Mr Kirit Patel (a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Council and chief executive of the Day Lewis pharmacy chain) told the Prime Minister (Mr Tony Blair) about some of the problems faced by small pharmacy businesses during a seminar at 10 Downing Street on November 27. It is the second time in a month that the Prime Minister has been told about the difficulties being faced by pharmacists (PJ, November 25, p776).
Mr Patel told The Journal on November 28 that he had been invited because of his experiences with setting up his own business. He was the only retailer at the seminar.
There had been short presentations by the Prime Minister and by Mr David Irwin (chief executive, Small Business Service) on the help that the Government was looking to give to small- and medium-sized enterprises, after which Mr Blair had asked Mr Patel for his opinion first.
"He said: ‘Kirit, you are a pharmacist — what do you think?', so I took that as an opportunity to put over some of the problems faced by pharmacists.
"I said that, from the pharmacist's point of view, there did not appear to be much ‘joined up government'. The Department of Health wanted to take pharmacy forward through the National Health Service plan and the pharmacy plan, but at the same time the Department of Trade and Industry and the Office of Fair Trading wanted to scrap resale price maintenance which would harm small pharmacies. I said that the pharmacy plan was very good but there was no new money attached to it. I told the Prime Minister that the Treasury had to take a much more long-term view of pharmacy, not just set annual budgets, and invest in it to allow pharmacists to deliver the aims of the plan.
"I told him that the 97 pence dispensing fee was not going to get pharmacists very far. I do not think that he or the others present realised how little we get paid.”
At the seminar, the Prime Minister announced that the Government intended to bring forward a new Regulatory Reform Bill. This would give Ministers powers to scrap outdated or overlapping regulations by Order. Among the first targets for the new Bill, when it became law, would be regulations relating to the conduct of industrial tribunals when dealing with weak cases, the handling of unfair contract terms, and renewals of manufacturers' and wholesale dealers' licences.