimethorpe village – and it was as busy as ever.

Steve said there was “a real and present danger that the Government’s cuts will make many pharmacies unviable. That can only mean a longer trip not just for your prescription, but for free advice on minor ailments or medicines as well as a number of other NHS-led services and is only going to put more pressure on GP surgeries and Accident and Emergency departments”.

Paradoxically, at the same time as announcing the £170m cut to chemists’ budgets, the Department of Health said it wanted to put pharmacy “at the heart of the NHS”. But instead, the Government’s cut to community pharmacies will deliver a blow to the heart of national healthcare as we know it.

Michael Dugher is the Labour MP for Barnsley East.