www.pharmacy.biz
DECEMBER 2024 9
will increase 6.7 per cent to £12.21 per hour, and
the national minimum wage for 18–20-year-olds
will increase 16.3 per cent to £10 per hour.
The Budget saw a hike in the amount
employers pay in National Insurance
contributions. From April, the rate will rise
from 13.8 per cent to 15 per cent, and the salary
threshold at which it is paid will fall from £9,100
a year to £5,000.
The NHS and rest of the public sector are
exempt from the tax rise, but not pharmacies
or GPs.
Rees said this was emblematic of the way that
pharmacy and to a lesser extent, GPs, have been
treated by government and the NHS.
“When the government and the NHS think
about the health service, they think of hospitals.
They think of hospital care. They think of
secondary care,” he said.
“When they do think about primary care,
they think about GPs and often forget about
pharmacy.
“Community pharmacy is always the bottom
of the pile – it is treated as a third-class citizen
within the NHS and by the government.
“That’s why, yet again, these changes in
the Budget are being covered for hospitals,
they’re not being covered for community
pharmacy. That is the way that community
pharmacy has been treated for years. That’s
why community pharmacy is now in the
desperate state that it is in.”
Health secretary Wes Streeting
has criticised the NPA’s call to action
describing it as “unhelpful degree of sabre
rattling” and warning that it will “harm
patients” and “put pressure” on other parts
of the healthcare system.
Streeting urged community
pharmacies to work with the government
and be part of the government’s 10-year
plan to transform the NHS.
Rees hit back insisting that the
government’s lack of clarity over
funding and when the pharmacy
contract will be announced was one of
the reasons behind the ballot.
“The deal that we’re talking about
now should have been announced in
April, we’re now in November,” said
Rees. “Pharmacists are actually operating
outside of a contract. They’re dispensing
medicines at a loss.
“Every couple of weeks you hear that
there might be a deal around the corner, but
it never materialises.
“We’re reaching such a late stage in this
financial year that there’s now a real risk
that when a deal does eventually emerge,
it will actually be for this year and for the next
financial year - it’ll be a two-year deal and that
would be really disappointing.
“Pharmacy owners, so many of them are
clinging on by their fingertips. We need the
government to move fast and we’re just not
seeing that.”
In response to Streeting’s claim that collective
action by pharmacies would lead to patient
harm, Rees said it was better communities had
a pharmacy offering reduced services, and for
there not to be a pharmacy at all.
“We do know that some patients will be
affected, and that’s something to be regretted. No
one proposes action that could affect patient care
lightly,” he added.
“Unless these steps are taken, more and
more pharmacies will close because they’re
running on empty. They are doing more work
than they’re being reimbursed for. And if
they take these measures, such as stopping
free delivery of medicines, stopping free
blister packs, if they reduce their hours to core
hours, that will make them more financially
sustainable, which means they won’t have
to completely close down and can still serve
patients.
“If they carry on doing all the things
they’re doing for now, there’s more chance
that more pharmacies will go to the wall,
and that’s something we want to prevent in
order to safeguard the services that patients
receive in local communities.”
After the announcement of the ballot
back in September, the Pharmacists’ Defence
Association (PDA) publicly stated that only trade
unions, which the NPA isn’t, can conduct ballots
for industrial action.
With over 38,000 members, the PDA is the
largest pharmacist membership organisation and
the only independent trade union of pharmacists
in the UK.
Therefore, it argued that the NPA’s action
should not be “inaccurately described as a strike
or industrial or collective action.”
The PDA further explained that NPA’s
proposed ballot pertains to a contractual dispute
between businesses operating community
pharmacies and the NHS commissioners in
England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Additionally, the PDA noted that the NPA
is not conducting a ballot for its members in
Scotland.
While some reports have stated that
pharmacists are being balloted for the first time
to take collective action, the PDA pointed out
that many NPA members are, in fact, business
owners and investors, not pharmacists.
Rees, however, stated that it was important
that the sector’s different representative
bodies worked together. He pointed out
that when the NPA handed a petition to
Downing Street as part of its Save
Our Pharmacies campaign, they
were accompanied by the likes of
Community Pharmacy England (CPE),
Community Pharmacy Northern
Ireland (CPNI), and the Company
Chemists’ Association (CCA).
“The sector is crying out for a united
front across the bodies,” said Rees.
“We’ve got a good relationship with
the with the PDA. We meet with them, and
other representative bodies, regularly and
we work in a collaborative way.
“They will take slightly different
views on some things, but we all want,
ultimately, the same result, and that is a
fair deal for community pharmacy.”
action on the cards, says NPA after ballot results
“There’s a state of
emergency, there’s
a crisis within
community pharmacy”