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Labour’s manifesto commitment to create a Community Pharmacy Prescribing Service has stalled, with “affordability” cited as a key barrier to discussing it in recent contract talks.  

The party’s 2024 election manifesto declared it would launch a prescribing service over the course of its term and grant “more pharmacists independent prescribing rights where clinically appropriate” – but it appears little progress has been made on reaching this goal.  

“We didn’t talk about it at all during negotiations,” Community Pharmacy England chief executive Janet Morrison told P3pharmacy in a recent press briefing to discuss the 2025-26 settlement CPE has agreed with Government. 

She said that in recent years CPE has “very strongly” established principles “around affordability” to deter government interlocutors from overloading the pharmacy network with services that don’t have adequate funding behind them. 

Ms Morrison said ministers “see the value of pharmacies being able to deliver services and to be able to create a prescribing service” and that CPE is “really keen” to engage with policymakers on “the value that we could deliver through further clinical services”. 

She added: “The fact they want to do that and recognise the value of that – I think that’s what’s given us the leverage to be able to say, ‘You can’t have that’.

“We know you want it – but you can’t have that unless we’re stable and can do the really important basics of medicine supply for contractors.”

Asked if the 2025-26 contract would help lay the groundwork for commissioning the service as part of the next annual settlement, Ms Morrison replied: “That’s all for discussion, and it will depend on how much money there is.” 

In a recent interview with P3pharmacy, Labour MP and pharmacist Sadik Al-Hassan said Labour still has “no plan” for putting independent prescriber pharmacists to work at scale as concerns mount around the opportunities available for newly qualified pharmacists who from September 2026 will all have IP annotation on the day they join the register. 

“I haven’t seen further detail,” he said when asked if his party has carried out work to develop the concept since including it in its 2024 election manifesto. 

Service updates in 2025-26 deal

Changes to services in the 2025-26 contractual settlement include:

• Pharmacy First (PF): Minor illness and clinical pathway consultation fees to rise by £2 to £17. 
• Monthly PF payments ‘banded’ into £500 for 20-29 consultations a month and £1,000 for 30 or more (from June 2025)
• From June, pharmacies must register to provide the contraception service and hypertension case-finding service in order to qualify for PF payments as new service ‘bundling’ arrangements kick in 
• From October, pharmacies must deliver at least one ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) provision per month to qualify for monthly PF payments
• Contraception service: Consultation fees to rise to £25. From October, emergency hormonal contraception will be included in the service at a fee of £20 per consultation
• Hypertension service fees: Blood pressure check fees will drop by £5 to £10 per consultation while ABPM fees will increase to £50.85
• New Medicine Service: Depression to be added to NMS from October – while ‘subcontracting’ of NMS consultations to another provider will be banned once service directions have been amended
• Distance selling pharmacies may no longer provide services from a physical premises.