Streeting to confirm in January if new funding will offset NI hike

Arthur Walsh, 19 Dec 20243 Min

Business news

Streeting to confirm in January if new funding will offset NI hike

Arthur Walsh, 19 Dec 20243 Min

In Business news

Health secretary Wes Streeting has told the health select committee that community pharmacies and other privately owned providers of NHS care can expect to hear from him in January on whether his budget allocations will relieve their increased national insurance burden in the next financial year.

Addressing the health and social care committee (HSCC) yesterday (December 18), Mr Streeting defended chancellor Rachel Reeves’ decision to raise national insurance contributions and lower the eligibility threshold, which has been reported as delivering a possible £50m blow to pharmacies.

The chancellor’ decision on national insurance enabled her to pump an extra £22.6bn into the NHS budget, he said, adding that he was aware of business owners’ concerns.

“I haven’t set out funding allocations for the year ahead,” he commented. “We won’t know the net impact until I’ve done that… people should not be taking decisions ahead of seeing the allocation.” Clarity will come in January at the latest, he said.

“Everyone, whatever part of the health and care sector they’re in, is going hell for leather on saying ‘we need this sorted’” he said, adding that some are in his view “slightly jumping the gun”.

The health secretary said he will be meeting with Community Pharmacy England to resume 2024-25 funding talks in early 2025 and that he wished “to reassure pharmacists across the country that we are taking into account the enormous pressures they are under when thinking about allocations, so that we can stabilise the system and create the foundations from which to recover”.

His comments followed remarks the previous day from pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock, who told MPs he was “confident” long-delayed funding talks for the 2024-25 financial year will begin early in the new year.

In a House of Commons debate on Tuesday December 17, Mr Kinnock said he was “as frustrated as anybody else” by the delays in agreeing new terms for England’s community pharmacy sector, now overdue by almost nine months.

“I can say now that we are very focused on getting these negotiations started early in the new year,” he said, adding that he is aware of widespread interest in the outcomes “in terms of the contractual framework, the medicines margin and all of the funding”.

He said that on Labour’s side key priorities include the development of a prescribing service building on Pharmacy First and an overhaul of IT infrastructure “to make sure that the sector can more easily prescribe and refer”.

Many pharmacies 'will not survive the winter'

Meanwhile, Community Pharmacy England has warned that many community pharmacies will not survive the winter without urgent financial support.

In polling carried out by the negotiating body, almost all (96 per cent) of pharmacy owners said they were worried about their businesses this winter, with seven in ten concerned about the risks to patient safety posed by the ongoing funding pressures.

More than a third of pharmacy owners said they were worried that their business may not even survive the winter.

Pharmacy owners also predicted that patients will see a raft of problems in 2025 including longer waiting times (expected by more than 80 per cent of contractors), reduced opening hours (expected by around a third of pharmacy owners) and reduced availability of some services (expected by almost three-quarters of owners).

The concerns were echoed at local level with:

▪ 73 per cent of local pharmacy leaders “extremely concerned“ about the ability of pharmacies in their area to continue serving patients this winter

▪ 69 per cent predicting this will have a serious negative impact on patient care

▪ Without action, 60 per cent of local leaders expect to see more permanent closures of pharmacies in their area this winter

▪ 67 per cent anticipate that pharmacies would be forced to reduce their opening hours, while 58 per cent expect to see patients waiting longer for medications.

Janet Morrison, chief executive of CPE, said: “Community pharmacies simply will not withstand another season of winter pressures, and if they are left to collapse, the impact on businesses and their staff, on patients, on the wider NHS, and ultimately on the nation’s health, will be unthinkable. Pharmacies now need urgent support.”

Anil Sharma, a pharmacy owner in the east of England, added: “We are really feeling the strain in community pharmacy, and as winter approaches, it feels even harder to manage. My team and I are burnt out, stressed, and worried about how we’ll cope with ever increasing demand.

“Patients rely on us, yet every day the service we are able to offer is deteriorating, whether its medicines we are unable to source, or waiting times because the team are so overloaded. We need urgent support to be able to keep helping our patients in the way that we want to.”