The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7176 p766
1 December 2001

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She came to bury pharmacy, not to praise it

Community pharmacists in England and Wales are up in arms: how many more kicks in the teeth or slaps in the face can they take? They have endured the loss of resale price maintenance and a report into the supply of generics. They are facing an impending Office of Fair Trading investigation into control of entry and now must accept a cut in the dispensing fee and a small increase in the global sum.

If Hazel Blears, the Minister with responsibility for pharmacy, is not a worried woman, she should be. Earlier this week she spoke at the triennial dinner of the National Pharmaceutical Association to an assembly of the great and good. She must have been relieved not only that neither eggs nor tomatoes were thrown at her, but also that the only dissent was that a few people present refused to applaud her speech (p767).

In truth, her speech was a disgrace. In one gush she said what a marvellous job pharmacists were doing and that, however inadequate the remuneration system was, they had to live with it until the Government and the profession could work on an agreed agenda for change, and anyway pharmacists had enjoyed a 4 per cent increase in income, in real terms, over the past decade. This message will be already familiar to many community pharmacists because she has taken the unusual step of writing to them to explain the Government position. It is hard not to share the view of some contractors that the Government is trying to force the closure of as many small pharmacies as it can so that it will have fewer to reward when a new contract is negotiated.

Historically pharmacists have been a docile group and rarely threaten any action, partly on the sound ethical ground that patients should not be made to suffer and partly because it is difficult to be united over what action might be taken when there are competing interests at work in every high street. However, such is the anger in the profession that the National Pharmaceutical Association is suggesting that there should be a moratorium on repeat dispensing projects (p767) and correspondents in this week's issue have made other suggestions (p778).

The Government has put money into other sectors of health care in response to outcries from patients and the medical profession, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, only this week, has said that the National Health Service needs more resources.

If Ms Blears is as serious as she says she is about the future of pharmacy and maintaining the pharmacy network, she could surely find a way to release extra funds and keep the profession on side. Then would the profession believe that she has come to praise pharmacy, not to bury it.

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