The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7480 p611
1 December 2007

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Global sum is secure, minister tells Parliament

Parliament has been told that primary care trusts will not be able to raid pharmacy funding when responsibility for it is transferred from the Department of Health.

Responding to the Second Reading debate on the Health and Social Care Bill in the House of Commons this week, health minister Ben Bradshaw said: “I hope that I can reassure [Sandra Gidley] that PCTs will not simply be able to siphon off the funding for pharmaceutical services or to vary nationally negotiated fees and allowances for essential and advanced services.”

Earlier in the debate, pharmacist MP Sandra Gidley (Lib Dem, Romsey) and shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley (Con, South Cambridgeshire) both expressed concern about the planned transfer of responsibility for the global sum.

Mrs Gidley said that PCTs understood neither pharmacy nor its potential. She unsuccessfully sought a ministerial assurance that pharmaceutical expertise in practice-based commissioning would be available within PCTs to ensure that the money was used to the best advantage of patients.

Mr Lansley said that there had been pitiful take-up of advanced pharmaceutical services and that the Government should make sure that there were incentives for this when the global sum was transferred.

The minister made no comment on a number of other matters raised by Mrs Gidley and Howard Stoate (Lab, Dartford), who is also chairman of the All-Party Pharmacy Group.

Mrs Gidley expressed concern that the Government was foisting the General Pharmaceutical Council on the profession. “Most of the profession seems to feel that there has been a lack of help in setting up a professional body or something akin to a royal college,” she said.

And she challenged the planned lay majority on professional regulatory councils.

“As we are always told that an evidence base is needed for introducing any change in regulation and policy, what evidence is there that a lay majority gives a better outcome for patients,” she asked. “I do not think that there is any.”

Mrs Gidley also described plans for the proposed Care Quality Commission, which will take over the functions of the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection, the Commission for Social Care Inspection and the Mental Health Act Commission, to introduce a third tier of registration and inspection for pharmacies, as bureaucratic overkill.

“Multiple registration creates potential for duplication and confusion, as well as giving rise to additional expense for health care professionals,” she said.

Referring to a Royal Pharmaceutical Society briefing document, Dr Stoate said that the Society wanted confirmation that the transition to the GPhC would be managed properly and adequately funded, and would make use of the experience of many individuals and organisations that currently play an important role in pharmacy.